There are plenty of complex stances on the Mind/Body problem. We give them names like “Reductionism”, “Epiphenomenalism”, “Cartesian Dualism”, etc. The distinctions are vague, and the literature (not the fun stuff by Douglas Hofstadter, but the real philosophy) is virtually unreadable. But what it really comes down to is one, fundamental question, which many thinkers in the field have posed: would you teleport?
Don’t let the Sci-Fi speak terrify you. It does have a point.
We think of teleportation as some mystical thing seen in Star Trek, but it’s really not so far off. It’s based on the same idea which powers telephones, fax machines, and the internet: things move slowly, but data moves very quickly. If I have a piece of paper in Berkeley which you need in Japan, there are only a few options. Either I physically mail it to you, or I fax it — or, to be a bit more modern, I scan it, convert it to a PDF, and e-mail it. One requires a 15-hour plane ride; the other takes two minutes. Why? Because the actual ink and paper, with mass and volume, takes time to transport. But you already have ink and paper — that’s not what you’re after. What you need is what’s on the paper, which the ink only conveys — the information. And information travels at the speed of light.
The idea transcends technology. It’s pouring rain in Berkeley right now, and all I want is a bowl of my mom’s signature tomato bisque. (Okay, that’s a lie. My mom doesn’t have a signature tomato bisque. But if she did, I’d definitely want a bowl of it right now.) If what I’m asking for is a bowl of soup which has been prepared by my mom using the exact basil that is currently sitting in her cabinet, I’m out of luck. But that’s not really what I want, is it? I’m not craving that particular tomato which only she has access to: my ingredients are adequate substitutes. What I’m asking for is the proper ratio and preparation — the recipe. And that information can be shared with a phone call.
Now, no one would say I’m actually eating my mom’s homemade soup, just like no one would say that the faxed paper is the original. Your paper looks a bit shinier than mine, the ink is a little more gray than black, and a forensic scientist certainly won’t find my DNA on your copy. That’s because the paper itself wasn’t sent; only a low resolution approximation of what was written on it. But what if that weren’t the case? What if instead of sending a snapshot of one face of the paper, I sent you a complete description of the entire object? The state of every electron and every quark would be meticulously recorded, sent as data, and reconstructed on your end. Here the raw materials aren’t only similar; they’re identical. In fact, according to Quantum Mechanics it doesn’t even make sense to refer to “this” electron as opposed to “that” one. If I swapped each particle in that paper with an entirely new one, not only would there be no discernible difference; theoretically speaking, I did nothing. “This” electron is “that” one, just in a different place.
Suppose I “send” the paper to you in this way — and, to make things simpler, assume my original copy is destroyed in the transaction. What you have in your hands now looks exactly like my paper. It has my fingerprints on it. You can still feel the heat from where I gripped it. It smells like the signature tomato bisque I was drinking when I sent it. The bottom left corner was crumpled when I put it in, and you can smooth it back out. In every respect, that is my paper you are holding; the one, unique copy, with its entire history in tact. That’s teleportation.
At first it seems ludicrous to say that what you are holding is the same thing that I fed into my machine. After all, the matter didn’t go anywhere: my paper was destroyed, and you only got a copy of it. But unlike any copy machine currently in existence, this created a perfect copy. We can object that it’s made up of different particles, but as was mentioned above, there’s no such thing as “different particles.” Just different states for a particle to be in. The pattern is everything, and that pattern was perfectly preserved.
So here comes the philosophical question: what would happen if a person stepped into this machine? His entire physical makeup would be stored as data, transmitted, and rebuilt somewhere new. Not just his outward appearance — everything, including his brain. Including the collection of neurons which were firing when he stepped into the machine, signifying the thought “I wonder what will happen to me when I step into this machine.” Every memory would be preserved. The man on the other side would recall that exact thought, breathe a sigh of relief, and conclude “Turns out I was fine.” But was he?
Hofstadter is a big proponent of the "People as Patterns" idea.
If we are entirely physical, the answer seems to be “yes”. A human being is a collection of particles arranged in a certain way, and the person would have moved from Point A to Point B completely unscathed. After all, when you talk to someone one on the phone and say “It’s good to hear your voice,” you don’t care that the air molecules carrying the sound aren’t the same. The voice is found in the pattern, not the medium, and in the same way a person must be found in the pattern, not the (identical) raw materials. Whatever there was to this person, it was transmitted. He had nothing to fear by stepping into that machine: his identity went with him.
