Transporter Philosophy

[jmercer]

See, here is where we differ

Because I believe that any rational and reasonable goal for a legal system, and by extension ethics and morality, must be based on the individual. These are all systems designed to guide an influence behavior...to modify individual behaviors enough so that productive cooperation within the group is possible. SInce an exact duplicate copies a person's personality, mannerisms, beliefs, intentions, desires, etc, etc, etc...then I don't see how any moral, legal, or ethical standard that would apply to the original would not apply to the duplicate. That's the point I'm having trouble understanding...why?

That's what I've been trying to get across here... there is a difference. One person is the original, and the other person is not. They're both people; they're both independently alive; but only one of them actually lived prior to the replication.

Regardless of questions about observation, that's a fact, and it's not irrelevant - far from it.

In my opinion, the replicant would have absolutely no rights to the original's properties whatsoever; nor would s/he have any rights within current marriages, etc. The replicant did NOT take the actions that led up to all of those things; the replicant simply didn't exist prior to replication, and so cannot be responsible for the actions of the original - good or bad.

Simple existence doesn't entitle the doppleganger to anything other than whatever basic human rights are universally provided under law - and I have no doubt that the courts would consider a replicant as a person and not an object.

However, the replicant may be able to apply for some transitory relief from the original while s/he establishes him/herself, especially if the original willingly participated in the transportation process. I would expect this to be the case much as child support exists for the same reason - the child didn't ask to be born, but the parents have responsiblity for the child until the child can provide for itself. No reason I can think of that this wouldn't also apply to a replicant.

However, to the point - the courts, society, family, friends and everyone concerned would still view the original and doppleganger as two different people... and the provenance of the individuals would determine their identity.

 

[Hellbound]

jmercer:

I'm looking for the reasoning for that, though....not a description. Hope that makes snese of what I'm asking.

IMO, both existed previous to this. Responsibility for actions is based on you willfully taking part in them, a matter of personality and memory, identity, something that both can lay valid claim to.

I'm asking what the justification is for treating them differently, when both are indistinguishable? Two different people, yes, but both responsible for property, debts, and actions pre-duplication (my view). Debts and property shared, punishments for criminal acts applied unilaterally.

What I'm looking for is the reasoning as to why it should be consdered the way you pointed out (which, I agree, is likely what would happen, although I'd disagree with it).

 

[jmercer]

Hm... reasoning. I suppose the reasoning would be that the law requires that discrete entities must be treated individually. (That's why individual verdicts are handed down in trials concerning multiple people who worked together to commit a crime. Regardless of the crime committed by the group, each individual involved may have different degrees of responsibility.)

This is true in corporate law where the entities are corporations - parent corporations are often held blameless for a subsidiary's actions, etc.

Since there's no doubt that both versions of the person are discrete entities, I expect the law to apply accordingly.

The only exception is where children are involved, because the parent (or responsible adult) is supposed to control their behavior; not applicable here, though.

 

[Hellbound]

Hm... reasoning. I suppose the reasoning would be that the law requires that discrete entities must be treated as discrete. (Even true in corporate law where the entities are corporations.) And there's no doubt that both versions of the person are discrete entities, so I'd say thats the reasoning behind it.

The only exception is where children are involved, because the parent (or responsible adult) is supposed to control their behavior; not applicable here, though.

Well, they are treated as discreet, from the point they became discreet and forward. We're talking abotu tings that heppened pre-duplication, and how this applies to post-duplication copies.

They are discrete entities post-duplication, but were the same entity pre-duplication. This is my argument.

 

[jmercer]

Ok - I've invited someone to join us who may be able to shed some light on this, if he shows up. Hang in there until then.

 

[Hellbound]

Heh.

Now I'm curious as to who

 

[jmercer]

I'll PM ya.

 

[Hellbound]

Well, I'd replied tot he PM, but this is general info, so it's reposted here

Of course, we're discussing a totally unrealistic, unprecedented situation....

Personally, I'm somewhat in agreement. IMO, they are the same person pre-dup. In terms of involuntary actions, things such as murder or criminal charges, etc, both should be held equally accountable. IN terms of finances, debts, property, etc, since both have an equal claim to it (IMO), it's be split. I could see the existence of a "pre-dup" agreement with oneself, where one allocates what goes to self and to copy(ies). BUt I'd still say that specifically for criminal charges, the copies are the original (identical mind/personality/self as the one that needs punishment).

