123. Personal Identity & the Transporter Paradox | THUNK
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- What makes me "me?" How can I still be me, even though I change over time? Is Starfleet taking applications yet?
Links for the Curious
Parfit's review of personal identity - home.sandiego.e...
CGP Grey’s amazing “The Trouble with Transporters” - • The Trouble with Trans...
PhilosophyTube’s very thorough (& speedy!) coverage of personal identity - • Personal Identity - Ph...
The SEP’s brilliant article on personal identity (including major problems & possible solutions) - plato.stanford...
“Teletransportation Paradox,” via Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.o...
Thomas Reid’s scathing letter to Lord Kames regarding the Resurrection (the OG transporter paradox) - goo.gl/KREL2F
A brief summary of Hume’s work on personal identity (aka bundle theory) - www3.nd.edu/~j...
Good video. Surprised it doesn't have more views!
As you've mentioned, there is a reason why it's so difficult to establish meaningful criteria of personal identity. It's because the concept itself is ultimately meaningless - it's merely a mental heuristic that's part of our intuition, and as with many other parts of our intuition (most notably morality), when you put it under the microscope, it always breaks down. There is no hard criteria - it's just something that humans "feel". If you try to give it clear-cut criteria, you can always find a counter-example that just feels wrong. That's because ultimately, the idea of "identity" does not exist in the universe. The universe is just a collection of particles interacting with each other. Even at the quantum level, there is no clear-cut identity, because particles switch places with each other all the time. When we try to define an idea that exists only in our minds, and not in the universe, we'll always run into these difficulties, because our perception of reality is not always representative of reality and its underlying mechanics. For these reasons, I think that trying to define things like personal identity and morality are ultimately futile and meaningless.
I broadly agree with your sentiments, although I don't know if I'd say the process of trying to define such things is "meaningless." (I certainly don't feel inclined to drive into a telephone pole, even on the days I feel like identity is a totally empty concept.)
At the very least, I think it's fun to try to fit these concepts we take for granted into logical frameworks, if only for the weirdness that transpires. :)
Right, 'meaningless' is the wrong word to use here. From a scientific stand-point, 'non-sensical' has a more pertinent characteristic to apply to the problem as if we try to define identity (a subjective experience) through scientific means (measurement) then sure, it will fail. However, to say identity and the study of identity is meaningless I think is only the case if you believe there is nothing to know apart from scientific means. If that is not the case, then finding out what it is to be 'me' has a lot of meaning for people's lives. Knowing your identity potentially has the consequence of knowing how you can help society, how you can best pursue purpose, and how you take on different roles.
Actually, if your looking for topics, Thunk. Have you done an episode on roles?
Nexnaught but where should the process of defining stuff stop then? When observed under sufficient scrutiny, the mere concept of a particle appears to be vague. The modern language of quantum mechanics speaks rather of fields as fundamental objects and the concept of *particle* acquires a new *definition* of an elementary excitation of a field. This definition, although it has its limits, remains useful and certainly conveys a certain *meaning*.
You are certainly right when you say that the idea of *the self* is a human construction that carries its own difficulties with it. But the idea that one should be content with what ultimately constitute "the universe" seems like an impasse to me as we have no way of asserting what the universe is made of. We can only suggest explanations which we should try to make as *consistant* as possible and which we have good reasons to believe in, owing to our scientific method of enquiry.
I would say that the same is true of the concept of the self. And we should regard difficulties with the idea as encouragement to improve our definition and understanding rather than interdictions to venture further.
In short, your comment is excellent. Yet in lack of a definite way of saying what had meaning and what has not, we can ask the question: "what meaning can I put in the definition of an idea such that it fits all the data which I have good reasons to trust".
Even if we assume that something exists 'only in our minds' we need to explain why we see our minds as something 'apart' from the universe even if it's not the case. Also there are somethings that we also don't have a concrete meaning neither appears to be only in 'our minds' (like number for example)
NEXnaught....you claim morality is just something that humans 'feel'?? you are mistaken. morality is objective. your views are not only wrong, but also dangerous.
""trying to define morality is ultimately FUTILE and MEANINGLESS""???? wow, you are spewing dangerous poison nexnaught, dangerous poison on par with religious fanaticism.
Islam treats women/atheists like garbage, but you probably claim this is merely an 'opinion', and thus, we have no real authority/foundation to claim western values are superior.
Your relativism is poison. Western values are indeed superior to Islamist values...and this is not an opinion, its a fact. perhaps you should read D Parfit.
your nihilism is poison. dangerous poison.
Hey Josh! I just started watching your series again after a long break. It's still just as insightful. Thank you for it.
