Hypothetical situation

[Rapscallion]

Bit of a poser here I've been mulling over. More or less this is hypothetical, but there are real-world applications.

Who is a person?

I got around to wondering about this while pondering the potential for mind-wipe technology while wandering through the warehouse. No idea why. I got to wondering if the person who was mind-wiped was the same person?

Is the person the body or the mind? That's currently a moot point as we don't have mind-wipe technology, but if we did would this change things?

I know it's been tackled in SF on a number of occasions, and one of the more dramatic ones I recall was in Babylon 5, though it's a plot theme in Total Recall etc.

This has real-world applications for me when you start to ask yourself who the crime system should be punishing. I'm not saying that we should mind-wipe people, but it does mean that if we say it was the personality causing the offence, then can we keep the body locked up if the person changes?

Where does everyone here, as members of society, sit on this?

Currently, many prisoners up for parole find religion. The ones who are genuine about this - are they really the same person? Should they remain locked up? That's a conteporary issue.

In the future, if we could reliably mind-wipe serious offenders, would this be an acceptable punishment to avoid throwing them in jail?

Rapscallion

[siead_lietrathua]

the idea of a person's personality or sense of self is something that is fluid and ever-changing based on life's circumstances. if you take two people biologically similar and place them in drastically different living situations (say, one in the upper 1% of US society, and one in third world poverty) they will develop into different people.
that being said, the sense of self can change. it changes through formative years, through youth and teens, and again into adult hood. otherwise we would be perpetually stuck in infanthood.
to the finding religion behind bars... finding religion doesn't always mean that a person has changed their sense of self. they will probably still have the same societal or internal incentives to do whatever bad they have done, they will just have more guilt for it. take a theif. you can convert one to a godlike life... but if you toss him out on the street with no hope of work or a home, he will turn to what he knows will work, and go back to stealing. just, feeling worse about it.

[Gravekeeper]

Welcome to Buddhism!

Please enjoy your stay. There's refreshments in the lobby and the band is scheduled for 5pm.

[TheHuckster]

Currently, many prisoners up for parole find religion. The ones who are genuine about this - are they really the same person? Should they remain locked up? That's a conteporary issue.

In Abrahamic religion, one always carries the same soul, therefore they are, for all intents and purposes, the same person. Spiritually if they repent for their sins, they are considered absolved of that sin, but they remain the same person. I don't think there's anything in the scriptures that say an absolved person should be released from prison. In fact, some believe that part of absolution is serving whichever sentence is prescribed by society.

I should also mention that the parole system already covers this sort of issue. Except for the worst criminals (in the US), those who have shown they have been reformed can be let out early. In some countries outside the US there isn't even a concept of a "life sentence" per se, and even the worst murderers are given a sort of undetermined sentence that depends on whether the criminal has been reformed.

However, the criminal's identity remains the same: The deed has been done by this person's mind, even though that mind has changed afterwards.

In the future, if we could reliably mind-wipe serious offenders, would this be an acceptable punishment to avoid throwing them in jail?

This brings up a huge ethical and human rights issue, really. To allow government or society to do this amounts to a form of mind control, and if it's abused by a totalitarian government it could have grave consequences to the human rights of the public. The worst implications would be that the victims would, by definition, not even know that they are being wiped in this way.

If this came up as a ballot question, I would definitely oppose it on the grounds of it effectively restricting my rights to my own memories, and it opens a dangerous precedent that future amendments to the law could encroach on innocent people's rights.

[HYHYBT]

In the future, if we could reliably mind-wipe serious offenders, would this be an acceptable punishment to avoid throwing them in jail?

Fundamentally altering *who somebody is* in that fashion, should it become possible, should never be done unless it's what they want. To my way of thinking, that's far worse than just killing them, and I don't think we should be doing that either.

[Andara Bledin]

I suspect Schroedinger's cat would have some valuable input in this discussion.

Otherwise, a person without their memories is still that person, but not that same person. Hardly a one of us is the same person we were a decade ago; moreso for the younger, but still the case, even for the eldest among us.

As for wiping a person's memories, I actually find it to fall somewhere just this side of killing them, as memories can be restored (if not directly, new ones can be made), but death is irreversible.

^-.-^

[bara]

I dont know if we will ever fully understand the human mind. But I do know that free will is the most important thing we have and even taking that away from the most deranged among us will lessen the whole.

So to me, its not worth it. Such a thing would most certainly be used in the worst possible ways.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

First of all, remember that cells die off in your body. All cells except the brain.

So a person is (at least in my mind) a software package that was installed on that brain by genetics and allowed to evolve over time and exposure to different situations.

Since the rest of the body dies off cell by cell, you are not the same body you were 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. Yet you are still *you*.

