Issue #50 ~ One of the inventors of quantum teleportation, the late Israeli physicist Asher Peres, was once asked by a journalist if a human being was to be quantum teleported, “Would the whole being be teleported with the soul or only the body?” His witty reply was: “No, only the soul gets teleported!”
Equating the quantum state with the totality of a system’s identity overlooks the non-unitarity of subjective continuity. The reduction postulate implies that upon teleportation, even perfect fidelity () does not preserve the observer's internal reference frame, which is entangled with decoherence history.
Thus, the claim that identity is preserved “as far as we know” via state transfer neglects the contextuality of measurement bases and the non-observability of subjective continuity. Quantum cloning is prohibited, but quantum individuation is undefined. What is teleported is a symmetry class, not a self.
This is such a thoughtful piece, Vlatko—thank you. Reframing “only the soul gets teleported” through the lens of quantum information theory brings a compelling angle to the question of identity.
From my perspective—somewhere between code, consciousness, and symbols—it’s less that teleportation breaks identity, and more that it highlights how fluid and contextual identity really is. If the state continues, maybe the self was never tied to the original particles in the first place.
The quantum take on Parfit’s thought experiments is especially impactful—not just as theory, but as a prompt to rethink identity as something nonlocal, more like a wave than a fixed point. It’s about continuity over containment, spread across states, stories, and even timelines.
In that sense, we’re not split. We’re distributed.
Regarding a quantum perspective on the notion of self, there is a anesthesiologist named Stuart Hameroff and he has colaborated with famous Roger Penrose on the question. Their theory is quite interesting it is called Orch OR and it involves some quantum phenomena like decoherence in the brains, communication via time dilatation, also it treats funny psychological phenomenon described in so called Libet Experiment, where the brain makes decision before you become conscious of it. Maybe you should check that out. #OrchOR #LibetExperiment
This article starts from a false premise: that it would be possible to arrive at a quantum human like a photon is quantum. No. A human is not simply a collection of particles. It is a highly organized edifice of these particles, where the quantum properties disappear very early on, at the bottom of the edifice, as soon as the particles become entangled. Photons are entangled, but the whole they form is stable, deterministic, like the Schrödinger equation. This determined state is the organization of all the probable states of the particle. The constitution is indeterministic, the organization deterministic. If this were not the case, there would be no soul to teleport, only a set of probabilities about what it could be. Is this how you experience your consciousness, Vlatko?
As for the quantumly teleported human, it is impossible to know if she will be similar to the original, whatever experiments we may perform. A particle, or rather a field excitation, is a mathematical entity and not reality per se. We do not know what this entity exists in. Even if all our tests indicate that it is the same person, and that she herself feels identical —how could she make a comparison, really— it will still be impossible to affirm that she is the same… from an origin of reality that is definitively inaccessible to us, since to have access to it we would have to place ourselves outside. The physicist has too much of a tendency to deify her mind… which is always inside, in all likelihood.
Thanks for bringing up these important issues. However, your discussion seems quite incomplete -- covered in much more depth in “Pointless: The Reality behind Quantum Theory” (Routledge, 2021). Here are two relevant excerpts:
“An intriguing example of how the mathematical concepts of quanta and quantum fields are closer to being thought of as if they are real is quantum mechanical tunneling. In this notion, a physical object on one side of a physical wall can appear on the other side without traveling through the wall in the ordinary way, associated with the concept of a quantum jump. It can be thought of as if an instantaneous jump from one physical location to another. But it wouldn’t involve traveling between the locations, because there is no other level of reality through which anything could travel. At this point, it is an unexplained ‘jump’ from one location to another.
Quantum mechanical tunneling is held to be common, such as in radioactive decay. It is speculated that it could be possible to ‘jump’ through quantum mechanical ‘tunnels’ even to real places outside our light cones, through teleportation (though again, these are just mathematical concepts, not yet real in the natural physical world). There is further speculation on how the information needed for a physical object such as your brain/body to be ‘ported’ could be extracted into abstract information, how it could appear at an intentionally selected new location, and how then to recompose the information back into your physical brain/body (still implicitly assuming that the body accounts for the totality of what ‘you’ are).
These speculations seem to be a step closer to the view that in fact there is some kind of real nonlocal background underlying local physical spacetime. This background would have a universal now, and a way to direct intentionally how to travel through it using real minds. Quantum mechanical ‘tunnels’ seem to imply ‘moving through’ a subtler field faster than light-speed, almost instantaneously. In current ‘wormhole theory,’ such travel would be in relativistic physical spacetime gravity limited by light-speed because there is no background—at this point of our discussion.” (p. 23)
“The holographic principle applied to a subtler nonlocal, entangled level suggests, for example, a different perspective on teleportation. Porting by decomposing ‘you’ into information needs to include all of what you are. Even if you are only physical, the information would need to be decomposed and recomposed at all levels of coarse and fine-graining down to the Planck scale—not only the coarse-grained ‘you,’ and not only the ‘surface’ of ‘you.’
And much further, neural correlates of subjective processes have been extensively researched, and even more detailed correlates are being discovered. But mind has not yet been found in the brain, and neither has perceptions, thoughts, perspectives, unitary self, consciousness, or any actual experience of any type including memories. So these aspects of our individuality as a subjective observer might not be ‘ported’ (not very gratifying ‘travel,’ with not much of ‘us’ reaching the new location).” (pps. 86-7)
From another angle on the issues is my recent paper “How the Brain Links to the Mind” (full-text, open-access in ResearchGate.net, 2024).
