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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.