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The fear of death and the myth of immortality are themes long present in various narratives, whether literary or visual. Science fiction as a genre offers us many venues for new explorations of this idea. Mind uploading is one of them. This fictional technique, related to cloning, is performed when the mind and consciousness of a person are transferred to another biological body or machine with the help of technology. In this way, a person continues their social life through their brain functions. This paper looks at four separate recent screen narratives – the movies Self/less, Transcendence, and Replicas, and the episode “Be Right Back” of the TV show Black Mirror. With the help of Tzvetan Todorov’s structural analysis, we find clauses that are present in all of the plots and see what ideas and topics they share. The paper also uses the idea of anthropological reading of science fiction and therefore uses scientific research to analyze these themes. By looking at anthropological findings of immortality, mortality, death in modern society, and digital techniques, we see how the analyzed narratives portray a unique mixture of fear of and longing for all the mentioned processes and ideas. Finally, this paper shows how science fiction could possibly reflect reality – both through presenting thoughts of society and inspiring future technological advances and ideas (in this case, the quest for immortality). While humans are still far from achieving eternal life, the mentioned screen narratives portray the growing stream of ideas that deal with mind uploading in the age of the internet and social media.

The paper analyses selected philosophical aspects of Stanisław Lem’s Solaris. I argue that there is an interesting similarity between the history of “Solarist studies” –the fictional scientific discipline depicted by Lem and cognitive science. I show that both disciplines go through similar stages as they try to describe their main subject (the planet Solaris and human consciousness respectively). In the further part of the paper, I focus on two problems identified in cognitive science that can be directly related to the themes found in Solaris: the problem of the detection of intelligence and the problem of the notion of mental representations.I finish the paper by looking at the mysterious guests that stalk the main protagonists and show that they can be understood as heuristic models that are taken into account in the theories of mind uploading. Artykuł bada wybrane filozoficzne aspekty powieści Solaris Stanisława Lema. Twierdzę, że zachodzi interesujące podobieństwo pomiędzy historią „solarystyki” – fikcyjnej dyscypliny naukowej opisywanej przez Lema a historią kognitywistyki. Pokazuję, że obie dyscypliny przechodziły przez podobne etapy, starając się opisać swój przedmiot (odpowiednio, planetę Solaris oraz świadomość ludzką). W dalszej części artykułu skupiam się na dwóch problemach zidentyfikowanych w kognitywistyce, które można bezpośrednio odnieść do wątków obecnych w Solaris: problemie wykrywania istot myślących oraz problemie reprezentacji umysłowych.Kończę artykuł przyglądając się tajemniczym gościom, którzy prześladują bohaterów powieści i pokazuję, że mogą oni być zinterpretowani jako modele heurystyczne rozważane w teoriach uploadu.

ML would like to thank Kaj Sotala for his support for Moralities of Intelligent Machines team and for providing the first version of the Mind Upload vignette. ML would like to thank all of his team members, who make this research possible. Special thanks to Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation (grant number: 170112) and Academy of Finland (grant number: 323207) for funding this research. This article is dedicated to ML’s mother: thank you for everything. May all the beings in all the worlds be happy., Mind upload, making a digital copy of one's brain, is a part of the transhumanistic dream of eternal life and the end of suffering. It is also perceived as a viable route toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). However, AI safety research has alerted to one major risk in creating AGI by mind upload: namely, that mind upload technology could appeal primarily to callous and selfish individuals who then abuse this technology for their personal gain—and, potentially, at a considerable cost to the welfare of humankind. Therefore, it is important to understand whether people's acceptance of mind upload is associated with pathological and/or antisocial traits. To this end, the present research examined whether individual differences in Dark Triad traits predict attitudes toward mind upload in a sample of 1007 English-speaking adults. A pre-registered structural equation model revealed that Machiavellianism (but not psychopathy) was associated with favorable views about mind upload, both directly and indirectly through utilitarian moral attitudes. These results therefore substantiate the concerns voiced by AI safety researchers—namely, that mind upload technology could be adopted disproportionately by individuals with an antisocial personality., Jane & Aatos Erkko Foundation [grant number 170112], Academy of Finland [grant number 323207]

