Question for atheists: What happens when we die?

[Gil Hamilton]

I don't dispute any of that. Where we differ is that I don't want to "fade to black" so that a perfect copy can continue my legacy.

That's about personal preference and is fair. However, what I'm arguing that the digital copy would be you, so you really wouldn't be "fading to black" because everything that is you wouldn't notice the difference.

There's no evidence that there's such thing as a mind that's separate from the physical processes, so there's no reason to believe that this hypothetical mind would transfer to a separate but otherwise identical brain.

Let me give an analogy. I have a book with a story printed in it. Is the story in the book in any way seperate from the wood pulp and ink it is printed on?

It's not irrelevant if you're not around to see it. But I do see where you're coming from. From the perspective of everyone including the copy, the person is the same, and there's no original to offer an objection, so parsimony does seem to support your view. On the other hand, if you made an identical but physically separate copy of someone and they didn't subsequently die, they wouldn't both the same person, they would be different but indistinguishable people. So why would the situation change if one is zapped out of existance at the moment of cloning?

They'd be different people as time went on, of course, simply because they'd have different experiences. However, at the moment of duplication, they'd be the same person, just two of them. After all, what does indistinguishable from each other mean if they are different?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I would say that the difference is that they occupy different points in spacetime. Of course, the obvious problem with this debate is that there is no way to prove any of this, and it's really dictated by gut feeling. I consider it self-evident that such an event would lead to a "fade to black", you consider it self-evident that it would be like being briefly unconscious and then coming to. So unless you have an objection, I declare a stalemate.

[CaptJodan]

::sigh:: I'm not the best person to argue for any of this, but I'm interested in this discussion for the purposes of my own....interest I guess, so here we go.

What I'm not understanding is the idea that my person...the old me, whatever, won't fade to black. From what I understand of the conversation, I won't "die" because my (we'll call him...) "duplicate" will have exactly everything I have down to my consciousness. How does that even work? I'm with Arthur on this one. If you were able to do this while you were still healthy, and you kept your old self alive AND created your duplicate, then the consciousness you have now could not occupy two areas of spacetime at once. You would see out of his eyes and yours? Is that what you're saying, or am I just not getting it?

A person is duplicated before they die. (copied digitially) The original dies, and the consciousness within that original dies with it. The duplicate, a new being (not likely to realize it until after it wakes up that it is a new being) goes on with life. So I "fade to black" but my duplicate, including its new consciousness, lives on indistinguishable from me. A simple download doesn't solve the problem of the original still having all of its own neural landscape. The person from that body isn't transferred anywhere.

At least that's how I understand it.

[General Zod]

::sigh:: I'm not the best person to argue for any of this, but I'm interested in this discussion for the purposes of my own....interest I guess, so here we go.

What I'm not understanding is the idea that my person...the old me, whatever, won't fade to black. From what I understand of the conversation, I won't "die" because my (we'll call him...) "duplicate" will have exactly everything I have down to my consciousness. How does that even work? I'm with Arthur on this one. If you were able to do this while you were still healthy, and you kept your old self alive AND created your duplicate, then the consciousness you have now could not occupy two areas of spacetime at once. You would see out of his eyes and yours? Is that what you're saying, or am I just not getting it?

A person is duplicated before they die. (copied digitially) The original dies, and the consciousness within that original dies with it. The duplicate, a new being (not likely to realize it until after it wakes up that it is a new being) goes on with life. So I "fade to black" but my duplicate, including its new consciousness, lives on indistinguishable from me. A simple download doesn't solve the problem of the original still having all of its own neural landscape. The person from that body isn't transferred anywhere.

At least that's how I understand it.

See my post earlier. From the PoV of the person dying or being transferred, their stream of consciousness ends for a moment, then suddenly they're back on. From their standpoint, nothing is different whether they died momentarily or their actual consciousness was moved. You can argue semantics about the consciousness being different, somehow, but unless the person that was transferred or brought back can tell the difference, does it really matter?

