The Star Trek Transporter Enigma

Let's suppose that the fictional Star Trek transporter works like this:

A computer records the identity and position of every particle of your body as the transporter disassembles it, and the particles are stored locally in some sort of storage space, or perhaps annihilated by conversion to energy.

Simultaneously, it recreates those particles at a remote location, or perhaps harvests them from existing matter at that location, and reassembles your body to form an exact duplicate of what it disassembled. The important point here is that the only thing actually transferred to the destination is information; no actual particles of matter travel across the gap. Thus, you've been transported.

Or have you?

Objectively, it seems so to everyone, including you. After you've been transported, you seem to be the same person with the same memories that you had before, but are you?

Or did the "you" that stood on the transporter actually get killed? Does the transporter actually execute people and replace them with duplicates? Is it suicide to step on a transporter platform?

This seems more like a philosophical than a scientific question, so I'm posting it here. Some might argue that the Star trek transporter must be forever impossible because of the difficulty of resolving the paradox. Some might argue for the existence of a soul. What do you think?

By the way, a similar puzzle is a situation like the one that occurred in the movie The 6th Day, where the original "you" isn't annihilated but survives while another "you" is created. Which one is you? How do you divide the property?

I'm not sure there's a paradox here, just a myriad possible interpretations of the event, assuming it's possible.

Hm...
Transporter Duplicates

12starstuff321

well if all your atoms are ripped apart and put back you have basically cloned your self, the person is on the other side is not "you" you are dead. but an exact copy of you is on the other side.

once the chemistry is lost in your brain i am very certain , no matter how short a time, you will not be alive but it will appear to everybody else that you are, now is somehow the machine can keep your consciousness alive while it does its mili second transportation then the person being transported will be fine. witch better fits the show because the people being transported are aware of there surroundings while they are transported.

The materialist way to see it is that the original is dead. The new one will have the same memory and physical body, but it isn't the original person, from their point of view the life ended. A easy demonstration of that, is that the transporter has been KNOWN to create duplicates. The only way to interprate that (beside this being SF) is that the transporter hicupped and after the original died, it created two copy instead of 1 copy.

We duplicate ourselves all the time its called reproduction.
And yes it is a sacrifice, ask any parent.

The problem you have and other transporter philosophers is more to do with the immortality of consciousness.
To me a more interest question is, do we have some of the consciousness of my parents?
The physical basis is there in our genes.....

Suppose I get up out of this chair and walk across the room. Has the version of me that was in the chair been killed? I look, that person is gone. Utterly destroyed.

Now, still looking back at the empty chair, I take out a picture of me when I was sitting there. This is evidence that there was a living, breathing human in that chair. That human is gone now. I must destroy the picture so it cannot be used at my murder trial.

Darwin's Beard!
Can we have a subforum for transporter threads? If not, can we have posters look for previous threads before starting new ones about the same topic?

Ladewig said:

Darwin's Beard!
Can we have a subforum for transporter threads? If not, can we have posters look for previous threads before starting new ones about the same topic?

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OK, you! You're first! Stand right here.

Aepervius said:

The materialist way to see it is that the original is dead. The new one will have the same memory and physical body, but it isn't the original person, from their point of view the life ended. A easy demonstration of that, is that the transporter has been KNOWN to create duplicates. The only way to interprate that (beside this being SF) is that the transporter hicupped and after the original died, it created two copy instead of 1 copy.

Click to expand...

The Transporter is IMO an excellent way to suss out pseudo materialists. They refute the HPC and they chortle at new-agers and mystics - but stick them in the Transporter and they won't push the button. Why not? Because they don't actually believe what they preach.

If you think there is an experiencing self and that this will die in the Transporter, you are not a materialist. You are just suffering from delusion. A very human delusion perhaps, but delusion none-the-less.

Nick

Nick227 said:

The Transporter is IMO an excellent way to suss out pseudo materialists. They refute the HPC and they chortle at new-agers and mystics - but stick them in the Transporter and they won't push the button. Why not? Because they don't actually believe what they preach.

If you think there is an experiencing self and that this will die in the Transporter, you are not a materialist. You are just suffering from delusion. A very human delusion perhaps, but delusion none-the-less.

