What are your thoughts to this classic mind-body and personal identity thought experiment?

It’s a little late in the evening to think this one all the way through, but I can certainly answer this part:

What if 1 atom was missing, would you still be the same person? How many atoms would need to be missing before you wouldn’t consider this the same person (would this be different if it recycled your atoms from when they killed you to when they re-built you)?

I shed atoms all the time. I file my nails and have my hair cut. I’ve lost teeth and had major surgery. I am at the point in life where I think I must be losing brain cells faster than I can make them. Yet I entertain the illusion that I am the same person now that I was when I started typing this post. As illusions go, it is a reasonably convincing one.

When I start to decompose and fertilize some plot of earth, I imagine I won’t feel quite so much like myself.

Yes, (assuming the rebuild/clone was complete) you would have the same memories, and in my mind, the same soul. A soul (to me) is everything a person is. What you do, how others feel when they’re around you, your character, your moral fiber, what the world will no longer have when you pass on. None of that would change just because you were teleported. And as Jeruba said, as the human body has billions upon billions of atoms, I assume a person could afford to lose a few atoms and the difference would be unnoticeable.

I was wondering the same exact thing two days ago when I was watching “The Prestige”.

If every particle and cell of the brain was put back in the absolute exact same position, I can’t see why you wouldn’t remain the same person and have the same thoughts and memories.

Well I guess to answer this question we could simply look at those people that have died for a few minutes and then have been brought back to life. As far as I’m aware their memories and their personalities are intact. I am assuming dieing, and being brought back to life, is the same as having a new body made for you….

But then you must consider if there is a God, and he is choosing to give these people another chance, then their original spirit will return to their bodies…because it is God’s will.

The situation in question has an individual brought back to life by human will….and because of this, I don’t think we would be exactly the same person. We might have the same level of cognitive function, and the same personality traits that are determined by the structures in our brains, the same amount cell degeneration from our age, but I don’t think we would be complete…. a soul is a God given thing…I don’t think men will ever be able to replicate that….If you’re killed and God doesn’t want you back here..it wont be you…..Maybe its a game of chance, just like trying to resuscitate someone…if God wants it, human will, will succeed, if not, thats it.

What if God wants you to teleport?

Hmmmm, that doesn’t sound like a teleporter to me, just a death machine. The ‘new’ you is a totally different person. Fine, biologically it’s identical, however it hasn’t shared any of your life experiences & to me, thats what makes us who we are. I dont actually think humans have a soul so no, the new you wouldnt have one, just like the origional didn’t.

Yes, you would be the identical person. A person is defined by their thoughts, and if the brain could be properly remapped in the same way then you would be the same person and you would finish your thoughts. I’ll let the ‘soul’ comment slide through to the keeper. If the reconstruction was delayed, you would only be the same person for the first split second, because you would soon realise the difference and it would have some interesting psychological effects.
As for missing atoms, it depends on which ones. I think the definitive test for this would be if ten of your closest friends and yourself are able to tell the difference or not. The machine could destroy a few leg hairs and no one would know or care. It could also destroy the same number of atoms in the frontal lobe of the brain, and you would have an entirely different personality.

If you could be identically recreated then it would be you. But what if something went wrong? What if the old you was still around? Which one is the real you? Or what if the re-creation was faulty so that the being re-created was very much like you but different in some important ways. Would it still be you?

A few more questions: So let’s say the original version of you was a murderer, do we consider the 2nd version of you to also be a murderer or do you get a “blank slate?” Also, does it make a difference for you whether the atoms used to re-create you are the exact same ones as you originally had, or could they be generic atoms assembled in exactly the same way?

@gorillapaws The ‘new’ person is a murderer also, as it is the same person. There is no known mechanism to tag elementary particles or even differentiate them from one another. They are defined by their quantum state, which would need to fit the parameters that the original held in the original body. If a particle is forced into the quantum state that another held, there is no reason to draw a distinguishing line between them and they are as good as the same particle anyway.

I would need to transfer more than the atoms, as our thoughts and such are stored electrically. I think live teleportation is further off than cargo teleportation.

@gorillapaws wow. Tabula rasa. That’s interesting. If the new being were blank, could it then pick up a life and live without the violent tendencies? What would stop someone from writing new programs of behaviour onto an army of clean slates?
Hmmm. I have to go to class soon. I can’t let my brain get all tangled up in this. I’ve answered two really thought provoking Q’s already this morning!
I’ll come back later.

We are constantly exchanging millions if not billions of atoms every second so I don’t think loosing one atom would make any difference at all adding in the fact that every cell in our body is made of lots and lots of atoms. I also believe we would retain our thoughts as thoughts are electrical pulses in nature and electricity is made up of atoms and if this machine has the ability to disassemble us atom by atom and reassemble them even sans one we should retain what is stored in our skull.

@The_Idler…thats what I was talking about in my last sentence.

I’m inclined to think that the duplicate would lose the memories and thoughts of the first. Maybe some kind of quantum interference, or maybe because I think these things depend on the dynamic system. If the system stops, it seems like the information it contains stops. The new system rebuilt at the end of the teleporter would be lifeless. Or empty. I don’t know if the autonomic systems would even work.

When you die, you die. Even if the dybbuk did retain memories, it still wouldn’t be you. It would be a copy of you, and of course, it would not have all the atoms in all the same states they were when you were killed. The dybbuk would be made of entirely different atoms. Who knows what information they might be retained in the brain?

