The Skeptic

        When I was a kid, my dad used to ask me: “if you had the option to transfer your memories into a functional human clone, would you do it?” The conditions that came with the question were simple: 1) You are going to die within a short period of time; 2) you will be ‘downloading’ your memories into a functional clone or robot with no other memories prior to the transfer and 3) the host robot or clone body would be physiologically indistinguishable from your own original one. With these given conditions, the main question was then: if you did end up proceeding with the transfer, would you still be alive?

        In hindsight it really wasn’t the best question to ask to a six-year old toddler—but my dad was never commended for his outstanding parenting skills anyways. Condition 1 promises that without this transfer, you risk destroying everything connected to you and your sense of self by dying. Condition 2 implies that you would be transferring your memories into a clone body that would allow you to live for an extended period of time or longer than you were intended to live. Condition 3 fortifies this by setting the rule that no one would be able to tell your new body from your old one, meaning at least from a physical viewpoint you would remain virtually the same.

        At first, this scenario seems to be perfect. Most people argue that who you are right now depends on everything that you experienced in your life and what you remember from it (i.e. your memories). As a kid, you learn from the environment you grow up in; from the people you’ve met and lived with; the mistakes that you and others make, etc. Every decision you make is influenced by such knowledge and experiences, the bulk of your personality built upon your childhood memories of observing the world around you and coming to a conclusion about how to act in society. For example, a child who grew up in a loving and kind household may continue to be kind to everyone until that kindness becomes an integral part of their personality; at the same time, a kid who lived through worse conditions may become more reclusive and see the world through darker lenses. As you continue to grow, you begin to observe and understand your position in the world as an individual based on all of your prior experiences. Therefore by transplanting your memories into your clone, they’ll be able to live on as an exact replica of yourself. They would be able to think, speak and feel exactly the way you do. You’d essentially be living an extra 50 years—all the more time to spend with your family and friends, right?

        Except it’s not as easy as you think.

        Let’s put it this way: if you were able to meet your own clone, would you see the clone as yourself? The answer most people would give is: probably not (hence the cliché exchange in every movie involving body duplicates of “I’m the real one!” “No, it’s me!”). Even if the clone looks and acts exactly like you, they can’t be you, right? After all, only you should know how you feel and think. That is to say, you are aware of yourself as a unique individual in this world—it’s the sensation of looking at the world around you and knowing that no one else except you, literally, can see the world with the same perspective as you do. It’s the sensation of knowing that there is no one else out there who can, at the very least, think exactly the way you do. We may then define being conscious as the feeling or knowledge that no one else, not even a clone, can be a perfect replica of you. If this is the case, the entire premise of this essay will just be likened to you dying off while a clone of yours lives on. The clone is preserving your legacy by living on in your place but they’re no longer you. The clone does not possess your specific consciousness, and thus renders the transaction meaningless.

        However—what’s the guarantee that what you’re feeling as “consciousness” is actually real and not just fabricated by memories of learning your place in the world? Is there really such a thing as “consciousness” or being “conscious” that exists within us, or is it just something we made to convince ourselves of our own significance in this world? What’s the guarantee that what we perceive as our consciousness isn’t transferred over to the clone at the same time as our memories? At least from this perspective, there doesn’t seem to be any definite answer to whether or not to go through with the transaction between you and your clone. It seems that in order to answer this question we need to delve deeper into that of another: what are the mechanisms of consciousness?