What happens if you Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V on the Doctor’s data files? Do you duplicate a sentient being?
In “Virtuoso”, Tom & Harry try to reproduce the Doctor but they’re basically trying to make him from scratch, so I don’t think their failure is relevant.
At the end of “Author, Author” we see many repurposed EMH Mk1s working as miners:
…and they seem to be self-aware, so I guess we have to assume that it’s technically feasible.
But then what happens if you Ctrl+Z?
This just makes me think of the transporter issue.
As far as I can work it out, either transporters are death machines and Star Trek is a secret dystopia, or consciousness has a universal root so it doesn’t actually matter. Like, either the observer changes and just has the same configuration of thoughts and memories, or the observer is the same regardless and the only difference between individuals is their thoughts and memories.
It doesn’t seem like the people in Star Trek know this with any certainty, though, one way or the other.
If you are killed quickly enough, it stops meaning anything subjectively…
Enterprise tries to go there are few times, and show how people just become desensitized and completely stop caring about it. But they never get fully into the point. (Do they get fully into any point?)
They did though, they didn’t dwell on it but the transporter inventor had some line about the idea of it being a different person who comes out the other side being nonsense.
I don’t have the episode on hand right now to get the exact quote.
I could definitely see people just taking it for granted that it’s fine due to the difficulty of pinning down one particular source of consciousness versus another. It isn’t obvious and everyone who goes through the transporter claims to feel fine, so unless they’re thinking a lot about their own consciousness why question it? Endless killing by convenience and ignorance.
Or, you know, not. Hard to say, though.
Well, no. Subjectively either the observer is continuous or it isn’t. Either you walk in one end and walk out the other continuing to perceive your body and the world around you, or you’re replaced by a different perceiving entity with the same memories.
Certainly the speed at which your body is deconstructed might have an effect on the pain and horror of it all, but in terms of your consciousness remaining afterward it kind of either does or doesn’t. If some other consciousness is looking through your eyes because you own has been extinguished, it’s not going to do you much good if it just happened fast enough that it doesn’t have to grapple with the memory of disintegration.