Transporter Death in other Sci-Fi

[petesampras]

If you read what I wrote, you will see that this is exactly what I am talking about. There are two identical Rikers. Do they have the same or different conciousness? Well that's the big question. There are many arguments on both sides. I presented one above. If you can answer my above points, then please do....

It's not even really that big of a question. At the moment of transport, they are the same. You can't make the argument that the Riker on the planet is different, as he is the original. The Riker on the ship is so identical that Troi, an empath who can easily read Riker at the time, noticed no difference.

The only point where they differ happens after the transport. That's it. People can be caught mid-sentence in a transport.

Your points do nothing to answer the fact that the body at the point of origin is annihilated and the body at the destination doesn't even have to be made up of the same matter in order to be identical. You. Are. Destroyed. By. Transporters. Killed. Made dead. Shoveled off the mortal coil into the bleeding choir invisible. What comes back is not you. It may be identical in nearly every way that matters, but it is not you. Nothing is more evident of this than the fact that you can make a duplicate WITHOUT destroying the original.

God damn. What is so difficult to understand about this? A copy of you is not you. It may be a perfect copy, but it is still not you. This is like trying to explain that identical twins or clones are not the same people. Even "perfect" clones are not the same individuals for fuck's sake. The fact that they are each unique beings means that their experiences will differ and no matter how well they meshed up at the point of creation from that point on they will be different.

Not a one of your points dealt with the fact that the original body in a transport is ANNIHILATED. You're just throwing out some mealy-mouthed shit which sums up as "well if the copy is just as good, who cares?"

By that logic, there's nothing wrong with making transporter copies and killing them for no reason at all, because hey, it's not like you removed a sentient being from the universe, there's still a version of him running around somewhere. No harm, no foul. How is that any different from the standard operation of transporters?

You have not answered my original argument at all here. If you want to contest my original argument, then go back to it and refute the points I have made there. I can't discuss an issue with you if you completely ignore my arguments and just present a new argument of your own. That isn't debate, it's just two sides shouting at each other....

[Hotfoot]

I disagree. The story 'Moby Dick' can appear in more than one book simultaneously. The exact matter used is different, but the story is the same. It is meaningless to refer to one of the books as being 'the real mckoy' and one being a 'knock off'.

Wow, brilliant, comparing sentient beings to printed literature. That's so amazing it HAS to be rational and relevant.

If you believe that the same conciousness cannot exist in more than one body at the same time, give your reasoning. I'm not claiming that the copy of Riker is Riker, but I would make the claim that the conciousness is the same - since conciousness, like stories, is dependant on information processing and patterns of matter - it is not a property of the matter itself.

Bullshit. It's the same DNA, maybe, but it's not the same matter, and the MOMENT their experiences differ, it's no longer the same conciousness. This means that your precious little photocopy logic falls apart a millisecond after the transport ends.

[petesampras]

I disagree. The story 'Moby Dick' can appear in more than one book simultaneously. The exact matter used is different, but the story is the same. It is meaningless to refer to one of the books as being 'the real mckoy' and one being a 'knock off'.

Wow, brilliant, comparing sentient beings to printed literature. That's so amazing it HAS to be rational and relevant.

Don't be a moron. I'm not trying to claim that books and conciousness are the same thing. I am showing that the same thing can exist in two places simultaneously, for certain types of things - i.e. stories. Now is conciousness such a thing? Well I have presented arguments in favour of it being - which you have ignored.

If you believe that the same conciousness cannot exist in more than one body at the same time, give your reasoning. I'm not claiming that the copy of Riker is Riker, but I would make the claim that the conciousness is the same - since conciousness, like stories, is dependant on information processing and patterns of matter - it is not a property of the matter itself.

Bullshit. It's the same DNA, maybe, but it's not the same matter, and the MOMENT their experiences differ, it's no longer the same conciousness. This means that your precious little photocopy logic falls apart a millisecond after the transport ends.

Dumb. Experiences change constantly, but you would not argue that this means you are constantly becoming a completely different conciousness all the time. The fact that the two copies have divergent experiences may eventually cause them to be two different conciousnesses, but to claim that it means they are different from the moment they diverge is to claim that we are constantly losing our conciousness since it is changing from moment to moment.