 

[jmercer]

Oooo. Interesting. I was totally wrong, which is why I don't play an attorney on TV, either.

 

[politas]

He too can be medically treated to help him realize he didn't actually do it -- just as the person who believes he killed Lincoln could (or perhaps should).

I doubt it would take much for a murderer to agree that he really didn't do it. In fact, I'm quite certain that if your morals held sway, it would be the first words out of his mouth when steping out of the transporter.

Also, it has nothing to do with posing a future threat -- it's all about the committed crime.

The actual murderer is dead -- what could be more just?

It's all about justice ... take a life, lose your life. Believe mistakenly you killed a life, and get treatment.

That's not how modern justice operates. Modern justice systems are entirely about prevention and protection for society. As long as you insist on operating in a medieval mindset, there's really no point discussing ethical and moral considerations with you.

 

[AmateurScientist]

That's what I've been trying to get across here... there is a difference. One person is the original, and the other person is not. They're both people; they're both independently alive; but only one of them actually lived prior to the replication.

Regardless of questions about observation, that's a fact, and it's not irrelevant - far from it.

In my opinion, the replicant would have absolutely no rights to the original's properties whatsoever; nor would s/he have any rights within current marriages, etc. The replicant did NOT take the actions that led up to all of those things; the replicant simply didn't exist prior to replication, and so cannot be responsible for the actions of the original - good or bad.

Simple existence doesn't entitle the doppleganger to anything other than whatever basic human rights are universally provided under law - and I have no doubt that the courts would consider a replicant as a person and not an object.

Hmmm...the first thing that comes to mind is that the English common law -- and thus current American law based on it as well -- didn't evolve to deal with dopplegangers. As currently constituted, our law does not have anything in place to address property rights which might belong to two identical persons arising from the same original identity. Our law has never had to deal with dopplegangers, and it would have to change radically in order to accommodate their existence.

Human cloning, whenever it comes to fruition, will have to have laws accommodating it (The Sixth Day, anyone?).

I understand that you claim that the two persons do not share the same identity, as you attach some temporal significance to the "original" versus the "copy," but I'm much more inclined to go with Huntsman's pure materialist view. I think your 4th dimension distinction is artificial and without substance, as a materialist viewpoint would incorporate time into space-time, as time t is just as physical as the three spatial dimensions x, y, and z. Therefore, a perfect copy of an original would share the same temporal characteristics. In other words, it would have the same history as the original up until the moment of duplication (although it really isn't possible to make a perfect copy of you in N dimensions, because each of you will occupy different co-ordinates in N-space). Remember, however, that this is a thought experiment.

This is a separate issue, but I have a question for you. Isn't your use of the term "replicant" loaded? Your apparent usage implies that the original and the copy are indeed distinguishable. One of them has the physical property or quality of "originalness," and the other doesn't. How can originalness be a physical property of hairless atoms arranged in N-space? If it isn't, then you are proposing a dualist paradigm, aren't you?

However, the replicant may be able to apply for some transitory relief from the original while s/he establishes him/herself, especially if the original willingly participated in the transportation process. I would expect this to be the case much as child support exists for the same reason - the child didn't ask to be born, but the parents have responsiblity for the child until the child can provide for itself. No reason I can think of that this wouldn't also apply to a replicant.

Transitory relief from whom? The "original?" If so, which one is the original? There is no physical way to tell. I'm not buying your continuity argument, because I think it's another way of assuming a dualistic universe. I agree with Huntsman 100% on this issue. There is no continuity of "you," because atoms are fungible, and because the atoms constituting you are continually being exchanged with other atoms you expell through your breath, your sweat, your waste, and those you ingest by breathing, eating, and by having your skin come into contact with air and surfaces and plants and animals, etc. The atoms constituting you today were not in your body 30 years ago.

Therefore, if "you" are simply a configuration of atoms, then a duplicate of you is possible to construct merely by arranging a different, but indistinguishable set of atoms in exactly the same configuration (ignoring the impossibility of occupying the same co-ordinates in N-space problem for the sake of argument). Which "you" is required to provide transitory relief to the other?

