Is the uploading of consciousness possible and feasible?
From my perspective the universally Simple answer - it depends:
if you go about it with physics as the basis of action - NO.
if you manage to free your consciousness from your body and remain metaphysically intact, then YES, you can dwell in any vessel.
For example one can move one’s true self into a rock and feel the signals that this vessel has to offer… perhaps not as rich a set of signals that our glorious human body has to offer, but still perhaps interesting in a certain way.
So the more interesting question for me is what type of consciousness vessel shall we design? what signals will it be capable to perceive and transmit? In what way will it be more interesting for a spark of liberated consciousness to dwell within? more interesting that heavenly upper spheres? more interesting than taking/making a new human body?
As a race we are still struggling to work with the amazing capacities that this body has! We barely use 10% of our brain capacity, we can barely hold our focus with our intentions, we can barely manage to be in touch with the difference between biological need to eat and existential hunger for fullfillment that we misplace onto our lasagne…
If these investigations are done from the perspective that consciousness is a product of bio-physical brain… they strike me as flat out boring… For me it is perfectly clear that “consciousness is the ground of being” and the brain is simply a tool for perception and processing of signals… what is not boring is the question of what shall a spark of liberated consciousness decide to DO?
In response to :
Dr M A Twyman on “Consciousness and the transhuman”
Many of the long-term futurist scenarios frequently discussed by
transhumanists touch upon questions of the nature of sentience. For
example: Is uploading feasible, or even possible in principle? How
might we assess the degree or type of sentience in a truly alien
lifeform? Serious answers to these and other questions require
recourse to scientific theories of the nature of consciousness and
human sentience. Dr Twyman will briefly review the principal
contemporary accounts of consciousness, and then describe their
relevance to areas of particular interest to transhumanism, before
leading discussion of the kinds of social and research policies which
transhumanists should perhaps be advocating.
