Well, let's look at an individual that apart from most everything else, actually believes he assassinated President Lincoln. Of course there's no rational explanation to his conclusion, he poses no threat to anyone else and apart from that you would never suspect him of believing such. Do we prosecute him as a murderer? He believes this as much (as much as can be tested with our transporter clone) as our clone believes he murdered whoever in our thought scenario.
THe bolded part is where we would disagree. If this is true for the copy, then this was also true for the original, thus the original assassin should not be charged either (they are copies, identical mentalities at least up to the point of duplication).
It's not about belief, it's about consistent goals for the justice system.
If the "original" needed to be put in prison to protect society, well, the copy or clone has the exact smae outlook, and the exact same argument applies. If the original needed to be incarcerated as a deterrent, then only the outside argument for the transporter applies, and the clone/duplicate/whatever would still need to be incarceratecd. If the original needed to be rehabilitated, then the same mindssets and pre-dispositions that needed correction in the original also need correction in the duplicate.
By your argument, our entire justice system is simply based on accidental coincidence. There is no goal to incarceration, and there should be no punishment difference between accidental death and intentional murder.
jmercer:
The reason to assume instantaneous transmission is precisely to highlight where we draw the line on self, identity, consciousness, etc. Think of it as removing variables in order to highlight the variables one wishes to examine
And Dilb elucidated my viewpoint pretty well. Both yourself and the duplicate have equal claim to being "you". No one is arguing that they are the same consciousness or will remian exactly identical after duplication, but simply that each is just as valid a version of you as the other.
Likewise with the transporter, not including duplication. There's no more reason to say the reconstituted person isn't you than there is to say that a waterfall is different because it stopped during a drought and then restarted. Or to say a river is not the same because it was dammed, then undammed. The consciousness is a process.
And again, I go back to the gradualist examples, and partial copies, to highlight the problems with using continuity as a guide. What if the transporter only removes the brain and rematerializes it back in the same body? It's been destroyed and recreated, is it the same person? The physical argument says yes, simple answer, The coninuity argument has no clear answer, and would seem to require additional explanation and categorization (how much of you is in body versus brain, is instantaneous destrcution/reintegration enough to break continuity, etc). Likewise, what if half the brain and body were removed (split right down the middle) and recreated by the transporter, with the other half left intact?
The continuity model does not adequately address all situations as is, and requires additional qualifications to answer these questions. Combine this with the inability to distinguish between physically identical copies (in any way except by known history...and even this cannot be distinguished without a continuous chain of observsation) and the conclusion is that the copies are both identical to the original.
The Mona Lisa example is a good one, IMO. As soon as the copy is made, it could be authenticated as the original. Which the original would be, as well. Pre-copying, there were identical. Only post-copy is there any detectable difference at all, and that's only in location. Yes, people would want the original, but the only way to distinguish between the original and the copy would necessarily be based on post-duplication events that affected each...NOTHING that occurred pre-duplication could be used to distinguish between the two. Which is, essentially, the point.
) And unless you're sociopathic... your replicant is going to suffer while watching you die as well.