Nick

Click to expand...

So if one refuses to imagine pressing a button in an imaginary scenario that apparently will transfer ones consciousness across space from its physical source to a replica of its physical source then you are not a materialist.
Nice

!Kaggen said:

So if one refuses to imagine pressing a button in an imaginary scenario that apparently will transfer ones consciousness across space from its physical source to a replica of its physical source then you are not a materialist.
Nice

Click to expand...

No.

One is not "really" a materialist/physicalist if they honestly think there is something essential to their identity (or as Nick said their "experiencing self") that would be lost if they stepped into the machine.

This has been flushed out in the zillion other threads on this issue.

There are many genuine materialists/physicalists on these forums that feel like something may be missing, but they don't put their finger on it and try to explain it in logical terms because they admit that it is probably just an emotional thing. There is nothing wrong with this. The only error is to say for sure.

rocketdodger said:

There are many genuine materialists/physicalists on these forums that feel like something may be missing, but they don't put their finger on it and try to explain it in logical terms because they admit that it is probably just an emotional thing. There is nothing wrong with this. The only error is to say for sure.

Click to expand...

Emotions have their own logic too. For sure, if you look at it from the perspective that you are going to die when you push the button, then there will be an emotional response. But if you recognise that the copy lives and that there is not an experiencing self anyway under materialism, then the emotional response can be understood and let go of. Like !Kaggen says, if you won't travel you ain't a materialist. Simple as that.

Nick

Ladewig said:

Darwin's Beard!
Can we have a subforum for transporter threads? If not, can we have posters look for previous threads before starting new ones about the same topic?

Click to expand...

No kidding! Has it always been such a hot topic here?

ThermionicScott said:

No kidding! Has it always been such a hot topic here?

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Yes. For many years.

Ladewig said:

Darwin's Beard!
Can we have a subforum for transporter threads? If not, can we have posters look for previous threads before starting new ones about the same topic?

Click to expand...

I think the multiple threads are making the point that if all the different copies are saying the same thing, surely we only need one of them. It's perhaps an oversubtle way to make the point.

Robin said:

Yes. For many years.

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And it's remarkable just how many on this forum who proclaim themselves materialists show their true colours in them. They are only too happy to apply scientific, materialist notions to the world around them, but apply them to what they consider to be "themselves" and it's like, no way I'm outta here!

It seems to me that there are a lot of people who get into materialism because they feel it represents some bullwark against a tide of new age BS. I sympathize, but actually, if you look, materialism is a great deal more radical and a great deal more confrontational than pretty much anything put out by the alternative brigade, a fact Parfit's Teletransporter shows up very well.

Nick

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be a true Scot.. er Materialist, but it seems to me if what I call my "self" is currently comprised of a particular collection of atoms arranged in a particular way, then if those atoms were destroyed and a different collection of atoms somewhere else were suddenly arranged in a "Brainache" shaped pattern, the new Brainache would be a different individual.

I know that in the normal everyday world my body gradually replaces all of the matter in my body, that the carbon and whatever inside me now is not the same as it was ten years ago, but replacing it all at once just seems a lot different to me.

Am I just a latent Dualist, or what?

Brainache said:

I know that in the normal everyday world my body gradually replaces all of the matter in my body...

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Are you sure? In agreement with a lot of anti-substance abuse propaganda, Wikipedia says:

Neurons of the adult brain do not generally undergo cell division, and usually cannot be replaced after being lost, although there are a few known exceptions.

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It seems intuitively clear that your identity must reside in your brain.

Towlie said:

This seems more like a philosophical than a scientific question, so I'm posting it here.

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Perhaps some time ago this would have qualified as a philosphical question. But, I think today it has been reduced to merely a semantical one.

The answer depends on how you define "you". In one context, "you" could refer to the very specific particles that made you up, in which case your transporter scenario would be seen as "suicide", at least of that edition of "you". In another context, "you" could function as a reference to the entity that, for all intents and purposes, could be called "you", (regardless of which particles happened to be used); in which case the transporter would be merely tranferring "you" from one source to another.

It makes for very interesting studies of language usage. But, for very boring philosophy, nowadays.