[18-Till-I-Die]

He's not saying that experiences changing makes you a different person. In a normal person these experiences build upon one another creating new thoughts and feelings, called "growing up", and thus we develop a life, intelligence, feelings etc from our near mindless beginnings as a child.

However if you take a version of yourself out of time, say, one year ago and brought it to now...would it be the IDENTICAL same you? No of course not, because your mind has changed and grown since then and your experiences have changed and grown different.

Thus it's not 'you' its just a version of you from long ago.

In this case, it's not even a version of you. It's a clone created in a replication process, who possesses the same basic memories up to the point of transport, then nothing else but appearance and genetics are similar. Because, you will go on building on experiences in a different way that he will, as you will most certainly not experience identical lives.

[Hotfoot]

You have not answered my original argument at all here. If you want to contest my original argument, then go back to it and refute the points I have made there. I can't discuss an issue with you if you completely ignore my arguments and just present a new argument of your own. That isn't debate, it's just two sides shouting at each other....

The topic of this thread is that Star Trek transporters destroy you, and asked what other Sci-Fi has similar technologies.

You are contesting that Star Trek transporters don't destroy you, since the copy is perfect. I say that the original was still unique and that by destroying it, you have removed a sentient being from the universe. That you replaced it with another that is virtually identical just before the time of death is irrelevant. The original still died, and moreover did so needlessly, since the copy can be made without destroying the original.

I find it hilarious that you accuse me of ignoring the points when you have been doing nothing but.

Don't be a moron. I'm not trying to claim that books and conciousness are the same thing. I am showing that the same thing can exist in two places simultaneously, for certain types of things - i.e. stories. Now is conciousness such a thing? Well I have presented arguments in favour of it being - which you have ignored.

Bullshit you little fucker. The ending of Moby Dick doesn't change over fourty years, but people, amazingly enough, do. The brief millisecond in which Riker existed for two places at once ended the moment Ship Riker felt relief from being back aboard his ship and the moment Planet Riker felt despair for being trapped on the planet below. Even if they ended up in the same place, one of them would deviate from the other rather quickly. Once again, identical twins are not the same person, even though they have the same DNA. Just because people think in similar ways does not make them identical. Ignoring nurture is, in a word, retarded.

Dumb. Experiences change constantly, but you would not argue that this means you are constantly becoming a completely different conciousness all the time. The fact that the two copies have divergent experiences may eventually cause them to be two different conciousnesses, but to claim that it means they are different from the moment they diverge is to claim that we are constantly losing our conciousness since it is changing from moment to moment.

No, the claim is that our conciousness is an ever growing, ever changing thing. It's not simply held in limbo forever as you would have us think. The claim is that conciousness is destroyed because THE BODY WAS DESTROYED. Fucking hell, how stupid are you? The body does not need to be destroyed for a transport, but it is. THAT ACT removes a unique conciousness from the universe. Now are you just refusing to respond to this because you're a fucking moron and can't see how this applies or what?

Stop bitching and moaning and saying the same shit over again without answering me and respond to what I'm saying you little shit. I've been making counters to your arguments and you just try to blow me off by saying they aren't relevant. Anyone can say "wah wah what you posted isn't relevant". That doesn't make it true. Your entire argument is hinged on the idea that the destruction of one conciousness is A-OK so long as it's replaced by one that's identical sometime later.

[Big Orange]

In Doctor Who the Dalek transmat beam can essentially be fatal with a transmat permanently scattering the atom patterns of somebody mid-trip on a few occasions.

A good example of hyperdrives being fatal or making living duplicates in the Xeelee book, Exultant.

[Nyrath]

The Enemy Stars, Poul Anderson. The subject is scanned down to the subatomic level, a process which reduces the body to superheated plasma; the plasma is stored as a matter reserve. The data record of the passenger is transmitted to a receiver, which reconstructs the passenger using the plasma left over from previous transports.

Delta Pavonis by Eric Kotani & John Maddox Roberts; the passenger is recorded, converted to pure energy, and transmitted. Then the energy is reformed into the passenger.

Way Station, Cifford D Simak. Passengers are transmitted as "wave patterns" and reconstructed from a matter reserve at the next station.