The aim of the article was to present the influence of changes to the body-machine system, resulting from the application of innovative technologies and the strategy of cyborgization on the perception of and assignment of value to the human body in contemporary society. I apply two research approaches. On the one hand, the non-invasive functioning of the body-machine system as an expression of transgression; on the other one: the functioning of a machine connected with a body (exo-extension), the functioning of a machine in a body (endo-extension) and the functioning of a body in a machine (mind uploading), as an expression of transhumanism. Addressing the problem formulated in the title of this article, I postulated the hypothesis that undermining the natural status of the human body in postbiological society, favoured by cyborgization and the application of innovative technologies, resulting from a controlled social discourse and knowledge, changing the body-machine relations, changes the perception of and assignment of value to the human body. The hypothesis was confirmed. The article is analytical and descriptive. The research problem is analysed from the sociological perspective.

This paper addresses the greatest aspiration of the transhumanist movement: achieving immortal life through a procedure known as mind uploading. This procedure consists in keeping our minds fully a...

Nos proponemos en este artículo analizar dos obras recientes que tienen como tema común la utopía de la inmortalidad alcanzada a través de los medios tecnólogicos, esto es, la mind uploading, la “subida”: el cuento del mexicano Alberto Chimal “La segunda Celeste”, incluido en Manos de lumbre (2018), y la novela escrita en forma de crónica Sinfín (2020) del argentino Martín Caparrós. Nuestro objetivo es demostrar que las dos obras tratan el tema de la “subida” como una utopía en el sentido dado a este término por Matthew Beaumont, es decir, una mirada sobre un presente historizado desde la perspectiva de un futuro fantástico, y reflejan más bien las contradicciones de la presente visión sobre lo humano que una cala real en un futuro implacablemente opaco. Al mismo tiempo, mostraremos que en las dos obras se transparenta la paradoja observada por Fredic Jameson respecto a la imposibilidad de distinguir entre la utopía y la distopía en el momento en que se trata de indagar el futuro. Por fin, intentaremos poner de relieve que, en los dos textos, la utópica “subida”, que es uno de los objetivos fundamentales de la agenda transhumanista, se contempla con el escepticismo derivado de una visión pesimista sobre un sujeto que accede a la tecnología sin ser capaz de superar sus debilidades humanas, por lo cual, fracasa en su intento de convertirse en “post-humano”.

The technology and possibility of achieving mind uploading, technically called whole brain emulation, are explored. Experimental work is ongoing with small animal brains. Religious issues addressed include the role of the body, what kind of body the uploaded mind gets, and how cognition is embodied. The philosophical and religious concept of personal identity is examined with regard to whether the mind upload preserves the identity of the person choosing this procedure. The chapter discusses the various ways the religions might respond, should mind uploading technology be successful. Three ways of defining the ethics of mind uploading are discussed: the therapy—enhancement continuum and ways to make us better, choice, and justice. Discussion questions are included at the end of the chapter.

Elon Musk regularly advertises for the simulation argument, stressing that he regards it as highly likely that we live in a computer simulation. However, it must be noted that the argument can be reconstructed such that its line of thought can be rationally grasped. This, however, does not necessarily mean that it is a plausible argument. The argument presupposes the anthropology that human beings can be uploaded onto a hard drive, which is based upon the view that humans are nothing like a software running on our body which serves as our hardware. It is this understanding of the human species which has been employed by many transhumanists who stress that immortality is near. The author will explain the line of thought underlining the simulation argument while they will, at the same time, explain that it is neither highly likely that we live in a computer simulation, nor that we can upload our personalities onto a computer, and even if this was possible, it would not enable us to become immortal.