On another note, this episode made me feel very excited! It so happens that in 2009 in business school (I left, it really wasn't for me) my super-depressed self wrote down this same exact experiment instead of revising for my exams. I still have the almost decade-old file backed up on my computer. I had always wondered if anyone had already thought of it, considering I haven't watched or read a lot of science fiction or philosophy. That day I learnt to accept that identity permanence is likely simply a cognitive bias.
It does being one to question one's fear of death. Why fear it if in truth, we die at the very least once every day? Or at least our conscience does. Which is the only really important part as far as I'm concerned. We should either fear every single one, or none at all, including the last one.
Custom & habit are seriously powerful. ;) I think there are self-evident qualitative differences between actual-death & falling asleep, & decent reasons to fear one & not the other. Also, it's telling that even philosophers who are into extreme skepticism about persistent personal identity still avoid jumping off cliffs (even if the person who dies at the bottom isn't "them").
I strongly recommend reading thru the SEP article linked in the description - I love it when I reinvent a philosophical wheel & suddenly realize there's centuries of work on it!
I find the concept of past self vs present self to be rather interesting in the sense that me from 7 years ago might not recognise current me at all.
In the end, I look at a lot of these conundrums like brain teasers. They're fun to think about, but not things that cause me to lose sleep. I can't know if I'm still me any more than I can know if I'm in the Matrix, so I choose to carry on as though I am. Of course, that brings up the time lapse again, because what past me would do in these circumstances is different than what present me would do a lot of the time.
It's funny, I got called out by a friend recently about hyperbole like "My journal entries from 7 years ago are totally alien to me!" I like to distance myself from my past self psychologically (because many of his views are abhorrent to me now), but if I'm being honest, I totally understand where that (stupid stupid STUPID) dude is coming from.
The identity thing is likely only a serious problem in border cases, but I think it greatly informs how we process facts about the world: marriage, promises, Alzheimer's, dementia, prison reform, a *whole bunch* of stuff turns on how we think about people, persistence, & identity.
The Upanishads have an interesting take on the Self. Similar to Buddhism, it has a view of most of the transitory elements of personal identity (personality, body, etc.) as empty, yet recognizes a "True Self" beyond this that is identical to Brahman. This Brahman is "always looking out" from each of us and individual identities are illusory. And so there is only one "experiencer," although it may be more appropriate to say that experience is always experiencing itself.
I was first acquainted with this view when it was mentioned by Schrodinger in his book What Is Life? and he expressed sympathy towards it. There also seem to be some parallels with Schopenhauer's conception of Will. I don't know if I can believe that we are each identical with such an ultimate, but it is an interesting perspective at least.
I'm familiar with the self-as-illusion bit, at least superficially. (I speed-read a lot of eastern philosophy in college, so please excuse any naïve mistakes.) I'm not sure if it actually ameliorates any of the issues raised by the problem of personal identity, as it seems like it'd just push the problem one step away? (i.e. Instead of "personal identities," we're now just discussing numeric identity of "illusory individual identities," etc.)
Whatever it is that makes me not-you, & past-me more me than you (even if those are merely illusory states atop the "real" substrate of Brahman), it seems worth considering what makes those perceived phenomena seem different, neh?
I definitely think that the idea of a persistent personal identity is incorrect. It seems like if we assume that it's a thing, that always leads to a paradox. Well, that in and of itself is a proof by contradiction, implying it's not a thing. So that would mean that neither of the two Rikers are the original, because there's no such thing as being the original. They both would have the same claim to Riker's life (as would, in theory, anybody else), and would have to make some sort of compromise.
I feel like I should expand on my remark that in theory anybody could say that they're "the original". Of course it's silly to think that Picard could be Riker just as much as any of these two people in sick bay could. I think the reason for this, however, is because our entire society is based around the idea that a person remains the same person over time. It just feels wrong to suggest that's not the case, but I think logically it's the only answer. I'm not saying that I think we should reform our society based on this, as there's really no reason to. What we have been doing in this regard has been working fine so let's just keep going with it. What I am saying is that if we ever in the future end up in a situation like the Riker example in this video, I think we should recognise that neither one is more a continuation of the old person than the other. Basically I think we should pretend like the persistent personal identy exists until we encounter a paradox in reality (not just in hypotheticals) and then abandon it for that specific case, only to then go back to pretending it exists.
Ah, the ol' "head in the sand" approach. ;) I totally dig it. This is basically how I get thru all those little existential crises brought on by philosophy.
Going into the teleporter is the same as going to sleep. People don't fear going to sleep, so why fear the teleporter?
That being said, at a past point in my life I wouldn't have taken it, but certain experiences have changed my mind.
Ego death on acid and the realisation that there is no 'you' and personal identity is an illusion is quite an experience.
Elaborate on this. I never had ego death on acid, just watched posters move, lol.