[CaptJodan]

See my post earlier. From the PoV of the person dying or being transferred, their stream of consciousness ends for a moment, then suddenly they're back on. From their standpoint, nothing is different whether they died momentarily or their actual consciousness was moved. You can argue semantics about the consciousness being different, somehow, but unless the person that was transferred or brought back can tell the difference, does it really matter?

It's not semantics when you still have (for the moment) a fully conscience being on the other end of the table that you just "transferred" from that, if healed or brought awake, would still be alive. Their brain's layout is still exactly the same. Thus that person is still in there until death.

From the person who successfully copies, I agree with you. They would have no concept of not being the person on the table from which they were copied (and this is a copy) from. But you're not leaving an empty shell behind, here. You use the word "transfer" but that's not what's happening because someone is still in the head of the dying man on the table.

[General Zod]

See my post earlier. From the PoV of the person dying or being transferred, their stream of consciousness ends for a moment, then suddenly they're back on. From their standpoint, nothing is different whether they died momentarily or their actual consciousness was moved. You can argue semantics about the consciousness being different, somehow, but unless the person that was transferred or brought back can tell the difference, does it really matter?

It's not semantics when you still have (for the moment) a fully conscience being on the other end of the table that you just "transferred" from that, if healed or brought awake, would still be alive. Their brain's layout is still exactly the same. Thus that person is still in there until death.

From the person who successfully copies, I agree with you. They would have no concept of not being the person on the table from which they were copied (and this is a copy) from. But you're not leaving an empty shell behind, here. You use the word "transfer" but that's not what's happening because someone is still in the head of the dying man on the table.

I'm still not seeing a difference. Since we can both agree that regardless of either perspective, the person who's dying or transferring will momentarily experience their consciousness being 'turned off', yes?

[Kuroneko]

Let's first recognize that this "Brain of Theseus" scenario is not unique to the identity of people, but potentially applicable to all things--in a variant of an ancient philosophical puzzle, this was done with the planks of a ship. Consequently, any potential resolution of the original question is translatable to this scenario. Consider an ordinary river. At different times, different waters flow in it. There's a very real quantifiable sense in which the river becomes a "different river" as it evolves in time, but throughout this process, it still has the same function, i.e., the flowing of water, and other qualitative properties. In a separate sense, it still stays the same river regardless. We can even do fancy things to the imagined river, such as mechanically stopping its flow, letting it dry out, and restarting it. Is it the same river before and after this operation if it's not only made of different water, but it also did not continuously evolve from its initial to its final state?

Someone who suffers temporary brain death still has the same brain. It's just been declared dead and then revived. Not so for a copy, even a perfect one.

You misunderstand. The issue is not whether there is some objective difference between the two, but whether or not this difference is relevant to personal identity. It appears self-evident to you that it is, but it's not self-evident to me. You haven't provided any argument beyond demonstrating that there is some sort of objective difference.

Right. But when you are KO'd or go to sleep, you later wake up and consciousness comes back. If you are killed and perfectly cloned, it doesn't.

Why not? If there is a relevant difference between this and the discontinuous existence of the river above, please elucidate it.

[CaptJodan]

I'm still not seeing a difference. Since we can both agree that regardless of either perspective, the person who's dying or transferring will momentarily experience their consciousness being 'turned off', yes?

I guess that depends on exactly how the process works. If it's an instant process where you're laying there awake and the machine goes buzz and then your copied, the person on the other end may wake up (or be very disoriented) but the original may have been awake the whole time. Why would the original need to lose consciousness at all?

[General Zod]

I'm still not seeing a difference. Since we can both agree that regardless of either perspective, the person who's dying or transferring will momentarily experience their consciousness being 'turned off', yes?

I guess that depends on exactly how the process works. If it's an instant process where you're laying there awake and the machine goes buzz and then your copied, the person on the other end may wake up (or be very disoriented) but the original may have been awake the whole time. Why would the original need to lose consciousness at all?

If you're suggesting that the process kills them, then by definition their stream of consciousness would momentarily stop, even if for a short amount of time. But if you want to suggest that they're somehow not killed by this transfer, well, why are we arguing the subject? I thought the point of contention was that the person on the other end would be a copy as opposed to an original, when that doesn't really matter from the perspective of the person being copied over/transferred/whathaveyou.

