X-Message-Number: 11051
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 06:38:46 -0800
From: "Joseph J. Strout" <>
Subject: Re: Uploading and the soul

In #11046, Michael_Schepps wrote:

>I really agree with Thomas Donaldson on the information that the soul
>really is just a conglomerate of thoughts, experiences and  things that
>make up our lives that combined make us who we are, but since this is
>constantly changing, I feel that the proposed "uploading" wouldn't really
>work that well. The only part of our memories that would live forever are
>the parts directly after our memories are copied, that may grant
>immortality to a version of you (V 1.0)

I'm with you so far...

> ...but still whatever actions,
>memories and experiences that have occured since the uploading took place
>are gone

But this makes no sense to me.  You must be imagining that either (a) the
biological "you" can continue to live and have experiences after the
uploading process, or (b) the upload somehow suffers from severe
anterograde amnesia (like the famous patient "HM", who lost a large part of
his temporal lobes from surgery for epilepsy).  (a) is not true, because
any plausible uploading process destroys the original brain; the biological
brain does not exist any more, and has no memories or experiences to save
or lose.  (b) is not true, because if the artificial brain is not
functionally equivalent to the original, it is not an upload.  Functional
equivalence includes the ability to form new memories and store new
experiences, just like the biological brain.

So I don't see exactly what experiences and memories you think are being
lost.  Can you give a concrete (hypothetical) example?

Best wishes,
-- Joe

(NOTE: due to a technical blunder, a lot of mail sent to me between
12/15/98 and 1/04/99 was lost.  If you expected a reply and didn't
get one, please send your message again.)

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           developer: MacOS, Unix, 3D, AI     |
|                 http://www.strout.net              |
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