It’s NOT the same. The teleporter isn’t putting you to sleep. It’s literally zapping you out of existence (i.e. killing you), then creating an exact carbon copy of you someplace else using the data it scanned from you. This person B might have the same memories as you, but he most definitely does not constitute the same consciousness. Suppose the machine had malfunctioned and the zapper broke, but the receiver still created that copy of you. Would you BOTH have the same consciousness?
@@garcalej still the same as sleep....
@@johnpoker-y1s No. It isn't. Unless we're talking the Big Sleep. And there's no waking from that one.
@@garcalej why would you say it isnt. (im playing the devils advocate a bit, but thats important for discussion)
Probably my favourite episode yet. I'd suggest that anyone interested in exploring it further read Derek Parfit's work. As far as philosophy goes, it's very approachable.
Every time I watch these videos I'm baffled as to how your subs haven't exploded. Your content is great and so is your delivery. Have you thought about tweaking the format a little?
Good call! Parfit's in the description, but I didn't want to get too far into any particular philosopher's interpretation. (If I were, I'd probably do Hume's "bundle theory.")
I mean I keep trying to make the format "decently-recorded in-focus videos..." T_T
That said, I don't really advertise anywhere. If you happen to know someone who'd like the content, feel free to grass roots it up. ;)
Reform project..you are baffled this channel does not have more subs? really? you are BAFFLED?? baffled?
cmon, society is obsessed with vanity, money, and pop-culture.
ignorance is rampant. if this channel included justin bieber talking about Bugattis.... then the subs would explode. but this dude is talking about Kant, science, etc. you should be baffled this channel has more than a few dozen views.
If you look at this identity in four dimensions then it seems more clear. A thing can change, but it's still part of one object, because history (including future) of that object can be traced and is included in its identity (it's one piece). You can then of course debate how would you define borders that separate object and surroundings (some other object). From one point of view a human standing on Earth is all one object. Because you need to define what separates their identities. Another problem stems from the information you have available. You assume full/partial knowledge. But what if you have none? Someone switches a thing in the shop for a structurally identical thing (elementary particles scale). Is it stealing if shop owner doesn't know about the switch? Or more importantly: Is it stealing when he does know? What if he knows but it was his favorite childhood toy? Did you steal sentimental value? There are even deeper implications. What if someone makes a perfect copy of you when you sleep, kills the original and puts you exactly on the same place where you were before. The perpetrator would know that this person is a copy, but that's him knowing the history and having perfect information. But from your point of view nothing would change. Some might think that "objectively" you are a different person (because of a different history), but that someone also has perfect information. What if observer doesn't know. Observer might see a person sleeping, lights go off, next moment lights go on and observer sees exactly the same person sleeping in the exact place. Is it the same person? Or someone performed the experiment mentioned above? Or no one did anything? Observer doesn't know. So he assumes that it wasn't performed (Occam's razor).
I believe the example that you create a duplicate of you might has a flaw in the personal identity of the duplicate. The very process of making another body that is an exact copy would have to be at a different point in space, which in the context of the universe is enough to change it, albeit a very tiny amount. This difference would make the chains of memory different. The immediate question following a duplication is: what do we do with a clone?
The more interesting question about this topic is actually whether teleportation is suicide or not. I believe that this question is answered by most people with yes (CGP Grey notes it and gives a compelling argument). The problem is, does it matter if it's suicide? This quickly delves into the problem of the afterlife, which implies a metaphysics. The teleporter kills you, but if you don't believe in an afterlife nor absolute meaning in life, the argument against doing it becomes less compelling. As an existentialist (I agree with Camus), I think that it's a leap of faith to put your conscious being at risk to teleport yourself, but it's still in the back of my mind that it might be worth it.
edits for clarity, it's late >.
Why are you, specifically you? As opposed to someone else, at some other point in time and likewise, your body could be here today, all the same, but with another "awareness" having control over it, and yourself not existing. It is clear the exact copy of you has a different consciousness or awareness/experience of self and control, one that is distinctly different to yours. In the case of the transporter breaking you down into atoms first and re-assembling you, I am at a firm position that you, i.e. your conscious/awareness would end as your original body is essentially annihilated; the copy that is re-assembled is someone else with the same memories and bioelectric processes, however others would just see the copy as the original you, to them, the copy would be no different.
So, still doesn't rule out a "soul", something that pervades and persists all throughout existence.
im surprised you didnt bring up the ship of theseus
I think most people are already familiar with it (if not the philosophy behind it). I don't know if it's any more helpful for illustrating the point than (say) body cells or broken pencils. ;)
Solace, when pondering these questions, it is something that most oft comes to mind.