[Xess]

From what I've gathered CaptJodan's point is something like this.

Lets say you have a guy, lets call him Bob who is not going to die anytime soon and just wants a new body cause the one he's in now lost its arm and he wants one with the arm. He goes to the brain copy place to get put into a new body. So they do their copy the brain data and put it into another brain and Bob wakes up in the recovery ward with a nice new shiny arm. But Bob is also in the copy room missing his arm and wondering why the hell it didn't work.

Thus while the Bob in the recovery ward is exactly like the Bob in the copy room, but with a nice new arm, the Bob in the copy room doesn't know he has a nice new arm. Copy room Bob doesn't get to see through recovery room Bob's eyes or feel his arm.

For copy room Bob the procedure was a failure but recovery ward Bob thinks it was a smashing success.

CaptJodan's point is thus that while recovery ward Bob is copy room Bob, copy room Bob is not and never will be recovery ward Bob. The only difference if the copy process destroys copy room Bob's brain no one is around to tell the difference between copy room Bob and recovery ward Bob, because recovery ward Bob is copy room Bob. Even though this is true copy room Bob doesn't ever get to experience recovery room Bob, because copy room Bob is dead.

And that doesn't really make sense even to me, and I know what CaptJodan means. I've been put under aneasthetic and for all I know I could have been vapourized, had my consituent atoms put back together bar my tonsils or wisdom teeth and woken up. So it makes sense that if you copy your brain the same would happen, but I also see the dilemma posed that the original is destroyed and if you're the original that's too bad for you.

My head hurts now, back to easy stuff like physics.

[CaptJodan]

From what I've gathered CaptJodan's point is something like this.

Lets say you have a guy, lets call him Bob who is not going to die anytime soon and just wants a new body cause the one he's in now lost its arm and he wants one with the arm. He goes to the brain copy place to get put into a new body. So they do their copy the brain data and put it into another brain and Bob wakes up in the recovery ward with a nice new shiny arm. But Bob is also in the copy room missing his arm and wondering why the hell it didn't work.

Thus while the Bob in the recovery ward is exactly like the Bob in the copy room, but with a nice new arm, the Bob in the copy room doesn't know he has a nice new arm. Copy room Bob doesn't get to see through recovery room Bob's eyes or feel his arm.

For copy room Bob the procedure was a failure but recovery ward Bob thinks it was a smashing success.

CaptJodan's point is thus that while recovery ward Bob is copy room Bob, copy room Bob is not and never will be recovery ward Bob. The only difference if the copy process destroys copy room Bob's brain no one is around to tell the difference between copy room Bob and recovery ward Bob, because recovery ward Bob is copy room Bob. Even though this is true copy room Bob doesn't ever get to experience recovery room Bob, because copy room Bob is dead.

And that doesn't really make sense even to me, and I know what CaptJodan means. I've been put under aneasthetic and for all I know I could have been vapourized, had my consituent atoms put back together bar my tonsils or wisdom teeth and woken up. So it makes sense that if you copy your brain the same would happen, but I also see the dilemma posed that the original is destroyed and if you're the original that's too bad for you.

My head hurts now, back to easy stuff like physics.

Yes, but it's a good pain.

You pretty much nailed it. Copy Bob isn't transfered at all. This procedure isn't giving him an arm, or it isn't saving his life. It's allowing the essence of who he is, for lack of a better term, to live on, but copy bob dies and does not inhabit share in recovery bob's perceptions or live his life or whatever.

I can't understand why this doesn't make sense to people. I would die if I did this procedure. Recovery me would live on. It's the same argument made about the transporter on this very site.

If you're suggesting that the process kills them, then by definition their stream of consciousness would momentarily stop, even if for a short amount of time.

In my example or whatever up there I was seeking the idea that one is terminally ill, awake, but the process itself doesn't kill you. You just die later from your terminal illness, watching your copy skip off to a merry life. Bastard Copy.

[Xess]

You pretty much nailed it. Copy Bob isn't transfered at all. This procedure isn't giving him an arm, or it isn't saving his life. It's allowing the essence of who he is, for lack of a better term, to live on, but copy bob dies and does not inhabit share in recovery bob's perceptions or live his life or whatever.

