"If mind uploading is possible, and we don’t know that it is, then it might also be possible to then download that consciousness into another body, and this mind downloading would give human consciousness an opportunity to experience life from the perspective of a radically different embodiment. "
The fairytale transfer of consciousness or mind to another person is not possible, because they are determined by the wetware of the person's brain. The mind is not a separate thing from the brain.
OTOH, if you can create a brain with the exact same connectome, then the mind is "transferable", or rather it becomes more like matter duplication, and explored in Star Trek when a transporter fails to eliminate the person, leaving a place to be recreated at a destination. If we could duplicate the connectome in another substrate, then the same mind would emerge in this simulation.
This duplication would have to exactly replicate the connectome with all the effects of changes in hormones and neurotransmitters. Current technology, even extrapolations of the Human Brain Project, do not even get close to this similarity to the original wetware. Arguably, the different scales of the silicon vs wetware will prevent the same mind from being replicated in the silicon substrate.
AFAICS, in both cases of brain duplication, the result is a copy of the mind that is a separate sense of self, like identical twins, but with a common base from the moment before duplication.
Agreed, mostly. If brain duplication could be realized, however, the duplicated brain could be engineered in a context in which that brain could be modified in ways that would not be possible for a biological brain in a human (or other) body. Arguably this engineered context could be built around an existing human brain, so that no possibilities are gained through brain duplication other than the story possibilities from science fiction.
Where I differ from you is, "The mind is not a separate thing from the brain." Given that there is no consensus on the mind-body problem after more that 2500 years of study, we aren't likely to resolve this any sooner than we likely to realize brain duplication.
"Given that there is no consensus on the mind-body problem after more that 2500 years of study," AFAIK, mind-body dualism (that the mind is separate from the brain, like a soul) has been discarded. Mind is an emergent property of the brain.
You both here are the strong and weak forms of the same idea. I don't think we can transfer consciousness but we could image or create an analog copying system to another medium sharing emergent features, unlikely I suspect, even if possible, why bother as it is not a transfer, certainly social learning has overcome any evolutionary need for it, so it is another immortality project.
If however consciousness is a Gödelian machine as some posit, rather than our current emergent hand waving realisations.. then it might be possible. I am not very convinced of that one however.
"If mind uploading is possible, and we don’t know that it is, then it might also be possible to then download that consciousness into another body, and this mind downloading would give human consciousness an opportunity to experience life from the perspective of a radically different embodiment. "
The fairytale transfer of consciousness or mind to another person is not possible, because they are determined by the wetware of the person's brain. The mind is not a separate thing from the brain.
OTOH, if you can create a brain with the exact same connectome, then the mind is "transferable", or rather it becomes more like matter duplication, and explored in Star Trek when a transporter fails to eliminate the person, leaving a place to be recreated at a destination. If we could duplicate the connectome in another substrate, then the same mind would emerge in this simulation.
This duplication would have to exactly replicate the connectome with all the effects of changes in hormones and neurotransmitters. Current technology, even extrapolations of the Human Brain Project, do not even get close to this similarity to the original wetware. Arguably, the different scales of the silicon vs wetware will prevent the same mind from being replicated in the silicon substrate.
AFAICS, in both cases of brain duplication, the result is a copy of the mind that is a separate sense of self, like identical twins, but with a common base from the moment before duplication.
Agreed, mostly. If brain duplication could be realized, however, the duplicated brain could be engineered in a context in which that brain could be modified in ways that would not be possible for a biological brain in a human (or other) body. Arguably this engineered context could be built around an existing human brain, so that no possibilities are gained through brain duplication other than the story possibilities from science fiction.
Where I differ from you is, "The mind is not a separate thing from the brain." Given that there is no consensus on the mind-body problem after more that 2500 years of study, we aren't likely to resolve this any sooner than we likely to realize brain duplication.
"Given that there is no consensus on the mind-body problem after more that 2500 years of study," AFAIK, mind-body dualism (that the mind is separate from the brain, like a soul) has been discarded. Mind is an emergent property of the brain.
Admittedly, I am biased, but I find the arguments for a mind-body dualism unconvincing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism
You both here are the strong and weak forms of the same idea. I don't think we can transfer consciousness but we could image or create an analog copying system to another medium sharing emergent features, unlikely I suspect, even if possible, why bother as it is not a transfer, certainly social learning has overcome any evolutionary need for it, so it is another immortality project.
If however consciousness is a Gödelian machine as some posit, rather than our current emergent hand waving realisations.. then it might be possible. I am not very convinced of that one however.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275024071_The_Relativistic_Brain_How_it_works_and_why_it_is_not_stimulable_by_a_Turing_Machine