On Teletransportation

On Teletransportation

Does teletransportation (henceforth “tele”) preserve personal identity? Does the person survive it?[1] I think not—and I think this is obvious on reflection. The workings of the machine are obscure, but the outlines are clear enough: the subject, body and mind, is vaporized, thoroughly dismantled, and someone just like him or her appears on a distant planet soon after. There is no continuous travel through space as a solid living thing (or non-living if the thing is inanimate); no one is hurtling through space for a few nanoseconds. No, the person is reincarnated at the other end, apparently, not having traced the intermediate steps. The teletransporter doesn’t transport at all; it duplicates after a brief period of non-existence. There are gaps in the individual’s life, but he comes back hale and hearty—allegedly. But is it really so? Why don’t we say that the initial person was destroyed, annihilated, and then a duplicate created soon after? That seems like a perfectly possible scenario: someone is killed, say by being dissolved in acid while sedated, and then a copy is made of that person’s body and brain. No one involved claims that this is a case of survival; it is candidly admitted to be homicide followed by duplication. It is like a photocopier that burns the original while the copy is being made: the original is destroyed but leaves behind a duplicate of itself. The type survives, but not the token. What if Captain Kirk were reduced to ashes in the tele bay by painless cremation and then a copy of him was created on a distant planet from other matter—isn’t that the death of the original man and the creation of an exact copy of him? You can’t undo the killing by producing a copy of the killed man elsewhere. Isn’t it clear that Kirk’s body (that token) was obliterated and another token of that type created? No doubt information derived from the original was used and this is connected causally to the re-creation process, but that doesn’t nullify the act of homicide. Copies often derive causally from earlier entities, but that doesn’t make the two identical. Indeed, the effect of the tele machine is very like the effect of phasers set to full: instant vaporization. The only difference is that a duplicate is produced on the double in the former case. If there was a snafu with the machine and no duplicate appeared, the initial phase of the process would be obvious death; so, the original was clearly deleted, so to speak, before being “transported”. Combine this with the point that multiple Kirks might appear on the distant planet, by design or accident, and they can’t all be numerically identical to the unique Kirk who entered the tele chamber without a care in the world. The entire organism has been obliterated by the machine, as if by a silent nuclear bomb, and the only consolation is that a copy appears in its place somewhere else. But that copy isn’t it. Philosophically speaking, the person is a substance enduring through time and any interruption to that is the cessation of that substance—like any other substance. If you dismantle and dissolve a substance, you destroy it—though you are at liberty to manufacture a copy of that substance. Teletransportation is just that, neither more nor less. It is not translocation, a type of rapid transit, a way of travelling (moving) from A to B. Presumably, a copy could be created at the other end without anyone stepping into the tele chamber; that individual would clearly not be numerically identical to the guy still hanging around on the mother ship minding his business. He never went anywhere; nor did his counterpart come from anywhere near the ship. The case is really no different logically from parentage: you get a copy (possibly exact) but you don’t literally become that individual.

The point of the teletransportation case was to persuade us that personal survival is no more than causal continuity—on the assumption that we agree that the original person survives the process. But he does not; to suppose he does is to conflate personal survival with duplication plus causal connection. So, this argument for a non-substantial view of personal identity doesn’t work. Personality survives (considered as a type), but not the bearer of this personality. So do the body type and person type survive, but not the particular instance of those types. The sad fact is that whenever James T. Kirk steps into the tele machine he is exterminated; the Enterprise has a new captain whenever “he” returns.[2] Same for everyone else: you are seeing different people from week to week with an eerie similarity to people now deceased. It isn’t good old Spock that you now see sparring with Bones, but only a copy of him, destined for replacement before episode’s end. That is the tragedy of Star Trek: all those fine people killed for our entertainment. Kirk should say stoically to Spock as he is about to be vaporized, “It’s been good knowing you, Mr. Spock, let’s hope our future copies are as good as we are.” But it appears that not even Spock has appreciated the homicidal logic of teletransportation (“A most illogical description”, as he might quizzically remark). It is sheer wishful thinking to suppose that these beloved characters survive their various “trips”.[3]

[1] I am obviously alluding to the work of Derek Parfit on personal identity, which I encountered some fifty-three years ago. I am also moved by the work of Michael Ayers on persons and substances.

[2] When Kirk says to Scott “Beam me up Scotty!” the correct answer is “I canne do that Captain—all I can do is destroy you and create a replica of you here on board”. Kirk can only reply “That will have to do Scotty”. Kirk thereupon dies and his replica takes his first grateful breath—just born and he’s already a starship captain! When Kirk is beamed down he is killed and a replica created; similarly for when the replica is beamed back up.

[3] Whenever I now watch an episode of Star Trek, I will reflect that murder (suicide) is being committed on a daily basis; I will feel the appropriate degree of grief. Nor will I welcome the individuals who boldly step from the extermination chamber—they are not the ones of whom I have grown so fond, just impostors. It would appear that star trekking will involve a lot of killing and consequent duplication.