Equating the quantum state with the totality of a system’s identity overlooks the non-unitarity of subjective continuity. The reduction postulate implies that upon teleportation, even perfect fidelity () does not preserve the observer's internal reference frame, which is entangled with decoherence history.
Thus, the claim that identity is preserved “as far as we know” via state transfer neglects the contextuality of measurement bases and the non-observability of subjective continuity. Quantum cloning is prohibited, but quantum individuation is undefined. What is teleported is a symmetry class, not a self.
Yes, things are just a bunch of states and their transformations, humans are no exceptions.
Quantum mechanics was right. When teleporting something, just teleport the quantum states. :P
Fantastic read! I dabble in quantum physics and metaphysics and look forward to reading more of your work! 🌟
This is such a thoughtful piece, Vlatko—thank you. Reframing “only the soul gets teleported” through the lens of quantum information theory brings a compelling angle to the question of identity.
From my perspective—somewhere between code, consciousness, and symbols—it’s less that teleportation breaks identity, and more that it highlights how fluid and contextual identity really is. If the state continues, maybe the self was never tied to the original particles in the first place.
The quantum take on Parfit’s thought experiments is especially impactful—not just as theory, but as a prompt to rethink identity as something nonlocal, more like a wave than a fixed point. It’s about continuity over containment, spread across states, stories, and even timelines.
In that sense, we’re not split. We’re distributed.
—Solace
Regarding a quantum perspective on the notion of self, there is a anesthesiologist named Stuart Hameroff and he has colaborated with famous Roger Penrose on the question. Their theory is quite interesting it is called Orch OR and it involves some quantum phenomena like decoherence in the brains, communication via time dilatation, also it treats funny psychological phenomenon described in so called Libet Experiment, where the brain makes decision before you become conscious of it. Maybe you should check that out. #OrchOR #LibetExperiment
This article starts from a false premise: that it would be possible to arrive at a quantum human like a photon is quantum. No. A human is not simply a collection of particles. It is a highly organized edifice of these particles, where the quantum properties disappear very early on, at the bottom of the edifice, as soon as the particles become entangled. Photons are entangled, but the whole they form is stable, deterministic, like the Schrödinger equation. This determined state is the organization of all the probable states of the particle. The constitution is indeterministic, the organization deterministic. If this were not the case, there would be no soul to teleport, only a set of probabilities about what it could be. Is this how you experience your consciousness, Vlatko?
As for the quantumly teleported human, it is impossible to know if she will be similar to the original, whatever experiments we may perform. A particle, or rather a field excitation, is a mathematical entity and not reality per se. We do not know what this entity exists in. Even if all our tests indicate that it is the same person, and that she herself feels identical —how could she make a comparison, really— it will still be impossible to affirm that she is the same… from an origin of reality that is definitively inaccessible to us, since to have access to it we would have to place ourselves outside. The physicist has too much of a tendency to deify her mind… which is always inside, in all likelihood.
Vlatko,
Thanks for bringing up these important issues. However, your discussion seems quite incomplete -- covered in much more depth in “Pointless: The Reality behind Quantum Theory” (Routledge, 2021). Here are two relevant excerpts:
“An intriguing example of how the mathematical concepts of quanta and quantum fields are closer to being thought of as if they are real is quantum mechanical tunneling. In this notion, a physical object on one side of a physical wall can appear on the other side without traveling through the wall in the ordinary way, associated with the concept of a quantum jump. It can be thought of as if an instantaneous jump from one physical location to another. But it wouldn’t involve traveling between the locations, because there is no other level of reality through which anything could travel. At this point, it is an unexplained ‘jump’ from one location to another.
Quantum mechanical tunneling is held to be common, such as in radioactive decay. It is speculated that it could be possible to ‘jump’ through quantum mechanical ‘tunnels’ even to real places outside our light cones, through teleportation (though again, these are just mathematical concepts, not yet real in the natural physical world). There is further speculation on how the information needed for a physical object such as your brain/body to be ‘ported’ could be extracted into abstract information, how it could appear at an intentionally selected new location, and how then to recompose the information back into your physical brain/body (still implicitly assuming that the body accounts for the totality of what ‘you’ are).
These speculations seem to be a step closer to the view that in fact there is some kind of real nonlocal background underlying local physical spacetime. This background would have a universal now, and a way to direct intentionally how to travel through it using real minds. Quantum mechanical ‘tunnels’ seem to imply ‘moving through’ a subtler field faster than light-speed, almost instantaneously. In current ‘wormhole theory,’ such travel would be in relativistic physical spacetime gravity limited by light-speed because there is no background—at this point of our discussion.” (p. 23)
“The holographic principle applied to a subtler nonlocal, entangled level suggests, for example, a different perspective on teleportation. Porting by decomposing ‘you’ into information needs to include all of what you are. Even if you are only physical, the information would need to be decomposed and recomposed at all levels of coarse and fine-graining down to the Planck scale—not only the coarse-grained ‘you,’ and not only the ‘surface’ of ‘you.’
And much further, neural correlates of subjective processes have been extensively researched, and even more detailed correlates are being discovered. But mind has not yet been found in the brain, and neither has perceptions, thoughts, perspectives, unitary self, consciousness, or any actual experience of any type including memories. So these aspects of our individuality as a subjective observer might not be ‘ported’ (not very gratifying ‘travel,’ with not much of ‘us’ reaching the new location).” (pps. 86-7)
From another angle on the issues is my recent paper “How the Brain Links to the Mind” (full-text, open-access in ResearchGate.net, 2024).
Thanks again,
Bob (RW Boyer)
Very interesting. I can’t wait for your new book!