CSflim

Well, I can only answer for myself, but I don't believe that "me" is an actual "thing"; an actual lump of flesh. What really matters is the abstract pattern underlying the physical substrate (in this case, my brain). Any instantiation of that pattern is "me".

In essence, "me" is constantly being destroyed and re-created; as the pattern is constantly developing as time goes by. State A goes to State B goes to State C, etc. The self that I percieve is a result of the relationships between these patterns.

So the fact that my old body is destroyed is irrelevant, what matters is that the pattern evolves in the way that it should, in order for me to continue my experience of "me".






This thought experiment left open a rather interesting idea, which many people picked up on. The fact that the Mark II machine could be set so as not to destroy the original. Instead you would end up with a "photocopier" rather than a teleporter. So if I stepped into the duplicator, two of me would walk out. But which one would be me...you know; the original me..me as in actually...me?

They both would be of course. But they would instantly start being different 'me's, due to the fact that they would recieve different sensory inputs*, and hence the patterns which I mentioned would evolve in a different manner. They would end up being two entirely independant people, just with a shared history.

Some may claim that I have wound up with a contradiction; but I put it to you that I have done no such thing. The only reason that there even appers to be a contradiction is due to the fact that we do not normally think in these kind of terms (we have no cause to). For us the idea of one body; one soul; one at a time works well in everyday life. (Like the idea that the passage of time is independant of any particlar observer works well in everyday life: but the twin paradox is merely counter-intuative, not contradictory). There is nothing contradictory about a self "splitting in two".

As an analogy:
Imagine a game of chess. Player A plays against Player B and C collabortaing together. The game gets about half-way through but B and C end up having a disagreement about what the best next move is.
So, Player C gets out a new chess set, and sets it up to be the same as the current game. Player A then plays one game against B and one game against C. We end up with two different games, both of which have a shared history. One game appears to "split in two"
But which is the original chess game? A fairly meaningless question if you ask me. Sure you could argue that it was the game that was played out physically on the orignal board from start to finish. But this seems incredibly arbitrary, as surely the actual chessmen are entirely irrelevant to what actually matters in a game. Some chess players are even known to play against each other without such visual aids (that is all they really are); they just describe their moves to each other. We could redescribe the above situation removing the physical chesspieces altogher. Now we have two different games, both with a shared history, neither of which is "the original".

The same goes for the self and the duplicating machine.

EDIT: Similarly, it is possible to "teleport" a game of chess. A and B play a game over a period of many days. A visits B's house and they start a game, but don't finish it. A few days later B is going to visit A so they can finish the game. Does he really need to bring the chess board and pieces intact all the way over to A's house? Of course not; he merely jotts down the positions of the pieces, and when he arives, they set up A's chessboard to the correct state and play on.

Is it really neccessary to say that B destroyed the orignal game, only to create an entirely new identical game later? Surely they are just continuing the the original game on a different board?

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*"they would instantly start being different 'me's, due to the fact that they would recieve different sensory inputs"; It is interesting to consider what would happen if you ensured that both selves recieved identical sensory input. See Where Am I? by Daniel C. Dennet for an interesting short story.

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