However, whereas Suber is a professional academic, I am not. Before reading any further, read my disclaimer and warning on my My Writings page.
Teletransporters: A Sensible Way of Travelling or a Death Machine?
Glenn Mason-Riseborough (4/10/1996)
Who is right: the somatophiles, the teletransporters, both or neither?
To answer this question we first need to define what somatophiles and teletransporters actually are. They are two groups of people who disagree fundamentally as to the nature of personal identity. The best way to describe the difference is to create a scenario in which these two groups of people disagree as to the outcome. The teletransporter scenario is as follows:
A device (the teletransporter) has been created which scans an object (source), destroys the object, and creates an exact replica at the destination. If a person steps into the teletransporter, their body is destroyed and an exact replica is created at the destination. A somatophile believes that this is not the same person, while a teletransporter believes that it is.
As already stated, this difference of opinion boils down to a difference in the interpretation of what personal identity is. There seem to be two major sets of views to personal identity. One of these sets assumes that there is some integral part of a person that remains constant over time (e.g. soul, body, personality). Another set of views takes a four-dimensional approach to the problem. This view states that a person is made up of parts in time, these parts are linked together in some appropriate way (e.g. memory, consciousness, anticipation of future events). Due to space constraints in this essay, I am going to look at only two views of personal identity. One of these views -- the body/brain concept, supports the somatophiles view, the other -- memory, supports the teletransporters. I will then discuss my own views.
The body/brain concept could in fact be subdivided into two (possibly opposing) theories. The reason I have lumped them together is that physiologically the body and brain respond to certain stimuli in a similar manner. Thus from a purely physiological point of view, both concepts have the same arguments for and against. I am going to ignore the body vs. brain personal identity disputes. These use a scenario whereby person A’s brain is transplanted into person B’s body. Person C comes out of the operation, the operation is a success and the transplant is not rejected by the immune system. Person C has person A’s memory and person B’s body. Is person C the same person as person A or person B? I believe that my own personal view (discussed at the end of the essay) allows for this scenario. Under the body/brain view of personal identity, the somatophile believes that the physical body (brain) is what makes a person who they are. Destroy the body (brain) and the person is also destroyed. Even if an exact replica is made, it is still not the same body, therefore it is not the same person.
To counter this claim you only have to look at the molecular level of the body. Molecules are constantly entering and leaving the body through everyday activities such as breathing, eating and excreting. It has been calculated that after approximately seven years a person is made up of entirely different molecules. Thus in seven years time I will have an entirely different body than I do today. By the body/brain concept of personal identity I must be a different person. To most people this seems counter-intuitive.
Perhaps then personal identity should amount to the speed at which the molecules are replaced. If they come and go slowly then it is the same person, if they are all replaced at the same time then it is a different person. This modification seems completely unwieldy. How can a rate of change be identified where a faster change of particles constitutes a new person and a slower change means the original person? What if every particle but one is replaced? Or two? Or three? Clearly it seems that connecting personal identity to body continuity is extremely dubious.
The next view I am discussing is that of memory. A person is the same person as they were in the past if they can remember being that person, or if they have the same memories of past events as that person. So this view suggests that I am the same person as I was five years ago because I remember events I did five years ago. The me in the present is connected to me in the past by way of memories of the past.
The first problem with this is delusions. A person may be hypnotised into believing they did certain events they did not do. For example, person A experiences some event E. Person B is hypnotised into believing that they experienced this same event E. By the memory theory, both person A and person B would remember person’s A event E. Therefore they would both be the same person doing that past event E.
The obvious answer to this would be to add that not only is the memory necessary, but the memory has to be created in the appropriate way. That is, the memory has to be real. The only way of identifying whether a memory is real or not is by saying that the person who has the memory is the same person as the one who actually did the event. This argument is completely circular -- a person is the same person only if their memories were created in such a way that they were the same person.
Another problem with the memory theory is that a person may not be able to remember any of their past. Anterograde amnesia is a condition where a person cannot form any new memories. The short term memory is not transferred to the long term memory. This may be due to trauma such as lesions to the hippocampus in the temporal lobe of the brain. A person suffering from this condition would have no knowledge of events happening to them days or hours before. Thus by the memory theory they would not be the same person as they were the day before. Obviously this person is treated as the same person even though they cannot remember being the same person.
So to answer the question, “who is right the somatophiles or the teletransporters," leaves us with a problem. Both arguments given above as to the nature of personal identity, seem to have equally many flaws, and they both seem to be weak arguments.
My own personal opinion is that personal identity is only an illusion. I propose that any attribute that we may find that claims to either be constant over time, or link points in time, can be proven not to do so. I suggest that we are constantly changing. The me of now is a different me from the me of one minute ago. I have new memories, I may be in a different emotional state, and my body has incorporated new particles into itself and expelled certain others (breathing). The only reason we appear the same is because we are sufficiently similar for a comparison between the two selves to be made.
From this point of view we can say that the somatophile is right. The person at the destination is a different person from the one at the source. On the other hand, since we are constantly changing anyway, this does not seem to be a major drawback. I would use the teletransporter content in the knowledge that although I was being destroyed, there was a being sufficiently similar to myself being created. On the other hand, this is only my opinion -- I cannot comment on the opinion of the person who has assumed my identity and is about to step into the teletransporter.
Perry, J. (1978). A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company