this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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What makes you think that “continuous consciousness” is a thing and not just the way it feels like to exist?
Do you fell like you're made out of cells? Do you feel the hormones influencing your thinking? Then why do you think that the perceived continuity of having an ego is a real thing that exists? No soul has been measured so far.
I'm not a philosopher, so this response will be imperfect and is subject to revision.
My current response to this is that something can exist without being made of something. Consciousness is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex, chemically active neurological system. (Someone can poke holes in this definition if they like, but come on dude, principle of charity. You get what I mean.) Essentially, "how it feels like to exist" is a real, if immaterial, thing. Just like mathematics and language.
If someone makes a perfect copy of my brain and body over by the lever, using none of the materials from my original body, then it is a different brain and body, no matter how arbitrarily similar it is. The consciousness that was by the entrance to the teleporter will never experience pulling the lever.
What makes that “new” consciousness less “you” than the old one? Why do you care if the atoms aren't the same?
If a perfect copy of me was made, both world be me, and then slowly diverge by different experience. But it doesn't matter which one has most of the atoms of the body that existed before the duplication (or indeed if any of us was). They'll both be “me”s with their own perspective and then they'd both continue to exist being “me” from their point of view.