However, to the point - the courts, society, family, friends and everyone concerned would still view the original and doppleganger as two different people... and the provenance of the individuals would determine their identity.

I don't know. This issue has been addressed in fiction many times before, by Phillip K. Dick, among others, and even by the writers of The Simpsons. It's a conundrum, and I'm not so sure the law as we know it could deal with it.

AS

 

[AmateurScientist]

Hm... reasoning. I suppose the reasoning would be that the law requires that discrete entities must be treated individually. (That's why individual verdicts are handed down in trials concerning multiple people who worked together to commit a crime. Regardless of the crime committed by the group, each individual involved may have different degrees of responsibility.)

Not necessarily. Yes, the law treats them as separate individuals for the purpose of affording them procedural due process. Both criminal and civil law have theories of culpability and liability for joint ventures or when actors act in concert, however.

In criminal law, we have the principle of complicity that holds actors who agree to join a criminal enterprise and who take action in furtherance of that enterprise jointly liable for all its consequences. That's accomplice liability. Sure, each actor may be held liable for differing degrees of culpability, or each may be punished differently depending on his or her role in the enterprise, but accomplice liability seeks to hold all participants liable for the same offense, the same as if only one person had committed it. Indeed, if convicted of the same offense, the law provides that each convicted defendant may receive the maximum punishment provided by law for that offense.

In civil law, we have the principle of joint and several liability. It is similar in some respects to accomplice liability in criminal law. The actors do not have to be acting in concert, however, or have any explicit or implicit agreement to act in furtherance of the same goal. They merely each have to breach some duty to the plaintiff and that breach has to be the proximate cause of some damages to the plaintiff. Joint and several liability says that each actor who is found liable for the damages to the plaintiff can be made to pay for all of it, without regard to how fault may be assessed among the various wrongdoers.

This is true in corporate law where the entities are corporations - parent corporations are often held blameless for a subsidiary's actions, etc.

Not necessarily. It sometimes happens that courts look beyond the surface of how parties are organized and look to the beneficial owners of the various legal entities. Sometimes, the beneficial owners of several distinct legal entities are the same, and the veils of protection usually afforded by discrete corporate existence can be pierced and liability be extended to the beneficial owners.

Since there's no doubt that both versions of the person are discrete entities, I expect the law to apply accordingly.

I would expect the law to adapt to develop mechanisms for handling clones or doppelgangers and their relationships to each others, and the various rights and responsibilities arising from them, assuming that's possible.

The only exception is where children are involved, because the parent (or responsible adult) is supposed to control their behavior; not applicable here, though.

In some situations this is true, but in others it is not.

AS

 

[Hellbound]

Nifty, I got backup

THanks for the legal view, AS. Ed knows my legal knowledge is insufficient to write a cheesy courtroom drama, much less anything applicable to the real world

 

[Rasmus]

They are discrete entities post-duplication, but were the same entity pre-duplication. This is my argument.

I find this notion to be outright ridiculous. (This may well have to do with the fact that the situation described is entrirely fictional, of course.) There were no two entities prior to the replication, so how could they have been the same?

Why should an entity be held responsible for actions that happened even before that entity ever existed?

That the copy has the same memories is immaterial. A person is responsible for what they actually - and not for what they do or don't remember. And even if I would have committed a crime in a particular situation doesn't change the fact that I didn't commit the crime. In our situation, the copy didn't exist.

And IMHO it shouldn't matter if you cannot tell apart the original and the copy, either. If there are several suspects to a crime, and you cannot prove who did it, they all walk free, right? (Having a twin is supposedly a good method to avoid speeding tickets, too. At least it is here in Germany, and then only until you get away with it once or twice, after which you may be required to keep records of who'd driving your car.)

 

[jmercer]

Hmmm...the first thing that comes to mind is that the English common law -- and thus current American law based on it as well -- didn't evolve to deal with dopplegangers. As currently constituted, our law does not have anything in place to address property rights which might belong to two identical persons arising from the same original identity. Our law has never had to deal with dopplegangers, and it would have to change radically in order to accommodate their existence.
AS

Hey, AS - Thanks for coming here and helping out.

