Does the transporter disprove the soul?

[Lt. Staplic]

The transporter only disproves the soul if it is a separated thing alltogether, made of something other than matter or electrical signals. I however believe that the soul is simply the inner essance of a person, created and manifested in a persons personality, ethics, and morals, which means the soal is comprised of the electrical signals jumping between neurons in our brains. With this train of thought the transporter does NOT infact disprove the soul.

[Tsukiyumi]

The transporter only disproves the soul if it is a separated thing alltogether, made of something other than matter or electrical signals. I however believe that the soul is simply the inner essance of a person, created and manifested in a persons personality, ethics, and morals, which means the soal is comprised of the electrical signals jumping between neurons in our brains. With this train of thought the transporter does NOT infact disprove the soul.

Wow. Head-first, eh?

Welcome to DITL.

[Captain Seafort]

The transporter only disproves the soul if it is a separated thing alltogether, made of something other than matter or electrical signals. I however believe that the soul is simply the inner essance of a person, created and manifested in a persons personality, ethics, and morals, which means the soal is comprised of the electrical signals jumping between neurons in our brains. With this train of thought the transporter does NOT infact disprove the soul.

The problem with that is that the "soul" has been consistently portrayed in Trek as something separate from the normal operation of the human brain. It's best shown in "Lonely Among Us" (TNG, series 1) and "Cathexis" (Voyager, series 1), where Picard's and Chakotay's disembodied souls (sorry "neural energy") spent at least some of the episodes floating round their respective ships trying to get back into their bodies (or in Picard's case, waiting for the crew to magic up a new body out of the transporter logs).

Welcome to DITL Staplic.

[Lt. Staplic]

The transporter only disproves the soul if it is a separated thing alltogether, made of something other than matter or electrical signals. I however believe that the soul is simply the inner essance of a person, created and manifested in a persons personality, ethics, and morals, which means the soal is comprised of the electrical signals jumping between neurons in our brains. With this train of thought the transporter does NOT infact disprove the soul.

The problem with that is that the "soul" has been consistently portrayed in Trek as something separate from the normal operation of the human brain. It's best shown in "Lonely Among Us" (TNG, series 1) and "Cathexis" (Voyager, series 1), where Picard's and Chakotay's disembodied souls (sorry "neural energy") spent at least some of the episodes floating round their respective ships trying to get back into their bodies (or in Picard's case, waiting for the crew to magic up a new body out of the transporter logs).

Welcome to DITL Staplic.

Thanks. It's definately nice to know i'm not the only Trek nerd out there.lol.

In those epesodes it is described as neural energy, as you ("corrected") so that once again falls under my opinion, but it simply comes down to weather you believe in the soul, and if you do, what you believe it is.

[Mikey]

Grundig - good point, although the effect of perception on reality has a lower limit. As someone asked Bishop Berkely when he espoused his philosophy of "nothing exists absolutely outside of perception" - if you were insensate to any indication of the approach of a train, would you then be willing to stand on the tracks?

[Tsukiyumi]

Grundig - good point, although the effect of perception on reality has a lower limit. As someone asked Bishop Berkely when he espoused his philosophy of "nothing exists absolutely outside of perception" - if you were insensate to any indication of the approach of a train, would you then be willing to stand on the tracks?

That's a great example.

[Sionnach Glic]

Ha, brilliant.

[Mark]

So, why hasn't the transporter become the tool of immortality? Away team beams down to a planet. Security man gets killed. Just re-engage the transporter with his stored pattern from when he was alive, and he re-materializes on the the ship all ok again.

[Tsukiyumi]

Just like in System Shock 2.

A long time ago, we discussed "Why don't people like the Borg just use transporters to create armies of duplicates?"

I don't remember what conclusion we came to. Probably writer stupidity.

[Teaos]

I think it was something to do with power out put...

[Tsukiyumi]

I think it was something to do with power out put...

Yeah, but if they can beam up ten people at once, why couldn't they make ten copies of one person?

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The real-life problem would be conservation of mass (the transporter has to get the mass from somewhere - it wouldn't when normally beaming someone up)

I've also wondered whether the transporter couldn't be used as a medical device. Have a virus? Just pass through the transporter and remove the viruses in the matter stream before rematerialization!

[Teaos]

(the transporter has to get the mass from somewhere - it wouldn't when normally beaming someone up)

Yeah but since it just transfers matter to energy there is no reason why it could drain power off the core which would get its power by blasting M/AM.

[Graham Kennedy]

It's unlikely that it transfers matter to energy as such. The way the TNG TM describes it you are scanned with perfect accuracy to create the transporter pattern, and then you are ripped into your component atoms or subatomic particles and then those are squirted through space as a particle beam. The pattern is them used to put you together at the other end.

Kirk once did describe the transporter as turning you into energy. In The Savage Curtain he said : "An energy-matter scrambler, sir. The molecules in your body are converted into energy, then beamed into this chamber... and reconverted back into their original pattern."

Which is canonical, obviously. But if that really is so then the energy stream a transporter emits for a normal sized person has as much energy as a 700 Megaton bomb. And we know from ST IV that you can beam 400 tons at a time up on a BoP, which would be around 8,000,000 Megatons. Forget about beaming people down, just turn them into energy and fire it at your enemy and you'd have a whopping great weapon there.

And against Kirk's statement, we have multiple quotes from McCoy about it "squirting my atoms through space". Whilst I think Kirk's quote is the most solid technically specific one we have, I think the TNG TM's version of events is rather more sensible.

[Teaos]

And Kirk could be mistaken, unlike Janeway he never pretended to be a scientist.