Jumping around a bit in your post Raps, When we lock someone up for life, with the death of cells you are not locking up the body that did it. At least not for long. Take a 20 year old who is in for life (no chance of parole) and lock him away. In 20 years every cell in his body (save the brain) has died and there is a new body locked away. A body that didn't commit the crime.

Yet we keep him/her there because the person did. The personality software contained in the brain did.

So I think Babylon 5 had a good look at it. The "Death of Personality" punishment where the mind is wiped and re-encoded with a personality designed to want to serve the community they harmed. Brother Edward from the episode "Passing Through Gethsemane" was an example of someone thus wiped and accidentally let lose on the world. He joined up with Brother Theo and his order to keep on helping.

However that episode brought up a good point. For those who are religious, (or get programmed to be so after a wipe), how do you confess? How do you repent? How do ask God for forgiveness of sins committed that you yourself no longer remember? If you never repented before the mind wipe, how do you do so after?

And why would you as a mindwiped person even think to ask that since you don't remember?

And the interesting point of it all, if you are religious how does the soul fit into it all? That's a more interesting question than the pure bio-electrical aspects of a mindwipe.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

I dont know if we will ever fully understand the human mind. But I do know that free will is the most important thing we have and even taking that away from the most deranged among us will lessen the whole.

I agree. The thought of wiping someone, to kill the personality is just a rather cowardly way to kill someone. Someone gets to walk away smug in the knowledge that they didn't technically kill anyone. That their hands are clean and thus proves that they're not a barbarian savage.

But it's still a death. It's the death of that person as that person. If you're going to kill, do so honestly and without hatred. To me, killing a serial killer or a sociopath that kills because it's the easiest way to do something else (robbery, rape, etc) is not unlike killing a rabid animal.

You don't hate the animal but you still need to prevent others from being harmed by it.

So to me, its not worth it. Such a thing would most certainly be used in the worst possible ways.

Agreed. It seems like there is damn little out there that isn't used in the worst possible way. We can't even have a social media site like Facebook without someone using it as a weapon against others (cyberbullying).

[wolfie]

Different mechanism, but same premise, as the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of Star Trek. You break someone up at a molecular level, and reassemble them somewhere else into an indistinguishable (down to their thoughts) copy. Still, while they were "in transit", they didn't actually exist. Does that mean that you kill someone the first time you put them through the Transporter?

As to why it's this particular episode instead of the whole series, it was a "workaround" after McCoy made this argument that led to the events in that episode.

[Racket_Man]

Different mechanism, but same premise, as the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of Star Trek. You break someone up at a molecular level, and reassemble them somewhere else into an indistinguishable (down to their thoughts) copy. Still, while they were "in transit", they didn't actually exist. Does that mean that you kill someone the first time you put them through the Transporter?

As to why it's this particular episode instead of the whole series, it was a "workaround" after McCoy made this argument that led to the events in that episode.

Goes into Star Trek Geek Mode: The episode Mirror, Mirror is where Kirk and the landing party, while in the process of transport during an ion storm, are flung into an alternate universe (which was used in several DS9 episodes and one long Enterprise story)

I think you are refering to the novel Spock Must Die. and the same plot line (ie. splitting of a person during transport) was used in another Star Trek (original) TV episode called The Enemy Within

**** Note this post was made without resorting to any search. shoot me now please

[Nekojin]

Also the TNG episode, Second Chances. Although that one dealt with a transporter split that had happened years prior, unbeknownst to the splitee.

[wolfie]

Goes into Star Trek Geek Mode:

Been quite a while since I was seriously into Star Trek - looks like I got the episode title wrong.

[Racket_Man]

Also the TNG episode, Second Chances. Although that one dealt with a transporter split that had happened years prior, unbeknownst to the splitee.

AHHHH I forgot about the Riker split in ST:TNG.

Been quite a while since I was seriously into Star Trek - looks like I got the episode title wrong.

I ODed on ST (TV shows and books) back when it was first broadcast then I watched it ad nausm (to the point I could point out what scenes were cut or trimmed after snydication) when it went into snydication in the early 1970's.

McCoy DID make some valid points about the transporter system as described in the Star Trek oringinal universe. Better explainations were given in ST:TNG.

[Gravekeeper]

Star Trek transporter technology is technically destructive copying. Technically speaking, it effectively destroys the original every time you use it and replaces it with an exact duplicate. From a metaphysical perspective, everyone who has ever stepped into a transporter probably died instantly and totally by surprise. But an exact clone was created to replace them.

With no knowledge of life after death, no one in Star Trek has any way of knowing if transporter technology isn't actually the greatest and most widely used murder machine in the history of the universe. ;p