You stole my comment
The biggest problem with the question is that the answer has actual consequences, despite its unsolvability. There is no clear line of demarcation between one entity and another if all the peripherals such as memory and personality can change without altering the core subject. Even breaking a continuous line in Minkowski spacetime might not result in an entirely different phenomenal consciousness if all other parameters remain intact, and once you have eliminated each parameter in turn, there is nothing left. If you therefore changed every parameter at once, there would still be a subject. This would effectively mean that "you" persist as long as any consciousness whatsoever persists, meaning you ARE awareness living with the illusion that you are localized. Much of Eastern philosophy accepts this as a default.
interesting idea so its like a thick liquid that is flowing down while never actualy de-taching from the source and all those little "streams" are people, does that make sense in your opinion.
beautiful way to see it
@11:29 Yeah, you are not going to loose a lot of sleep until your copy gets back from Mars and disputes ownership of your stuff.
I think we'll be too busy practicing our 22-step secret hi-5/handshake to worry about it.
Great vide and I loved Dues Ex: HR.
I loved this vid sooooo much. Thank you.
As we recognize a link of memory states we also recognize a link of mass states, it's like if we see the person as a combination of the software and the hardware where it runs. In your example if another member of the crew talks with the A and the B commander Riker this member couldn't tell the which one is the 'real' Riker, but if this member knows which copy have a links of mass states with the original body he or she will identify this body as the real Riker, even if seven years had passed an all the atoms had been replaced (it's not the atoms per se, but the link between the set of atoms that forms our body, like the link between our states of consciousness). Even if the proccess had hurt the brain of the original body making his personality diferent, the crew member would tend to think that the original had changed, not that the new body is the original person. It's a better way to define, but not without problems, you could think in a machine that split the atoms between the two copies, this way both 'new bodies' will have the same amount of shared history with the original.
this reminded me of the boltzmann brain, was hoping you would've mentioned something like it!
Man, I gotta draw some lines somewhere. ;)
PBS Spacetime already did it better, anyways: ua-cam.com/video/nhy4Z_32kQo/v-deo.html
Just found your channel and it looks pretty cool! I think describing one of the interpretations as a "cognitive or linguistic mistake" is a little harsh. Object permanence is something that is learned in infancy, which is why the peekaboo game works up to a point - like where DID he go. But rather than being a "mistake" I think a better characterization is that it is a necessary/useful fiction. I think it's analogous to the passage of time. We know that time passes independently of our active attention, but there are people with psychological and psychiatric conditions that impair that innate sense suffering from "dyschronometria." Actually, that'd be an interesting episode if you haven't hit it already - perception of time stuff.
Hey Josh, great video. You should check out Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy for a great take on this topic. Rather than scrambling to identify substances and persistence of objects, just say "f**k it" and claim that there's _literally nothing that persists_, and what is core to reality is fleeting configurations of configurations of configurations, turtles all the way down. Neat stuff!
Keep up the great content, always enjoy a good Thunk episode :).
Always love me some Whitehead. Thanks! I'll definitely check it out! :D
Great video as always.
But you say that we die every time we fall asleep (or lose consciousness) or every seven years, but I don't think that's really fair to say.
When you fall asleep you have reduced cognitive functions, but they are not completely "off", you can still respond to external stimuli, be woken up, dream, and even think if you can lucid dream.
Even people who go unconscious do still have some brain activity, so even if they don't remember anything about when they were out, their brains were still working, so I wouldn't say they were "dead" or that their consciousness stopped being continuous, it just means that some of their memories were not "saved" during that period, so they can't access them, but I'd say they were still very much alive.
Same with the cell replacement every 7 years, that happens gradually, so you could say it's more like a "ship of theseus" thing, and it's hard to say if replacing one neuron every minute does anything significant to the "identity" of the brain, but I'd say not really, it's such a small change that it's basically insignificant overall.
Anyway I really have no idea how to define consciousness, as in my "point of view" to the external world.
Why does it reside inside my brain?
Why doesn't it change over time as the atoms in my brain get replaced?
Why do I still wake up in my body every morning?
Maybe I dont?
Maybe this is the first time "I" ever woke up in my own body, but I just have no way to know, and when I will fall asleep tonight I will be gone forever?
Think of it like this: you fall asleep, somebody clones you, kills the original body and puts the clone in your bed. When the clone wakes up, they'll have the same memories like the "original you", remembering they went to sleep and all.
Subjectively, can you find out whether that happened or not? Does it even make sense to make such a distinction?
That's what I wrote at the end of my comment.
>Why do I still wake up in my body every morning?
Maybe I dont?
Maybe this is the first time "I" ever woke up in my own body, but I just
have no way to know, and when I will fall asleep tonight I will be gone
forever?
Yeah, I don't think there is any way to find out if this actually happens, but still, I wouldn't risk it with teleportation, there is always that "uncertainty" (teleportation pun).