But this begs the question: what if the machine didn’t destroy the original person? After all, destruction was hardly necessary to the mechanism. It was added in for convenience. So suppose we decided to turn off that feature. Suddenly, there are two people, identical except for their location and present thoughts. One is thinking, “Turns out I was fine,” and the other is thinking “Why didn’t I go anywhere?” Which is real? Or maybe it doesn’t make sense to ask a materialist which person is the “real” one, so let’s make it more personal. Suppose this happened to you; the “you” that clearly exists, the one which thinks thoughts and feels emotions, which is currently reading this. Where would you wind up? Either way, there’s a problem. If “you” stayed behind, that means “you” would have died had the machine been operational, and it was wrong to think “you” would have been preserved. But if you didn’t stay behind, who did? And why didn’t you?
Even if we are not purely physical beings (which, as a Christian, I strongly believe), it’s an interesting question. Maybe even moreso. After all, the argument can go both ways. If I am not solely physical, it stands to reason that a purely physical copy of me would not be enough — it wouldn’t contain the essence of “me”. But on the other hand, why would this current one contain that? Why am I, a spiritual being, intrinsically bound to the collection of particles which were destroyed at Point A, but not to the identical ones at Point B? How fragile am I, that swapping a few particles (in this case all of them) would destroy me? It’s an odd twist. If we are purely physical, what there “is” to us can be represented as data, which is an immaterial substance. If we are not physical, that is impossible: and since no one can explain why we are what we are, we’re physically “stuck.” And then the question becomes, what am I stuck to and why am I stuck to it? It’s commonly known that our cells are destroyed and regenerated: after a lifetime, you and I will be composed of entirely different atoms than we were when we started. So why are “we” still there?
A diagram of the twin paradox, by someone who is not me.
One amazing thing about the universe is its ability to keep these things hidden. Take special relativity. If I were in a spaceship traveling at a speed proportional to the speed of light, Einstein’s theory predicts some crazy effects. From your perspective I am travelling very quickly, and you would experience time normally while I, oddly enough, lived in slow motion. But from my perspective, the rocket ship is in place and you and the earth are moving quickly in the opposite direction: I will experience time normally, and you will be moving in slow motion. This seems to be a huge paradox. Both of us can ‘t be right. But when you work the math out, the results are astounding. Even though we are both experiencing time differently, we have no way of communicating with each other except via information, which travels at the speed of light. And, as it works out, in the exact time it takes me to contact you (or vice versa) the discrepancy will be perfectly resolved. We will never be confronted with a paradox.
Similarly, we suspect that faster-than-light travel would cause us to move backwards through time. Plenty of paradoxes have been conjured up: for instance, what if I went back in time and killed the creator of time machines? Or kept myself from ever being born? In Back to the Future you cutely become transparent and fade out of your family photos — but how on earth could it be resolved in real life? Fortunately, we don’t have to know. Physics says that as we approach the speed of light, we become more and more massive, thus requiring more and more force to speed us up. In order to reach it, we would require an infinite amount of force, and be infinitely massive. In other words, it is impossible.
Back to the teleportation problem: while Quantum Mechanics implies that two particles in the same state are indistinguishable, there is a similar caveat: the act of measuring a particle immediately affects which state it is in. Thanks to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In other words, creating a perfect copy of something is impossible. The moment you’ve looked at it, you’ve altered it. With that in mind, you can’t possibly capture all that there is to know about something, can’t convert it to data, and certainly can’t recreate it. Once again, the universe hides its paradoxes from view.
As I study things like this, I can’t help but develop a spiritual take on it. Not on teleportation in particular — like most interesting philosophical questions, it has little real world application. But this recurring idea of paradoxes which arise from our current understanding of the universe, but come with features which safeguard us from ever needing to resolve them. Of a universe which insists on keeping its mystery. It’s like God saying, “Look at this. You’ll never exhaust it all, but by all means keep looking.” A sobering reminder that for all mankind has discovered, the mysteries only go deeper.
That doesn’t keep us from searching: new discoveries are constantly being made, and more often than not they improve the quality of life. I think learning more about the universe is a worthwhile venture. But if we try to turn science into a search for some ultimate truth, we’re destined to fail. Centuries ago we didn’t know why some objects bounced and others hit against an obstacle with a dull thud. We now know why they do that, but we also know some particles can, on occasion, tunnel through an obstacle altogether. We didn’t used to know that light was comprised of photons: now we know, but also know that these photons set a bizarre “speed limit” on the universe, at which point time and space break down. We didn’t used to know what materials our bodies were made of: now we know, but we are struck with the truth that the materials are simply not enough. We solve one mystery, only to discover a more bizarre one.
With that in mind, I don’t put a lot of importance on this sort of thought experiment. I’m certainly not troubled by issues like the Mind/Body problem: the only people who are, I’d imagine, are those who think they can answer it with scientific rigor. I’ve happily succumbed to the fact that I will never know the answers in my lifetime, nor should I try to. But for what it’s worth, I would never teleport.
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