Teleportation, fact or fiction?

[Wolf]

Mahdi, I never said Stage 4 sleep was anything OTHER than what you said. (sigh) I am speaking from a philosophical point of view with regard to conscious awareness, not the scientific state of the mind during sleep. When we are in S4 sleep, our AWARENESS of self, world, time, is all GONE, it is dormant. Would it not, for all practicality, be analagous to S4 sleep? Granted, you are not totally "dead", for we would never wake up, but you must admit that our degree of conscious awarness is gone. We cannot access it, and for the majority of our dreams (excluding lucid dreams) we have no direct conscious control of what we SEE. Our self has no power, and with regard to S4 sleep, when dreams are for the most part gone, are we not "dead", in the conscious sense, when we are dreaming? I am not saying that our minds completely shut down, for things run in the background, BUT THE MACHINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS *IS* SHUT DOWN. Since consciousness is what we equate with our sense of self and awareness, would we not be "Dead" in that sense?

With regard to our CONSCIOUS AWARENESS (your mind's eye, your sense of self, your "spirit" if you're a religious type) we MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD. I did not say we were, or that it was EXACTLAY LIKE DEATH, I said that FOR ALL PRACTICAL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, ir MIGHT AS WELL be death.

Do you understand that? I never said it WAS death, I said that from *your conscious point of view* you *might as well* be dead. I cannot say it any simpler. Your post makes a great deal of scientific sense, and I grant you that, you know what any AP Psychology student in the States knows. However, take yourself away from psychology for a moment, and examine the problem philosophically. Have you studied Sartre and the self? Probably not, because that is what I am referring to.

Also, I am insulted by yoru lack of respect. Because you cannot understand my posts does not mean "my posts make no sense", I have awarded you a great deal of respect in acknowledging the truth of your statements from a scientific point of view, and I am dismayed that you are not looking at mine from a PHILOSOPHICAL point of view.

Are you AWARE in stage 4 sleep? Is your mind whirring, running, ticking, and thinking? Are you CONSCIOUSLY AWARE of yourself, of where you are, of laying down in bed? Of course not, the night would seem to take an eternity to pass if that were true. We are UNCONSCIOUS during this type of sleep, we DO NOT EVEN DREAM. Now, to pick apart your post, Night Terrors are not dreams, and, in fact, most scientists fo NOT know what exactly causes them, although there are many theories. Night Terrors are NOT CONSCIOUSLY TRIGGERED - FOR NO "CONSCIOUS" DREAMS TAKE PLACE WHEN THEY ARE TRIGGERED. More importantly, if there IS a conscious component of Night Terrors, they are FAR FROM the type of consciousness we possess during wakeful awareness. Night Terrors consist of people waking up screaming, and when asked to recall what made them do so, THEY CANNOT. You are incorrect when you say we have memories of Night Terrors -- people cannot answer what made them afraid. I'm looking at my Psych text right in front of me, and that is what it says. They have no memory, so, from a scientific point of view, WE HAVE NO DATA TO MAKE STATEMENTS WITH REGARD TO WHAT "CONSCIOUSLY" CAUSES THEM. You saying that "Obviously need to have some consciousness in order to know you are terrified." is a base assumption, NOT a fact. In fact, when we are frightened in some cases, we do not know WHY we are frightened. Why are children afraid of seemingly harmless places? Why, when a gunshot goes off, we all jump? Instinct, reflex, the KEY COMPONENTS of classical conditioning, can make us "afraid", proving that a conscious DESIRE or ACTION to cause us to be afraid is not necessary. With that in mind, how can you say that there MUST BE a conscious component of something we have NO MEMORY OF, NO REAL DATA CONCERNING IT, when it is based on "fear" which is NOT ALWAYS CONSCIOUS ANYWAYS.

JEEZ! The funny thing is, I was making a joke with regard to cloning millions of humans, and then asked the question if our being transported equated our death from a cosncious point of view, using S4 sleep as an analogy. I can't believe your desire to prove me wrong on something that wasn't even my main point escalated this far.

[Cyborg]

One thing is being conscious, but many scientists think that consciousness is just fake. Like a software running on a computer.

The software depends on the hardware inside, and may be programmed in many different ways, and it displays the results from the last half-a-second data gathering and calculations the hardware has done.

[Wolf]

That's true. For all we know, we have no right to say that conscious is like death because we do not know what death is like. However, if this is so, we have no right to say that sleep is "conscious", for we have no ability to gauge consciousness. Good point, Cyborg.

[Acriku]

I've no doubt that death is just like fainting. Everything goes black, and that's it. When you wake up from fainting, you don't even know what happened, so you wouldn't even know you're dying when everything goes black.

[Cyborg]

Well, if it's true that consciousness is like a software on a computer, the answer is simple...

You can exit the software, which you do during sleep.

But when you die, you also turn the entire computer off. The software doesn't notice that the hardware is turned off, because it isn't running...

So, basically, sleeping and dying will be almost the same...

