If you replace every part of the real Picard with robot Picard parts is it still the real Picard?
21 comments
The Starship of Theseus?
I kept trying to find a Theseus joke, thanks.
At the very least, he was already cybernetic, what with his heart and all.
No. At that point he would be Locutus.
Was there ever such a thing as the “real Picard” to begin with? Or is the continuity of identity just a lie we tell ourselves to keep from going mad?
This is the transporter dilemma, too. Disintegrating people kills them. Making a long range replicator spit out an exact duplicate with all their memories doesn't mean they've moved.
You are now are not the same as 1 second ago. Does it mean that you-1-sec-ago died?
Your body replaces all of your cells over the course of 7 to 10 years. So every 7 or so years, you are literally no longer the same person that you were. What's the difference between that and expediting the process with a transporter?
Oh boy, philosophers have been salivating over that question for millenia, and they've come up with some terrible answers lol
No because you didn't disintegrate my brain. Being disintegrated is a catastrophic, fatal injury that destroys the body, not just an imperceptible change like naturally ageing by one second.
My son and I talked at length about this one, and we agree with Bones. You wouldn't get me to go through a transporter unless I was already going to die. If there's any sort of afterlife, or soul, then that's where the people who have been transported are, and everyone else is a facsimile of themselves.
Humanity has a complicated relationship with organized religion.
As long as he still has original thought. Considering our bodies are pure mechanical, original thought is all there is distinguishing us as not artificial. At least that's what we're programmed to think.
"Neither are the true Picard. Both are the true Picard."
The Starship of Theseus?
I kept trying to find a Theseus joke, thanks.