Came for the interesting commentary, stayed for the teleportation puns.
FYI, I didn't crowbar it into this (12-minute) episode, but I'm not entirely sure that continuity of consciousness is violated in transportation, if only because of this (canon) first-person shot of what it looks like: i.stack.imgur.com/IZ5Hg.gif
Well yes, from the teleported person's perspective it would look like that, since you don't really feel the passage of time if your consciousness "stops" so it would look like a smooth transition, so I think they got that right.
What he said was prefaced with the notion that "if you hold to those prior definitions, then...."
This is important, because he's establishing the transporter scenario, not establishing this as fact.
9:20 assuming your society does not have ftl signaling, "I" am the one who walked into the box. The person who walked out of the box is "i-2" we are different people with nearly the same history. a new identity should be made for "I-2".
That seems an arbitrary distinction - you (and you-2) might be totally OK with that, but what justifies it?
My two cents: for a Human the thing that’s makes us the same person is that even though we eventually replace most of the cells and atoms in our bodies, we don’t replace the ones that contain our unique essence.... NEURONS. Most of are neurons are the same from birth, thus making us the same person from birth. Easy peasy
Seems more like an argument from convenience than truth, no? If neurons were replaced one at a time by identically-functioning artificial doodads, preserving the operation of the brain each time, I wouldn't know where to draw the line and say "okay that's a new person."
Also! www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-adult-brain-does-grow-new-neurons-after-all-study-says/
THUNK there may be no way to scientifically quantify the exact moment “you vs not you” would occur in such a scenario. However, from my personal perspective I consider the point in which one neuron is replaced as the beginning of the being not completely you moment. I would see such a person as mostly being the same person, but not 100% so. And so on and so on as neurons were replaced. Of course we as humans would still interact with such an individual as if they were the same person until the point that a percentage of new neurons essentially made person into someone else. ( that arbitrary percentage determined by bureaucratic process) Much like what has occurred in Star Trek Picard, I do not consider Picard’s Gollum to be The same person as Picard but only a robot copy.
maybe some of this confusion is that we see time as fleeting. Maybe if we look at time as just another dimension, then the "depth" of time as a singular entity becomes more clear.
There is an old Star Trek novel called "Spock" that addresses some of this. BUT.... you don't have to get too Sci-Fi to have this problem pop up. Lets say a man murders is girlfriend of 6 months; and as he tries to escape the police, he ends up in a terrible car accident. He wakes up a week later from a coma with a brain injury. HE CAN NOT REMEMBER THE LAST YEAR OF HIS LIFE!! The police walk into his room and charge him with murder. He exclaims "wait!!!! that wasn't me!!!! I don't remember murdering anyone. In fact I don't even know that woman!!" Would anyone be ok with letting that man off the hook? Is it fair? If it isn't fair, what happens if is later regains his memory? I think there is a Harrison Ford movie where a douche bag exec looses his memory and becomes a "good guy" essentially establishing that he is a different person.
We do have some legal complexity which reflects some of the difficulty of establishing a continuous identity for one person (like a plea of "insanity"), but totally, this fits the bill.
Check it out: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bsl.2370040103/abstract
Man this shit will forever haunt my brain, if I die and I get all of memories put into a perfect clone of myself, would that be me? Or just " Me" Ya know? For all intents and purposes that's me because it has all of my memories and my body so for rest of the world that is me and I'm back from the dead but "I" Died and the real me is gone. But would I want that second me to continue my story after I'm gone? Yeah I guess I do cause for the rest of the world that's gonna functionally be me cause it has all of my memories as it's own.
IMO, human consciousness is a quantum information system, that is (or at least seems ) individual here and now. It stores memories (data), and has specific quantum entanglements.
If I am right, the solution to the problems and questions in the video would be for the universe to not allow for a copy of you to exist, because your consciousness is unique and unrepeatable. What I'm saying is basicly you can create perfect corporeal clones of yourself, but those will be empty shells, and only one of them could be occupied by YOUR mind at the same time. If your clone would be somehow conscious, it would not be you, just someone who looks like you, with a different mind, or we can call that a soul maybe. To complicate things, this only applies if the many worlds theory in QM is not true. If it is, then maybe it's like the shadow clones in Naruto, scattered in spacetime and different world lines.
Ahh. The Ship of Theseus all over again.
the answer here seems very obvious to me; when we reference a particular object, there exists the reference (in our mind) and the physical instantiation of it... thus creating ambiguity. are we talking about the physical object or the reference? using the exact same words in different context will have different subjects. it is just that these subjects are so closely intertwined we usually make no distinction between them. but there is a categorical error when we get down to nitpicking the boundaries.
furthermore, our internal references need not be consistent or conform/relate to actual reality. ideally, our thoughts are strongly rooted to closely match the objective universe... but it is impossible to have full knowledge of even miniscule objects. so we are forced to generalize. we have large fuzzy definitions of things.
as we go even deeper, it is purpose (or utility) which becomes more and more important over the precise truth. we dont need to know the exact atomic vector of every molecule of a tool in order to harness that tool to accomplish our goals.
