You seem to be assuming the actual existence of a "thread of consciousness" or a "conscious strain", when it could be an illusion.
When you wake up after a dreamless sleep, are you the same person, the same conscious entity, as went to bed the night before? Or is that entity now "dead", and "you" are a new entity that has just inherited its memories (most of which it in turn inherited from its predecessors)? How could you ever tell? In fact, are you the same conscious entity from moment to moment, or at least from thought to thought?
More "making a copy" thought experiments, none terribly original:
- If you're disintegrated and immediately reassembled, are you still you?
- Does using different atoms make a difference?
- Does leaving a gap between disintegration and reassembly make a difference? If so, how long a gap? What if you're resurrected at the Omega Point by sufficiently advanced aliens/post-humans?
- If you're split in two (sagitally, coronally, or however), and each half is immediately reconstructed into a whole human, each identical to you before the split, which is you? Which pair of eyes would you find yourself looking out of? Both? Neither?
- If the two "yous" exchange atoms, such that one ends up with the entire complement of atoms that made up you before the split and the other ends up with none, does that affect the claims of either to be the "real" you?
Excellent points, and actually in line with my line of question as well: I think my assumption of a thread of consciousness was a semantic mis-communication, as bringing that idea into question was indeed where my questions were leading.
When you wake up after a dreamless sleep, are you the same person, the same conscious entity, as went to bed the night before? Or is that entity now "dead", and "you" are a new entity that has just inherited its memories (most of which it in turn inherited from its predecessors)? How could you ever tell? In fact, are you the same conscious entity from moment to moment, or at least from thought to thought?
More "making a copy" thought experiments, none terribly original:
- If you're disintegrated and immediately reassembled, are you still you?
- Does using different atoms make a difference?
- Does leaving a gap between disintegration and reassembly make a difference? If so, how long a gap? What if you're resurrected at the Omega Point by sufficiently advanced aliens/post-humans?
- If you're split in two (sagitally, coronally, or however), and each half is immediately reconstructed into a whole human, each identical to you before the split, which is you? Which pair of eyes would you find yourself looking out of? Both? Neither?
- If the two "yous" exchange atoms, such that one ends up with the entire complement of atoms that made up you before the split and the other ends up with none, does that affect the claims of either to be the "real" you?