Those are all good examples.

There was an even more nasty teleporter in the Cuckoo series by Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl (Farthest Star, Wall Around a Star)

In those, you step into the scanner here at point A, and then you step out of the scanner, still at point A. Meanwhile, light years away at point B, a perfect copy of you steps out of the receiver.

So you can volunteer multiple times for various suicide missions. Of course your duplicates tend to have uncharitable thoughts about you as they die.

[petesampras]

I'm going to present the original argument, which you responded to but ignored the content of, again. If you can answer the actual points made, then do so. Ignoring my argument and presenting your own argument is not answering an argument, by the way.

1.) The mind and therefore conciousness is considered, in cognitive science, not to be an actual property of matter, but one of patterns of matter and the information processing tasks these patterns peform.

2.) If point 1. holds, then the actual matter used is irrelevant to the conciousness. It only matters that the matter is in the appropriate configurations to process information in the same way.

3.) If point 2. holds, then a perfect copy of an individual must have the same conciousness.

4.) Whilst their experiences will diverge from this point, this will not instantly make them different conciousnesses. The reason being is that a specific conciousness clearly does not require an exact pattern of matter. Otherwise our own conciousness would be changing every second. Our conciousness would in effect be dying every second. Divergence may eventually occur, but it must clearly take a fair amount of time.

[Nyrath]

In essence, this reveals a nasty truth about transporters: They are little more than fancy replicators. To go from one Riker to two Rikers, you need additional energy and mass. Two guesses as to where that came from. This means that under normal operation, all the transporters do is scan you, annihilate you, then build a new you at the destination.

Yes, that is indeed their dirty little secret. Which means that the Trek writers have to wave their hands frantically to explain why you cannot use Transporters to duplicate people. Of course their explanations are unconvincing.

The one I've encountered most often is that replicators only scan on the molecular level, while transporters scan on the quantum level. The hand waving is that

• You cannot recreate something living with a molecular level recording because The Great Bird Of The Galaxy said so. Otherwise the replicator could produce Riker clones just as easily as multiple cups of "Tea, Earl Gray, Hot."
• Flying in the face of Moore's Law, scanning on the quantum level generates so much data that you'd need a hard drive the size of a planet to store it all. We are supposed to believe this is true on a starship with a library computer containing all human knowledge. The real reason is that making a recording of such a scan would allow the transporter to mass produce Riker clones.

The VENUS EQUILATERAL stories of George O. Smith chronicled the invention of a matter duplicator.

The first thing that happened is that the economy of the entire solar system collapsed. The duplicator could mass produce perfect copies of gold coins, 20 dollar bills, signed checks, fillet mignon, Ferarri sports cars, stock certificates, you name it.

The world had to move to a service based economy. And even that was impossible until somebody invented an alloy that was impossible to replicate (it explodes when the scanning beam hits it).

The replicator can clone people as well. They are considered to be "things." So if somebody had some complicated surgery coming up, the surgeon would run off a few replicator clones of the patient, and keep trying different variations of the surgical procedure until one of the replicator clones survived the surgery. Then they would euthanize all surviving clones and perform the surgery on the "real" patient.

The ethical implications personally bother me.

[Sam Or I]

The Prestige comes to mind as a good example of this.

[General Zod]

I'm going to present the original argument, which you responded to but ignored the content of, again. If you can answer the actual points made, then do so. Ignoring my argument and presenting your own argument is not answering an argument, by the way.

1.) The mind and therefore conciousness is considered, in cognitive science, not to be an actual property of matter, but one of patterns of matter and the information processing tasks these patterns peform.

2.) If point 1. holds, then the actual matter used is irrelevant to the conciousness. It only matters that the matter is in the appropriate configurations to process information in the same way.

3.) If point 2. holds, then a perfect copy of an individual must have the same conciousness.

4.) Whilst their experiences will diverge from this point, this will not instantly make them different conciousnesses. The reason being is that a specific conciousness clearly does not require an exact pattern of matter. Otherwise our own conciousness would be changing every second. Our conciousness would in effect be dying every second. Divergence may eventually occur, but it must clearly take a fair amount of time.

