The woman on Mars, millions of miles from home, protected from the killing, frostless cold of the red Martian desert by fragile membranes of terrestrial technology—protected but stranded, for your spaceship has broken down beyond repair. The only hope she found was the Teleclone.With nothing to lose, you set the transmitter up, flip the right switches, and step into the chamber. Five, four, three, two, one, FLASH! You open the door in front of you and step out of the Teleclone receiver chamber into the sunny, familiar atmosphere of Earth. She arrived to Earth and met her families. Later it hits her: “Am I, really, the same person who kissed this little girl good-bye three years ago? Am I this eight-year-old child’s mother or am I actually a brand new human being, only several hours old, in spite of my memories—or apparent memories—of days and years before that?” Did this child’s mother recently die on Mars, dismantled and destroyed in the chamber of a Teleclone Mark IV?
A song or a poem or a movie can undoubtedly be teleported. Is a self the sort of thing—a thing “made of information”—that can be teleported without loss? Is our reluctance to admit the teleportation of people a bit like the anachronistic resistance, recently overcome in most quarters, to electronically scanned legal signatures on documents?
Source:
Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s Book Intuition Pumps
