Sorry about that ridiculous watermark.
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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That is only an actual issue when you are some sort of spiritualist. From a materialist point of view, the entirety of you is "just" a very complex interplay of elementary particles.
It's true that the entirety of a person is "just" a very complex interplay of elementary particles, but I don't think it's only an actual issue if you're a spiritualist. I'm a naturalistic determinist, there's no such thing as souls or spirits.
My line of thinking is this. Let's say I step into the machine, and it makes a perfect copy of me at another location, but fails to dismantle my body. Since we're talking about the transporters in Star Trek, there is precedent for this happening. I step out of the transporter entrance, and another me steps out of the transporter exit. I don't see through that person's eyes, I don't hear through that person's ears. They are separate entity, no matter how similar they are to me.
If the transporter had successfully dismantled me, I still wouldn't see through that person's eyes or hear through their ears. I would be dead. Another person with my memories would step out of the exit. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, that person is me. But I don't care about the rest of the universe, I care about my own brain, which has been destroyed. Why would I agree to be transported, if I don't get to see what happens after?
I don't think this is true. Even if consciousness is only a product of our physical bodies, there's still the issue of who's experiencing it.
When this body dies, I'm dead. I don't care if there are a million other perfect copies of this body or my mind out there, if this mind won't be the one to experience it.
A copy of me can be fundamentally perfect, but simply as a product of being physically separate meat our consciousnesses will be separate. If instead of teleporting, both perfect copies stayed alive and had a chance to talk to each other, this would be apparent. I will continue to experience life from the eyes of my old body, not the clone. We could then go on to live our lives separately, and we would diverge. Because we'd both be separate simply by the physical nature of our existence, we're not interchangeable, and it wouldn't make sense to kill one of us and assume that now it's "teleportation". We didn't see out of the other's eyes before, so why would we see out of the other's eyes when we're dead? No, we'd just die.
The only way I can see this not being an issue is if the awareness somehow transfers, which requires some sort of technomagic beyond our comprehension, or outright rejection of the existence of consciousness, which is a bold claim.