zen_tom

No, the homunculus isn't the only alternative (by the way, the notion of 'soul' suffers from the same problem. i.e. does a soul have a soul? etc) However, there is an another option, that the 'self' we're talking about spontaneously emerges from the processing and reprocessing of all of this data.

This option isn't magical, nor is it necessarily as illusionary as perhaps you suggest, but sits somewhere in-between, an internal phenomenon with not only structure (in the way a hurricane has structure, despite it in reality being a collection of particles unrelated except for their positions, velocities and interactions) but also self-knowledge - whatever that is (which I suppose is the root of this discussion)

A hurricane blows itself out after time, and you can stop the swirl in a bathtub's plughole by putting the plug back in. If self awareness is a delicate pattern, if it is a something that emerges and self-perpetuates from the processes and interactions of complex nets of interconnecting pieces of matter, then it is likely that disruption of that pattern is going to change it in such a way that disturbs and or destroys it. Is it even possible for any machine to freeze-frame such a pattern (even of a the spiral in a bathtub), transport it somewhere, and unfreeze it without damaging the motion in some way? (However, since this is a hypothetical machine, I will keep from posing that hypothetical, but I suspect damning, question)

Now this is all fine and well (rationally describing patterns and drawing similarities between mental processes and weather formations) but as soon as I start wondering what this means for ME, the me that is sitting here typing this, experiencing these patterns, no, BEING these patterns, then where does that leave me if this pattern is interrupted? If it is started again, do 'I' return? Or is it something else? Perhaps it is a delusion, the idea that I am anything other than the stuff of the rest of the world, but then isn't the fact that the delusion exists enough to suggest that the delusion is able to self-fulfill? These questions are ones I don't know the answers to, and while I'm not ready yet to understand exactly what this 'self' is, neither am I ready to accept that there is no such thing as my 'self', leaving me in a kind of limbo.

Your chess analogy is a good one, except that the game is something that the chessboard plays with itself, which complicates matters. If I were to be copied now, or say, while I sleep tonight, and I wake tomorrow, who wakes up? Damn, I'm talking in circles now. I hope I've got over what I'm trying to say (or at least express some of my level of confusion) - Despite this, I do think you and I, if not on the same page, somewhere in the same chapter or even the same book, are at least both able to read.

In the meantime, let me leave you with this observation: I'm trying to answer this on a personal level, while you seem content to do so from a rational standpoint. Is it possible to find a personal way to truly answer this question? Or is it an obvious paradox to be written off and dismissed with rationale? If it is, it's one my existence is directly tied up in.
And if that is the case, how can we answer from a rational standpoint, if we know the question itself is false?
However you look at it, there remain unresolved issues.