Me Versus Copy of Me: Transhumanism's Dilemma by Ron Blechner | Second Tense

Description

Transhumanism: "Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities."

It is not a philosophy, as it may sound like some reaction to Humanism. Its beliefs range from using advanced medicine to cure diseases to the extreme of uploading human consciousness into computers and living entirely digital lives. At its heart, transhumanism acknowledges a belief that technology has essentially replaced humankind's natural evolution. (Of course, it may be argued that technological evolution is an extension of natural evolution, but that's a whole different debate, which is pretty philosophical.)

The issue that I would like to discuss is the idea of full uploading. I am not endorsing any of this, just trying to imagine what different possibilities might arise in the future, and discuss ethical consequences of them all.

Let's assume 3 things:
1. We would have technology scan a human brain with 100% fidelity.
2. We would also have sufficient technology to transfer this brain scan to a new destination. This destination could be a computer simulation, or a custom-grown human body with a brain tailored to host the source brain's data.
3. That the destination would have a consciousness, and would beat absolutely any test that could be thrown at it to try and disprove identity of the person.

And let's save the whole religious question for another time. "Is that a person? Would that have a soul? Would there be a transference of a soul?" etc. These religious questions are a matter of belief and faith and are difficult to come to any objective agreement, due to the speculative and personal nature of the topic. They make for an interesting discussion, but a very different topic.

The question I am most centrally interested in: "Is that me or is that a copy of me?

We can assume one of two conditions to answer this question:
1. That the human source and the destination could exist at the same time.
2. That the human source cannot survive the transference procedure.

If the first condition is assumed, then there should be little doubt that the destination is "a copy of me". Of course, from the copy's perspective they absolutely are the same person. The copy would have all the memories up to the moment of transference and it would seem that they have just moved physical location. (or digital, in the case of a computer simulation)

The second condition being assumed makes the question a little more tricky. As with the first case, the destination would have every reason to believe and assert that they are the same individual. Is an individual's consciousness and/or soul something that can be transferred as well? (An argument that one might make against the third of my original assumptions.)

Here we simply must turn to our imagination to supply possible answers.

Contents:

Answer #1: We are more than our memories.

Answer #2: Transporters and Seat Belts!

Answer #3: Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Life is but a dream

Ethical Ramifications

Ideal, Full Transfer

Less Ideal, "Legacy" Transfer

The Bizarre Scenario: Both Original And Copy Co-exist

 

Original URL

http://secondtense.blogspot.com/2009/09/me-versus-copy-of-me-transhumanisms.html

http://secondtense.blogspot.com/2009/09/me-versus-copy-of-me-transhumanisms.html