Is it possible to transfer a human mind and survive? (Picard spoilers)

[clearspira]

I made the title of the thread ambiguous just so I did not unintentionally spoil the ending to ''Picard''.

Lets get into some real metahuman discussion here: that man who ends season 1 looks like Picard, sounds like Picard, has the memories of Picard... but he IS NOT Picard. Picard is dead. This is a copy that was downloaded into a body that looks like him.

For all intents and purposes, season 2 will be following a completely different man to the one that we have followed since ''Encounter at Farpoint''.

And this is why human beings in real life will never attain the holy grail of mechanical immortality that many predict will one day happen due to the simple fact that YOU will still be dead no matter how many copies of you are downloaded into other bodies. The only way to get around this would be an actual, full-on body swap - which a) is not what happened to Picard and b) I don't believe that to be possible either.

[Winter]

Well technically speaking, Spock from Search for Spock onward was a "Copy". He had Spock's body, he had his memories but the Original Spock is dead. But that did not make him any less like Spock and he's friends treated him like Spock. Since OG Picard is dead, and this "Copy" will be going through life instead, and he has all of Picard's memories and experiences does that make him a different man or just Picard in a new body?

Again, using Spock as the go to example, as far as the characters, creators and fans of the series are concern he WAS Spock. He knew everything Spock did, he was reborn just after Spock died, and he react like Spock would have in his place.

This isn't like Thomas and Will Riker from 'Second Chances' where two Riker's existed at the same time and had two completely different lives and where therefore, as far as both Riker's, the characters, the creators and the fans were concern they WERE two different people.

This is something I look forward to Chuck going over and I do think he and I might be of the same mind about this. But that's for another time as of right now, I still see this as the Same Picard I've known since I was a kid just in a new body.

[Darth Wedgius]

IMHO, you could consider him to still be Picard, or not, and either is fine. I think being the "same person" is not really well-defined.

We're each of us not exactly the same person we were five minutes ago. Picard 2.0 could be in many ways closer to Picard 1.9 (Picard just before he died) than Picard 1.9 was to 5-year-old Picard. IMHO, you could reasonably consider Picard 2.0 to be the "same person".

As to Picard's soul... If he ever had one... If such a thing exists... He might have been missing that since the first time he was beamed somewhere. Or when he went exploring the universe without his body for a few hours in "The Lonely Among Us". Or when he died on the table in "Tapestry". Or when he decided that Nemesis needed a car chase.

I think Star Trek 3 side-stepped (or tried to side-step) that by saying the katra was "all that is not of the body," with Kirk calling it a soul, so Spock's soul entered the new body. Kind of a katra sutra. Not that that isn't subject to interpretation, or doesn't open up a can of worms of its own.

[kingofmadcows]

This is pretty much the same issue with the transporter. Fans have always asked if the transporter kills the person and makes an exact duplicate at the destination.

Well, the writers say that the transporter simply transports the person, and it's the same person going in and coming out, so that's the way it is.

Same thing with Picard and the golem. If the writers say it's the same Picard, it's the same Picard.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I trust the narrative of the show that it is Picard more than any colloquially interpreted constructs of what constitutes identity with respect to consciousness.

[TGLS]

Avoiding the context, there are a few possibilities. I see it as basically two factors: whether "Souls" exist and whether Qualia can be transferred. I use "Soul" as short hand as some kind of conclusive evidence to whether Qualia is transferred. We get four or so cases:

1) Souls exist, Qualia cannot be transferred. Attempts to transfer minds are attempted a few times and eventually consigned to the dustbin of history.

2) Souls exist, Qualia can be transferred. Attempts to transfer minds are proven to work. This seems very unlikely unless it's impossible to duplicate human minds.

3) Souls don't exist: The question of whether Qualia can be transferred is irrelevant. Without conclusive evidence, people must rely on circumstantial evidence, such as how a transferred mind acts. Duplication would provide a lot of circumstantial evidence against it.

[Madner Kami]

Ship of Theseus. Funcitonally, they are identical and the exact same person. Factually, it's two different but identical persons. The original Picard is gone, the perfect(?) copy is still around.

As for whether you can transfer a human mind? No. You theoretically could make an exact copy, but the original "software" is indivisbile from the hardware it's running on.

[excalibur]

Anyone else noticed they stole this exact same plot from X-Men 3?

[Fianna]

Star Trek has never been good about distinguishing between software and hardware. How many times did Voyager "download" the Doctor onto a different computer system, and this is treated as him being physically moved from one computer to another, with him not being present on Voyager's computer system till he's transferred back into it?

[Actarus]

Since mind transfer has occured several times in this franchise, I suppose there is no problem about it and Picard is really Picard. It's like transporters and time travel. You better take it as "magic" and accept it as it is. Now can it be done in real life, I don't think so, nor would I risk it if they developed the technology. I really doubt a whole personality can be reduced to some cerebral engrams or things like that.