Anatta as applied to Star Trek

Before we start, I would like to give you a scenario, ask what you would do if put in the (unlikely) situation, and see how you answer. You are a crew member of the Star Ship Enterprise. There is a transporter machine that crew members use to “beam” themselves to planets. Until now, everyone on the crew has assumed that the transporter disassembles your atoms, beams them to a location, and reassembles the atoms when they arrive. However, one day, some classified information is leaked, and you learn that the transporter actually scans your for data on your atomic structure, painlessly incinerates your body, sends the information to earth, where the next transporter takes atoms at that location and re-arranges them to create a being that looks and thinks exactly like you. Now here’s the question: given this information, would you still use the machine?

I would. I would use it without any qualms at all. This belief stems from my views about the nature of self, and what it means to die. So, let’s address the usual reasons that using the transporter would cause someone concern. Obviously, the worry is that using the machine is suicide. Certainly the atoms of an intelligent being are disassembled—but does that mean that someone really dies? The question is a great deal more complicated than it at first appears to be.

Consider another scenario. You are condemned to be put to death for an inter-stellar crime, and are given the choice between being painlessly incinerated or being beamed, via the transporter, from your cold lonely prison cell to your nice safe bed. If you really believe that the transporter kills you, then the fact that you have an option as to how you will die will give you little relief. You may, out of a sense of altruism choose to be executed using the transporter so that some lucky person might have the chance to experiencing your living quarters. The result is the same for you though—an abrupt and painless death by incineration. I feel inclined to say that I would choose to be “executed” using the transporter for less than altruistic reasons.

If I did use the transporter, would it be appropriate for my family to weep my death? Should my parents bemoan the fact that they son they knew is no longer, only to be replaced by a mere substitute? Again, my intuition is that they would be acting quite silly, and even monstrous if they chose to avoid and neglect the person living in my house after my execution. Would that person be wrong in calling himself Alex? Would he be removed from the house that was, in fact, not his? Would he lose his job, be stripped of position? Inconceivable.

If I have convinced you to use the transporter, then consider another scenario. After every one has acclimated to the last revelation, and regained their psychological comfort in using the transporter, more classified information is leaked. Due to the way that transporters work, there is a slight delay in your body’s annihilation. In fact, the new you is created in the new transporter before the old you is annihilated! For a split second, there are two of you. Would you still use the transporter?

Again, I would, and for much the same reasons as before. You might well ask under what circumstances I wouldn’t use a transporter. The answer is this. I would not use a transporter if the delay between the creation of the new me and the annihilation of the old me were a long period, say, several months. Can you imagine knowing that there are two of you, walking around, living and loving, for several months, and that one is destined to die and the other not? The fact is, I believe that it is rather arbitrary how we define the self, and that there is only a continuum of comfort levels that we feel when faced with different transporter scenarios.

There’s something else—I think that we use the transporter machine every second of every day, merely by being “beamed” through time. If I take “I” to mean the Alex of today, then clearly I will not survive until tomorrow. The Alex of the past will have passed away, and will have been replaced by the Alex of tomorrow. If I decide to define Alex as a continuous biological process from womb to grave, then I only die when my heart and brain stop. But it’s even possible to stretch the definition further—to tell yourself that the only “you” that fails to survive death is the “you” given the second definition mentioned.

You see, I take a pragmatic notion of the self. Like so many other terms, the way we define self is a matter of convenience. The term is indispensable for us to talk about things like personal rights and ownership, and it helps us avoid coming up with different names for ourselves every day that we live. However, the term is still a definition, and nothing more. There is nothing arbitrary about the way we define it—we have specific reasons to do as such. But we must realize that our notions of self are only definitions and nothing more, with no underlying substance that makes our selves.

Personally, I take a wide enough view of self that I do not fear death. Well, I might fear death if someone pressed a knife to my throat, but I don’t fear death from a day to day basis. You see, the fact that there will be others living, breathing, and thinking after I die is a great comfort to me. Heck, the fact that there were once others before I was born living, breathing, and thinking before I was born supplies an equal comfort. There are only true and false states of affairs—there are no non-existent entities. I will not dwell in a non-existent state for all eternity, and I will never experience unconsciousness.