[ExI] Mind Uploading article in Wikipedia

[Damien Broderick]

At 11:26 PM 4/6/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote:

>"I" find that "I"
>wouldn't be scared of walking into that uploading machine. Rather, "I"
>wonder why? What on earth am "I" working so hard to preserve in the
>first place? So many meaningless eddies in the flow?

"Meaningless" is a clue. Meaning implies a purpose chosen (or 
recognized) by an entity using what Dennett and others call "the 
Intentional Stance." If that entity *comprises* eddies in a flow, 
then the eddies are not meaningless; they are the very basis of meaning.

Why am "I" working hard to preserve it? Because "I" am a device built 
with that powerful drive, to preserve the ensemble of matter that in 
principle passes along a bundle of its own gadgets with 
how-2-build-and-operate-a-me-like-thing instructions or hardware . 
And some of those gadgets are memetic rather than genetic. And so on. 
Natural selection builds devices like us to have conscious awareness 
(as John Clark keeps insisting, whether he'd put it this way or not, 
and I don't hear anyone disagreeing)--that is, to function from an 
Intentional Stance. This is not an accident or a drill.

The rest of the argument is just filling in the dots.

Damien Broderick