McCoy's Paradox was the name given to a philosophical problem raised by Leonard McCoy in 2269 regarding transporters. McCoy theorized to Montgomery Scott that, since during the transporter process there was a time in which neither body nor consciousness existed, this meant that what the transporter actually did was destroy the body and create a duplicate which possessed the consciousness and memories of the original. When Scott rebutted with a phrase coined by Alfred Korzybski, that "a difference which makes no difference is no difference", McCoy responded that, if there was any difference, especially to the unconscious mind, he would have no way of knowing it. As McCoy pointed out, the main question raised by the paradox was if the soul was also duplicated by the transporter. James T. Kir
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