As a disclaimer, I did end up working on this several hours after I usually call it quits on homework for night. My brain starts to rapidly lose functionality after nine or ten o'clock where my studies are concerned, but hopefully I come across as at least kind of intelligent.
Then, as another side note, I can't seem to change the formatting here... I've tried putting spaces between my paragraphs and the updating the post, but it resets itself back to the way it is now... so I apologize if it seems crowded or hard to read. I did my best to fix it, and my best wasn't good enough.
Anyway, enjoy!
Here is the set up given in my assignment...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
General Introduction (read this first)
It’s the year 2025. The Earth is under attack by an alien race
known as the Vogons, who wish to destroy Earth to make way for an Interstellar
Super Highway. You have been chosen as part of a contingent that will carry on
the human race by traveling to another solar system which contains an
earth-like planet called Krypton, a planet that by all indications is capable
of sustaining human life. You will have
to make three major decisions along the way.
At each decision point you will be presented with two choices, and each time you should choose the option that gives YOU, individually, the best chance of survival. By this I mean that you should choose the option in which you are least likely to die (You’re not worried about survival here in the sense of life after death. You want to make decisions that will keep you alive). Also, you should not take quality of life into consideration here—just make the choice that is most likely to keep you alive, no matter how poor your quality of life may be. You will then describe why you made that choice. Each of these decisions confronts you with a major question about personal identity and what it means for you as a person to survive. So, think carefully about each of your decisions.
Scenario #1: Spaceship or Teletransporter?
The
first decision concerns how you will travel to Krypton. There are two possible methods of
transport. First, scientists have
constructed an incredible spaceship similar to the Space Shuttle (but much
bigger) that will carry up to 100 people comfortably to Krypton, with plenty of
oxygen, water, food, opportunity for exercise, entertainment, etc. (think of
the Axiom, the spaceship in the movie Wall-E).
The trip will take approximately three
years. Due to the great length of the
trip, there are many dangers. Lots of
things could go wrong (oxygen tanks could rupture, you could be hit by
interstellar debris, some illness could befall you for which you have no cure,
etc.). The best scientific minds on
Earth estimate that you would have about a 70% chance of surviving the trip to
Krypton via spaceship.
The
second option is a recent technological development called teletransportation. Here’s how it works (pay attention to how it works—it may be different than what you’ve
heard before about teletransportation, say, from Star Trek). The
teletransporter performs a complete scan of your body, atom for atom, molecule
for molecule, to capture all the physical information about you. This scan actually destroys all the molecules
of your body while simultaneously shooting a beam of energy carrying all the information about the physical
structure of your body to the planet Krypton.
The beam of energy arrives on Krypton, where the energy causes existing
molecules on Krypton to be arranged exactly like your body on earth (it’s like
being “raised from the dust of Krypton”).
The whole process (from the beginning of the scan to the assembling of
molecules on Krypton) is virtually instantaneous (let’s just ignore limitations
imposed by the speed of light, etc. It’s
my example after all!).
Teletransportation
has been tried on human beings on earth thousands of times. After some initial problems (disintegrations,
people emerging with arms on the top of their heads, etc.), the process is now
virtually perfect. For the last ten
years covering thousands of cases, in every case the person emerging from the
transportation process is an exact physical match to the person entering the
transporter. Furthermore, the person that emerges from transportation appears
to be an exact psychological match. This
means she has all the same memories, beliefs, hopes, personality, etc. as the
person who entered the teletransporter.
The person emerging describes the experience as such. “I have a memory
of stepping into the transporter, I saw a bright flash of light before me and
then the next thing I knew I was in a completely new place.” Also, friends and loved ones of the
post-transport individual always report nothing out of the ordinary about the
subject upon completion of the process – the person recognizes her friends and
family and has completely normal conversations with them. Friends of the patient who did not know she
had undergone transportation are unable to tell that it has ever taken place. The post-transport person reports having all
the same beliefs, desires, hopes, and dreams as before transportation. All the top minds working on transportation
believe that transportation to Krypton will be just as successful as
transportation on earth (there is absolutely no reason to think it would not
be).
What will you do? The Ship or the
Teletransporter? Why?
Scenario #2: Vaccine or Silicon
Replacement
So
let’s assume you’ve made it to Krypton.
