My Brain, my Mind, and I: Some Philosophical Assumptions of Mind-Uploading

Abstract

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.