Glad I got that right.

And I shouldn't post when I'm tired. All those grammar errors in my last post make me wince.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Let's first recognize that this "Brain of Theseus" scenario is not unique to the identity of people, but potentially applicable to all things--in a variant of an ancient philosophical puzzle, this was done with the planks of a ship. Consequently, any potential resolution of the original question is translatable to this scenario. Consider an ordinary river. At different times, different waters flow in it. There's a very real quantifiable sense in which the river becomes a "different river" as it evolves in time, but throughout this process, it still has the same function, i.e., the flowing of water, and other qualitative properties. In a separate sense, it still stays the same river regardless. We can even do fancy things to the imagined river, such as mechanically stopping its flow, letting it dry out, and restarting it. Is it the same river before and after this operation if it's not only made of different water, but it also did not continuously evolve from its initial to its final state?

Someone who suffers temporary brain death still has the same brain. It's just been declared dead and then revived. Not so for a copy, even a perfect one.

You misunderstand. The issue is not whether there is some objective difference between the two, but whether or not this difference is relevant to personal identity. It appears self-evident to you that it is, but it's not self-evident to me. You haven't provided any argument beyond demonstrating that there is some sort of objective difference.

Right. But when you are KO'd or go to sleep, you later wake up and consciousness comes back. If you are killed and perfectly cloned, it doesn't.

Why not? If there is a relevant difference between this and the discontinuous existence of the river above, please elucidate it.

You keep looking at it from the perspective of everyone else. I'm looking at it from a totally selfish perspective. I could care less if a copy has my exact personal identity, and I find the assertion that I would ever "wake up" into the body of a copy that is seperated from me by physical distance dubious. By what mechanism would this transfer occur?

If an exact clone of me were created without the original being destroyed, would I simultaneously see, hear, and feel for both of us? How can you assert that the former is true but the latter is false? The only difference between the scenarios is that the original is destroyed in the first one, and that should not have any effect on whether the original can see, hear, and feel what the copy experiences.

[Sikon]

I am not aware of any hypothetical realistic future technology that would allow practical, affordable copying of the 100-billion-neuron brain structure without the same or a lesser level of future technology also allowing gradual neuron replacement. Gradual neuron replacement seems better and more likely to be successfully developed in the foreseeable future.

[Falkenhayn]

I got into a debate over this once. Apparently I am "just as ignorant" as a religious fundamentalist because I can't accept that there is no proof that there isn't any form of afterlife.

Next time, introduce them to the "cannot prove a negative" fallacy. Be sure to punctuate it with a slap to the face.

I tried. Honest I did.

Don't you know that you must accomodate the most negligible and/or manufactured probability as fact?

[CaptJodan]

I am not aware of any hypothetical realistic future technology that would allow practical, affordable copying of the 100-billion-neuron brain structure without the same or a lesser level of future technology also allowing gradual neuron replacement. Gradual neuron replacement seems better and more likely to be successfully developed in the foreseeable future.

Agreed. This does seem to me to be the most logical option as well.

[Gil Hamilton]

I would say that the difference is that they occupy different points in spacetime. Of course, the obvious problem with this debate is that there is no way to prove any of this, and it's really dictated by gut feeling. I consider it self-evident that such an event would lead to a "fade to black", you consider it self-evident that it would be like being briefly unconscious and then coming to. So unless you have an objection, I declare a stalemate.

If you mean to say that they are in two places at the same time, then you'd be right. But on the gripping hand, if they are identical in every way that makes a person a person, then they are the same person. Both would have a legitimate claim on that identity and both would be right.

But if we are copying a dying person there isn't even the "briefly unconscious" in there. As far as a person who is copied to a digital medium is concerned, there would be no discontinuity perceived. They'd go from the last moment of awareness they had pre-copy to the first moment of awareness upon the copy being activated. It would be:

Mr. Smith: "I'm dy-"
*few hours later after the person was scanned, loaded, and activated*
Mr. Smith: "-ing. Huh? Where am I?"
Doctor: "Mr. Smith, the transfer was a success. We will be running a few routine questions and tests before loading you into the simulator while your new body is being fabricated as per indicated in your living will. You'll have a choice of locations from our database or you can opt for deactivation until your body is finished. First, we need your insurance information..."

