To find the right answers, ask the right questions. I have skated around the question, “Is there a rational justification for self concern?” without coming up with a solid argument that settles it one way or the other. But there is a related question which can be answered.
Two Views of Teleportation
As we have seen, teleportation by means of information transfer can be viewed in two ways. The facts of the case are: I am scanned in North Vancouver and my information is sent to Omaha, where it is used to construct a living replica of me. Meanwhile, the original in North Vancouver is destroyed. Two views of these events are:
SURVIVE: I am transported from North Vancouver to Omaha.
DIE: I am killed in North Vancouver, and someone else – my replica – is constructed in Omaha.
People who think about teleportation disagree about whether SURVIVE or DIE is an accurate description of the case. How can it be settled which view is true – or whether neither is true?
People who disagree about SURVIVE and DIE do not disagree about the facts of the case. The facts are not in question. No scientific experiment can be devised to settle which of SURVIVE and DIE is an accurate description of the facts. Continue reading “The Self Illusion”
Imagine, in the early days of books, a small library consisting entirely of original manuscripts. Some of them are very old, and have been attacked by mice. Some have deteriorated so much that their pages crumble to dust when the custodian of the library tries to read them. He mourns the loss of these books, and contemplates the inevitable decay of the remaining books with sorrow. To be sure, new manuscripts are occasionally added to the library, but they cannot replace the volumes that are lost forever. This goes on until, one day, the young assistant librarian has an idea. “This book will be unreadable in five years,” he tells his elder. “But I can read it now. If I copy the words of this book onto sheets of new vellum, and bind them in a strong new binding, we will be able to read it for many decades to come.” The old librarian tenderly strokes the cracked spine of the crumbling volume, and shakes his head. “What good is a copy? It wouldn’t be the same book.” 
Part Three of 
In the 
In the story 
Roger Beethey shows up late, with a blonde. Elliot gives him a pleading look. “Relax,” says Beethey.
Getting into the Institute turned out to be easy. Arriving in a crowd from the bus, he found the iid-controlled gate held open for him by a smiling girl. Security at that boundary is given low priority. The ‘free-campus’ tradition. Half-hidden in a big armchair in a departmental Reading Room – not his own department’s – he checks the messages on his phone. Nothing new that matters. He re-reads Elliot’s reply to EB, agreeing to meet before class. Elliot must be in his car by now, probably in slow traffic on the Expressway.
Instead of the motel on Bridgeport, as the other Elliot wanted, he checks into the Verdmont for what remains of the night. He owes himself that much. He is a bit surprised that his iid still opens doors. The other Elliot could have changed his code, which would have made his own implant useless. But the surprise vanishes when he thinks of what he would have done in the other’s place. Without a valid iid, he could hardly last a day in Waterloo without coming to the attention of the police. He has to eat, to sleep somewhere, and although he knows that resourceful denizens of the city’s underbelly do so without an iid, he cannot. He might, of course, approach the authorities for assistance, were it not that he fears publicity just as much as the other does. As the other Elliot said last night, the stikists could ‘get mileage’ out of this. That could set the itravel industry back ten years.
Finally an email from Dalton, on the last possible day. With misgivings, Elliot opens it. Nothing at all in the body, just Dalton’s signature and the animated IGo logo scrolling endlessly across the page.
All that’s needed to make a case for radical reform of the idea of self is a thought-experiment with a clear and compelling outcome. However, the world is full of people who pay no attention to thought-experiments, however revealing they may be in exposing inconsistencies in everyday ideas, because thought-experiments aren’t ‘real’. These are people from Missouri, as the saying goes, who demand to be shown. And I have nothing to show, yet.