Since consciousness is dependent on an individual's experiences from a specific pov, trying to claim that the same consciousness can exist in different bodies is bollocks without introducing some new unexplained mystical mumbo jumbo into the works. Now guess which one is more likely. Unless you want to claim that people don't change as their experiences change and it's not possible for someone to be a completely different person than you knew a year down the road if something drastic happened.

[petesampras]

I'm going to present the original argument, which you responded to but ignored the content of, again. If you can answer the actual points made, then do so. Ignoring my argument and presenting your own argument is not answering an argument, by the way.

1.) The mind and therefore conciousness is considered, in cognitive science, not to be an actual property of matter, but one of patterns of matter and the information processing tasks these patterns peform.

2.) If point 1. holds, then the actual matter used is irrelevant to the conciousness. It only matters that the matter is in the appropriate configurations to process information in the same way.

3.) If point 2. holds, then a perfect copy of an individual must have the same conciousness.

4.) Whilst their experiences will diverge from this point, this will not instantly make them different conciousnesses. The reason being is that a specific conciousness clearly does not require an exact pattern of matter. Otherwise our own conciousness would be changing every second. Our conciousness would in effect be dying every second. Divergence may eventually occur, but it must clearly take a fair amount of time.

Since consciousness is dependent on an individual's experiences from a specific pov, trying to claim that the same consciousness can exist in different bodies is bollocks without introducing some new unexplained mystical mumbo jumbo into the works. Now guess which one is more likely. Unless you want to claim that people don't change as their experiences change and it's not possible for someone to be a completely different person than you knew a year down the road if something drastic happened.

Well fuck me, another moron who responds to a post without reading it.

I said - "Divergence may eventually occur, but it must clearly take a fair amount of time."

So how is that incompatible with "a completely different person than you knew a year down the road".

...and of course you haven't made any attempt to refute points 1 thru 3.

If you wanna refute an argument you need to go through it point by point showing how you disagree. You and Hotfoot seem to believe you you can just present your own arguments.

I challenge any of you to actually go through that argument point by point refuting it.

[General Zod]

[

Well fuck me, another moron who responds to a post without reading it.

I said - "Divergence may eventually occur, but it must clearly take a fair amount of time.".

So how is that incompatible with "a completely different person than you knew a year down the road".

...and of course you haven't made any attempt to refute points 1 thru 3.

If you wanna refute an argument you need to go through it point by point showing how you disagree. You and Hotfoot seem to believe you you can just present your own arguments.

I challenge any of you to actually go through that argument point by point refuting it.

Your entire premise rests on the concept that the mind is somehow mystically independent of a physical body dumbass, which requires introducing more bizarre explanations and violating Occam's razor. If that premise can be shown to be incorrect then there doesn't need to be a point by point refutation. That's what myself and Hotfoot are arguing. In some sci-fi universes things might work differently, but if you're going to argue based on the concept of real life research then you should get your information straight, or at least cite sources.

[Luzifer's right hand]

'Seems rather strange to me' is not a solid argument though. Our concepts of death and killed derive from a reality where you can't rebuild someone if they are destroyed. In a universe where that is possible we need to think about what exactly 'death' means compared to what it means to us.

I belive that the human conciousness changes all the time and I know that some interpret such constant change as constant dying, these "small" deaths are unavoidable, however useing a transporter or a similiar device ist avoidable and thus a completely differnt kind of dying.
However im not good at debating this stuff in a 2nd language.

[petesampras]

[

Well fuck me, another moron who responds to a post without reading it.

I said - "Divergence may eventually occur, but it must clearly take a fair amount of time.".

So how is that incompatible with "a completely different person than you knew a year down the road".

...and of course you haven't made any attempt to refute points 1 thru 3.

If you wanna refute an argument you need to go through it point by point showing how you disagree. You and Hotfoot seem to believe you you can just present your own arguments.

I challenge any of you to actually go through that argument point by point refuting it.

Your entire premise rests on the concept that the mind is somehow mystically independent of a physical body dumbass, which requires introducing more bizarre explanations and violating Occam's razor.

I have made no such claim, moron. Where have I claimed that the mind is mystically independant of a physical body or made claims that require this? Give exact quotes, shit-for-brains, or concede.

If that premise can be shown to be incorrect then there doesn't need to be a point by point refutation.