I understand that you claim that the two persons do not share the same identity, as you attach some temporal significance to the "original" versus the "copy," but I'm much more inclined to go with Huntsman's pure materialist view. I think your 4th dimension distinction is artificial and without substance, as a materialist viewpoint would incorporate time into space-time, as time t is just as physical as the three spatial dimensions x, y, and z. Therefore, a perfect copy of an original would share the same temporal characteristics. In other words, it would have the same history as the original up until the moment of duplication (although it really isn't possible to make a perfect copy of you in N dimensions, because each of you will occupy different co-ordinates in N-space). Remember, however, that this is a thought experiment.

This is a separate issue, but I have a question for you. Isn't your use of the term "replicant" loaded? Your apparent usage implies that the original and the copy are indeed distinguishable. One of them has the physical property or quality of "originalness," and the other doesn't. How can originalness be a physical property of hairless atoms arranged in N-space? If it isn't, then you are proposing a dualist paradigm, aren't you?

Yes, it's loaded... I used the term replicant specifically because I was taking the position that the two individuals aren't the same person and that there are physical aspects to both of them that are unique, no matter how they're created.

I maintain that duration is a physical property of systems (i.e., humans) in the universe - and that is one of the properties that differentiates the two. Spatial location at the time of creation and afterwards is a second property, IMO - so from my perspective, this means that there are two physical properties for the original and the replicant that are unique. Again, IMO, this is as true for individual atoms as is it for systems. I don't see why the act of transportation would carry over the temporal property of the original (i.e., history); after all, it doesn't carry over the spacial coordinates, which is another property of the original at time of transport as well. (Unless someone wants to argue that non-quantum spacial location and duration of things aren't a physical property of a given object. I'd like to hear the science behind that position. )

As pointed out, an atom has no hair; well, neither does a black hole. However, we differentiate between them - "This atom and that atom" and "This black hole and that black hole" with no problem whatsoever on a routine basis due to location and duration of both. So I don't see why the hairlessness of atoms constitutes a decisive argument here.

Anyway, if I'm proposing a dualist paradigm, I'm not doing so on purpose; I believe I'm presenting a pertinent physical aspect of the situation that's being dismissed. I could be wrong, though - maybe I am being dualist. We'll see.

Transitory relief from whom? The "original?" If so, which one is the original? There is no physical way to tell. I'm not buying your continuity argument, because I think it's another way of assuming a dualistic universe. I agree with Huntsman 100% on this issue. There is no continuity of "you," because atoms are fungible, and because the atoms constituting you are continually being exchanged with other atoms you expell through your breath, your sweat, your waste, and those you ingest by breathing, eating, and by having your skin come into contact with air and surfaces and plants and animals, etc. The atoms constituting you today were not in your body 30 years ago.

Therefore, if "you" are simply a configuration of atoms, then a duplicate of you is possible to construct merely by arranging a different, but indistinguishable set of atoms in exactly the same configuration (ignoring the impossibility of occupying the same co-ordinates in N-space problem for the sake of argument). Which "you" is required to provide transitory relief to the other?

Fair enough, although I don't agree with your response on this for the reasons given above. In the example, the original remains at the point of origin while the replicant (yeah, I am going to use that word again! ) appears at a different location. This makes it trivial to separate the two at the instant of transfer - and if they're kept separate, it also makes it easy to distinguish them going forward. (As in one is on Mars and the other on Earth, for example.)

Additionally, any physical procedure (dental work, tattoo, whatever) done to either one of our hypothetical people would be enough to differentate them going forward. (Always assuming that they both didn't get the identical procedure.)

The difficulty in differentation only happens if the two are brought together unobserved and unrecorded with no change to the original or replicant to separate them... or if the replicant is created in the same chamber (again, unobserved and unrecorded) with the original.

Then it would be impossible for us to determine which one was which, assuming our abilities in the thought experiment remain the same as they are in the real world.

An inability to determine the difference is a lack of technology on our part, however, and not - IMO - a built-in characteristic of the two. if we go back to my assertion that duration and spacial location are two physical aspects that are not being considered here, this suggests a solution to the problem of detection.

Snce we are postulating the ability to perfectly - and instantly - duplicate someone, we are ignoring the physical laws in our thought experiment. That's fine, for purposes of our discussion.

