Uhm... not for nothing, but there was nothing coincidental about the relation between Roddenberry's communicators from Star Trek and modern cellular phones. The guys who developed cellular telephone technology were inspired by Star Trek, and were intentionally pursuing a similar technology. 

I do think that memory, including short-term memory, is what gives us our feeling of continuity, of me persisting as 'me' thru time.

I will agree that we may feel instinctively/intuitively that there is more to this feeling of continuity than our memories, but intuition/introspection is NOT a reliable source of insight into the actual operation of our brain/mind, as amply demonstrated by many experiments and observations, especially with brain-damaged individuals.

So would i agree to take part in such a process, given a 100% guarantee it would work as claimed? Intellectually, maybe. I assume at worst it would like experiencig a brief period of unconsciousness.

If it resulted in two 'copies' of 'me', I don't see that as much more problematic than suddenly discovering I have an identical twin.

This is of cource leaving aside the comment in the OP that implied that Teleportation as in Sci Fi was actually looking promising for large assemblages of atoms... WHich I understand is not really relevant to the actual speculation about consciousness and identity. (Sorry, Brian...)

EDIT: TO clarify, I am way unconvinced that Teloportation is looking remotely plausible at the moment, as implied in the OP, so it may have been better to not include that comment, but concentrate on the implications of either being duplicated or destroyed and later recreated with all your constituent elements in the exact same location and energy state.

Reference to the actual possibility of a Transporter seems to have been a distraction to some. 

Well, let me put it this way, Bob...

I have only my life. When I die, any chance for improvement goes away. Any hopes and dreams I have are lost to me. Heck, *I* am lost to me.

We're postulating about a process that destroys me. Its end result is an individual who, to all external appearances, and presumably his own internal awareness, is me. He has all my memories. He knows everything I know. So far as you, or Brian, or anyone else could ever tell, it's me.

However, at the same time, there is no way to know that it's not just another organic computer, with the same OS and peripherals, that's had a copy of my stored data uploaded. It thinks its me. It doesn't know better. It has no way to know better. Just like if I replace a lightbulb, externally, nobody who didn't see/experience the burnout would ever know it's not the same bulb. And yes, I know that analogy is also somewhat flawed, but it's an attempt at expressing a concept that I don't know if I'm otherwise getting across.

But I, the awareness that I currently have, the consciousness that the copy was made from, I am either dead, or I'm not, and here's the problem:

If I'm dead, there is no way to know, because there's a copy that thinks it's me, that everyone else thinks is me.  There's no way to ever ascertain whether the individual going into one end comes out the other, or if the machine is killing people and producing copies, ie: if the original mind continues, or if it experiences death and cessation while everyone else interacts with a brand new mind with the same data tables.

From the outside, there's no difference. From the perspective of someone else, the potential 'new person' is, in every measurable way, the old person. However, from my perspective, it's like playing russian roulette with an unknown number of bullets in the cylinder, and it's not worth the risk.

Oh, believe me, I have no problem with the mental exercizes involved in trying to get our heads around this stuff.

Something to consider, though, is even when we sleep, during the periods when we're not aware of being aware, we're still processing outside information. That's why sirens wake us up, or a touch, or the dog sitting on our face (heh), even if we're not in REMsleep at the time.

We're always processing input... except when we're dead. 

Hi Brian37 it's a quantum physics fetish

The manipulation of individual atoms is not some impossible dream it is happening today

The manipulation of individual atoms has opened up a new world of possibilities 

Although there is a difference between what is technically possible in the future and what is actually possible in the future

The major problems in transporting somebody from here to mars, are computers are not powerful or fast enough, although quantum computers will be, communicating that much information via radio transmissions would make it virtually impossible, but one of the spinoff technologies of transporter research is unlimited bandwidth and instantaneous transmission over any distance, ie sending information via quantum entanglement has been achieved, which means there are two major problems the manipulation of atoms on such a large-scale at such speed, and storage of such a vast quantity of information,

? are the last two problems unachievable ever ? is this some impossible science-fiction dream, I don't know myself but I'm certainly not brave enough to call them impossible

100% safe now that's impossible

Another fetish of mine psychology, would I do it ? would other people do it, although nowadays virtually nobody would hesitate at traveling faster than sound, which was considered impossible by many as the technology was emerging, the idea of who you are is not questioned by traveling via this method

The original question is not so much about emerging technologies and the manipulation of atoms it's a psychological question  

Who are you ? are you just a sequence of atoms, or do you believe you are something more ? 

The hypothetical transporter is just a something for your mind to focus on, whether it is possible or not was not part of the question

Brian37's objections aside, this all assumes that teleportation is a disassembly/reassembly process.  MY teleporter will induce the body into a state that forces a giant quantum tunneling event. No copy, just a transition to another place in space time.

The difference may be that in order to dissassemble and reassemble there must be a discontinuity. The copy can have no memories of any time passed during the discontinuity. And, the reconstruction is not how would be at ther time of reconstruction, but rather how you were at the deconstruction.  This raises the interesting possibility of deconstructing something, carrying some device on a space ship to a distant star and reconstucting the item, unchanged, light years away.

Another intersesting possibility is the potential of a time lag between scanning the head and the feet. Then the reconstructed person would arrive at his destination with some parts of his body older than other parts. If you always scan from head to foot, then repeated scans would increase this differential.

Quantum tunneling avoids all these side affects. 

Again, there is still no evedence that we can move an object of any sugnificant size, much less an entire human, in any mannor of that speed. I higly suspect and lean toward this being just another "tribble" fantacy that will not come to fruition.

Will speed of moving objects and information increase? YES. Do we know our limits as far as the future?, no. Should we push oursleves to see where we can go? Yes.