[Kuroneko]

You keep looking at it from the perspective of everyone else. I'm looking at it from a totally selfish perspective.

No, I'm not. Perspective is not at all an issue. At best, this dispute can be characterized by having different notions on "person" or "self". Yours treats the material composition of the brain as a fundamental part of personal identity, while mine treats it as an accident of biology.

I could care less if a copy has my exact personal identity, and I find the assertion that I would ever "wake up" into the body of a copy that is separated from me by physical distance dubious. By what mechanism would this transfer occur?

By a physical process, assumedly. The question doesn't even make sense otherwise. One might as well ask: if I walk across the room, by what process does my identity transfer from the "past me" to the "future me"? Or, to make the analogy more precise: if I take a nap while a friend drives me to a nearby town, by what process would I ever "wake up" in the body of the "future me" whenever we get there? Or perhaps we can even include an intermediate period of the cessation of all brain activity just in case. Since these are hypotheticals, a situation can be contrived to make it so that the fact that remains truly different is the physical composition of the neurons that make up the brain. Here we come full circle to what I was saying from the beginning--your interpretation requires us to give it some metaphysical significance independent of its function.

If an exact clone of me were created without the original being destroyed, would I simultaneously see, hear, and feel for both of us? How can you assert that the former is true but the latter is false?

Alright, then I won't say it, especially since I don't really see its relevance at the moment, since this sort of "identity fission problem" is hardly unique to my stated view. To see this, examine analogous scenarios in light of your views about the brain. People have been known to survive hemispherectomy operations, in which an entire hemisphere of the brain is severed. If we had the technology to transfer the the other hemisphere to a clone body sans brain, which one is one is the "original" person? There are many possibilities, and almost all of them are compatible with the discussion at hand. The only one that is not is if the operation destroys "the original" regardless of whether or not there is a unique survivor or whether or not he or she is in the original body, i.e., hemispherectomy is murder.

[R. U. Serious]

There's no evidence that there's such thing as a mind that's separate from the physical processes [ed.: in the brain], so there's no reason to believe that this hypothetical mind would transfer to a separate but otherwise identical brain.

That sounds contradictory to me. Let me explain:

> There's no evidence that there's such thing as a mind that's separate from
> the physical processes,

Here you imply (if I read you correctly), that the relevant aspect for "self" or "consciousness" is not seperate from the physical processes, did I understand you correctly? If we take that as a premise, it follows that as soon as we have absolutely identical physical processes, then we also have the identical "self"/"consciousness". There is nothing seperate, nothing "extra", no "meta"-entity that would need transferring, besides creating identical physical processes.

> so there's no reason to believe that this hypothetical mind would transfer
> to a separate but otherwise identical brain.

Here, however, you imply there is a "relevant uniqueness" (relevant to self/consciousness) that goes beyond the physical processes. You seem to be saying that "self"/"consciousness" is inseperably bound to a certain, specific collection of physical matter, i.e., there is a "meta-physical" attribute of the matter that is beyond anything that we can observe, measure, manipulate or copy, which is relevant to your concept of "self"/"consciousness".

[I am sorry, if I have misread your argument, which is possible given that I have grabbed a short sentence out of a longer discussion, but it seemed to me, that this is really the crux of what is being debated.]

[K. A. Pital]

Speaking of replacement, what if it's modular? I.e. parts of the brain are replaced with identical copies that are filled with the same information, and the "I" perceives this as nothing more but a "hard drive replacement". When the last part of the brain is replaced, where is the "I"? It's still in the brain, perceiving it's living as entirely continous. It's not dead, and it didn't even die.

[R. U. Serious]

If an exact clone of me were created without the original being destroyed, would I simultaneously see, hear, and feel for both of us?

