Isn't the Star Trek transporter essentially just uploading all of the information of a body (brain included), transmitting it, and reconstructing it on the other side?

@BenjaminHerman If they reconstruct your body that counts. If they just download your consciousness into a robot that doesn't count.

@JonathanRay What if the consciousness is instead copied into a biological replacement body that externally is a near-perfect replica, perceptually indistinguishable from the original, but was not in fact reconstructed from any "energy pattern"?

@BenjaminHerman that counts