[Letum]

Originally Posted by bookworm_020

I remeber reading somewhere that even if you transport a human and rebuild them in one piece, you would turn their brain state back to the equiviant of a new born child.

From a strictly scientific point of view, if you put every atom and sub-atom in the correct position, includeing all the chemicals and connections of the brain, then the new person should have all the memorys of the old one and his/her stream of concousness would not be modifyed.

This is a scientific point of view because it assumes that thought and consciousness are products of the physical state of the brain.

Originally Posted by Reaves

By those theories we can come to the conclusion that life is not just the atomic makeup of our bodies but also consists of our "soul" aka life.

If only that was a logical conclusion, then so many questions would be answered and the deportation paradox would no longer be a paradox.
There is no way we can come to such a conclusion with out physically trying the paradox.
It is just one of 2 main conclusions; either:
1) Consciousness and thought are results of physical brain states and the teleportation will not alter the stream of consciousness.
or
2) Consciousness and thought are non-physical and teleportation will alter the stream of consciousness.

Option '2' comes with it's own set of questions:
a) To what is the stream of consciousness attached?
b) How does something non-physical interact with something physical?

Option '1' is more simple, but more puzzling. It does not throw up any major logic puzzles, but it supposes that all qualia (including that of consciousness) are physical. This is counterintuitive because that does not seam to be how we experience qualia. If you thus take option '1' to be false; a new paradox arises: How would we experience the world differently if all qualia where physical?