“Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy at school for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard in his first campaign, and to have been made a general in advanced life. Suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that when he took the standard he was conscious of his having been flogged at school, and that when made a general he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consicousness of the flogging. Therefore [if the psychological theory of survival is true] the general is, and at the same time is not the same person with him who was flogged at school.”

“I enter the Teletransporter. I have been to Mars before, but only by the old method, a space-ship journey taking several weeks. This machine will send me at the speed of light. I merely have to press the green button. Like others, I am nervous. Will it work? I remind myself what I have been told to expect. When I press the button, I shall lose consciousness, and then wake up at what seems a moment later. In fact I shall have been unconscious for about an hour. The Scanner here on Earth will destroy my brain and body, while recording the exact states of all of my cells. It will then transmit this information by radio. Travelling at the speed of light, the message will take three minutes to reach the Replicator on Mars. This will then create, out of new matter, a brain and body exactly like mine. It will be in this body that I shall wake up.

Though I believe that this is what will happen, I still hesitate. But then I remember seeing my wife grin when, at breakfast today, I revealed my nervousness. As she reminded me, she has been often teletransported, and there is nothing wrong with her. I press the button. As predicted, I lose and seem at once to regain consciousness, but in a different cubicle. Examining my new body, I find no change at all. Even the cut on my upper lip, from this morning’s shave, is still there.

Several years pass, during which I am often Teletransported. I am now back in the cubicle, ready for another trip to Mars. But this time, when I press the green button, I do not lose consciousness. There is a whirring sound, then silence. I leave the cubicle, and say to the attendant: ‘It’s not working. What did I do wrong?’ ‘It’s working’, he replies, handing me a printed card. This reads: ‘The New Scanner records your blueprint without destroying your brain and body. We hope that you will welcome the opportunities which this technical advance offers.’

The attendant tells me that I am one of the first people to use the New Scanner. He adds that, if I stay for an hour, I can use the Intercom to see and talk to myself on Mars.

‘Wait a minute’, I reply, ‘If I’m here I can’t also be on Mars’.

Someone politely coughs, a white-coated man who asks to speak to me in private. We go to his office, where he tells me to sit down, and pauses. Then he says: ‘I’m afraid that we’re having problems with the New Scanner. It records your blueprint just as accurately, as you will see when you talk to yourself on Mars. But it seems to be damaging the cardiac systems which it scans. Judging from the results so far, though you will be quite healthy on Mars, here on Earth you must expect cardiac failure within the next few days.’”

“My Division. My body is fatally injured, as are the brains of my two brothers. My brain is divided, and each half is successfully transplanted into the body of one of my brothers. Each of the resulting people believes that he is me, seems to remember living my life, has my character, and is in every other way psychologically continuous with me. And he has a body that is very like mine.”

“At the near end of this spectrum is the normal case in which a future person would be fully continuous with me as I am now, both physically and psychologically. This person would be me in just the way that, in my actual life, it will be me who wakes up tomorrow. At the far end of this spectrum the resulting person would have no continuity with me as I am now, either physically or psychologically. In this case the scientists would destroy my brain and body, and then create, out of new organic matter, a perfect Replica of someone else. Let us suppose this person to be Greta Garbo. We can suppose that, when Garbo was 30, a group of scientists recorded the states of all the cells in her brain and body.

[One] assumes that, in each of these cases, the resulting person either would or would not be me. This is not so. The resulting person would be me in the first few cases. In the last case he would not be me. In many of the intervening cases, neither answer would be true. I can always ask, ‘Am I about to die? Will there be some person living who will be me?’ But, in the cases in the middle of this Spectrum, there is no answer to this question.”