You have beeen cyrogenically frozen. While in this state, scientists replicate your entire body, perfectly. In addition, they replicate your brain in a perfect manner. All of your memories, all of your experiences, everything about your brain is identical.

Then both of the bodies wake up at the exact same time. Which body do you wake up in... and why? What makes you... who you are?

If a question like this has already been asked in the field of philosophy or science I'd love to hear what replies or theories there have been. It's just something I thought of the other day...

You are the original body. The other one is just exactly the same. Your soul won't switch bodies. You just get a cool guy to play videogames with

That's the only reasonable answer I can think of. But then that begs the question of whether we actually have souls or if that's a man-made construct. 

If we don't have souls, what makes us who we are? What makes us wake up in this body? If we do have souls... what the hell are these souls?

I'm not religious and these questions drive my brain crazy.

Both bodies are inevitably different since they are in different locations. The only way they can become exactly the same is if they wake up in the EXACT same location, then they are alike in EVERY way. But you can't have two bodies EXACTLY alike as you can see.... because then it would juts be one body.

Basically you are talking about a paradox, from my perspective.

In my eyes the soul is simply the consciousness tied to a body or indeed housed within the body in the case of the 'traditional' soul. In otherwords, in the proposed scenario the thing that seperates you from your clone is that the your conscious hasn't been recreated, a new albeit identical one would have simply manifested within it.

Ill give this to you. 

Two different souls exists on two identical bodies. Identical bodies which have the same thoughts in the physical brain and same senses. Same reactions same movement. 

BUT STILL TWO DIFFERENT SOULS. 

It would not be an exact replica physically from the moment it is in a different position to your own body, nor mentally the moment it gains consciousness (as it experiences different stimuli.)

I've got some stuff written down on exactly your described situation and I'll copy paste some here when I'm back home, I think.  

There are now 2 persons with the exact same memories up to this point, but they will be different from the moment they wake up. Both will think they are you.

What if we develop computers powerful enough to simulate the workings of our brains and we can make a flawless copy. Did you succeed in transferring yourself into the net for eternity. Well one of you, the original is still stuck in the human body, is it not?

I feel qualified to answer this question, and the answer is that a perfect duplication is fundamentally impossible. This isn't a matter of philosophy, but the laws of nature. It goes all the way down to Quantum Uncertainty. Without going into a lecture you can replicate the dance hall, but you can't replicate the dance. The mind isn't the brain, and while it may not exist independently it is a unpredictable fluctuation. Just like in Uncertainty observing something changes the outcome. Trying to replicate a quantum fluctuation would require a measurement which would change how the next thought progresses.

So though the scientists might try to pull it off. All they would get for their trouble is you waking up like you are always apt to do without a sense of anything being amiss. Your clone however will know damn well something is terribly wrong. They will sense a profound discontinuity of thought. You would have a real sense of continuity. While they will have a jarring collage of incomprehensible gibberish running through their head as they wake up.

You may not grasp this, but your mind never actually shuts down. Even in the deepest sleep it is still continuing on. This is part of why you never see people acting like computers. Why you don't have to reboot, or why you never just lag all the way out. The mind isn't the hardware it is just something that resides within the hardware. It just isn't possible to replicate a mind.

Now if you want to question the soul aspect of this endeavor. I would have to say that the soul would probably be at the quantum level as well. So no you wouldn't share a soul with the clone, because both of you would have decidedly different quantum states. You would be utterly different from each other in that regard. Your neurons will not fire in synch with one another, and you will not be having the same thoughts at the same time. Even if you are given the same stimulus you will not react in the exact same way, because thinking itself is random. This is also something that computers cannot do as well.

If you and your clone were both asked to pick a purely random number. You will not pick the same number. The mind really is random at the moment to moment level. Only the overarching brush strokes could ever be the same. Anyway the clone wouldn't be you, and they would know that, and you would know that. You wouldn't be of the same mind on things from moment to moment, and whether the clone feels it has a soul would really be entirely up to your perspective.

I would wager that clones of Atheists would have the lowest mortality rate. Clones of fundamentalists would probably go right off the deep end. You know not being able to live with the knowledge that they do not fit the criteria for having a soul. Really easy to see a lot of those walking off the top of tall buildings.

Thanks for your insight. I suppose if it's just fundamentally impossible to replicate all of someone, then the question doesn't matter anymore as it would take place in a universe different than ours.

I'm aware that our brains never shut down, and I'm also aware that our brains also show more activity during parts of our sleep than it does while we're awake, but would our brain not shut down if we were in some sort of cryogenic sleep? What would theoretically (or literally?) happen to our brains if we were in such a state? If our brains stay active, do we dream or are otherwise aware of our being alive? If so... could we technically live forever in that sleep?