New Orbit Magazine: Issue 04, October 2018

more feasible fiction on which to attach our
hopes for never-ending life.
But how feasible is it? As we begin to
develop real science and technology to explore
ways of housing a human consciousness, how
much stock can we put into the practicality of
immortality within our lifetimes, or ever?
“Type” and “Token” are philosophical terms
used to describe an object’s relative identity.
There is a simple linguistic distinction
between the two that can be described in the
following example:
Examples of the transferral of human
consciousness to achieve immortality is a
hugely prevalent theme throughout the
history of multiple genres of fiction. Both
Isaac and Janet Asimov’s writings explored the
subject (in short story The Last Question and
novel Mind Transfer respectively). Richard K
Morgan’s Altered Carbon (recently adapted into
a Netflix Original TV series) sees human
minds coded onto “stacks” and rehoused into
newly grown (or more dubiously acquired)
bodies. Black Mirror episode San Junipero
explores the idea of uploading one’s mind into
a virtual reality as a proxy for the afterlife.
Consciousness transferral is science &
speculative fiction’s answer to the otherwise
pure fantasy idea of human immortality – a
Say I have on my mantelpiece a tissue box.
Somehow, one day, it accidentally gets
knocked into the fire and completely
destroyed – erased from existence. Although
that item is gone forever, I am an able to
procure a tissue box that is wholly identical,
down to the number of tissues remaining and
the exact dimensions of the box with
subatomic accuracy, to replace it with.
Generally, in language, we would say that the
new tissue box I place on my mantle is “the
same”. This is only half true. The only
difference between the destroyed tissue box
and the replacement one is a numerical
difference. This exact kind of tissue box – one
with this exact number of tissues remaining,
these exact dimensions, etc – is a type, and
each the destroyed box and the one now on
my mantle, are tokens. While they are
qualitatively identical (and members of the
same type), they are numerically separate.
This seems like an intuitive but not
particularly practical way to communicate
identity. After all, the tissue boxes, physically,
bear no difference at all – there is no value to
me in their distinction as two tokens of one
type. My life doesn’t change in the slightest
with the destruction of the first token as long