So what happens when the teleporter makes a copy of you, and then places it right next to you. Your stream of consciousness and your brain allow you to make decisions for your body. So what happens when the copy is made? What if your consciousness was somehow transferred to the new body because they are identical in every way, shape and form? What if your consciousness existed inside the brains of both individuals, such that you could control both of "you" at once?
What if it is not 1 criteria but all criteria. In that the person must have the memories, the cells, the x, y, and z. And if one is missing, it does not fail completely but becomes "less Josh" until it is indistinguishable or stated far enough from the original.
This is flirting with Hume's "bundle theory" of identity - check out the links below, there are some issues with it, but it's definitely a thing!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_theory
plato.stanford.edu/entries/tropes/
Why would the duplicate have to be "quark perfect"? Wouldn't molecule perfect, or even cell perfect for that matter, be sufficient for continuity of memory causality? Could someone explain to me how quarks could factor into memory? The way I see it, if I'm transcribing a book it doesn't matter what kind of paper I'm writing on so long as the information is duplicated faithfully.
Unfortunately, we don't really know if quantum mechanics are important to the operation of brains yet. IMO, most signs point to no, but without a deep understanding of how physical/chemical processes translate to mental phenomena, we can't really say for certain what errant quarks might do to memories.
I would suggest that personal identity can't exist, and that identity can only really be formed through societal perception, but even that is subject to much of the same issues that personal self identity is...
The way i see it: a person/mind is the continuous chain of electro-chemical signals that exists in a meaningful substrate (aka the brain), is able to use the body's senses to perceive and interact with the world (words chosen very carefully).
Someone paralised is a vegetable but is still alive so long as they are still trapped in their brain even if unable to interact. if you heal the brain-muscle connections they are still the same person. Sleeping or pooping or replacing cells doesn't break the above, as the chain of signals is maintained. Replacing bone or muscle tissue is irrelevant in this case.
Someone transported like in startrek fundamentally breaks this continuity, the person dies and whoever is transported is an artificial clone, regardless of existing memories. This breaks the "continuous chain" condition above.
Uploading your mind to a computer is meaningless, as it simply creates an image of your brain and simulates it in software, akin to taking a photometric shot and showing an indistinguishable recreation of the original. It doesn't "upload" or "transfer" anything, just reads and makes a copy in software. This breaks the "meaningful substrate" condition above, as an uploaded mind is nothing more than a simulation in abstract software and has no real platform on which it anchors, it's not a real thing. Plus the awkwardness of the fleshy original still being alive.
Mind uploading is actually very useful to project your presence in the virtual world, if it was possible to download the momeries back into the fleshy brain it would act as a sort of drunken version of you - it would go about on the internet acting as you and you would sync your minds every evening to find out what your alter-ego did. You can even go as far as uploading your mind into a clone and now there's two of you, still the SAME PERSON but split as two egos in separate bodies. This particular situation is very interesting to explore but i don't want to bloat this youtube comment more than it already is.
Your workthru of the concept is sound. In some ways, it seems to somewhat prove the "soul" concept doesnt it? If our identity isnt directly bound to our matter, then where does it come from? But seeing as we havent actually transported someone yet, we have no idea if our identity is within our matter or not, or if its transferred normally from dying cell to new cell. In time, we will learn the answer.
Also first.
Souls don't add any explanatory power, unfortunately, they really only push the problem back one level; we can replace the word "identity" with "soul," & we'd still have all the same issues. (Does the duplicate of Riker have a soul? Is it just a "copy" of his soul, or is it the real thing? Where did the original pre-transport Riker's soul go?)
This video is missing from the "THUNK - From the Beginning" playlist.
Thanks, mate, just added it!
@@THUNKShow I ran into some others, so I made a list of all the episodes not on the playlist:
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@@Zeklandia @_@ Holy crap, thank you!
@@THUNKShow No problem! I'm happy just to finally be caught up!
What I really want to know is if I make a copy, which one continues the experience of myself? Or if I die being beamed up, do I not experience the transport because I stop existing?
I think that if you made a copy, the original would maintain the consciousness point of view, but to the copy it would just feel like they just teleported, and that they actually did maintain the consciousness point of view.
Check out the movie "The Prestige". Saying too much would be a spoiler, but it's a good film.
This is always the experience (AFAIK): i.stack.imgur.com/IZ5Hg.gif
If there's infinite nonexistence in there somewhere, it's camouflaged enough that I don't personally have a problem with it. ;)
I think our consciousness is illusion. On every second our memory changes... and new consciousness appears everytime. So it doesn't matter you have lived 1 minute or you have been copied and original destroyed.
