Let's say scientists invent a teleportation device. It can send you to any other teleportation device. It works by scanning your body down to every molecule. It then disintegrates you and sends the data to a second device in the desired location. The second device then reconstructs your body exactly how it was. This raises several questions. First, is the consciousness the same? Second, are you actually dead and this copy is only a copy? Assuming we have souls (make this assumption, don't argue against having souls), what happens to them? Furthermore, if you hadn't done whatever you were "supposed" to do according to your religion before you teleported and your copy then does this, does it count (likewise if you are agnostic or atheistic and then your copy becomes religious)? Also, could your copy have its own soul?
Assuming the technical problems are swept under the rug and the copy is indeed exactly perfect, then this is very interesting. I'd answer the questions in the following way:
1. Yes. I don't know of any form of consciousness that is separate from the body, and given it is an exact replica (assuming right down to things like quantum states and the like) it's likely that the consciousness will simply continue from the state in which it was left off.
2. "You" I suspect is a misleading word to use. The original copy is dead. The new copy is alive. As far as the new copy is concerned, its awareness is contiguous with that of the old copy and so therefore if would be reasonable from its perspective to consider itself the same. At that point it's only outside observers who might define it differently (and the original copy doesn't get to have a perspective; it's dead).
3+. Assuming we have souls, we'd have to agree on a definition and a mechanic by which they work before we could answer these questions meaningfully.
Ya, but after the creation of the copy, even though everything before the copy is the same, everything after is different. So they aren't the same consciousness. Twins don't have the same consciousness, and it could be said one is the copy of the other.
If the original reads a book, the copy doesn't gain the knowledge.
This raises the question: are you the same person as you were a second ago? After all, your experiences have changed, and reading a book doesn't mean that your past self gains that knowledge.
i don't wanna get into an argument, i was simply stating what the typical judeo/christian doctrine is.
I don't think there is a "typical" Judeo-Christian doctrine. The bible mentions very little about the exact nature of the soul - most of what we consider to be part of the Judeo-Christian mythos is what various thinkers have developed over several thousand years, and it varies quite a lot from place to place and denomination to denomination, and this includes concepts of the soul.
Could you define your concept of the soul in a little more depth? I'd be interested to see what you think, because definition is so important in these discussions. This is a bit off topic though, so feel free to not bother or do it in another thread or something if you want.
