[ExI] Uploading and selfhood

[John K Clark]

Michael Miller Wrote:

> the self and thoughts are not reducible to the machinery
>which generates  them, whatever that machinery may be.

Then it is not detectable with the scientific method and the word you are so
desperately trying to avoid is "soul".

> to think that it can be 'transferred' from one set of
> hardware to another  is to posit some kind of supernatural
> or metaphysical entity as the self.

The self is just as metaphysical as "swiftly" is, or "large", "red" or the
number eleven. Not very.

> The self, whenever we use the concept, is better understood
> as being based  in social action.

So if I put you on a desert island with plenty of food but without a cell
phone you would cease to exist.

> I have never experienced an identical set of atoms to my body

I haven't either, yet.

> if I were in that situation I would probably argue that my
> conscious  experience correlated with what was happening
> to only one of those groups.

And that other group of atoms would be having exactly precisely the
same thoughts, and if I pushed a button and claimed that you and
that other group of atoms exchanged positions you'd have no way
of knowing if I was telling the truth or not and thus no reason to care.

> I think we're barking up the wrong tree as soon as we start
> trying to pin  down 'me' to a specific material object.

And that contradicts what you were saying just one sentence ago.

> unless we're positing some kind of non-physical essential self

You're the one postulating something vastly important that cannot
be detected with the scientific method not me.

> There's no such thing as 'me'.

Well you would know, however there is such a thing as me.

  John K Clark