No, they are physically distinct. But from a very real subjective as well as objective POV both of them are the same self/consciousness they were a few seconds ago before the "copy". The point is there is no "master" copy, both copies are as real or as fake as the other one. They are equivalent. The fact that one self happens to have the same, concrete physical representation as that self had, before the copy was made, is irrelevant as far as the "self"/"consciousness" is concerned. Both physical representations are the same self, both are just as real and original as they were, when they were only one.

Of course we are looking at a snapshot in time, the moment the copy is made, and both are identical. As soon as time continues both entities will diverge due to the different physical input they receive from their senses/environment etc., so the "fork" happens after the duplication.

Now the issue comes up how you refer to the two entities. Arthur keeps calling it the "original self/consciousness", which is really only supportable, if you accept that the concrete physical representation has some meta-physical qualities which are relevant to the self/consciousness, that (on principle) we are unable to observe, manipulate or copy, this is contradictory to how a scientist would view the world.

A better term to distinguish between the two would be to use "physical entities". Starting at the moment of the duplication, you have two phsical entities. There is really no point (by definition) in discussing what it is like to "be" on of the two at the moment of the duplication, because at that moment they are identical, frozen-in-time representations of the same self/consciousness. If both entities continue to exist beyond that moment, they start to diverge, and it's a matter of convention when to start calling them different selfs/consciousness. One could argue that with the first tick of time after the duplication, they start being two different selfs, or alternatively one could argue they are the same self, until they experience something significant enough that "permanently", fundamentally changes them. The latter onbviously leads to a lot of problems, and I think that's the source for Arthurs rejection of having the same "self" at two different points in spacetime. Though as hopefully became clear, I think that aspect only has any relevance at a later point in time, not in the "moment" the duplication is made. Because "being" someone/something is entirely something that happens in the software, for a lack of a better word, not a magical, metaphysical capability of the physical particles. So you cannot "be the copy that gets destroyed", if that copy never for a single tick of time has the chance to realize (for a lack of a better term) that it "is", let alone that it will be destroyed; in a similar way that you cannot "be and experience what it is like to be a stone", it's simply undefined.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

You keep looking at it from the perspective of everyone else. I'm looking at it from a totally selfish perspective.

No, I'm not. Perspective is not at all an issue. At best, this dispute can be characterized by having different notions on "person" or "self". Yours treats the material composition of the brain as a fundamental part of personal identity, while mine treats it as an accident of biology.

That's a very concise and astute summary of our differences.

I could care less if a copy has my exact personal identity, and I find the assertion that I would ever "wake up" into the body of a copy that is separated from me by physical distance dubious. By what mechanism would this transfer occur?

By a physical process, assumedly. The question doesn't even make sense otherwise. One might as well ask: if I walk across the room, by what process does my identity transfer from the "past me" to the "future me"? Or, to make the analogy more precise: if I take a nap while a friend drives me to a nearby town, by what process would I ever "wake up" in the body of the "future me" whenever we get there? Or perhaps we can even include an intermediate period of the cessation of all brain activity just in case. Since these are hypotheticals, a situation can be contrived to make it so that the fact that remains truly different is the physical composition of the neurons that make up the brain. Here we come full circle to what I was saying from the beginning--your interpretation requires us to give it some metaphysical significance independent of its function.

It doesn't require that, it only requires otherwise identical specimens to be different in at least one way, for which a different place in spacetime should suffice. Even though someone can move through space and time, it's still an unbroken line of movement that can be legitimely called one object. If another, otherwise identical object is created and the original is destroyed, that's a break in the line, and those objects are not the same for that reason. This is completely irrelevant to any object except ones which have a survival instinct and a vested interest in continuing to see, hear, feel, etc.

If an exact clone of me were created without the original being destroyed, would I simultaneously see, hear, and feel for both of us? How can you assert that the former is true but the latter is false?

Alright, then I won't say it, especially since I don't really see its relevance at the moment, since this sort of "identity fission problem" is hardly unique to my stated view. To see this, examine analogous scenarios in light of your views about the brain. People have been known to survive hemispherectomy operations, in which an entire hemisphere of the brain is severed. If we had the technology to transfer the the other hemisphere to a clone body sans brain, which one is one is the "original" person? There are many possibilities, and almost all of them are compatible with the discussion at hand. The only one that is not is if the operation destroys "the original" regardless of whether or not there is a unique survivor or whether or not he or she is in the original body, i.e., hemispherectomy is murder.