[Sneakgab]

‘’What is a mind but a conscience from connected neurons in a complicated organ? If those same neurons connected in the same way to make a new brain, giving the same conscience, then how is it a different mind?’’

It is a different mind, a mind perfectly identical to the first, but still a different mind.

eg: We have block A type A, we then create a block EXACTLY similar to block in every way; block B type A. Clearly block B IS not block A though it is no different to block A

Assuming body A type A has sentience, and that sentience is connected to body A type A, if an exact replica of body A type A is constructed, it will have the exact same sentience. However, sentience is a condition or a ''super-natural'' thing as such (well, for arguments sake, it is assumed not to be materialisticly based in the dimensions of existence that we can perceive). So therefore if Body A type A is destroyed along with it's sentience that ''condition'' ceases to continue and thus body A's life ends, despite the fact that an replica of a continuing life and ''condition'' of sentience continues to exist...

Of course, this post contains EXTREME assumptions, but it is for the purpose of discussion regarding the carrying over of sentience during teleportation, not for wether we are actually alive or not.

[Acriku]

Are we to define 'mind' as the illusioned conscience, or the physical brain? If the former, then the illusioned conscience remains the same, built by different neurons, but placed and acting in the same place and manner. If the latter, then you are correct. Of course, I was going off of the former.

[EWS]

How can you be sure that the mind becomes "inactive" when we die?  Have you ever died?  "Studies" may show that the mind infact does not do anything whence the living being is dead, but then that would completly disallow for reincarnation and previous lives(Something that "studies" again proved).

Taking Plato's view on the mind (he tended to call it the soul) he believed that it came from the perfect realm, the Realm of the One, the Realm of the Forms (god bless Plato!) and that it returned when its task had been carried out in the physical realm.  So could this not be what happens, the soul (or mind) returns to the plain of the minds and waits to be assigned to another body.  This is how we could then have reincarnation, or previous life experiences.

The mind may not be part of the body, I believe it is a complete seperate entity that can survive without a body.  This stems to my belief on why I am better at Mathematics then some and why I seem to get a good feeling doing them, my mind was a Mathematician in a previous existence!

[Sneakgab]

''Are we to define 'mind' as the illusioned conscience, or the physical brain? If the former, then the illusioned conscience remains the same, built by different neurons, but placed and acting in the same place and manner. If the latter, then you are correct. Of course, I was going off of the former.''

Well basically, I was going along with the latter. However, this views conscience as a condition or characteristic (by some) because it is considered to be an illusion (by some). I am not so sure that consciense is an illusion in the way you describe it to be. If conscienous is just an illusion created by what is effectively termed as a super computer (in this theory) then why do we not just have programming and date that we react to through by inputting calculations and the like thus giving us knowledge of object locations,e.t.c through calculations (as this theory suggests) and the like? Why do we not only ''experience'' calculations or nothing at all? Instead, we have vision,sound,smell,e.t.c.... A desktop of sorts.... Why apply this sort of text ''colouring'' to our calculations if we just respond through calculations?. Surely this would be illogical. Perhaps our conscienous is an illusion, but I doubt that it is an illusion in the way that it is just a reaction to what is done to us.

[Cyborg]

If conscienous is just an illusion created by what is effectively termed as a super computer (in this theory) then why do we not just have programming and date that we react to through by inputting calculations and the like thus giving us knowledge of object locations,e.t.c through calculations (as this theory suggests) and the like? Why do we not only ''experience'' calculations or nothing at all? Instead, we have vision,sound,smell,e.t.c.... A desktop of sorts.... Why apply this sort of text ''colouring'' to our calculations if we just respond through calculations?. Surely this would be illogical. Perhaps our conscienous is an illusion, but I doubt that it is an illusion in the way that it is just a reaction to what is done to us.

Our brain is not good at doing maths.

It's a very slow calculator.

It uses devices like your ear, eyes, tongue and skin to take samples of the world around you, coordinate your body and keep it out of danger.

All the signals these devices produce are more or less displayed "as is" to you. There's no volume, treble or bass knobs on your ears. You can't tell exactly how hot the surface you touch with yur finger is, but you've stored some reference points, so you should be able to give the hottness of the object you touch with a 5-10°C +- error.

Your brain uses your tongue to see if something is okey to swallow, but it also represents the signals to yourself. As these signals don't come as values, you've probably noticed how hard it is to explain how good the food is. Again, some reference points are used.

Your vision is maybe the most advanced. Your brain takes many pictures each second, and scans them for objects. This is because you should be able to see that deer in front of you when you are hunting, you should be able to see the tree before you crash with it. But it also works very well to read with, recognize relatives, see which food looks safe to eat and so on and so forth. However, you do not get the position of objects in coordinates. You don't need them. You can measure the coordinates yourself, although you're seldom correct.

As you can see, your brain do not need maths to do its work.

It puts its power elsewhere.

[Dude_Doc]

About the soul thing in teleportation. See it this way: when you loose your leg, do you also loose a part of your soul?