In recent years, the idea of mind uploading has left the genre of science fiction. Uploading our minds as a form of immortality, or so it has been argued, is now within our reach. Of course, this depends on the assumption that our mind is nothing more than some sort of computer software running on the brain as hardware paving the way for a standard procedure of mind uploading, namely instantaneous destructive uploading – where the brain is simulated on a computer - or gradual destructive uploading – where brain regions are gradually replaced by micro-chips. Lately, however, there has been sustained doubts that things are so simple. In this volume alone Susan Schneider & Joe Corabi and Gualtiero Piccinini argue that a person cannot survive standard procedures of mind uploading. The main reasons are that the uploading process violates identity criteria for the person and that it is unclear that conscious mental states can be uploaded. In this article, we argue that while the sceptics about the standard methods of uploading are probably right, there are more options to be evaluated. We introduce what we call slow continuous mind uploading as an alternative procedure. Slow continuous uploading (SCU) is based on the extended mind thesis which claims that artefacts can under specific circumstances come to count as part of the realization basis for an individual’s mind. In this context, we explore a form of mind uploading which may already be being innovated today through our deep reliance upon cognitive incorporation of “smart” internet technologies. We will argue that this process may give us the right kind of tools to survive mind uploading, or more minimally, to create an agent that can be considered a psychological continuity of an individual. We think that, at least, the objections so far developed in the literature do not rule this out.

Agradezco los comentarios de Belén Liedo y Pablo García-Barranquero a una versión previa del manuscrito, así como a los revisores anónimos de la revista Isegoría y al público de Valencia, Santiago de Compostela y Málaga por sus aportaciones., Tanto el transhumanismo como el posthumanismo filosófico han prestado una atención especial a la corporalidad humana en relación al avance tecnológico. En el presente artículo, se comienza señalando cómo ambos movimientos difieren significativamente respecto a la herencia del humanismo. Posteriormente, se aborda la noción transhumanista de la ‘libertad morfológica’ de la mano de More, Sandberg y Bostrom. A continuación, se presentan casos paradigmáticos de modificaciones corporales mediante implantes cibernéticos. En último lugar, se problematizan las cuestiones de la identidad, la corporalidad y el desencuentro entre ambas corrientes respecto al ‘volcado de la mente’., Transhumanism and philosophical posthumanism have paid special attention to human corporeality in relation to technological breakthroughs. This article begins by pointing out how the two movements differ significantly about the inheritance of humanism. Subsequently, the transhumanist notion of ‘morphological freedom’ is addressed from the proposals of More, Sandberg, and Bostrom. Then, paradigmatic cases of body modifications through cybernetic implants are considered. Finally, the issues of identity, corporeality, and the disagreement between the two currents regarding ‘mind uploading’ are problematized., Proyecto Inteligencia artificial y biotecnología de la mejora moral. Aspectos éticos (FFI2016-79000-P), financiado por el Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad del Gobierno de España

El mind uploading es el acto de transferir una mente de su sustrato original (el cuerpo biológico de la persona) a otro sustrato, que puede ser también biológico, o bien robótico o incluso digital. Esta propuesta se enmarca en el movimiento transhumanista y tiene como objetivo último la inmortalidad personal más allá de la duración temporal del cuerpo biológico. La tesis de este artículo es que el mind uploading es una propuesta que se presenta principalmente como tecnológica, pero que, en realidad, tiene implicaciones a muchos otros niveles: antropológico, cultural, político, etc., por lo que requiere una reflexión más profunda. Por ello, se analizan en este artículo dos dimensiones del mind-uploading: su posibilidad real de realización y su deseabilidad, sin pretender tanto dar respuestas finales como suscitar preguntas que se dan muchas veces por descontadas.

