Yes, that is not only 100% accurate, but describes where I’m headed.
I am looking for the simplest explanation of the subjective continuity of personal identity, which either answers or dissolves the question. Further, the explanation should either explain which teleportation scenario is correct (identity transfer, or murder+birth), or satisfactorily explain why it is a meaningless distinction.
What is there to predict here?
If I, the person standing in front of the transporter door, will experience walking on Mars, or oblivion.
Yes, it is perhaps likely that this will never be experimentally observable. That may even be a tautology since we are talking about subjective experience. But still, a reductionist theory of consciousness could provide a simple, easy to understand explanation for the origin of personal identity (e.g., what an computational machine feels like from the inside) and which predicts identity transfer or murder + birth. That would be enough for me, at least as long as there’s not competing equally simple theories.
What is there to predict here? If I, the person standing in front of the transporter door, will experience walking on Mars, or oblivion.
Well, you certainly won’t experience oblivion, more or less by definition. The question is whether you will experience walking on Mars or not.
But there is no distinct observation to be made in these two cases. That is, we agree that either way there will be an entity having all the observable attributes (both subjective and objective; this is not about experimental proof, it’s about the presence or absence of anything differentially observable by anyone) that Mark Friendebach has, walking on Mars.
So, let me rephrase the question: what observation is there to predict here?
So, let me rephrase the question: what observation is there to predict here?
That’s not the direction I was going with this. It isn’t about empirical observation, but rather aspects of morality which depend on subjective experience. The prediction is under what conditions subjective experience terminates. Even if not testable, that is still an important thing to find out, with moral implications.
Is it moral to use a teleporter? From what I can tell, that depends on whether the person’s subjective experience is terminated in the process. From the utility point of view the outcomes are very nearly the same—you’ve murdered one person, but given “birth” to an identical copy in the process. However if the original, now destroyed person didn’t want to die, or wouldn’t have wanted his clone to die, then it’s a net negative.
As I said elsewhere, the teleporter is the easiest way to think of this, but the result has many other implications from general anesthesia, to cryonics, to Pascal’s mugging and the basilisk.
Yes, that is not only 100% accurate, but describes where I’m headed.
I am looking for the simplest explanation of the subjective continuity of personal identity, which either answers or dissolves the question. Further, the explanation should either explain which teleportation scenario is correct (identity transfer, or murder+birth), or satisfactorily explain why it is a meaningless distinction.
If I, the person standing in front of the transporter door, will experience walking on Mars, or oblivion.
Yes, it is perhaps likely that this will never be experimentally observable. That may even be a tautology since we are talking about subjective experience. But still, a reductionist theory of consciousness could provide a simple, easy to understand explanation for the origin of personal identity (e.g., what an computational machine feels like from the inside) and which predicts identity transfer or murder + birth. That would be enough for me, at least as long as there’s not competing equally simple theories.
Well, you certainly won’t experience oblivion, more or less by definition. The question is whether you will experience walking on Mars or not.
But there is no distinct observation to be made in these two cases. That is, we agree that either way there will be an entity having all the observable attributes (both subjective and objective; this is not about experimental proof, it’s about the presence or absence of anything differentially observable by anyone) that Mark Friendebach has, walking on Mars.
So, let me rephrase the question: what observation is there to predict here?
That’s not the direction I was going with this. It isn’t about empirical observation, but rather aspects of morality which depend on subjective experience. The prediction is under what conditions subjective experience terminates. Even if not testable, that is still an important thing to find out, with moral implications.
Is it moral to use a teleporter? From what I can tell, that depends on whether the person’s subjective experience is terminated in the process. From the utility point of view the outcomes are very nearly the same—you’ve murdered one person, but given “birth” to an identical copy in the process. However if the original, now destroyed person didn’t want to die, or wouldn’t have wanted his clone to die, then it’s a net negative.
As I said elsewhere, the teleporter is the easiest way to think of this, but the result has many other implications from general anesthesia, to cryonics, to Pascal’s mugging and the basilisk.
OK. I’m tapping out here. Thanks for your time.