Except that I have never claimed the above premise, you lying piece of shit.

That's what myself and Hotfoot are arguing. In some sci-fi universes things might work differently, but if you're going to argue based on the concept of real life research then you should get your information straight, or at least cite sources.

I have stated that cognitive science views the mind to be a property of information processing carried out by the brain, not a property of the matter of the brain itself. If you contest this statement, I can go find some sources. Are you contesting it?

[General Zod]

I have made no such claim, moron. Where have I claimed that the mind is mystically independant of a physical body or made claims that require this? Give exact quotes, shit-for-brains, or concede.

1.) The mind and therefore conciousness is considered, in cognitive science, not to be an actual property of matter, but one of patterns of matter and the information processing tasks these patterns peform.

See the bolded section. I don't know what you'd consider the brain if not a physical body that was made up of matter.

I have stated that cognitive science views the mind to be a property of information processing carried out by the brain, not a property of the matter of the brain itself. If you contest this statement, I can go find some sources. Are you contesting it?

Since this information processing is dependent on the brain's unique neural structure, then I fail to see how you can separate the "information processing" from the "hardware" itself. If this were the case then people who go through lobotomies and other brain trauma should still be the same person afterwards, when it's clearly been demonstrated that they have considerable differences in personalities.

[Lord Zentei]

I'm going to present the original argument, which you responded to but ignored the content of, again. If you can answer the actual points made, then do so. Ignoring my argument and presenting your own argument is not answering an argument, by the way.

The arguments presented against your position are all valid, and you have chosen to ignore them while playing broken record. I really don't think you can claim the moral high ground here.

1.) The mind and therefore conciousness is considered, in cognitive science, not to be an actual property of matter, but one of patterns of matter and the information processing tasks these patterns peform.

2.) If point 1. holds, then the actual matter used is irrelevant to the conciousness. It only matters that the matter is in the appropriate configurations to process information in the same way.

3.) If point 2. holds, then a perfect copy of an individual must have the same conciousness.

Unless they are simultaneously coexistant. Since a perfectly indistinguishable copy was made of Riker while the original Riker still existed, this reasoning is simply false. The two Rikers are different individuals at the moment of the creation of the second Riker. The two Rikers were simultaneously aware, yet seperate entities from the get go.

4.) Whilst their experiences will diverge from this point, this will not instantly make them different conciousnesses. The reason being is that a specific conciousness clearly does not require an exact pattern of matter. Otherwise our own conciousness would be changing every second. Our conciousness would in effect be dying every second. Divergence may eventually occur, but it must clearly take a fair amount of time.

Non sequitur.

[Lord Zentei]

And adding to the above; if it is possible to distinguish simultaneously coexistant copies as seperate individuals, and since the original didn't need to be destroyed, the transporter does indeed kill-and-create.

[18-Till-I-Die]

And we're back to the meat of it...

A knockoff is still a knockoff, even if it is a PERFECT duplication it's still just a knockoff and not the original.

Thus...you die in a transporter, you get cloned. The only reason they destroy teh original is to prevent the mass production of soldiers which would make the whole plot of Star Trek irrelevent. It's literally writer's fiat that they dont use the transporter as a cloning device.

We actually discussed this here a while ago and someone's argument was "I doubt that the ST powers would not notice a use for their technology some college kid does".

Well they obviously did because it's there.

[Lord Zentei]

And we're back to the meat of it...

A knockoff is still a knockoff, even if it is a PERFECT duplication it's still just a knockoff and not the original.

Thus...you die in a transporter, you get cloned. The only reason they destroy teh original is to prevent the mass production of soldiers which would make the whole plot of Star Trek irrelevent. It's literally writer's fiat that they dont use the transporter as a cloning device.

We actually discussed this here a while ago and someone's argument was "I doubt that the ST powers would not notice a use for their technology some college kid does".

Well they obviously did because it's there.

Funnily enough, they could also use this feature to re-create people after they get killed in action. Just keep scanning at regular intervals, and you're sure to get a clone to replace you. Yet, they don't seem to think of doing so.

[petesampras]

I have made no such claim, moron. Where have I claimed that the mind is mystically independant of a physical body or made claims that require this? Give exact quotes, shit-for-brains, or concede.

