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"Individual" is a word that is usually a pretty descriptive one, but breaks down a bit in this kind of situation; likewise "self". As clarified elsewhere in the

"Individual" is a word that is usually a pretty descriptive one, but breaks down a bit in this kind of situation; likewise "self". As clarified elsewhere in the thread, we use "self", "me", and so on, to express several different notions: "who I am right now", and also "who I was in the past" and "who I will be in the future". Nothing is possessing multiple beings, except in the sense of my final paragraph in this comment. "I" is merely a pattern expressed on a physical substrate: a computation being executed, if you like. I don't believe I have some kind of essence that is not completely expressed by my physical state. If you want a neat shorthand for my position: I am to my body as Mac OS is to the computer I'm currently typing on. There can in principle be different incarnations of Mac OS running on different computers (indeed, there are thousands! Every Mac is running a different incarnation of Mac OS right now), but the one which is running on the computer I'm currently using is unique because it's diverged from the master copy that was imprinted on it by the install process. In that sense, Mac OS is the abstract entity possessing multiple computers, though each instance of that entity is different from all the others; Mac OS has multiple "selves". In the teleporting-by-copy analogy, "take a backup image" is the process of scanning matter ready for transmission and disassembly; "install that backup onto a new computer" is the process of recreating my body; "destroy the original computer" is the process of destroying the original body.

colordrops 9y ago
You are still alluding to the concept of a non-physical layer of reality, the concept of the platonic ideal. There is no "abstract MacOS" floating out in the ether that all your computers have diverged from, unless you believe in a soul or platonic ideal. There are only individual computers with operating systems that happen to look similar to our flawed senses. The abstraction that they are all instantiations of some original is in your head, not a fundamental aspect of reality. Abstractions are a feature of the mind. Furthermore, the human body is not digital, and not encoded in numbers. You can't completely copy all properties - you would have to change some properties, for instance location in space. Is something more "you" or less "you" based on how much it has diverged from the original? Thats just absurd.

colordrops 9y ago

You are still alluding to the concept of a non-physical layer of reality, the concept of the platonic ideal. There is no "abstract MacOS" floating out in the ether that all your computers have diverged from, unless you believe in a soul or platonic ideal. There are only individual computers with operating systems that happen to look similar to our flawed senses. The abstraction that they are all instantiations of some original is in your head, not a fundamental aspect of reality. Abstractions are a feature of the mind. Furthermore, the human body is not digital, and not encoded in numbers. You can't completely copy all properties - you would have to change some properties, for instance location in space. Is something more "you" or less "you" based on how much it has diverged from the original? Thats just absurd.