This is equivocation. Under one definition, a me died. Under a much more meaningful and relevant definition, the only me died. Someone else that looks and acts and sounds like me is alive, but I am not experiencing life through his senses. He’s a different guy, even if no other person can tell the difference between us. I already explained this.

If you acknowledge that “you” is just a electrochemical reaction, you’re just like a computer program: only defined by what’s happening, not which CPU is running it.

I said that consciousness is a chemical reaction, and also that my experience of life is bound to my physical body. If you destroy my physical body, my experience of life ends. I do not care if an identical program is running on a different CPU right now, I am running on this one.

I want you to imagine for a moment that I’m about to shoot you in the head, but I explained that “it’s fine, because I just scanned your body and at some point I will make a perfect reconstruction of it. Nobody will ever know the difference between the you that I shoot in the head and the you that I reconstruct later.” You don’t want me to shoot you in the head. I know that for a fact. You know there’s a difference between the you that’s experiencing life right now, and the you that I will reconstruct elsewhere.

It doesn’t matter whether I reconstruct you later, or I’ve already done so, or if I do so at the exact moment the bullet enters your brain. I know that you know that when you get shot in the head, you die, regardless of how perfectly I can recreate you elsewhere. Does this analogy help you to understand why I think that a transporter that disintegrates your body kills you?

Okay? That’s all well and good, but there is a way to know that a transporter does kill you. Given a choice between maybe living or definitely dying, I’m gonna choose the former.

If you eliminate that location part (e.g. like in “The Prestige”), nobody will know or care who is “copy” or “original”

I will. Or rather, if my original body gets disintegrated, I won’t. Because I’m dead.

I’m saying that you’re essentially believing in souls.

Nope. I’m explicitly denying the existence of a soul. My experience is bound to my physical body, and nothing else. If my physical body is disintegrated, then my existence ends, even if someone constructs a perfect copy of my body somewhere else. That will not be my physical body.

My transporter clone and I may be indistinguishable to you, but I can distinguish between us pretty easily. A transporter is not interrupting a chemical process and then letting it continue, it is stopping a chemical process and then starting another one elsewhere. Death or no death is very meaningful to me, the person who is about to be disintegrated at the entrance of this transporter.

The person who shows up at the lever looks like me, acts like me, thinks they’re me, and they are not me. No matter how arbitrarily similar we are, they’re a different person. If the transporter fails to disintegrate me, I do not see through that person’s eyes. I do not hear through that person’s ears. Because they’re a different person.

So it stands to reason that if the transporter does disintegrate me, I still will not see through that person’s eyes nor hear through that person’s ears. And because my eyes and ears are gone, I will never see or hear anything again. There’s a word for this state of existence, in which you do not experience anything.

I already explained how the thing that makes the consciousness continuous doesn’t transfer over to the new body. It’s not magic.

Really, all of this philosophical posturing is pointless. When you step into the entrance of the transporter, the entity that experienced stepping into the entrance of the transporter does not experience stepping out of the exit. If that entity is successfully deconstructed, it dies.

Assuming we’re talking about Star Trek/The Prestige style transporter. Some kind of space-bending wormhole that physically transports a body doesn’t kill the user.

I’d go deeper and say that “continuous consciousness” isn’t a concept that makes sense. You only live in the moment, with access to part of your past selves’ memories.

I posit that consciousness is a chemical process occurring in your brain. This process is continuously ongoing, and when it stops, you die. If a transporter constructs a perfect copy of you, down to the chemical process that constitutes your consciousness, then there is no continuity between your original body and this new one, because it’s a wholly different brain.

I’m not a philosopher, so this response will be imperfect and is subject to revision.

Then why do you think that the perceived continuity of having an ego is a real thing that exists?

My current response to this is that something can exist without being made of something. Consciousness is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex, chemically active neurological system. (Someone can poke holes in this definition if they like, but come on dude, principle of charity. You get what I mean.) Essentially, “how it feels like to exist” is a real, if immaterial, thing. Just like mathematics and language.

If someone makes a perfect copy of my brain and body over by the lever, using none of the materials from my original body, then it is a different brain and body, no matter how arbitrarily similar it is. The consciousness that was by the entrance to the teleporter will never experience pulling the lever.

I hate that comic. Equivocation is a fallacy. Your alarm clock is proof that you don’t lose experiential consciousness when you sleep.