It's an interesting scenario, but one that is easier to solve, as the two hemispheres are different and the personality and abilities of the one with the left hemisphere would be different from the one with the right. The scenario poses a lot of problems for people who believe in a metaphysical consciousness that is separate from the biochemical processes, but that is not my view. My view is that biochemical processes that are otherwise identical but physically separate are not actually the same, so my unique clump of neurons and synapses would cease to exist and I would die, even if nothing had happened from the point of view of everyone else.

I believe that also answers R. U. Serious. Let me know if I'm mistaken.

[R. U. Serious]

The scenario poses a lot of problems for people who believe in a metaphysical consciousness that is separate from the biochemical processes, but that is not my view. My view is that biochemical processes that are otherwise identical but physically separate are not actually the same [...]

They are not physically the same, yet I fail to see why that makes any difference to you as a "self", when you say that "I would die". If that is not metaphysical, I am not sure what it is...
I still find your position contradictory. You belief that something that is not observable in any way (as a principle!), is a constitutive part of the self. How is that something different from the concept of "soul" as new age hippies, or religious folks use the term (with respect to the world we live in; I do understand you do not believe in an afterlife).

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

It is observable that two otherwise identical but physically separate objects are not the same. Let's imagine a subatomic particle that's always exactly like every other of its kind. You woldn't say that they're all the same particle, or that if you disintegrated one and replaced it with another, it would be the same as nothing happening.

[Kuroneko]

It doesn't require that, it only requires otherwise identical specimens to be different in at least one way, for which a different place in spacetime should suffice. Even though someone can move through space and time, it's still an unbroken line of movement that can be legitimely called one object.

As an aside, according to this position, an actual teleportation (without possibility of a copy) represents a true death. Is this a fair consequence of your view?

If another, otherwise identical object is created and the original is destroyed, that's a break in the line, and those objects are not the same for that reason.

Yes, but to leave it at that is to beg the question. The issue is the importance of this fact, not the existence of the fact itself.

It's an interesting scenario, but one that is easier to solve, as the two hemispheres are different and the personality and abilities of the one with the left hemisphere would be different from the one with the right. The scenario poses a lot of problems for people who believe in a metaphysical consciousness that is separate from the biochemical processes, but that is not my view.

You misunderstand, which is in itself odd, since you claim to be looking at it from a personal perspective. The problem is not that there is no difference (in a hypothetical, we can suppose that there is no difference in abilities, but this is not necessary), but that if you personally undergo this operation, there is no apparently legitimate way of deciding which one of your fission products is "the real you," especially if both of them are put into a clone body. My point was that almost every way one can choose to resolve this question is compatible with my stated position. One can say neither, or one can say both, or one can pick whichever fission-clone 'most closely resembles' the abilities of the "original you" before the fission event, but since the brain states will start to diverge from the moment of creation in the 'perfect clone' scenario, that's in principle applicable there as well (if in practice almost impossible to determine).

My view is that biochemical processes that are otherwise identical but physically separate are not actually the same, ...

I do not dispute this.

... so my unique clump of neurons and synapses would cease to exist and I would die, even if nothing had happened from the point of view of everyone else.

What I dispute is this "so" implication. If my thought processes are continued on a different material substrate, I would not truly die.

Let's imagine a subatomic particle that's always exactly like every other of its kind. You woldn't say that they're all the same particle, or that if you disintegrated one and replaced it with another, it would be the same as nothing happening.

No, I would not say that nothing happened, but I would say that if it is put in an identical state as the original, then one particle is as good as another. I have no particular attachment to my individual particle qua particles, but only in so far as their presence is necessary for me to keep living. I "lose" particles all the time throughout my lifetime, but so long as they are replaced with other particles to keep my bodily functions, it makes no difference to my person identity. I'm simply applying the same kind of view to the brain in particular--if my neurons are replaced with functionally identical synthetic ones, it is of no import that if one carbon atom is substituted with another. Under your view, as you've already stated, this kind of 'robotization' is a systematic way of killing oneself.