Conscience Experiment

[ZetaX]

Fun fact: If you to something stupid like, kill your mother -in-law, and just after, perfectly clone yourself and go both for judgement: What could the court do?

Jail the "original" and free the clone? ^^

Any reasonable court would jail you both, as the actual goal of punishment should not be the punishing itself ("retribution"), but the prevention of such acts (being a deterrent and/or incapacitation) and fixing the persons (rehabilitation) . As both the clone and the original are still potentially dangerous (they have the same state of mind) and are thus in need of fixing, two of those three still apply. Also, deterring from people using such a technology to "escape" (well, somewhat) prosecution might also be a good idea.

[K^2]

Which actually makes it a more interesting question of what should be done if you cloned yourself just before committing a crime. Is it a good enough indication that the clone is also dangerous? Or should the clone be given benefit of the doubt being created pre-crime? Could, ultimately, be a question of whether mens rea was present prior to cloning, regardless of whether actus reus took place pre- or post-cloning. Which would be quite a conundrum to prove.

[Camacha]

One doesn't need direct evidence specific to human brains

Maybe not for the underlying phenomena, but I would love to see some substantiation that this would affect our level of existence (as opposed to the lower quantum levels) enough to cause detectable changes in behaviour. If not, it is all fairly academic.

Edited May 19, 2015 by Camacha

[Red Iron Crown]

Title is confusing, I'm not sure how one's conscience is relevant. Are we supposed to feel guilty for bad things the copy does?

[Endersmens]

Title is confusing, I'm not sure how one's conscience is relevant. Are we supposed to feel guilty for bad things the copy does?

He meant conscious.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm guessing you haven't taken many psychology classes?

Only undergrad intro stuff, nothing advanced.

The conscience isn't just the "voice in your head" its being aware of yourself, and what you're thinking and such. When you're unconscious, you aren't aware of thoughts in your head or the outside world. Also, Freud's "unconscious" theory suggested that there is a part of our minds we aren't aware of that dictates things about us, such as our personality. So in this thread, he's asking if their conscious thoughts will be the same until an outside force affects them.

Are we using the terms "conscience" and "conscious" interchangeably? I think of them as different things altogether.

[Endersmens]

Only undergrad intro stuff, nothing advanced.

Are we using the terms "conscience" and "conscious" interchangeably? I think of them as different things altogether.

I redacted my response as i realized that he had typed conscience instead of conscious. I thought you made the name mistake, but actually he did. Check the post I replaced it with.

Yes, they are different. Conscience is the voice in your head, conscious is being aware. Sorry 'bout that.

[Technical Ben]

An exact copy of me in 2 locations breaks most other laws, so becomes a meaningless explanation. On the assumption it is possible, it also becomes possible to have 2 "me". Both would be equally me, while both being equally independent (could lead different lives going forwards, as an example, the same as normal "twins" that already exist). As the setup of the question forbids me to make a distinction, I cannot make one, so why ask the question?

However, this is not the same as asking about a replication in the singular. As we already know people exist from one moment to the other, we can theoretically stop that moment, then continue it at a later date. It just depends on if we can (or other systems/laws of physics, time travel etc) possibly ever get to that level of detail to accomplish it.

In which case, if we stop existing at one point, then continue at a later time, it continues to be us. Does it require atomic level, greater than or less than, accuracy? I don't know. We would first have to find out what makes a "person" in it's entirety.

If we make a photo or a statue, it's not the real or full person. The answer is "no it's not me". If it's a "perfect copy", then yes it is me. It's anything in between that would be harder to know.

[Linear]

Why is there a discussion about whether two people making separate decisions are indeed different people? Or am I lost?

[Teutooni]

"You" is a vague concept and if you can define it precisely you will have your answer. As a side note the Schrödinger's Cat has nothing to do with consciousness. It deals with the cat's fate being decided by measuring a quantum state, and prior to the measurement the cat is effectively both dead and alive. It could be a rock, and it would be simultaneously an intact and a smashed rock if the experiment was modified to destroy a rock upon activation instead of killing a cat. Again, answering whether quantum fluctuations affect our consciousness or if "you" die when there's an exact copy somewhere is entirely dependent on what the mind precisely is and how you define "you".

If you define "you" as a conscious, thinking entity then you die every night. If "you" includes subconscious mind and memories, reflexes etc. it gets messy. If you lose your memory due to illness, do "you" die? There are cases where brain injury has completely changed one's personality. What if you learn something that deeply affects you and makes you change, did the old you die? If you define "you" as a learning process that guides your body, then you die when said process stops. These are just to mention a few definitions.

[Perry Apsis]

You think our use of the word "you" is anything other than a convenience. It is not. You're more or less the same month to month and even year to year, so it makes sense to treat you as an identity. You start getting into edge cases like this and all bets are off. "You" will not be two people at once. You will each be a person who happens to resemble another person in every particular. This does not become true when differences arise. It is proven when differences arise. If you both survive, there will be two people with the same history, both of whom are "you" or not "you", depending on how you define these things.

More interesting to me than whether you are you or not, is how you feel about these things, because that tells us about how and why we generate the illusion of self-hood. Consider the transporter thought experiments. We seem to be more okay with a transporter that destroys you and then recreates you elsewhere, than we are with a transporter that duplicates you elsewhere, then kills the one still standing here, just to avoid unpleasant philosophical conundrums. Why? Idunno, perhaps because it gives us the feeling that our identity went somewhere, whereas when they happen in the opposite order, it's more clear that there are two identities and we just murdered one.

[Technical Ben]

I may be unable to define the sun. But for a matter of fact it exists. It's no "illusion". So being hard to define does not necessarily change the facts. But it does limit the restrictions we assume, the abilities we assume and the results we assume. If I assume the sun extinguishes each night, or assume it's made of coal, I'd be wrong.

Tell me what conciousness is, before you say it's an "illusion", then I can test such a claim.

[theend3r]

I may be unable to define the sun. But for a matter of fact it exists.

Solipsists would disagree with you.

[SpaceChipmunk]

Ok let's for a moment assume that it were possible to make an exact copy of someone. If we had two copies in two rooms. Then they should, if they are identical behave in an identical manner to identical stimuli. This would apply up to the point that they encounter each other. There reaction to each other would in theory be identical, but then they should adapt their behaviour to each other, so if they were brought into the same room and posed a question, they would behave identically to a shared experience. Pose them a puzzle and they should work together?

If they are seperately exposed to stimuli at seperate times. Then it is safe to assume that while they would react the same way to the stimuli that their behaviour would not be synchronised since the stimuli were applied at seperate times and therefore when the stimuli is stopped and they return to an idle state, then they would not be behaving the same as each other at the same time.

Is that at least at the heart of what the original question was trying to get at?

[Technical Ben]

Solipsists would disagree with you.

Then I would argue Solipsist does not exist. When they do, they can come back to argue their point.

"Ok let's for a moment assume that it were possible to make an exact copy of someone. If we had two copies in two rooms. Then they should, if they are identical behave in an identical manner to identical stimuli."

We defined the question, so that there is only one possible answer. "If I have a ton of feathers, how much do they weight?"

So the original question is more like "what makes us what we are?" and that is more difficult to answer.

[Slam_Jones]

I was hoping option #2 would end with the phrase "... and promptly disappeared in a puff of logic."

In case you don't get the reference.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Slam_Jones