Continuity Of Consciousness

It is the year 3000 and teleportation machines are rampant everywhere. They are the main mode of transportation in everyday life. All you have to do is step into the machine and a bright laser zaps through your body, and a ‘you’ is recreated in another machine. This new ‘you’ contains the exact same pattern of atoms and neural connections as the ‘old’ you, and the ‘old’ you is destroyed by the laser. The question to ask here is, is the ‘old’ you the same person as the ‘new’ you? The new ‘you’ is meant to be you, with the same exact consciousness and memories, but is consciousness something that can be recreated just like the atoms of a body? If one were to clone someone’s body, and this body established its own consciousness containing all …show more content…
There would be a moment where the original consciousness dies. That would be the moment you essentially stop existing, for however small of a moment it is. The original person who would step into the machine would most definitely be aware that they will cease to exist, but the emerging new self would believe that there was no break in continuity. This loss of self-awareness and psychological continuity would be where one person ended. The replica would have the same memories and thoughts, but they would not have that exact same transferred consciousness. There are many ways that consciousness can be defined, but it is very difficult to come to one simple agreement of a definition. A general base for it is that the physical state of one –the body– creates the mental state –the consciousness–. This creates an almost abstract idea of consciousness, and because of that, one’s understanding of consciousness has to be dealt in the way of dealing with an abstract idea. In the case of teleportation, it does not seem to be something that can be completely transferred from one person to another, which is essentially what the teleportation machine seems to do. Consciousness here is not a physical thing, but one that comes to be as a result of the endless neural connections and the physicality of the body, both combined as one to produce it. Therefore when the teleportation machine …show more content…
If the teleportation machine is defragmenting a human, copying the physical data of the atom patterns, and then reforming that human in a different machine using the data from the original human, then the original human has died as their consciousness and self-awareness ended. They ceased to exist for a moment, and when they are reconfigured, it is a new body with the same atom patterns and the same neural connections. The body even has the same memories and thoughts and ideas as the original one did, but the consciousness that arose from the physical patterns of the body is not the same as the old one. The original consciousness was deleted when the body was destroyed. The new human is the same physical individual, but not the same conscious individual, and here one can conclude that there is a problem. The two people are not the same, as there is a difference between consciousnesses. What can be said is that every human being creates its own consciousness, and this consciousness cannot be transferred or replicated as exactness. Therefore teletransportation would not be the way to travel. The new ‘you’ would not be identical to the ‘old’