1.) The mind and therefore conciousness is considered, in cognitive science, not to be an actual property of matter, but one of patterns of matter and the information processing tasks these patterns peform.

See the bolded section. I don't know what you'd consider the brain if not a physical body that was made up of matter.

Well, holy fuck are you stupid. The brain is a physical body made up of matter. That does not mean that the mind is an actual property of the matter itself. It is a property of the organisation and patterns that matter forms and the information it can then process. This cannot, by any rational person, be interpreted to mean I am saying the mind is a mystical force independant of the physical body. A computer programs function is not a property of the matter in the computer, that doesn't mean it is mystical. Now, come up with a quote of mine which actually supports you view I am claiming the mind is some mystical entity or concede.

I have stated that cognitive science views the mind to be a property of information processing carried out by the brain, not a property of the matter of the brain itself. If you contest this statement, I can go find some sources. Are you contesting it?

Since this information processing is dependent on the brain's unique neural structure, then I fail to see how you can separate the "information processing" from the "hardware" itself. If this were the case then people who go through lobotomies and other brain trauma should still be the same person afterwards, when it's clearly been demonstrated that they have considerable differences in personalities.

Strawman. The brain's unique neural structure, and consequent functions, is a result of the arrangements of the matter in the brain. It does not depend on the exact matter used. If you replace the atoms of the brain with different atoms in the same unique neural structure you have done nothing to change the brains information processing and hence the mind. Therefore the exact atoms used are unimportant, since they don't effect the functioning of the mind in any measurable way.

[petesampras]

I'm going to present the original argument, which you responded to but ignored the content of, again. If you can answer the actual points made, then do so. Ignoring my argument and presenting your own argument is not answering an argument, by the way.

The arguments presented against your position are all valid, and you have chosen to ignore them while playing broken record. I really don't think you can claim the moral high ground here.

Whether they are valid in themselves or not is irrelevant. If you want to respond to an argument you need to actually go through it refuting the points. Essentially ignoring the details of the argument and presenting a counter argument which is against the overall position of the original argument is not a constructive way to debate the issue. Would you not agree? No one has actually gone through the original argument point by point to show where the disagree, they have just presented their own counter arguments to the position.

1.) The mind and therefore conciousness is considered, in cognitive science, not to be an actual property of matter, but one of patterns of matter and the information processing tasks these patterns peform.

2.) If point 1. holds, then the actual matter used is irrelevant to the conciousness. It only matters that the matter is in the appropriate configurations to process information in the same way.

3.) If point 2. holds, then a perfect copy of an individual must have the same conciousness.

Unless they are simultaneously coexistant. Since a perfectly indistinguishable copy was made of Riker while the original Riker still existed, this reasoning is simply false. The two Rikers are different individuals at the moment of the creation of the second Riker. The two Rikers were simultaneously aware, yet seperate entities from the get go.

Why can they not be seperate entities with the same conciousness? If conciousness is a property of the mind, and the mind is defined in terms of processing information, why cannot the same conciousness be present in two individuals?

4.) Whilst their experiences will diverge from this point, this will not instantly make them different conciousnesses. The reason being is that a specific conciousness clearly does not require an exact pattern of matter. Otherwise our own conciousness would be changing every second. Our conciousness would in effect be dying every second. Divergence may eventually occur, but it must clearly take a fair amount of time.

Non sequitur.

What exactly is it you feel is non sequitur here?

[His Divine Shadow]

Offhand, ones that don't kill you; 40K ones, and probably 40K necron ones, Iconian Portals from Star Trek (presumably) and Culture displacers.

The stargate certainly does kill you. It breaks you down and shoots you as a particle stream through a micro-wormhole. It can even store your 'data' and energy.

Yes and it only appears as if you are conscious throughout because you have no conception of time when you are dead.

[General Zod]

Well, holy fuck are you stupid. The brain is a physical body made up of matter. That does not mean that the mind is an actual property of the matter itself. It is a property of the organisation and patterns that matter forms and the information it can then process. This cannot, by any rational person, be interpreted to mean I am saying the mind is a mystical force independant of the physical body. A computer programs function is not a property of the matter in the computer, that doesn't mean it is mystical.

