Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.

Philosophical questions

6 posts / 0 new

Last post

Wed, 2013-11-13 14:01

Baldrick

Philosophical questions

I am new to the forum, and to the game, having only just acquired the hardback, so I thought my first post should be to raise some philosophical questions about the game's ideas. The game says everyone who can afford a cortical stack and a new "morph" to upload their "ego" to is effectively immortal - but are they? Won't the ego in the new morph be just a copy of the original? Consider the following. Say someone tells you they've invented a teleportation device which scans your body and creates a perfect map of every particle it contains, and then sends this data to a similar device a long way away which constructs a new "you" atom by atom in the exact same pattern. Voila, now you can visit relatives on the other side of the world as simply as stepping into a phone booth! Then you ask what happens to the original "you" and the operator tells you that they simply kill the "old" you and chuck it into a waste disposal unit, as presumably you don't want to leave a doppelgänger behind you whenever you visit granny. In the game, if you are "killed", a backup of your "ego" is "resleeved" in a new "morph", but is the new you really "you" or just another person with a duplicate of your mind? I think if the technology ever became available I would be pretty dubious about it, for the philosophical reason described above. I am not at all religious but even I can see this technology, if it ever became available, as problematic. Is it true immortality or just a clever con-trick?

Wed, 2013-11-13 14:22

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Heh. There's been alot of

Heh. There's been alot of discussion on this topic over the years. It's probably the second or third most popular discussion in transhuman philosophical debates (and definitely in the top five...). To boil all of the various points, counter-points, and counter-counter-points, side-notes and corner cases down to a single axis, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head: that is the debate: Is it Me, or am I a Copy? That's the existential crisis at the core of the technology, and it is really something that every person that would engage in use of digital consciousness emulation technology would need to decide for themselves. And, like emotional issues everywhere, changing someone's mind on the topic (especially on the internet) is nearly impossible. :) However, within the context of the Eclipse Phase setting, there is one very salient point to make: nearly all living transhumans have resleeved at least once, so there's a powerful selection factor for people to have decided that, yes, I am Me, not a Copy, thanks to the Fall. People that couldn't deal with the concept of digitizing their consciousness either A) managed to get off Earth physically, B) were already off Earth, or C) died. (with a minority having undergone the process and decided that, yes, they were a copy). So, within the context of the setting of Eclipse Phase, it's mostly a settled topic, because most of the people that disagreed have died off. Also, welcome to the forum! See the sights, meet friendly people, don't feed the trolls. :)

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Wed, 2013-11-13 15:10

Cyber-Dave Cyber-Dave's picture

Yup. You just nailed the

Yup. You just nailed the central question on the head. Welcome to the forums! I have been a silent lurker here for a few years, but recently I have decided to become more vocal. Eclipse Phase is great! Easily my favorite RPG of all time. Hope you enjoy your stay! (Oh, and for the record, I too think that I lean towards a bioconservative point of view. But, a left leaning, slightly libertarian, bioconservative. I think that is the affect of Hayles and Lyotard on my mind. ;) )

Wed, 2013-11-13 22:03

Leodiensian Leodiensian's picture

The bodily transportation

The bodily transportation problem you describe does exist in the Eclipse Phase setting - there are lots of conspiracy theories around what the Pandora Gates are and how they work. One theory is basically, yes, they just make dopplegangers out of your atoms on the other side of the galaxy and who knows if some alien intelligence won't decide to make some changes when it does? But it's not so much a core issue because most people don't identify with their bodies in Eclipse Phase - your morph is equipment. "You" are your ego which is considered entirely separate, essentially some computer data. It's more along the lines of if you think two versions of the same computer program running on different computers are somehow different because of the computer they're on. That's what forking is all about - hitting ctrl-c and ctrl-v on your mind. It basically involves redefining "you" from "this specific instance of my consciousness in this body" to "all possible instances of my consciousness, past, present or future regardless of physical shell". "You" are immortal so long as you're backed up, regardless of what may happen to your body which contains instances of 'you'. There are different stances on forking, resleeving etc within Eclipse Phase of course, such as within the Jovian Republic. There they believe resleeving DOES eradicate the 'soul' unless done in a very specific fashion in order to preserve it during data transfer, by taking thousands of brain slices to copy. On the other hand, most Sapients see forks and uplifts as people with the same moral and ethical standing as 'real people'. The majority of the setting are people who have accepted the technology into their lives without too much existential angst, so it's not really worth going into too much unless this is the topic you want to base a whole campaign around.

Thu, 2013-11-14 03:20

Baldrick

Thanks for all your replies.

Thanks for all your replies. It's certainly thought-provoking stuff, which makes EP such an interesting RPG. To my mind, the problems of any technology, philosophical or otherwise, are at the heart of science-fiction, so plot ideas that explore these issues should certainly have a place in any EP campaign. Religious people describe the body as a mere shell for the soul, which goes on after death, but here at least there is the idea that there is only one "copy" of your soul, and it leaves your body at the moment of death. However, I've also heard non-religious people describe having children as a form of immortality, in that some part of you (half your DNA code) goes on once you are dead, and people such as Richard Dawkins I'm sure would argue that the drive to procreate is really the drive of our selfish genes to copy themselves and so obtain some sort of immortality, whether we realise it or not. The film "Solaris" explores, amongst other things, the idea of the rights of a "copy" of someone. Even if it's just a copy, do we have the right to treat it with any less respect than a true human being. After all, the copy feels just as human as you or I, regardless of what we may think of it. If I create a computer simulation of someone's mind, would turning off the computer be like murder? These are interesting questions which maybe we will only have the answer to when we have built the technology. I am enjoying reading the book and hopefully will be able to play a few sessions soon, although finding players is always a problem. Hopefully there are some online campaigns I can join.

Thu, 2013-11-14 08:16

Lorsa

These sort of philosophical

These sort of philosophical debates will still be highly present in Eclipse Phase. While certain groups and institutions will probably try to sell the majority on the idea that "it's true immortality", individual believes will vary. While the thought that I could meet and talk to an identical copy of myself is somewhat frightening, I would love to see what it would be like. Perhaps roleplaying with my alpha fork so I could experience how I am as a Game Master myself. Or get a better idea how others see me. It's really interesting!

—

Lorsa is a Forum moderator [color=red]Red text is for moderator stuff[/color]