Survival

Derek Parfit (Oxford) has argued that it is not personal identity that matters to us. Why should we care if what survives of us is or isn't the selfsame person as previously? (The police and the insurance company and the Inland Revenue might care, of course). So what do you want to survive of your present self 1) into old age, 2) after death?

Parfit's point is partly that something of us can survive - not enough to satisfy your interest in immortality, perhaps, but something, for a time. Not even in your own continuous consciousness, perhaps, but in the thoughts and memories of others. "What will survive of us is love", Philip Larkin said in a lovely poem ("An Arundel Tomb"). Not just love, though: also, the way we may have affected the world, influenced others, etc.

Would this be better than nothing? What would you prefer: that you survive your death as a disembodied consciousness or that tangible effects on the world or on other people continue without you?

NB Get ready to revise Reason and Experience.

Mars Teletransporter Thought Experiment

You're in a hurry, so you take the quick route to Mars. You enter the cubicle on Earth and every cell of your body is (somehow) recorded and the information transmitted instantly to Mars, where the cells are replicated. The original cells on Earth (ie your body) are annihilated. A qualititively identical thing steps out of the cubicle on Mars. Is there numerical (quantitative) identity between the you that entered the cublicle on Earth and the one that steps out of the cubicle on Mars? Is it you?

Because all the cells of your body have been replicated, including brain cells, the assumption is that the new body will have all the thoughts, memories, etc of the old one. There is psychological continuity.

What are your intuitions about this? What can a thought experiment like this really show or prove? Would your intutions be different if the original body were simply replicated, but not annililated, so there is now one "You" on Mars and the original still on Earth? Perhaps one could have a conversation with the other.

Would your intuitions be different if what your thoughts, memories, etc were replicated in on Mars wasn't physically identical (qualititively) to your body - if it were more obviously a machine, if the medium were different but the content the same?