But I do get a lip twitch when people postulate alchemy and use unrelated science to justify what they see on Star Trec.

I am a strident skeptic and as you can see Wave, it is aimed at all claims, not just those of theists. So never take what I say personally. I merely call em as I see em. Now roll up your newspaper and rapp me on the nose.

"Teleportation" as dipicted on Star Trec is an absurdity, copy or not. It is pure speculation and wishfull thinking. That is my take on it anyway.

I'd say no, because if I did it, my consciousness would be destroyed, but even if it's merely copied somewhere else, it just won't be me.

Gotta love Quantum weirdness. 

It's a thought experiment. 

lol, o rly?

I was googling like M-A-D to get some info on tickets off this rock

I know this topic isnt exclusivly a religious one, however by conducting this experiment you can touch on a vital part of how people convince themselves that there is a god-given soul.

Because of simple ignorance we get to the point of imagining the transit to mars and suddenly, regardless of how well your body is put back together, you realise that you are already dead as soon as your original body is destroyed in this example, and we simply dont know if conscience is simply the sum of parts or more than.

Its fair to say that anyone thinking this thru would realise that the experiment is too far beyond our understanding to be more than a bit of fun.

HOWEVER, due to a general lack of understanding, one type of person would, and probably has at somepoint led people to this empass, and used it to prove that there is more to existance than just the physical form, and thru lack of any other explanation use that as proof that there is a non-tangable, god given soul.

People are so easily tricked and confused, but the best way to do that is by abusing concepts that already exits in the mind, things like fear and self-perception.

The brain is clever no doubt, weve got a working understanding of the mechanics of memory and im sure that if we didnt need a conscience to use our memory then thie mode of transport would be perfect. BUT im not sure its provable (at this time) that our self perception could be as easily restored as the memories, simply because its FAR more complicated than memory it would seem to me.

Tho i agree it SHOULD be possible, but you just cant be sure, so thats the gap in the argument that some would use to confuse people.

The religious crap in my post is simply a thought in the context of the forum.

As far as the practicality of the teleportation idea is concerned, i cant see it happening... I wouldnt know where to start with the stats but im sure, even if it were practically possible, the logistics of such a task as described, would be far more complex and involved than all the other things that everyone have done, ever, and then some

Sure, we don't have a good theory yet on just what gives rise to consciousness, self-awareness, etc.

But we DO have plenty of evidence that it is intimately connected with the states of the brain, that even after major breaks in normal brain processing from various causes, physical trauma, prolonged deep coma, etc, consciousness can fire up again, and a sense of self and continuity can re-establish in the person's mind. It is probably not purely conscious memory, but other accumulated, internalised, learned responses and reactions, which are also stored in the pattern of neural connections, that contribute to the feeling.

A conscious being (heck, even a relatively non-self-aware creature) is more than 'just' the constituent atoms, of course. A functioning computer, or any other complex structure or mechanism, is not the same thing as a pile of components that could be assembled into a copy of it. It is the structure, the ongoing interlinked processes which are only possible in the assembled version, which is clearly more than the sum of its parts. Even water has properties than cannot be ascribed to the oxygen and hydrogen gasses of which it is constituted.

So I see no reason whatever that consciousness continuity requires some magic essence to be passed on to the 'new' physically re-assembled brain, just a sufficiently accurate copy of its physical state.

Now whether an individual going through a transporter and thinking about the implications of the effective destruction of his physical self and subsequent re-activation in a physical copy would have difficulty coming to terms with the experience and not find it traumatic - that's another question....

And if the process left an intact original at the starting point, you would now have an identical twin, with shared experience/memories up to the moment of transportation, with teir own separate consciousness, which would proceed to diverge from that of the twin on Mars. Again, the only 'problem' would be the potential psycholgical one of the individual's reaction to thinking about what the situation.

I would not do it.  The person created would be an exact duplicate of you, but it would not actually be you.  There would be no continuity of consciousness in my opinion.  To see that this is so, we can imagine what it would be like to create a perfect duplicate of someone without destroying the original.  The original and the duplicate would be identical individuals, but they would nonetheless be completely separate.  The original would not be the duplicate, nor would the duplicate be the original.  Anything the duplicate experiences from that point on, for instance, would not automatically be experienced by the original.

I should point out that I don't believe in a soul or spirit, but I do believe in a flow of consciousness that connects all of the different versions of ourselves that exist throughout the moments of our lives.  By creating a duplicate of yourself, you are creating a new flow of consciousness identical to the original, but nonetheless separate.

This brings to mind another thought experiment. Let's say that all your memories are implanted into another person and all their memories are implanted into you. Are you now 'you' with their memories and vice versa, or are you 'them', and they 'you', with a new processing unit? It seems you would no longer have a claim to being 'you' as you would have no continuity of consciousness on which to base your 'youness'. But you wouldn't be them, even though you would have a continuity upon which to base your 'theirness', because we your memories occupy different physical matter.

If this could be done, and one of the two people was going to be tortured immediately after the memory transfer, would you rather they torture the entity with your memories or the entity with your brain?

How about an even more problematic example: we swap HALF the memories between two people. I guess we get two very confused individuals. Maybe in the extreme, depending on the set of memories swapped, we get split personalities, two 'selfs' appearing to inhabit each body.

Note that all of these consequences do actually arise, not due to memory swap of course, but for other more mundane reasons.  If you read about the range of brain/mind pathologies, resulting from injury, tumours, split-brain operations, and so on, Classic ideas of 'self' become severely challenged.

What if we got two people to agree to this, and then used hypnosis to make them think we'd swapped their memories...