Strange Loop #641 and #642: In the proceeding dialogue, the query most insistently posed by Strange loop #642 was, What makes me housed in this particular brain rather than in any other one? However, even though Strange loop #641 tried to provide an answer to this enigma in several different fashions, Strange loop # 642 always had the nagging feeling that Strange loop #642 always had the nagging feeling that Strange loop #642 hadnt really gotten the question, and hadnt understood how profoundly central it i to human existence. Could it be that here is a fundamental breach of communication here, and that some people simply never will get the question because it is too subtle and elusive. One way of doing this fundamental question appears in the path-breaking book REASONS AND PERSONS by the Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit. Here is how Parfit poses the riddle: I enter the Teletransporter. I have been to Mars before, but only by the old method, a space ship journey taking several weeks. This machine will send me at the speed of light. I merely have to press a green button. Like others, I am nervous. Will it work? I remind myself what I have been told to expect. When O press the button, I shall lose consciousness, and then wake up at what seems a moment later. In fact I I shall remain unconscious for about an hour. The scanner here on Earth will destroy my brain and body, while recording the exact states of all my cells. It will then transmit this information by radio. Traveling at the speed of light, the message will take three minutes to reach the Replicator on Mas. This will then create, out of new matter, a brain and body exactly like mine. It will be in this body that I shall wake up. though I believe that this is what will happen, I still hesitate. but then I remember seeing my wife grin when, at breakfast today, I revealed my nervousness. As she reminded me, she has been often Teletransported and there is nothing wrong with her. i press the button. As predicted, I lose and seem at once to regain consciousness, but in a different cubicle. Examining my new body, I find no change at all. Even the cut on my upper lip. from this mornings shave, is still there. Several years pass, during which I am often Teletransported. I am now back in the cubicle, ready fro another trip to Mars. but this time when I press the green button I do not lose consciousness. There is a whirring sound, then silence. I leave the cubicle, and say to the attendant, Its not working. What did I do wrong? Its working. he replies, handing me a printed card. this reads: The new scanner records your blueprint without destroying your brain and body. We hope that you will welcome the opportunities which this technical advance offers. The attendent tells me that I am one of the first people to use the New Scanner. He adds that if I stay an hour, I can use the intercom to see and talk to myself on Mars. Wait a minute, I reply, If Im here I cant also be on Mars. Someone politely coughs, a white-coated man who asks to speak to me in private. We go to his office, where he tells me to sit down, and pauses. Then he says; Im afraid that were having problems with the New Scanner. It records your blueprint just as accurately, as you see when you talk to yourself on Mars. but it seems to be damaging the cardiac systems which it scans. Judging from the results so far, though you will be quite healthy on Mars, here on Earth you must expect cardiac failure within the next few days. The attendant later calls me to the intercom. On the screen I see myself just as I do in the mirror every morning. but there are two differences. On the screen I am not left-right reversed. And while I stand here speechless, i can see and hear myself, in the studio on Mars, starting to speak. Since my Replica knows that I am about to die, he tries to console me with the same thoughts with which I recently tried to console a dying friend. It is sad to learn, on the receiving end, how unconsoling these thoughts are. My Replica assures me, that he will take up my life where I leave off. He loves my wife, and together they will care for my children. And he will finish the book I am writing. Besides having all my drafts, he has all of my intentions. I must admit that he can finish my book as well as I could. All these facts console me a little. Dying when I know that I shall have a Replica is not quite as bad as simply dying. Even so, I shall lose consciousness forever. So who is the space voyager and who is the philosopher? if there are two different things that look alike, think alike, and quack like Derek Parfit, and if one of those things is located where we last saw Parfit and the other one of them is far away, then, by God, the close one is obviously the real one, and the far one is just a copy-a clone, a counterfeit, an imposter, a fake. If the copy on Mars is a fake in episode II, why wasnt it a fake in Episode I? Why were we such suckers when we read episode I? Where is space voyager Derik Parfit really, after teletranspotation in episode II? Which of the two Parifits really is Parifit?
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 01:11:19 +0000
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