Since we're breaking physical laws anyway, it's only fair to allow me to postulate a mechanism for viewing duration and spacial location - such as a "visual time machine", for example. The kind of machine I'm proposing would allow us to voyueristically view every moment of anyone's life, from birth to the current moment... thereby providing a contiguous view of that individual's duration and spacial location at all times. Clearly this would provide the ability to differentiate between the two.

Not to beat the point to death - but to clarify - I believe dismissing duration and spacial location as characteristics here would be seriously problematic for this thought experiment. In doing so I think we'd be creating a universe so alien that it bears little physical resemblance (sp?) to our own... which invalidates the thought experiment, IMO.

I haven't thought it through fully, but dismissing those two characterstics might also affect causality as well.

I don't know. This issue has been addressed in fiction many times before, by Phillip K. Dick, among others, and even by the writers of The Simpsons. It's a conundrum, and I'm not so sure the law as we know it could deal with it.

AS

I think you're probably right... and yeah, when cloning happens, it's going to become quite interesting, indeed.

Thanks again for jumping in here... Huntsman and you have both given me some new perspectives on this.

 

[jmercer]

Not necessarily. Yes, the law treats them as separate individuals for the purpose of affording them procedural due process. Both criminal and civil law have theories of culpability and liability for joint ventures or when actors act in concert, however.

[snipped more good information.]

In some situations this is true, but in others it is not.

AS

Thanks, AS - this is exactly why I reached out to you. I know my limits, and law is definitely one of 'em.

 

[Hellbound]

I find this notion to be outright ridiculous. (This may well have to do with the fact that the situation described is entrirely fictional, of course.) There were no two entities prior to the replication, so how could they have been the same?

Why should an entity be held responsible for actions that happened even before that entity ever existed?

That the copy has the same memories is immaterial. A person is responsible for what they actually - and not for what they do or don't remember. And even if I would have committed a crime in a particular situation doesn't change the fact that I didn't commit the crime. In our situation, the copy didn't exist.

And IMHO it shouldn't matter if you cannot tell apart the original and the copy, either. If there are several suspects to a crime, and you cannot prove who did it, they all walk free, right? (Having a twin is supposedly a good method to avoid speeding tickets, too. At least it is here in Germany, and then only until you get away with it once or twice, after which you may be required to keep records of who'd driving your car.)

So then, in your opinion, the basis and rational for any sort of justice system is simply punsihment? No meaning is attached to the intention and mentality behind the crime? Rehabilitiation and/or protection have nothing to do with it?

This is the notion I find outright ridiculouos. You have just adamantly confirmed that the justice system has no rational purpose. You're removed any reason for actually putting murderers behind bars.

And you are correc that pre-duplication there were not two entities...both of the two entities are variations of that single one. Heck, the argument could be made that the original is not the original anymor,e because post-duplication it's affected by having an exact double.

And once again, what about a person who isn't duplicated, but steps through a transporter? Is he still guilty of a murder he commited pre-transport? If yes, then why doesn't the same logic apply to duplication? If no, then, again, what is the rational purpose for a justice system?

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Th problem is that it isn't exactly the same. If you copy a file from your hard drive to a cd, you can then erase the file from your hard drive. But if you have an error copying or continue to edit the file on the computer after copying it, hen you don't have the same file anymore.

If I was to undergo a process of copying my mind to another body in which I would be destroyed in the process, I wouldn't have a problem with that either. The consciousness that emerges from the copy would be me, just as the one destroyed was. It would just be waking up in a different brain. (I LIKE that phrase!)

But, if I was left alive afterwards, now my consciousness is divergent. It is no longer identical to the copy. Now it wouldn't be me, but a different version of me. Now if I die, there is no me anymore anywhere. The 'me' is dead.

Yes, I get all that and I agree. The problem I have is that the two conclusions seem to be a contradiction to me. In one, I wake up in a different brain. In the other, I stay in the same brain. Why should it matter if the original is still around or not? And, in the final example, of many clones and a destroyed original, who's brain do I wake up in? Sure I've been "split" but it doesn't seem like that should matter, since it is just plain impossible for me to ever "experience" being split. I'll either experience one side of the split or the other, but not both. From the outside, it doesn't matter. Without conciousness, it doesn't matter whether you consider a copied file the original or not. When you introduce it, suddenly it matters. Maybe I'm overthinking this, and really I don't think there's anything that magical about conciousness, except one thing. I've got to be SOMEONE, or I've got to be NO one.