The trick is to not have a personal identity. Just be a generic shadow trotting about on two legs.
Dogs are people too, Spockrates.
They're good people. >: (
They’re Good Dogs Brent.
well you've simply skimmed over the possibility that consciousness continuity constitutes personal identity simply because you didnt want to think about the fact that you could be dying every night. tho even if the continuation of consciousness constituted personal identity there are quite a lot of arguments against the line of thinking that states that when you sleep your consciousness is replaced, for starters, you are never truly and fully unconscious in any state of sleep because respond to external stimuli (also i have read somewhere that what you hear during sleep affects your dreams, wich are obviously moments in wich you are conscious, though this is purely anodectal evidence since i dont have the link at hand). anyways, i think this was great and informative
I skim over the possibility because it's obviously wrong - we don't treat sleep like death, we don't re-introduce ourselves to our spouses every morning, we don't expect a nap to divest someone of their property & obligations. Whatever "personal identity" entails, in order for it to make any sense & not be some arbitrary gerrymandered definition for the sake of consistency, it has to be able to accommodate our commonsense understandings!
@@THUNKShow but that could be just held together by memory, we could be a "clone"(with same memories preferences etc)- after all most ideas regarding self identity do fall apart when faced with the idea of clonation. also sorry for the very late response, not sure if this makes sense. even if we "act" as if we are the same we might just not be
I just discovered you and am crawling through your great content. Have you addressed Intuitionism in a video yet? Is there any chance you could review or address Michael Huemer's "Ethical Intuitionism"? It includes a great review and critique of a number of philosophical theories (subjectivism, non-cognitivism, reductionism, etc), as well as pitching Huemer's own take on intuitionism as a plausible alternative. This work was where I learned about and was led through an examination of Hume's is/ought gap, which led me to your video on the same topic, which eventually led me here to ask this question. :) For one thing, that book is so dense that I don't trust my ability to easily remember a lot of the things I already had to read, think about, and attempt to explain to friends just so I could be sure I understood them in a first pass. If there was any way to distill the content in there down to a sparknotes THUNK video, I would be both amazed and indebted.
Wellllll....
A lot of THUNK is explicitly dedicated to trying to undermine naive intuition as an organ of truth, & I tend to furiously distrust it in most contexts (obviously leaving me in a bit of a pickle at the weird edges of rationality, e.g. this episode). I haven't gotten explicitly into ethical intuitionism yet, but just skimming the SEP article on it, it seems like something I'd be unfairly biased against from the outset. That's not to say I won't try to engage with it, of course, but prima facie the idea of trusting intuition to report facts is one of my personal bugaboos?
If you haven't gotten to it yet, I'm not sure if this episode describes my feelings on moral intuition or not, but it seems relevant: ua-cam.com/video/krOBdYnWKNk/v-deo.html
Well, if you do find the time to check it out, even if you don't think it'd be fair to produce a video on it, I would still love to know what you think about it. Diving into this and related topics has left me in a mess I'm sure many actually legitimate students of philosophy have been in before, what I might only be able to describe as a massive, addictive black hole of seemingly infinitely many known and unknown questions and answers about the nature of reality, which I have trouble understanding, sorting, and ignoring. I'm not even *slightly* educated or brilliant enough to engage on the topic of competing ethical theories if I thought it was a good idea, so I think I *ought not* try. ;) I don't know how much of the material is published elsewhere yet, since most of the other philosophical literature I've read is completely different (I tend to be a little scattered), but if you do end up checking it out, you might enjoy the reviews and critiques of other moral theories like synthetic and analytic reductionism, or divine command and ideal observer theories (which are referenced briefly in your linked video). I realize that in all likelihood, you're probably familiar with all of this already, but maybe I should mention it on the off-chance that you find something you appreciate.
I also searched your channel for the word "Absurdism", another topic of interest for me, and no videos came up! Any chance of overviewing Albert Camus' ideas in the future? Or maybe you have in another video? :)
Additionally, do you view your channel more as a source to educate viewers on ideas as you understand them and have come to favor them, or as an attempt at a neutral presentation of various topics even if you might disagree with them? If you believe you have an unfair bias against an idea, do you also believe that it's likely to leave your presentation of it flawed or unsatisfactory, or do you just have little interest in presenting it?
Thanks for the massive wealth of brain candy you've made so far. I was shocked when I saw how few subscribers/views your channel has, because this is a criminally under-viewed gold mine to me.
I was waiting a the Kingdom Hearts joke that never came.
(Still a fantastic video, of course lol.)