At first it’s not so bad. The
planet is very much like earth, though without pollution, deforestation,
reality TV, and other ugly things mankind has done to earth. In a way you feel as if you are in a new
“Garden of Eden.” But after a few weeks
you discover that life on Krypton is not a bed of roses! Many of your party start
exhibiting a marked decrease in powers. Eventually this malaise affects all of
you. Your speed, your strength, and even
your mental powers of memory, reasoning, etc. are being sapped. Your group begins to refer to this as the
“reverse Superman” effect. Some of you
are starting to be rather forgetful – forgetting other people’s names, even
forgetting some basic things about your past.
The scientists among you determine that Krypton’s sun has an extremely
detrimental effect on all carbon-based life forms – it causes all carbon
molecules to slowly decay. Left
untreated, this condition, over a period of just a couple of years, will lead
to the complete wasting away of your bodies, your minds, and eventually
death. Your science team has not lost
all hope forever—they surmise there are two things that might be done to
reverse this condition.
First,
they have developed a vaccine that might
reverse the effects of Krypton’s sun. If
it works, it will immediately stop the decay process and you will gradually be
restored to complete health. However, they
are not overly optimistic about the vaccine’s working on each person. Whether
the vaccine will work in you depends upon myriad aspects of your genetic
make-up; however, the scientists do not have the ability to test your genetic
makeup and predict whether the drug will work.
The general thinking is that the vaccine will work in around 50% of
those who take it.
Your
other option is much more radical, and this is to undergo silicon replacement
of all your body parts. Silicon (not
silicone—that is something completely different!) is an element similar to carbon that behaves
very much like carbon, and could easily serve as a basis for biological life. Over
a period of one month, you will undergo a series of four surgeries in which
different parts of your carbon-based brain will be replaced by a silicon
part. Then, after your last surgery,
your entire brain will be transplanted into an artificial silicon body, which
will be constructed to look very much like you and will be functionally
equivalent to a human body (i.e., capable of pretty much everything a human
body is capable of). As with
transportation, this silicon replacement process has been tried on humans
before. Each time, upon waking from each
of the four brain surgeries, the subject reports having all the same beliefs
and memories she had before surgery, and interacts the same with family and
friends. And the same is true of the
subject whose brain is transplanted into a silicon body.
You
can only choose one of the options.
Taking the vaccine and waiting to see whether it will work eliminates
the possibility of doing the silicon replacements (you’ll die too soon).
What will you do? Why?
Scenario #3: Your mind wiped clean?
So let’s suppose
you’ve made it to Krypton and survived the “Reverse Superman Effect”. Things are fine and dandy until you discover
that, despite what you previously believed, there are other people on Krypton. And human beings at that—who speak English
(albeit with some kind of accent to indicate they are the bad guys)! One day you find your camp suddenly
surrounded on all sides by thousands of these Kryptonians. It turns out they
are not hostile and wish you no harm; they just want to “assimilate you” to
their society. What this means is the
following—you will be given a drug that puts you to sleep, wipes your mind
clean, and “installs” new memories, beliefs, desires, and the like. After taking the drug, your body will be
perfectly healthy and unaffected, but the person that wakes up will have no
memory of earth or of any of the hopes, beliefs, desires, likes, dislikes,
etc., she had before the drug was taken.
Rather, the person who awakes will believe she is a Kryptonian, born and
raised on Krypton, and have myriad “memories” of her life on Krypton, along
with a very different personality, hopes, and desires.
But the Kryptonians
are a rather fair-minded lot. They don’t
want to force anyone to take the drug. They
inform you that you can, if you wish, choose to be banished to the Kryptonian
desert. If you make this choice, your mental
life will be left entirely intact, but you’ll be forced to traverse the
desert. The Krypotonians tell you that on
the other side of the desert, which extends for hundreds of miles, is a virtual
paradise where you will be able to live happily. However, the Kryptonians tell you that you
have at best a 10% chance of making it across the desert without dying.
What will you do?
The drug or the desert? Why?
Final Summary Section
You have made three decisions
about personal identity. I want you to
evaluate your own decisions. Did any of
your decisions change as you moved along?
In other words, did thinking about a later decision make you change a
former decision? Why was this?
Do you believe all of your
decisions are consistent? In other
words, have you used consistent criteria in making your decisions? Can you identify what criteria you have used?
Finally, can you give a one
or two sentence summary of what YOU actually are? What is absolutely essential to you? Is it your body, your mind, both, something
else? Do your decisions make it clear to
you?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And here is my response...
