What is the difference? If somebody stops you then restarts you, are you the same person? If half your brain is destroyed doctors recreate it from a back up and merge it with the surviving half, are you still you, half you, someone completely new?
I don’t think that anybody has enough knowledge on that matter to answer that question. From the outside, it may well look like the same entity boots up in both cases, because the new version may run on the same processes. However, we do not know whether there is person #1 who simply does not return and is survived by person #2 who is and feels identical. In today’s technological situation, ripping someone apart with the caveat “don’t worry, we’ll build a puppet that is identical to you in all details somewhere else” would not fill me with confidence.
The transporter question, the “backup” question, are only difficult if you take the body to be the “vessel of the soul”, but it isn’t.
The body creates the soul, or even better, the soul is a normal process of the body.
You say that there’s no way to tell which is you from the outside. There’s also no way to tell from the inside.
Imagine a copy is made of you while you’re sleeping. When you awake, how would you tell which you were? Your only chance would be to find out what happened to your two bodies while you were sleeping, to look for external clues.
I posit that there is a way of telling whether I am. And if I am no longer, that status would stop. Whether someone else someplace else thinks they are I at that point is irrelevant in that regard at that point if I have stopped being.
What is the difference? If somebody stops you then restarts you, are you the same person? If half your brain is destroyed doctors recreate it from a back up and merge it with the surviving half, are you still you, half you, someone completely new?
I don’t think that anybody has enough knowledge on that matter to answer that question. From the outside, it may well look like the same entity boots up in both cases, because the new version may run on the same processes. However, we do not know whether there is person #1 who simply does not return and is survived by person #2 who is and feels identical. In today’s technological situation, ripping someone apart with the caveat “don’t worry, we’ll build a puppet that is identical to you in all details somewhere else” would not fill me with confidence.
The transporter question, the “backup” question, are only difficult if you take the body to be the “vessel of the soul”, but it isn’t.
The body creates the soul, or even better, the soul is a normal process of the body.
You say that there’s no way to tell which is you from the outside. There’s also no way to tell from the inside.
Imagine a copy is made of you while you’re sleeping. When you awake, how would you tell which you were? Your only chance would be to find out what happened to your two bodies while you were sleeping, to look for external clues.
I posit that there is a way of telling whether I am. And if I am no longer, that status would stop. Whether someone else someplace else thinks they are I at that point is irrelevant in that regard at that point if I have stopped being.