I do, indeed, have an image saved in my media folder named "kingdomheartschcainofmemory.png," it just never seemed like a good time to drop it in; it's a complicated enough idea without me hamming it up. ;)
Thanks for the 2 pencil argument. Ignoring the physics part of it, I guess, a consequentialist would accept the equivalence of a teleported clone. If you are not a consequentialist, (I do not think I am one), you would be slightly uncomfortable by a clone who has no past like you but is completely identical in every other way. Lets say you for example committed a crime in the past. Are your present day clones responsible? I would say the clones are not responsible but they still may benefit from the crime you did before cloning (leading to discussions of procedural vs distributive justice). So, hey, it's your choice to teleport but given the risks I would like rather do it in the conventional ways given the state of art now. Further, I have worked in software where there is a distinction between "a==b" and "a===b". The first expression just means both a and b are the same value. The second expression means means they are not only having the same value, but they are also the same storage. It's minor but trips many programmers :)
I knew I liked you for a reason. Concordia is great, Catan is less so. You should try Valeria: Card Kingdoms.
Definitely added to the list; thanks for the recommendation! :D
But then why do I see through my eyes and not through yours? Why am I conscious from this body and not from another?
And why not from none? that is, continue without experiencing consciousness, because, assuming that this "subjective experience" can be created by a human sapiens-sapiens, in the past there were many bodies that I could have been aware of... however I am aware apparently only from this body.
And if I am conscious from this body, it means that this body has to have something that the other bodies do not have for me to be conscious through it. Apparently that something is not material, since the matter that composes me can be copied atom by atom, analogous to the pixels of a .jpg image.
Every day I move a folder or copy a .jpg because to maintain order on my Windows desktop.
Sorry for the google translator translation.
Greetings!
I'm sorry if it's too personal.
What do you do for living?
I'm a mechanical design engineer. :D It's fun stuff most days!
hmmm does the new camera happen to be a Fujifilm and you are using Velvia for this? ;)
Man things were so much easier when I was just using my Samsung sport camcorder on a tripod.
(And by easier I mean even grosser than my inept fumbling.)
www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images2500x2500/Samsung_HMX_W200RN_XAA_HMX_W200_Waterproof_HD_Camcorder_766564.jpg
haha them good 'ol times ;)
You are correct: Concordia > Settlers
Right?!
Also, if you're into negotiation, Chinatown & Lords of Vegas are amazing.
I'm more on the side of just saying fuck it and accepting that identity is as illusory and arbitrary as free will, as that seems most congruent with the world as we understand it. Though, I may be more inclined to this idea because, compared to most people (I'm pretty sure, hard to do a study on something like this), I hardly have a sense of personal identity. Not bordering on mental illness or anything obstructive to my immediate well being, but definitely a distinct 'removed-ness' that's hard to articulate though.
And unrelated to the subject, but the video grading is a bit too contrasting. It isn't overly terrible, but I'd say it detracts a bit from what you saying, at least for me. Don't mean to diss your style if you actually like it, but it doesn't quite look intentional.
I think there may be a spectrum of attached-ness to one's sense of self; it may be all the sci-fi I consume, but I definitely feel like "I" am not identical with my body on occasion, like I'm just driving a meat popsicle around. I'd have to do more digging on the psychology of such before making any serious claims, but it seems feasible - maybe Starfleet just recruits people who don't really have a philosophical issue with the transporter. ;)
Every week is a new adventure in cinema at THUNK labs. >.< Thanks for the tip, I'll look for that next time.
Dude whaaaaaaat
The "pencil" is the sum of its constituent parts (wood, graphite, clay) assembled to fulfil a specific telos (drawing, writing). Breaking it in half, or merely inscribing on paper with it, redistributes its constituent parts, but does not alter its telos. If the purpose and composition remain the same we are still essentially dealing with "the same" pencil, merely in a different formation.
If a pencil is driven into someone's brain in order to kill them, it will be described in court as the "instrument of murder", the victim does not become an essay or a sketch simply because he was killed with a pencil. This presentation is weak.
@Hungti Imagine a wooden house that stood for hundreds of years in which compromised timbers were periodically replaced by timber of the same dimensions from the same species, etc. Even when every timber and tile had been replaced at least once, it would still be the same house, corresponding to the same plan, serving the same purpose, in the same location. After seven years the talents, skills, memories and personality that reside within an individual will remain, meaning the person is the same, or at least is an evolved continuation of that person, which is the same thing in this context.
@Hungti If the house was blown away by a tornado and all of the construction materials were assembled, timber of the same spec and dimensions, same type of shingles, fixtures and fittings, etc, to rebuild the house and these materials were just dumped in the same location unassembled, would that be just the same as the house that was blown away? I would say, no, because it's identity is determined by it's form and function and not its strict material properties.
Twins?clones?