Part I: How to Reach Krypton
Based on the description of the Teletransporter
(Henceforth called the TT), the likelihood of it doing what it is supposed to
is almost 100%. Which means the probability of success for the TT is 30%
greater than it is for the Axiom equivalent. As a result, if the TT performs
the goal of keeping me alive properly, then it is the logical choice as my
means of transportation. The question then, of course, is whether or not I will
survive using the TT. Since we are assuming the TT has an almost 100% chance of
success the question of survival then comes down to whether or not it is
actually me that would end up on Krypton or if I would cease to exist. Since
the TT apparently sends the information about my physical form to Krypton, but
not necessarily the actual atoms that make up my body, the physical form that
would end up on Krypton with my likeness and conscience would be made up of entirely
different material substance than that which currently makes up my body.
However, by all accounts, it seems like the mind or
conscience operating the new physical form (identical to the one I currently
have but made up of entirely different stuff) would be also identical to my
own. So then the question becomes one of whether or not it is my physical form
that is the primary foundation of my “self” or my mind, memories, and
conscience. Honestly, it is more or less the Rodd, Maud, and Todd or Sili-Me
question from the very beginning of class. What causes me to be myself, and
what has to be changed to make me no longer exist?
If I were to lose a limb, or two, or three, or even four,
I would still be considered the same person I am now… more or less. True, my
appearance and capacity to accomplish certain tasks would be diminished, but my
family and my friends would still consider me to be me. Similarly, my doctors
would still expect payment from me as if I were the same person they removed
tainted limbs from, and the law would still consider me to by myself such that
I wouldn’t have to re-register to vote or re-sign up for the draft (ignoring
the fact that I would be incapable of serving in the military). If somehow I managed to survive losing almost
my entire body while maintain my intelligence, sense of self, ability to
communicate with others, I would still be considered to be me. True, we are
faced with the fact that using the TT would completely destroy my entire prior
physical form and if my entire physical form were destroyed by some other means
without my conscience being transported to another body, we would consider me
to be dead and gone, but my point is that a very substantial portion of my
physical form could be lost or altered without most people considering my
“self” to be gone.
Additionally, I can’t think of another possible
measureable foundation for my “self” than my body or my mind. As a result, I
feel that I must conclude that my “self” is based not on my body but on my
conscience, my mind, and my memories. If not completely, at least to a greater
extent than it is based on my body. Because of this, my primary goal in
attempting to survive (assuming that survival is maintaining my “self”) should
be not to maintain my body but my mind. If I use the TT there is a 100% chance
that my body as it is will be destroyed and only a 30% chance of the same
happening if I take the Axiom equivalent. However, my mind seems to have a near
100% chance of survival if I use the TT and only a 70% chance if I take the
Axiom. Consequently, I feel that I should use the TT over the transport.
Part II: The Reverse Superman Effect
For this portion we are faced with the fact that our
mind, conscience, and memories, which we identified in the last portion as being
the most likely foundation for the “self” we are trying to keep alive, is
actively deteriorating. In order to combat this we have two potential options
with some similarities to the options we had for getting to Krypton in the
first place. One option has a chance of keeping us alive more or less the same
as we are now while the other also has a chance of keeping us alive but at the
cost of our entire body being destroyed and recreated. The two most notable
differences are that the percentage chance of success for the less extreme
option has dropped from 70% to 50%, and the method of destroying and rebuilding
my body is actually more extreme than before because it will result in my body
actually being made up of a different kind of substance. In the previous
example, or reformed body was explained to be identical to our current one in
that all of the building blocks and materials forming it were of exactly the
same type as original. In this example, the Silicon treatment would change the
makeup of my body into something very different in some ways from its current
state.
Just as with the first problem, if the surgery has the
inexplicitly assumed success rate of 100% that the problem indicates it does
and manages to keep my “self” alive, it is the obvious choice because it would
have 100% chance of success as opposed to the 50% chance of success that the
other method has. The drop in probability of success for the less radical
treatment actually doesn’t change the outcome of the problem at all, because I am
still faced with a 0% percent chance of survival for one option and a more than
0% chance of survival for the other if what matters in keeping my “self” alive
is keeping my body alive, and a 100% chance of success for one option and a
less than 100% chance of success for the other if it is my mind that matters.
