You still haven't said how you define "original" and "copy" though. Is it really just one having existed for longer than the other? But if the one is identical to the other, then the difference between them is what is just semantics.
It is. And it is an important difference. Our sense of the self is inextricably linked to time. "Awareness" is a function of the experience of time passing and thus self-awareness can not be separated from time.
Yes I agree, but you can't perceive the passage of time that you don't exist in. If a being exists for a time, then gets copied, both still have the perception of time having passed.
Yeah but as I said elsewhere in our other back and forth in this thread, as soon as that being gains awareness again they will zoom out to ask questions about their "self" from the third party perspective. At this point they will gain awareness of whether a third party would perceive them as the original or as a replica.
But that perception is academic unless there's some concrete difference that separates the two beings at the exact moment of replication. And not even then, really. If I woke up tomorrow with gills, my first thought on regaining conciousness wouldn't be "oh I must be a copy because I know I don't have gills," it would be "oh I guess I have gills now glub glub I'm choking."
Point being, the two might see themselves as different beings as they accumulated different experiences, but neither loses the claim to call themselves "original." And that in turn just points out ephemeral the idea of originality is.
Given my own experience of dysphoria and its effects on the sense of self I'm not convinced that the brain would accept it so simply and without longterm repercussions. But I usually hate bringing in anecdotal things like that into discussions like this because it feels like cheating.
You still haven't said how you define "original" and "copy" though. Is it really just one having existed for longer than the other? But if the one is identical to the other, then the difference between them is what is just semantics.
It is. And it is an important difference. Our sense of the self is inextricably linked to time. "Awareness" is a function of the experience of time passing and thus self-awareness can not be separated from time.
Yes I agree, but you can't perceive the passage of time that you don't exist in. If a being exists for a time, then gets copied, both still have the perception of time having passed.
Yeah but as I said elsewhere in our other back and forth in this thread, as soon as that being gains awareness again they will zoom out to ask questions about their "self" from the third party perspective. At this point they will gain awareness of whether a third party would perceive them as the original or as a replica.
But that perception is academic unless there's some concrete difference that separates the two beings at the exact moment of replication. And not even then, really. If I woke up tomorrow with gills, my first thought on regaining conciousness wouldn't be "oh I must be a copy because I know I don't have gills," it would be "oh I guess I have gills now glub glub I'm choking."
Point being, the two might see themselves as different beings as they accumulated different experiences, but neither loses the claim to call themselves "original." And that in turn just points out ephemeral the idea of originality is.
Given my own experience of dysphoria and its effects on the sense of self I'm not convinced that the brain would accept it so simply and without longterm repercussions. But I usually hate bringing in anecdotal things like that into discussions like this because it feels like cheating.