I was reading some of Alex Jones's counter to Transhumanism (Here) His counter argument is that the human mind can't be uploaded because we have a soul that can't be uploaded or copied, any copy of you on a machine will be non-conscious, but he really hits the great philosophical antagonism with transhumanism on the nail here:
"This discussion of consciousness is the part that drives the transhumanists bonkers because to be a member of their cult, you have to believe that there is no such thing as consciousness… or a soul… or free will. You have to believe that consciousness is an artifact of the brain itself – a kind of “ghost in the machine,” if you will, that somehow gives rise to the self-delusion of awareness.
This means you have to believe free will is an illusion and that if you copy the brain and paste it somewhere else, then somehow magically that other thing becomes “you.”"
This is fundemental true, to beleive that one can be uploaded we have to beleive that our consciousness is nothing more then an emergent property of our physical material analog spiking neural network (brains), a "delusion" as Jones puts it.
Time and technological progress will likely tell us if this is true or not, for if we do upload humans and that these uploads act and behave and think they are the people they were copied from, this will mean a soul is superfluous, for those of jones's thinking it would mean that consciousness, self-awareness and free-will ARE a delusion. Or worse can be simulated such that it is impossible to prove simulated consciousness is not the real thing, leading to horrifying solipsism, for those of Jones's conspiracy mindset their would be no proving that they have not already been placed in the matrix and everyone and everything around them is mearly a simulation... the matrix server I assume is run by big brother.
On the other hand if we create uploaded humans and they don't behave and think they are who they a copied from, then we have have indirectly proven the soul exists, a win-win in my book, for both ways we would be potentially immortal as a matter of proven fact. Either way unanswerable philisophical quesions about what is consciouness, self-awareness, free-will will become answerable!
Do you disagree that transhumanism will finally test the great introspective questions and answer them once and for all?
"This discussion of consciousness is the part that drives the transhumanists bonkers because to be a member of their cult, you have to believe that there is no such thing as consciousness… or a soul… or free will. You have to believe that consciousness is an artifact of the brain itself – a kind of “ghost in the machine,” if you will, that somehow gives rise to the self-delusion of awareness.
This means you have to believe free will is an illusion and that if you copy the brain and paste it somewhere else, then somehow magically that other thing becomes “you.”"
This is fundemental true, to beleive that one can be uploaded we have to beleive that our consciousness is nothing more then an emergent property of our physical material analog spiking neural network (brains), a "delusion" as Jones puts it.
Time and technological progress will likely tell us if this is true or not, for if we do upload humans and that these uploads act and behave and think they are the people they were copied from, this will mean a soul is superfluous, for those of jones's thinking it would mean that consciousness, self-awareness and free-will ARE a delusion. Or worse can be simulated such that it is impossible to prove simulated consciousness is not the real thing, leading to horrifying solipsism, for those of Jones's conspiracy mindset their would be no proving that they have not already been placed in the matrix and everyone and everything around them is mearly a simulation... the matrix server I assume is run by big brother.
On the other hand if we create uploaded humans and they don't behave and think they are who they a copied from, then we have have indirectly proven the soul exists, a win-win in my book, for both ways we would be potentially immortal as a matter of proven fact. Either way unanswerable philisophical quesions about what is consciouness, self-awareness, free-will will become answerable!
Do you disagree that transhumanism will finally test the great introspective questions and answer them once and for all?