X-Message-Number: 32856
From: Daniel Crevier <>
References: <>
Subject: Re:  Mark Gubrud on Uploading
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:14:15 -0400

I finally got around to reading Mark Gubrud's piece in The New Atlantis:
http://futurisms.thenewatlantis.com/2010/06/why-transhumanism-wont-work.html
If I understand correctly, the argument boils down to this: "What uploaders 
really claim is that they could transfer a person's soul into a computer. As 
souls don't exist, this is impossible. QED."
Please! Uploading has nothing to do with the transmigration of souls. 
Uploaders at times use loaded terms like "essence" (Moravec) or "fundamental 
identity" (Kurzweil) simply because there is no simple English expression 
for "whatever physical mechanism causes a particular conscious experience". 
The real assumption at the basis of uploading is that such a mechanism could 
be built out of materials other than cytoplasm. If this is so, then thought 
experiments like the gradual replacement of a person's brain with such a 
mechanism strongly suggest that this operation would not interrupt the 
continuity of consciousness. The uploaded consciousness would then logically 
be the same as the preexisting biological one.
I think Gubrud's real beef against uploading is that he doesn't believe 
anything non biological can be conscious, as when he asks (strongly 
suggesting a positive answer) " ... is the 'mere jelly' [of cytoplasm], once 
appropriately patterned ... what real human beings are made of - that and 
nothing else that is known to science?"  Indeed the only conscious beings we 
know of for sure (ourselves) are made of cytoplasm, but then it was the only 
material available to evolution for producing conscious entities. If someone 
from a faraway country told you that the only houses they know of are made 
of straw, at that this proves that houses can't be built of any other 
material, would you believe them?
So yes, uploading is based on an assumption, but a fairly plausible one, and 
imho Gubrud's discussion doesn't do anything to disprove it.

Daniel Crevier 

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