This chapter focuses on AI-based cognitive and perceptual enhancements. AI-based brain enhancements are already under development, and they may become commonplace over the next 30–50 years. We raise doubts concerning whether radical AI-based enhancements transhumanists advocate will accomplish the transhumanists goals of longevity, human flourishing, and intelligence enhancement. We urge that even if the technologies are medically safe and are not used as tools by surveillance capitalism or an authoritarian dictatorship, these enhancements may still fail to do their job for philosophical reasons. In what follows, we explore one such concern, a problem that involves the nature of the self. We illustrate that the so called transhumanist efforts to “merge oneself with AI” could lead to perverse realizations of AI technology, such as the demise of the person who sought enhancement. And, in a positive vein, we offer ways to avoid this, at least within the context of one theory of the nature of personhood.

RESUMO Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar os atuais discursos em torno do problema da imortalidade tecnológica presentes em algumas ficções científicas recentes. Essas ficções serão tomadas como ponto de partida para uma discussão sobre as implicações filosóficas decorrentes da possibilidade do mind uploading, principalmente no que se refere a uma ideia de transcendência e abandono do corpo. Por fim, questiona-se qual o lugar dos sonhos utópicos de imortalidade em meio à crise de futuro que vivemos atualmente, relacionada principalmente com a discussão em torno das mudanças climáticas e da insustentabilidade dos atuais modos de vida capitalistas. ABSTRACT This paper aims to analyze the current discourses about the problem of technological immortality in some recent science fictions. These will be taken as a starting point for a discussion about the philosophical implications related to mind uploading, especially with regard to an idea of transcendence and abandonment of the body. Finally, we question the place of the utopian dreams of immortality in relation to the “crisis of the future” that we are currently experiencing, mainly related to climate change and the unsustainability of current capitalist ways of life. RESUMEN El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar los discursos actuales sobre el problema de la inmortalidad tecnológica presentes en algunas obras recientes de ciencia ficción. Estas ficciones se tomarán como punto de partida para una discusión sobre las implicaciones filosóficas relacionadas con la posibilidad del mind uploading, especialmente con respecto a una idea de trascendencia y abandono del cuerpo. Finalmente, cuestionamos el lugar de los sueños utópicos de inmortalidad en medio de la crisis del futuro que estamos experimentando actualmente, relacionada principalmente con la discusión sobre el cambio climático y la insostenibilidad de las formas de vida capitalistas.

AI promises to be a master technology that can solve any problem—including the problem of death. There are two main contemporary narratives describing how AI might achieve this: cyborgization and mind uploading. This chapter focuses on the latter. It examines how works of nonfiction by influential technologists, in particular Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil, have framed this possibility. It pays particular attention to three narrative elements: the promise of boundless wish fulfilment, the assumption of exponential technological progress, and the assumption of personal survival through the mind-uploading process. It then examines how works of fiction, including those of William Gibson, Greg Egan, Pat Cadigan, Robert Sawyer, Rudy Rucker, and Cory Doctorow, offer problematized accounts of these claims. It focuses on three problems in particular, which I call the problems of identity, stability, and substrate. It concludes that science fiction offers a particularly important site of critique and response to techno-utopian narratives.

Transhumanism is an international movement which es­pouses the idea that any human organ, function, sense, ability, can be augmented and ameliorated with the judicious use of technology. The ethical, cultural, social, biological, economic implications for this view are far-reaching and point to a number of complex ques­tions whose solution eludes researchers so far. One of the possible sources for answers to these is found in science fiction. While trans­humanism is a relatively recent phenomenon (last 25 years or so), science fiction published in English that mirrors some of its issues and ideas has been flourishing for at least as long. In Italy, science fiction is starting to enjoy popularity and critical depth in no small measure due to the untiring abilities of a number of authors. This article analyzes the intersections between human and machine as they are portrayed in Francesco Verso’s Nexhuman. Francesco Verso has published 4 award-winning science fiction novels and a number of short stories. Nexhuman offers a considerable narrative construct which paints a dystopian future where trash is formed and re-formed, sold and reworked; however, strong emotions are not absent, since love may flourish in this “kipple”-laden setting, as well as violence and obsession. Transhumanist ideas explicitly dealt with in the novel include the end of death, the question of the soul, mind uploading, limb prosthesis, the co-existence of humans with mind-uploaded be­ings. The amalgam between human and machine does away with the Self and the Other(s) as separate entities and constructs a completely different Weltanschauung. Nexhuman is not only a transhumanist trailblazer within the flourishing arena of Italian science fiction, but also a springboard for deeper understanding of what makes us human and the extent to which binary categories need to be overcome in order to create a more accommodating world.