By the way, to whoever said they think making a clone is like eternal life, why do you think that? There's nothing in common between you and the genetic copy except DNA. It'll grow up to be it's own person. If you think you will be "reincarnated" into that new form, why not any OTHER mind out there?

That leads me to a final quandry. Imperfect copies. How imperfect does your copy have to be before it isn't "you"? Clearly, a mother dying during birth isn't going to suddenly experience the world out of the baby's eyes. What about the father that died during conception? (There's a though...) Aside from the genetics, the brain of that newborn clone has nothing in common with your fully formed brain, and there's no reason to think of that brain as in any way "specialer" than the brain of a child or a twin.

And when it comes right down to it, the ability of our species to make imperfect clones leads me to believe that making a perfect one isn't going to make me wake up a new brain at childhood. But how "perfect" does a total brain copy have to be? What if during the copy a single neural connection is changed, just a single one? Would that be enough to make that new person "not me", considering we are constantly altering our mind anyway? What about two? What about three? How different does that new brain have to be during the process before I no longer wake up in a new brain?

 

[AmateurScientist]

Hey, AS - Thanks for coming here and helping out.

You're certainly welcome. Thanks for inviting me to such an interesting and enlightening discussion. There are some great ideas here coming from several different angles.

Yes, it's loaded... I used the term replicant specifically because I was taking the position that the two individuals aren't the same person and that there are physical aspects to both of them that are unique, no matter how they're created.

If the replicant is a perfect copy (practically speaking, if not truly perfect because of displacement in N-space), then what difference does it make? His memories will be indistinguishable from the original's memories. He will believe them just as earnestly as the original believes them.

Objectively, from the perspective of a third party observer, the two jmercers are different, but from the two 1st person perspectives (the two jmercers with identical memories and thought patterns), they are the same, at least at the moment of duplication.

I maintain that duration is a physical property of systems (i.e., humans) in the universe - and that is one of the properties that differentiates the two. Spatial location at the time of creation and afterwards is a second property, IMO - so from my perspective, this means that there are two physical properties for the original and the replicant that are unique.

I agree with this, but this means the replicant is not a perfect copy. Practically speaking, it could be in theory. I say "practically" because on a human scale of perception, we wouldn't be able to tell them apart. They wouldn't be able to tell themselves apart either. They would each truly believe they were the original.

Again, IMO, this is as true for individual atoms as is it for systems.

Well, yeah, in the sense that theoretically we could take all the atoms in the universe and assign each one a serial number. We could then theoretically track each atom and see where it goes over the course of the evolution of the universe, including the ones that eventually become jmercer as an infant, and then leave his body eventually, only to be replaced over time with other atoms which constitute the body of jmercer.

Because atoms are hairless, however, i.e., they are fungible commodities, it doesn't make any practical difference which serial numbers one uses to construct a jmercer. You just have to put them into the exact configuration that spells "jmercer" and you have a jmercer. Not THE jmercer, but a jmercer. Jmercer is now a fungible commodity as well. Well, at least jmercer at any given time t is fungible.

I don't see why the act of transportation would carry over the temporal property of the original (i.e., history); after all, it doesn't carry over the spacial coordinates, which is another property of the original at time of transport as well. (Unless someone wants to argue that non-quantum spacial location and duration of things aren't a physical property of a given object. I'd like to hear the science behind that position. )

OK, forget the temporal characteristics idea. Perhaps it was ill-conceived. Forget the actual history of the atoms themselves which constitute the original jmercer. After all, their individual histories don't really matter because they're fungible. Their configuration doesn't confer upon them some mystical special quality of history in the aggregate. If it did, then again we would be conjuring up some dualistic property not found in the material world.

I think that given all that (and you may disagree with me here) we keep coming back to the idea that the original jmercer and the replicant are indistinguishable (except for the trivial matter, from a human perceptible perspective, of their not occupying the same N-space co-ordinates).