Semantical nonsense. Without a physical machine to read the information and make use of it the program may as well not exist. You can beam a program through the air to another machine, but if there's no machine to read it then it simply scatters into nothingness. A program that's ran on different hardware will function differently or not at all, and hey, guess what, when you put a program onto a harddrive you change the layout of 1s and 0s on that drive in order to get that program to run. Much like how someone's personality is dependent on the layout of neurons.

Now, come up with a quote of mine which actually supports you view I am claiming the mind is some mystical entity or concede.

I was illustrating that your claims require introducing terminology that isn't supported by existing evidence dumbass. Not saying you claimed it was a mystical entity.

Strawman. The brain's unique neural structure, and consequent functions, is a result of the arrangements of the matter in the brain. It does not depend on the exact matter used. If you replace the atoms of the brain with different atoms in the same unique neural structure you have done nothing to change the brains information processing and hence the mind. Therefore the exact atoms used are unimportant, since they don't effect the functioning of the mind in any measurable way.

I suggest you pay more attention to your own arguments before accusing someone else of strawmanning, dipshit. I never said it was dependent on specific matter, merely the configuration/structure. Replacing atoms != lobotomies.

[Hotfoot]

I'm going to present the original argument, which you responded to but ignored the content of, again. If you can answer the actual points made, then do so. Ignoring my argument and presenting your own argument is not answering an argument, by the way.

1.) The mind and therefore conciousness is considered, in cognitive science, not to be an actual property of matter, but one of patterns of matter and the information processing tasks these patterns peform.

Given that brains store information chemically, and thought patterns are formed by the linkages of these memories and logic, the very second stored input differs in either case, you have a different conciousness. Dipshit. Ways of thinking are not concrete, they change over time as people change. Your staunch denial of this fact is maddening.

2.) If point 1. holds, then the actual matter used is irrelevant to the conciousness. It only matters that the matter is in the appropriate configurations to process information in the same way.

This falls apart when you can create a copy without destroying the original. Once this fact enters the equation, any time you destroy the original, you are destroying a conciousness that in itself is physically seperate: there is no magical link connecting the two. While for a split second mid-transport (which is effectively akin to stasis) the two are identical, once the transport is over, things continue and change.

3.) If point 2. holds, then a perfect copy of an individual must have the same conciousness.

For all of a split second, perhaps. After that, AS I POINTED OUT BEFORE BUT YOU IGNORED, things change.

4.) Whilst their experiences will diverge from this point, this will not instantly make them different conciousnesses. The reason being is that a specific conciousness clearly does not require an exact pattern of matter. Otherwise our own conciousness would be changing every second. Our conciousness would in effect be dying every second. Divergence may eventually occur, but it must clearly take a fair amount of time.

You're an idiot. There's no other explanation for this argument. Change someone's brain chemistry, even a bit, and they will become a slightly different person. Change it a lot, and you won't have the same person at all. Chemistry, in case you're not clear, is all about this thing called matter and specific arrangements and patterns of it.

The conciousness is not shared, it is specific to the two beings involved. As individual changes occur to each individual, how they react and act will change. Your argument tries to completely ignore the effects of nurture. If you had bothered actually, you know, reading my posts, you might have noticed that I've covered this already. Remember identical twins? Same DNA, different people, different conciousness for each person.

To go back to your book and glass analogies, if you break my glass, then buy me a new one, I might not be overly concerned, since the new glass is effectively the same as the old glass, but it doesn't change the fact that you destroyed the old glass. Furthermore, that you destroyed the old glass doesn't change if you use pieces from the old glass to make the new one.

You contest that destroying one conciousness doesn't matter, so long as you replace it with one that's virtually identical. I find the very concept of destroying a conciousness in the first place reprehensible, as do most sensible people. You go further to say that when you make a replica, the replica is going to remain exactly the same, even though, in the case of this debate, we know this to be false given that we are debating what happened in the show.

And even without the show's events utterly trashing your position, there's still the simple matter of identical twins not having the same conciousness, which according to your argument, they should, since their DNA will build their brains in identical ways, assuming similar nutrition et. al.

Answer. My. Fucking. Points. You. Shitstain.