Would you survive if your consciousness branched into two or more streams? Commonly discussed within the context of split-brain scenarios, this possibility might soon become commonplace with mind uploading technology. Cerullo (Minds and Machines, 25, 17–36, 2015) suggests that after nondestructive mind uploading and other branching scenarios, personal identity would continue in two streams of consciousness. Thus he argues for what he calls branching identity. In this discussion, I evaluate the theory of branching identity and Cerullo’s arguments for it, concluding that branching identity is insufficiently justified and does not yield a better interpretation of branching cases than provided by Parfit (1984).

In this contribution, I aim to develop a philosophical account of post-human that allows us to conceive a future society of humanoids who are free and equal. ‘Post-human’ is to be interpreted here as material, not anthropocentric but rather interspeciesist, intercultural and syncretic dimension, as horizon of effective sharing of practices. In contrast, trans-human is meant to refer to the transcending of humans into an ‘ideal’, an immaterial network made up only of software, and lacking of relations with any material beings. The trans-humanism is an ideology directed towards the passing/abolition of the status of ‘being human’ in terms of finite and incarnate living beings, of which the myth/prevision of mind uploading is one of the most emblematic goals

In 1994 the Death With Dignity Act was first passed by Oregon voters successfully, and it became the first law in American history permitting physician-assisted suicide. Pain and negative mental feelings and physical unconsciousness about the future events in the Universe are getting considered as the only disadvantages of the death. Aside of the issues of human cloning and mind uploading for making progress towards eternity of life, complementary researches in-regard-with the effects of mood alternation during neurological shutdown shall be initiated. Alternation on the human feelings by stimulation of the brain's synapses would lead to a more peaceful mental shutdown. The pain's circuit (the circuit of negative emotions during the death) shall be extracted and gets stimulated during the death. The stimulation of the circuit usually begins right after the act of suicide and suppression of the oxygen follow, and then gets followed for about 15 minutes. Since the Brain Research Initiative began in 2013, NIH and the Brain Research Initiative are responsible for further researches on a variety of different brain circuits. The BRAIN Initiative, is a collaborative, public-private research initiative announced by the Obama administration with the goal of supporting the development and application of innovative technologies that can create a dynamic understanding of brain function.

Mind uploading is the hypothetical future technology of transferring human minds to computer hardware using whole-brain emulation. After a brief review of the technological prospects for mind uploading, a range of philosophical and ethical aspects of the technology are reviewed. These include questions about whether uploads will have consciousness and whether uploading will preserve personal identity, as well as what impact on society a working uploading technology is likely to have and whether these impacts are desirable. The issue of whether we ought to move forward towards uploading technology remains as unclear as ever.

Eighty years ago, Nicholas Berdyaev cautioned that new technological problems needed to be addressed with a new philosophical anthropology. Today, the transhumanist goal of mind uploading is perceived by many theologians and philosophers to be dangerous due to its violation of the human person. I contrast transhumanist “patternist” views of the person with Brent Waters’s Augustinian view of the technological pilgrim, Celia Deane-Drummond’s evolutionary Thomistic view of humanity, and Francis Fukuyama’s insistence on the inviolability of “Factor X”. These latter three thinkers all disagree with the patternist position, but their views are also discordant with each other. This disagreement constitutes a challenge for people of faith confronting transhumanism—which view is to be taken right? I contend that Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies can enrich our understanding of the debates by highlighting the transmutation of philosophical view into scientific theory and the intermingled nature of our forms of knowledge. Furthermore, I contend that STS helps Christians understand the evolution of their own anthropologies and suggests some prospects for future theological anthropology.

