Article Writing Homework Help

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on uniqueness for personal identity. Teleportation is the process of disintegrating the body to make a copy of a person in another place say, for example, Jupiter as a means of travel. In the teleportation experiment, Parfit demonstrated the problem of teleportation when the machine malfunctioned. The machine was not able to destroy the original body and yet a copy was already sent to Mars. So the problem arises of determining who is the real you? This phenomenon of teleportation is bad because it is problematic. It is problematic not only in the sense that the machine malfunctioned that there became two individuals because the original was not destroyed. It is mind-boggling, but we cannot cease to wonder how does the copy thinks? About himself, the universe around him, about things in general? Is that copy an individual? Of course, it is natural that we would like to think that the real you is the original but the copy might also be thinking the same.

This experiment is bad according to Parfit’s criterion of psychological connectedness that makes an individual because teleportation is hinged on the premise of ordinary survival, meaning that the mere copying of the physical aspect of a person enough for it to make functional already makes an individual. To illustrate the problem, he put forth the problem what if the teleporter malfunctioned and the original is not destroyed? This caused a dilemma on identifying who is the real you and brings forth the problem of personal identity. Or is it possible that both are “individuals” and that “individuals” can also be “persons”?

This dilemma may have been deliberate to illustrate the limitation of the physical criterion in determining what makes a person and to point out Parfit’s point that it is psychological continuity that makes a person which is impossible in the case since continuity is broken and not possible when the copy and the original exists at the same time, each having different continuity when the original did not disintegrate when the copy was made. &nbsp.I agree with Derek Parfit’s idea that our personal identity favors psychological continuity and connectedness over bodily identity. My agreement with Parfit is not only borne out of personal preference but as a result of careful deliberation and consultation with various philosophers who dabbled on the idea of what constitutes the self, person and identity to arrive at an educated and well-informed choice.