Well, I doubt if we’ll ever know. Certainly not in our lifetimes.

This same thought experiment was discussed in the recent past, but I think they way you posed it is more interesting. My best guess is that you would get nothing but a meat popsickle on the other end. It does not appear that memory exists in some spiritual, supernatural entity inside us. Despite how much it “feels” like we are a separate entity looking out the windows of our eyes, such does not appear to be the case. If a certain section of the brain becomes diseased, injured or removed, memories and capacities it managed disappear with it. Those things can sometimes be relearned using other still-functional areas of the brain, but the original memory is gone.

In the Star Trek transporter, the device was supposed to work as a matter-energy descrambler. In that case, no death occurred. Things were just moved from one place to another essentially intact. But if you killed the living being and then recreated all the same neurons and cells somewhere else, those cells would not hold the same memory any more than if I threw away my computer with all its RAM and its hard drives and bought an identical new one with the same amounts of RAM and disk memory; because the new one wouldn’t share the same memory imprints. I also need the 1s and 0s in all the right places.

If we ever invent such a machine, it will be an interesting test of the nature of human self awareness. Is memory encoded in neural reconnections that could be transported intact, in memory more like that of a computer storing bits of 1s and 0s, or in some supernatural soul? Since I spend so much time studying this very question, I hereby recuse myself from the test, as I would like to be sure of being around after it is run to witness the outcome.

I run on the assumption that consciousness is a deterministic but unpredictable phenomenon that arises from the complex mix of chemicals and tissue that form our body. If we could somehow replicate this mix exactly, that person would be exactly the same as me, have all the same memories, thoughts, and emotions up until the moment of divergence, but the me that was zapped would most certainly care about being zapped.

The new “me” is a separate entity, and perhaps would behave the same as me, and so is functionally me to anyone outside of me who wants to interact with me, but this consciousness in this slab of meat cares about this particular piece of meat surviving, because the I-that-I-am is inextricably tied to it.

Of course, tons of science fiction has been written about this question from all sorts of angles (including contrary ones).

As I understand it, we shed every cell of our bodies in 7 year increments. In a sense, your thought experiment is actually taking place within our own genome. Nothing about our physical body is the same from the body we had 7 years ago. Yet our consciousness remains.

But does it really…?

I suppose that neither one of us has the same conscious awareness that we did 7 years ago. Are we not actually expanding our consciousness in the midst of loosing ourselves?

Good Q.

I think if any atoms were missing, I’d turn into an ape! :O
Since, you know, they’re only a few small details away from being like us in the genetic pool.

But I wouldn’t dare step in there if I knew I was going to die even for a millisecond…noooo thank you.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies You will be relieved to know that unlike other cells in our bodies, brain cells are not replaced. After 18, you may loose perhaps 1,000 a day, but with 100 billion on hand, you still won’t run out for a very long time. Now why do you suppose nature evolved brain cells to be permanent when all the other cells in the body regularly get recycled?

Ya know, I actually did know that. One of those forgotten known’s, ya know? I think I learned that about the same time I learned that brain cells can’t be grown or replaced either. I think I also heard somewhere that that was in question… a few years back.

Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten. Lost brain cells?

Boy I don’t know why the brain cells would be any different than typical body cells. Any ideas?

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Here’s an educated guess. Their neural connections generally maintain one state till it is switched by our neural network logic. If they routinely died and were replaced by new cells, there would be no easy way to reestablish the same neural connections in the same state. Therefore, memory would be wiped out about every 7 years. We would have to spend our entire lives constantly relearning the same basic knowledge a 7 year old can grasp.

Sounds feasible. But why couldn’t that happen the same as regular cells? The genome is duplicated from cell to cell, and that is a simple code mapping. Are you suggesting that memory is separate from the physical brain, an immaterial agent of new Info, and that changing those cells, would therefor break the connecting mechanism between the physical and non physical realms?

Basically, it’s kind of like keeping an antenna from rusting out. Best to keep the original intact or the signal will be interrupted. No?

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies A cell of connecting tissue or the parenchyma of an organ have a limited number of roles. The cells of the intestinal wall are replaced about once a week, as the abrasive nature of some foods strips them off. Their main function is to absorb water and nutrients from food, which does not require them to be in any particular configuration.
A neuron is different though, because their axon length and the location of their various synapses can have a distinct effect on their function. To encode this information for transmission to a new cell, you would need some sort of master copy that would not be broken down and replaced. Because they are not broken down and replaced, there is no need for a master copy and the brain can be the sole control centre of the body.

The (cognitively) meaningful state of a neurone is not determined by its genetics.

Growth in humans is via cell division, which uses DNA code to create exact genetic copies of a cell. This would be useless in the brain, as the cells do not store any (cognitive) information in the genetics, but in their arrangements, shapes and electrical & chemical states.

To duplicate a brain, it would need to be reconstructed in a different way, a decidedly unnatural way.

@FireMadeFlesh & @The_Idler Thanks and that’s exactly right.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Cell mitosis makes exact copies. No two neurons are exact copies. Not only would their unique physical arrangement have to be copied and then somehow replaced while they are occupying it, their states at each synapse would need to be exactly duplicated as well. Even DNA with all its wondrous complexity falls far short of the coding capacity to do that.

Fascinating and extremely intriguing. Capturing synaptic states, how interesting.

Thanks for that.