Whole brain emulation, also called mind copying or mind uploading, is one of the several possible paths to superintelligence, which is machine intelligence that surpasses general human intelligence. This chapter examines whole brain emulation with regard to embodiment and personal identity. It contends that uploading can meet the embodiment requirement of Christian theology through a creative revisioning of body in light of developments in robotics and tissue engineering. This chapter demonstrates that uploading does not preserve personal identity according to the philosophical mental states theory, but the survival theory of David Parfitt does provide adequate philosophical grounding for one uploading scenario. Since uploading will likely evolve into superintelligent machines, the chapter calls for an “AI-Theology” conversation to address the theological significance of superintelligence and sketches out some possible avenues forward.

The purpose of this paper is mainly diagnostic. It tries to answer the question why we love machines. I argue that our biological bodies are often perceived as deficient in various ways. They limit our freedom, are easily destructible, and condemn us to die. For this reason, we look for an alternative way to exist and find it in the machine and its way of existing. Machines are attractive as a model for (post)human existence because they seem to allow an escape from the messiness of the human body. The more machine-like the human body becomes, the more it can be controlled and the more we make it our own by aligning the working of our bodies with our purposes. If the human body could be turned into (or be replaced by) a machine, we would finally be free to shape our own destiny. The paper traces how we attempt to become more machine-like in four different stages, which I call illusionism, fortification, replacement, and displacement. Illusionism is the practice of changing one’s appearance in order to accord with a commonly accepted standard of beauty. Fortification is the attempt to make the human body less vulnerable and more capable. Replacement is the practice of replacing human body parts with artificial ones. Finally, displacement is the act of replacing the whole body by something more durable or altogether immaterial. I conclude my discussion with an encouragement to adopt a different point of view, which sees the human body not as disabling and hence in need of improvement or displacement, but rather as enabling and a gift that is worth preserving, even in its imperfect state.

We present a hypothetical process of mind coalescence, where artificial connections are created between two or more brains. This might simply allow for an improved form of communication. At the other extreme, it might merge the minds into one in a process that can be thought of as a reverse split-brain operation. We propose that one way mind coalescence might happen is via an exocortex, a prosthetic extension of the biological brain which integrates with the brain as seamlessly as parts of the biological brain integrate with each other. An exocortex may also prove to be the easiest route for mind uploading, as a person's personality gradually moves away from the aging biological brain onto the exocortex. Memories might also be copied and shared even without minds being permanently merged. Over time, the borders of personal identity may become loose or even unnecessary.

The Terasem Mind Uploading Experiment is a multi-decade test of the comparability of single person actual human consciousness as assessed by expert psychological review of their digitized interactions with same person purported human consciousness as assessed by expert psychological interviews of personality software that draws upon a database comprised of the original actual person's digitized interactions. The experiment is based upon a hypothesis that the paper analyzes for its conformance with scientific testability in accordance with the criteria set forth by Karl Popper. Strengths and weaknesses of both the hypothesis and the experiment are assessed in terms of other tests of digital consciousness, scientific rigor and good clinical practices. Recommendations for improvement include stronger parametrization of endpoint assessment and better attention to compliance with informed consent in the event there is emergence of software-based consciousness.

The progressing cyborgization of the human body reaches its completion point when the entire body can be replaced by uploading individual minds to a less vulnerable and limited substrate, thus achieving "digital immortality" for the uploaded self. The paper questions the philosophical assumptions that are being made when mind-uploading is thought a realistic possibility. I will argue that we have little reason to suppose that an exact functional copy of the brain will actually produce similar phenomenological effects (if any at all), and even less reason to believe that the uploaded mind, even if similar, will be the same self as the one on whose brain it was modeled.