As pointed out, an atom has no hair; well, neither does a black hole. However, we differentiate between them - "This atom and that atom" and "This black hole and that black hole" with no problem whatsoever on a routine basis due to location and duration of both. So I don't see why the hairlessness of atoms constitutes a decisive argument here.

We can only differentiate them due to their occupying different configurations of atoms, or occupying different co-ordinates in N-space. Remove those variables, and you have identical entities, indistinguishable from each other.

Anyway, if I'm proposing a dualist paradigm, I'm not doing so on purpose; I believe I'm presenting a pertinent physical aspect of the situation that's being dismissed. I could be wrong, though - maybe I am being dualist. We'll see.

I believe you that you aren't proposing a dualist paradigm on purpose. I think you are stumbling into it inadvertantly by ascribing a history to the original that the replicant doesn't share in a meaningful way. I don't think you can do that at the atomic level. You can get away with it on a systemic level, but that's not what we're able to observe once we start picking out different atoms to configure into a replicant jmercer. That's because the two systems will be identical except for their different co-ordinates in N-space and the theoretically different serial numbers of their respective atoms (which again are constantly changing anyway, even in the original jmercer).

Fair enough, although I don't agree with your response on this for the reasons given above. In the example, the original remains at the point of origin while the replicant (yeah, I am going to use that word again! ) appears at a different location. This makes it trivial to separate the two at the instant of transfer - and if they're kept separate, it also makes it easy to distinguish them going forward. (As in one is on Mars and the other on Earth, for example.)

I'm with you here.

Additionally, any physical procedure (dental work, tattoo, whatever) done to either one of our hypothetical people would be enough to differentate them going forward. (Always assuming that they both didn't get the identical procedure.)

Again, I agree.

The difficulty in differentation only happens if the two are brought together unobserved and unrecorded with no change to the original or replicant to separate them... or if the replicant is created in the same chamber (again, unobserved and unrecorded) with the original.

Does the difficulty lie only with the third party observer, or with the two jmercers? How about both?

Then it would be impossible for us to determine which one was which, assuming our abilities in the thought experiment remain the same as they are in the real world.

An inability to determine the difference is a lack of technology on our part, however, and not - IMO - a built-in characteristic of the two. if we go back to my assertion that duration and spacial location are two physical aspects that are not being considered here, this suggests a solution to the problem of detection.

Again, that means the replicant isn't a perfect copy, and we know that. I think for practical purposes, within the realm of our thought experiment, we can conceive of the imperfections being undetectible on a human scale and using ordinary human perceptions.

Snce we are postulating the ability to perfectly - and instantly - duplicate someone, we are ignoring the physical laws in our thought experiment. That's fine, for purposes of our discussion.

Since we're breaking physical laws anyway, it's only fair to allow me to postulate a mechanism for viewing duration and spacial location - such as a "visual time machine", for example. The kind of machine I'm proposing would allow us to voyueristically view every moment of anyone's life, from birth to the current moment... thereby providing a contiguous view of that individual's duration and spacial location at all times. Clearly this would provide the ability to differentiate between the two.

Not to beat the point to death - but to clarify - I believe dismissing duration and spacial location as characteristics here would be seriously problematic for this thought experiment. In doing so I think we'd be creating a universe so alien that it bears little physical resemblance (sp?) to our own... which invalidates the thought experiment, IMO.

I haven't thought it through fully, but dismissing those two characterstics might also affect causality as well.

I can accept this, but it makes my head want to explode.

I think you're probably right... and yeah, when cloning happens, it's going to become quite interesting, indeed.

It's only a matter of time.

Thanks again for jumping in here... Huntsman and you have both given me some new perspectives on this.

Same to you and the many others in this thread. I found myself agreeing with nearly everyone while reading their respective posts. It was only when I would read another that my focus and opinion would shift. Such is the compelling nature of so many of the thoughts and arguments in this terrific thread (nevermind that it's been discussed before; I didn't participate before, so it's new to me).

AS

 

[Hellbound]

Yes, I always find these interesting

My current viewpoint has actually consolidated since this thread started . I just fail to see any meaningful way to call copies differnet people. Where a lot of confusion comes in is that we assume a person is a unique thing, so when I say they arre the "same person" it confuses the issue

But, as always, good arguments and a lot to think about. I'm feeling pretty comfortable where I am now, though, barring any new info thrown at me.