Consciousness & Sci-Fi Transportation Technology

I like to use science fiction as a good way to try to reimagine thorny philosophical questions. A good place to me to look at questions of whether there is a non-material part of us—like a soul, a mind, a consciousness—is in the possibility of science fiction teleportation devices.

If we assume that all we are is a body, then something like the transporter from Star Trek is unproblematic. Let's assume that we have a soul that's some sort of free floating thing separated from the body that is liberated after death. In the Star Trek transporter, your body is transformed into pure energy, zapped down to the planet's surface and is reconstituted as an identical material form. Does your soul float along through space and jump into the reconstituted body? Does the reconstituted body even have a soul? Does it acquire a new soul?

We might think it possible that since the same matter is used all the way through—being translated in energy, zapped down, then reconstituted—that the soul might be towed along.

Let's try an even harder case. Let's imagine that transportation works something like in The Fly: the original matter is destroyed, the information to reconstitute the matter is transmitted through electrical signals, and then a separate machine creates an identical copy. Is the copy going to somehow acquire the same soul?

I think the movie that best raises this point is the film very of The Prestige. In The Prestige, there is a machine that both transports and replicates the subject. When the subject steps into the machine, a second version of him is created in a different place. So, what happens to his soul? Is it duplicated, bifurcated, split? Let's look at it from his perspective. He steps into the machine, looking out at the audience; the machine warms up and there is a flash. Now, what does he see after the flash? Is he 1) still looking at the audience as the trap door opens below his feet? Is he 2) looking out over the audience from the balcony? Is he 3) seeing both simultaneously? Or is he 4) seeing nothing because his soul has blinked out of existence? I think the movie suggests it is 1), which is why the ending is so poignant. This also seems like the more plausible scenario given the situation.

To return to Star Trek, we might imagine what it would be like from someone using a transporter. I step into the transporter, looking out the room as someone prepares to transport me down to the planet's surface. Is it a) just a blink and now I'm looking out over some strange alien planet? Or is it b) the room disappears and then there is nothing, since I've blinked out of existence; meanwhile, simultaneously, a new man has been generated on the planet's surface, a new man physically identical to me, who bears all my memories, all my self-identity and who is in every sense convinced he is me. This new man remembers being up on the spaceship and everything that happened to me before and is convinced that he has done and experienced everything I have, even though he was just newly created only two seconds ago. This presents a problem since you can't decide whether it was scenario a or b that happened just by asking him.

If we think of the transfer in any of the cases when we are merely recreating the matter, and not reusing the same matter, then it is difficult to imagine the soul being conserved. It seems like the only reason to destroy the original is to preserve the illusion that the person hasn't simply been copied and that the copy is an entirely different person. Destroying the original before the copy is made allows us to think that it is merely the same person. But just like in the case of The Prestige, where there is a lag between the creation of the copy and the destruction of the original, the consciousness doesn't seem like it would find its way to the copy.

This is all to say, that if we develop technology like the above, then it will present real tests to help us better understand the nature of consciousness. And, in addition, it's possible because your consciousness or mind or soul cannot be transported with your body, these technologies will be things that most of us would prefer not to try.