Is this a morally acceptable technology to you? For well-adjusted atheists, I think it should be.
For the most part, atheists don’t believe in souls. Post-deconstruction the teleporter is a non-entity, I needn’t worry that the essence of the Chicago teleporter is going anywhere. I can imagine that a person who believed every time teleportation was used someone would be condemned to hell, exalted to heaven, or prematurely partaking in another afterlife would oppose the technology.
For the most part, atheists don’t accept transcendent moral standards. The act of teleportation could be seen as a willful killing and therefore immoral according to the most popular verses of most holy books. If we consider teleportation in regards to the negative impact of involved parties, one could argue that it isn’t immoral at all. Even if we see the Chicagoan's action as suicide, it lacks all the negative consequences of a suicide. The person’s replacement is indistinguishable from the original, meaning there is no one to morn. The victim is painlessly turned off knowing that a redundancy will be turned on elsewhere.
Where do you stand on this? Is it moral? Would you do it? Why or why not?
I'm somewhat on the fence on this one, because it gets down to the question of exactly what we mean by the continuity of identity. The transhumanist concept of achieving immortality by uploading the mind into a computer potentially poses similar issues, though I think there are ways around them.
ReplyDeleteOne way of approaching it is this: Is the "you" that woke up this morning the same person as the "you" that went to sleep last night, or are you a new consciousness which retains memories of being the old one which actually ceased at the moment of sleep? If you don't believe sleep constitutes a full shutdown of consciousness, how about if you were once put under total anesthesia for surgery? If you believe you are still the same person, then you should accept that you would still be the same person after being transported.
If such technology were actually invented, it would give rise to even weirder philosophical problems. What if the pattern recorded in Chicago were sent not just to one receiver in Tokyo but to 100 different receivers, each of which produced a perfect replica? Wouldn't each of those 100 new persons be equally "you"? What if a copy of the pattern were stored, and then if the "you" which arrived in Tokyo were run over by a truck and killed years later, the pattern were used to create a new "you", who would indeed be you, but with no memory of anything that had happened since being transported in Chicago?
We'll probably actually have to deal with these questions, or similar ones, sooner than we think. And we can count upon religion, with its blithering about "souls", to produce pointless convoluted and utterly worthless answers to them.
Good points about sleep and anesthesia. You are really constantly changing with the "you" of the past lost to time. Teleportation wouldn't be that fundamentally different.
DeleteI'd be more concerned with the possible risks, than the moral argument you put forward. I don't necessarily believe in a soul, but one miscalculation, and the person on the other side would be different than me. How could I be sure that people don't use the bio information for purposes I'm not aware of? Machines break so I can't be sure something horrible might happen (with unforeseen consequences) during transit.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I'd be concerned with the soul/moral implication in this case, but all of the other things that come along with it.
Very interesting thing to think about though.
I meant for this hypothetical to exist in a vacuum without unintended consequences, but yeah...you're right.
DeleteBut machines break now. You could die being transported, but you could die on your next car trip too.
DeleteInteresting questions. I hadn't really thought of it before, but now that you mention it, you're right. You're effectively killing one "you". I don't know if I would do it, but that has less to do with morality than the very fact that I would be killed while some copy, who thought that he was me and acted like me in every sense, was alive.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as Infidel753 noted, that brings up the possibility of "pirated" copies of you being made. Plus, if you think you are over-exposed now, just wait until some computer can log enough data to completely replicate you! Talk about no secrets! :-)
Now I must write a sci-fi novel.
DeleteToo late! Simps... er, Futurama already did it!
DeleteHa...it's hard to find an original idea these days.
DeleteWasn't this the climax in the film "The Prestige"?
DeleteI was always under the impression that teleportation involved the actual mass transfer (according to wikipedia this is correct), and so while you were obliterated in Chicago. The Copy in Tokyo is actually your matter from Chicago just reassembled. In this context I have no problem with teleportation.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to an actual copy been made, that is a different scenario all together. As long as someone else is not creating multiple copies, put me in the machine right away as I hate long journeys.
Even if the same matter is used, taking it apart in one place and reconstructing in another is effectively killing one brain to grow another.
DeleteI am hesitant to call this killing as the same person is effectively been formed at the other end, so it cant be killing as the person is still alive. The only way it isn't is if this person has faulty wiring in the brain, and effectively has an altered personality. Of course I do not believe in a soul, so death for me is complete and the person cannot be revived in any way (cloning aside, as that would be also a matter of experience forming the person).
DeleteThen again maybe I am looking for a legal loophole to avoid travel.
If an altered state makes it immoral, I should really stop drinking. ;-)
DeleteI know what you're saying, but this seems to be the otherwise impossible case of temporary brain death.
For the most part, atheists don’t believe in souls.
ReplyDeleteI fall outside of that scope, but I don't think that the concept of a 'soul' should get in the way of this kind of technology anyway. The soul, according to my unprovable, untestable, and completely nonsensical opinion, isn't something that bound to the body, it's more something tied to the consciousness. As long as that consciousness persists there would be no reason that a soul couldn't remain attached to it. Experiences where people die and have their systems restarted would be another example of this same concept in relation to the soul.
Now if someone were to believe that the soul was physically attached to the body, that could create a problem, but it also causes a problem with dying, having it detach to go do whatever it's going to do, and then having a doctor jump-start you. Did it reattach? Are you a ginger from then on?
Those of us with nutty beliefs are the ones that usually get strange on questions like this, even if atheist overall. It would be interesting to hear from Buddhists and spiritualists on this one that do believe in a soul and/or afterlife so see where they way in on the attachment of the soul.
How would your idea of a soul work if they were able to make multiple copies of you as Infidel753 mentioned above?
DeleteIn the event that some new physics is discovered that permits perfect teleportation of complex material states, then I would probably do it.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding of quantum teleportation is that the state of a single particle can be transferred onto another particle in a remote location without measurement. This means that the original state is somehow "erased" during the process (although the original particle still exists, its information is gone). I'm inclined to imagine macro-scale teleportation as something qualitatively similar, perhaps leaving a mass of smoky, sludgy ooze where the teleportee once stood. I suppose it is possible that the original "you" might experience an instant of perfect agony just before being rendered into ooze, and perhaps the new "you" would have no memory of that experience (sort of like the concept in "The Prestige"). In that case I would probably take the shuttle craft.