On the Philosophical Question of Telepod Transport

Topic: Suppose that you were offered the opportunity to make use of a device marketed as a teletransporter. This device consists of two pods, connected by a wire and a tube. When a person enters one of the pods (which the inventor calls the "departure pod") the pod scans the particles in that pod, creating a perfect map of their position relative to each other. In creating this map, the pod disassembles the living body and then sends the individual atoms through the tube at the speed of 2.9x108 meters per second to the other pod (which the inventor calls the "arrival pod"). At the same time, the map of the relation between the particles is transmitted to the "arrival pod" by way of the wire. Once the matter and the map arrive at the "arrival pod", the device returns the particles to their original relative positions using the map. Suppose as well that this machine is reliable - tables, chairs, viruses, rhesus monkeys, and living human beings can be placed in the "departure pod" and indistinguishable items, composed of the same matter, appear in the "arrival pod" just a moment later. Would you agree to step into the "departure pod" of this device?

In answering this question, be sure to explain (a) why one might be inclined to view this device as offering a viable alternative to planes, trains, and automobiles, and (b) why one might be inclined to view it as means of committing suicide.

While at first I might feel uneasy about it, I would on principle not object to using the teletransporter, and indeed, once accustomed to its use, I imagine it would be found to be quite convenient.

The teletransporter is certainly a viable alternative to currently conventional means of transportation (though as a traveler I do enjoy relishing the experience of passing through the land being traveled, hence my general preference for automobiles or trains for long trips). The teletransporter has precisely the same function as have conventional vehicles: to move people from one place to another. This the teletransporter does just as effectively, and indeed much, much more quickly than even a airplane.

In fact, the only difference between the teletransporter and conventional vehicles is that using the teletransporter involves the disassembly of one's material constituents, whereas a car or a train or even just walking involve simply moving those constituents while maintaining their relationship to one another throughout the whole process. It is no doubt this disassembly which might discourage one from using the teletransporter, despite its promise of flawless reassembly. Aside from this difference, however, the transporter does nothing we are not already accustomed to in traveling: we put ourselves inside the vehicle, and it moves us, maintaining the relative positions of our physical constituents.

Before proceeding, it should be noted that any disconcertion with using the teletransporter which is based on material dualism - that, for example, one's soul or Cartesian mind might be separated from one's body - really cannot be dealt with here, since immaterial stuff cannot be accounted for in the process of teleportation. Therefore, a reserved physicalism shall be assumed henceforth.

The difference presented by the prospect of disassembly is what might disincline one to use the teletransporter, or even to regard the use of it as suicide. There is discomfort with the notion that one's body will be taken apart. Since usually one's body being dismembered is indeed to be avoided, this concern is not entirely misplaced; however, usually dismemberment does not involve perfect reconstruction. In the case of the teletransporter, the unease that might be felt about its use discovers a common delusion in people's notions of self and identity. It is thought that disruption of the integrity of one's physical constituents is to be avoided, since in most cases it has been observed to result in death. Our assumption of physicalism would require us to hold that this is the case. Certainly it is, and if the teletransporter failed to reassemble the traveler's matter, they would be quite dead.

From this, however, it is unreasonably extrapolated that the temporary disassembly of one's matter is to be avoided. This is a simple instance of the attachment to one's temporary and ever-changing constitution, which is the same attachment among those that lead to fear of death. Regardless of whether this attachment is considered reasonable or not, the potential traveler's unease may be assuaged, since there is no good reason to fear the temporary disruption of one's constitution when it is followed by flawless reconstitution; the experience would probably be identical to that of momentary unconsciousness.

The extremely thoughtful concerned traveler might express a worry that they will not be the same person when they step out of the arrival pod. This is as silly as worrying that one will not be the same person when one steps out of the airplane, the train, the car, even when one is walking and arrives. One will, strictly speaking, not be, inasmuch as in the process of traveling by any of these means, one's constitution will have changed, how minutely soever. In fact, in this sense one will be more the same person when one steps out of the arrival pod, reconstituted exactly as one was at the time of entering the departure pod, than one will be when one arrives at the airport terminal after a few hours' flight; the arrangement of one's constituents will have changed much less.

Where is the self in the characteristics that compose a person? What is one afraid to lose that one can really keep at all?