In this paper, we explore from several angles the possibility, and practicality, of one of the major tenets of the transhumanist movement — the intention to upload human minds to computers. The first part of the paper assumes that mind-uploading is possible and will become quite commonplace in the near (21st century) future a la Ray Kurzweil and cohorts. This assumption allows us to explore several of its problematic implications for personal identity, especially the effects it will have on questions of duty, responsibility, interpersonal relationships, and culpability in the case of crime. In the second part of the paper, we take a deeper and more critical look at whether mind-uploading is indeed metaphysically possible, and offer some neurobiologically-inspired arguments against its feasibility.

The function of the brain is intricately woven into the fabric of time. Functions such as (i) storing and accessing past memories, (ii) dealing with immediate sensorimotor needs in the present, and (iii) projecting into the future for goal-directed behavior are good examples of how key brain processes are integrated into time. Moreover, it can even seem that the brain generates time (in the psychological sense, not in the physical sense) since, without the brain, a living organism cannot have the notion of past nor future. When combined with an evolutionary perspective, this seemingly straightforward idea that the brain enables the conceptualization of past and future can lead to deeper insights into the principles of brain function, including that of consciousness. In this paper, we systematically investigate, through simulated evolution of artificial neural networks, conditions for the emergence of past and future in simple neural architectures, and discuss the implications of our findings for conscious...

In a paper in this journal, Neil Levy challenges Nicholas Agar’s argument for the irrationality of mind-uploading. Mind-uploading is a futuristic process that involves scanning brains and recording relevant information which is then transferred into a computer. Its advocates suppose that mind-uploading transfers both human minds and identities from biological brains into computers. According to Agar’s original argument, mind-uploading is prudentially irrational. Success relies on the soundness of the program of Strong AI—the view that it may someday be possible to build a computer that is capable of thought. Strong AI may in fact be false, an eventuality with dire consequences for mind-uploading. Levy argues that Agar’s argument relies on mistakes about the probability of failed mind-uploading and underestimates what is to be gained from successfully mind-uploading. This paper clarifies Agar’s original claims about the likelihood of mind-uploading failure and offers further defense of a pessimistic evaluation of success.

Mind uploading speculation and debate often concludes that a procedure described as gradual in-place replacement preserves personal identity while a procedure described as destructive scan-and-copy produces some other identity in the target substrate such that personal identity is lost along with the biological brain. This paper demonstrates a chain of reasoning that establishes metaphysical equivalence between these two methods in terms of preserving personal identity.

Brain trauma often affects memories, perceptions and many other cognitive functions which all together form human mind. Modern medicine tries to provide technologies which can heal damaged brain and recover stream of consciousness. In this paper, I performed simulation experiment to analyze hypothetical process of mind recovery through uploading to an artificial environment. Neuroprosthesis, brain-computer interface or brain transplant might be the candidates for such migration. A term- “Mind uploading” was introduced to define process where core vital functions migrate from the human brain to an artificial environment. To simulate the process, I suggest a topological approach which is based on a formalism of information geometry. Geometrical formalism let me simulate a simple toy mind as geometrical structures. Also, it gives powerful geometrical and topological methods for analysis of the information flows in arbitrary complex system. The approach leads me to insight of using holographic analogy for the mind migration to an artificial environment. The concept of holography is well known in optics where localized 3D shape can be recorded and later reconstructed by 2D dimensional hologram. I am using that analogy to represents the toy mind functions as a geometrical shape on information manifold. Distributed holographic representation can be created for such shape. Then holographic reconstruction process provides an algorithm to reconstruct original system. Thus the migration from original to an artificial environment and back can be seen as a holography on information manifold. Interactions between brain and an artificial environment are modeled as an entropy flow which is defined as a geometrical flow on information manifold. Such flow is an analogy of holography recording for the toy mind. The opposite process of holography reconstruction is modeled by none-local Hamiltonians defined on information manifold. The simulated process illustrate a way to restore stream of consciousness which is lost due to brain damage, degeneration or decay. At the same, the simulation demonstrated that certain physical limitations will constraint such migration.