Against, just as before, the answer seems obvious if we
can distinguish between whether my mind or body is the primary thing we want to
keep alive. Even though the silicon surgery will more dramatically change my
body than when I used the TT, if my body is not what my “self” is based on,
that fact shouldn’t be a determinant in my decision making. Going back to the
loss of body parts example I gave previously, if I had the majority of my body
replaced with artificial limbs, but continued to be the same person mentally
and emotionally somehow, friends, family, legal entities, and my medical
personal would all consider me to be the same person. As a result, I am led
once again to conclude that transforming my body into a different kind of
substance would not actually destroy my “self” and for the same reasons that I
chose to use the TT as opposed to taking the transport, I would chose the
surgery over the antidote.
Part III: The Kryptonian Ultimatum
In Part III we are faced with a scenario very different
from the previous two in some notable ways. First, the option with a 100%
chance of success is not one that destroys our body but maintains our mind, but
rather one that maintains our body and destroys our mind complete. Likewise,
the option with a specified non-100% chance of successes is our only option for
keeping our conscience completely intact (assuming we do not go mad in the
dessert).
I would like to propose once again that the difference in
percentages does not actually have a notable impact on my decision making. The
question will still come down to what part of our “self” is it that we are most
ardently trying to keep alive, and if we can answer that question our answer
will be obvious. Why? Because once again, we will either be faced with one
option that either gives a 100% chance of survival or a 0% chance of survival.
Interestingly enough, my body isn’t necessarily
specifically at risk in this situation. True, my body will be dead if I die in
the dessert, but so will my mind and everything else about me as well.
So, in essence, I still only have to return to my
original reasoning that led me to believe that my mind, memories, and
conscience are what I want to maintain above else, to determine that I should
go through the dessert. True, this time I don’t actually have a 100% chance of
success if I go with the option that maintains my mind as I did before, but the
10% chance I do have is significantly better than the 0% chance of keeping my
mind if I were to take the drug being offered.
There is something worth considering though, that isn’t
specifically addressed within the question. While the set up for the question
seems to give the impression that there is no way that I could ever regain the
memories, mind, and conscience that I had before taking the drug, if there was
in fact a chance somehow of returning to the same mental, and emotional state
prior to taking the drug, I would have to reconsider my decision based on how
likely that return would be and if at that time I would have a greater chance
of getting across the dessert. Since there doesn’t seem to be a chance of
regaining my memories ever however, I would have to go with the attempting to
cross the dessert.
Also, it may be worthwhile to note that my above average
intellect, physical prowess, and all around superiority to others would likely
give me more than a 10% chance of success in crossing the dessert.
Part IV: Summery of Thoughts
I feel fairly confident that I remained consistent and
reasonable in my rationale throughout the exercise even if my reasons and
perception of things was faulty. Starting with the first scenario I established
what I felt were the key criteria and applied them to all three situations
despite changes in what was going on.
The main problem with the reasoning I applied, as I see
it, is that I don’t actually think my “self” is based solely on my mind.
Rather, I do believe that humans have a soul that is separate from their
memories and consciences and that would continue to exist even in light of
memory loss, total physical destruction, or a coma. The problem with trying to
apply that belief to this argument is that I cannot identify a way of testing
whether or not the soul would remain after any of the potential processes. I
cannot evaluate or confidently stipulate about the location of the soul after a
TT has been used, or after a silicon surgery has been performed, because I
cannot confidently identify what the exact characteristics of the soul are and
how it reveals itself. One, because I don’t think I’ve seen what a living
person absent a soul looks like, and two because the processes presented in our
scenarios aren’t not real and we have no way of extensively examining a product
of such a situation.
As a result, I was going off of the assumption that our
souls have something to do with our personalities, the way we think and reason,
and what kind of a person we are. If that is true, than the soul is actually
linked to the mind even if they are separate things, and because I do believe
that is the case, I went with the options that I felt were most likely to keep
the mind intact in hopes that the soul would follow the mind over the body.
It was a little bit more difficult to come up with a
solution around the soul in the last scenario, because I believe that a person
retains their soul even when they enter into a comma or suffer amnesia and the
effects of the drug seem somewhat comparable to something like that. However,
since, as I already stated, I have no way of evaluating whether or not the soul
is present on its own, and since I chose to use the presence of the mind,
memories, and conscience as my standard for the other two options, I felt it
was necessary to use the same standard for the last scenario. While I didn’t
feel satisfied in my reasoning, I couldn’t come up with a better method, and so
used the option that seemed the best given what I felt I had to work with.
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