Apologies for the point-by-point reply. I have many responses to many things, which don’t necessarily fit into a cohesive structure of paragraphs.

Asking which is “you” would be like watching a cell undergo mitosis and then asking which one is the original cell.

Disagree. In mitosis, both child cells contain parts of the original. This is akin to Farscape Season 3’s “twinning—” a method of cloning in which neither result has any claim over being the “original.”

This is different from a Star Trek/The Prestige style transporter—you can keep track of which one is the original: it’s the one who went into the entrance. No part of their physical body is present in the transporter clone.

the previous two things should mean that there is something about what you are that makes it, you, and not someone else, nor some unconscious zombie

Yes. A continuous conscious experience. Notably different from an experience of continued consciousness. We must avoid equivocation here. “You” has multiple definitions, some of which are more useful and relevant than others.

If that thing, whatever it is, is part of the material universe, then the perfect copy must have it too by definition, it wouldn’t be a perfect copy if there was something materially different about it, and then it would have to be you, because it has whatever that thing is that makes it “you”.

There is something materially different about the you that steps out of the transporter. They’re made of different atoms and subatomic particles. This isn’t even a Ship of Theseus situation—like, if you replace every single part of your car over the course of a year until every single part is different, there’s some ambiguity about whether it’s the same car as it was the year before. But the car that came off the production line right after it may be made using the same materials in the same pattern, but it is unambiguously a different car.

You could say it’s the “same” car, in that it’s the same color, make and model using the same materials, but if someone crashes it, you would not say they crashed your car, no matter how arbitrarily similar they were at the time of the crash.

Continuity (for anything, not just humans) by itself isn’t really a “thing”. It isn’t made of anything, and doesn’t seem to interact with the physical world in any measurable way.

Continuity isn’t a physical object, but it definitely exists. For one example, the lithium in my phone’s battery is the same lithium that was in it when it was made. The phone would work just fine if the lithium atoms were constantly being replaced, but they don’t seem to be. Continuity is a real phenomenon.

Yeah, I am assuming Star Trek transporters. If it’s a wormhole then it’s fine

Personally I love memes that mix different moral/philosophical dilemmas in silly ways

The exemplar version of this concept

I’m assuming this is a transporter as exists in Star Trek, and not some kind of wormhole.

Imagine if it didn’t deconstruct your original body, and only made the perfect copy at the exit. Would there be two “yous?” Under your definition, yes, but they are very clearly two separate entities. There is a “you” that walked into the entrance, and there is a “someone else” who walked out of the exit. I think a continuous consciousness is not only relevant, but crucial to a meaningful definition of “you.”

And nobody post that “you die when you fall asleep” comic. It equivocates different definitions ofbghese words in a confusing and misleading way.

And what would kickstart your heart beating?

Skydive naked from an aeroplane, or perhaps a lady with a body from outer space

Maybe just a custom built bike doing 103

What about someone whose dog will miss them very much?

I’d pull the lever if I was tied to the other track. The only meaningful difference is that there will be someone who shares my values and experiences roaming the earth after I die. I can live with that.

I wonder if that would inspire him to become healthier and live longer. If I knew someome sacrificed their life so I could live, I would probably treat my body a lot better. Maybe I should go through a transporter…

It depends on how it works. The most popular form of transporter works by scanning your body down to the subatomic level, deconstructing the original body, and creating a perfect replica somewhere else. Imagine for a moment that it didn’t deconstruct the original body (as seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Second Chances). The original and the copy are two separate entities.

A transporter doesn’t move you, it kills and reincarnates you. Unless it uses some kinda space bending wormhole tech to physically move the atoms from one spot to another, of course—then it doesn’t kill you, and you’re safe to pull the lever

Define “you.” An identical collection and pattern of atoms and subatomic particles? Then yes. A continuous consciousness as experienced by the “me” on the entry side of the teleporter? No.

Would I kill myself to save five lives and create one? Yes

All these comments are trying too hard. The only two options are “OK?” and “that watch?”

Verbose disses only work in rap

Dawkins is to atheism as Fred Phelps is to Christianity

Yeah it is, and it’s also like everyone’s opinion. People might be more interested in giving atheists a fair shake if it weren’t for people like you, only interested in letting everyone know how smart and rational you are. Sure, it keeps people from questioning their beliefs when every atheist they see is a condescending douchebag, but at least everyone knows you’re a special star-spangled skeptic.