You raise some interesting points, but I think there's another way of
looking at it. I tend to think of consciousness as an instantaneous
phenomenon: In every instant we are alive, and in every instant we die and
are then reborn. It's only memory that generates the illusion of
continuity - in every resurrection we inherit the memory of an infinite
number of previous fleeting lifetimes, from which we construct
subjectively continuous experience.
Take, for example, Star Trek style transporter rays. You take me apart, an
atom at a time, throw the remnants away and reconstruct a copy at a
distance. In at least an intuitive sense, the copy 'isn't me.' You've
murdered me, albeit in a peculiarly baroque way. The fact that there's
someone else walking around who thinks he's me is, from my oblivious
perspective, neither here nor there. I'm dead - just as dead as if you'd
shot me or cut off my head. For the copy, of course, the experience is of
course one of displacement. The copy would quite happily be transported
again, since he's already done it and knows it's safe.
What if, in every instant of our lives, we are the copy? I have a
subjective experience for every letter I type - I'm a living qualia soaked
thing for a single quantum of time - but I'm dead before I lift my finger
off the key and someone else, with all my state and memories, finishes the
word. He remembers the person who started the sentence, he remembers him
so well that he thinks it was himself, but, really, he isn't. That person
died.
-matt, having a much harder time expressing himself than usual.
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