[ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 5:00 AM,  Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Jeff Davis <jrd1415 at gmail.com> forwarded:
>
>> I wrote "Posthuman" specifically to combat the fantasy that I found in
>> Hans Moravec and other transhumanists that it would be possible to
>> transfer human subjectivity, perceived as an informational pattern,
>> into a computer without losing anything essential.
>
> OK, ignoring that assumption of 'fantasy', what, exactly, is essential that would be lost in such a transfer?  It's all very well to talk about 'something essential', but you have to actually say /what/ this essential something is, or there is no argument.

I have argued (and nobody has expressed an objection) that the
upload/download process should be completely reversible.

In fact I would not want to try it before that point.  :-)

>> This view sees
>> information as disembodied and
>
> No, it doesn't.  Nobody is claiming that any information is or can be, disembodied.  The idea is to take the information that is embodied in one form, and embody it in another.  Even during the transfer of information, it is embodied, as electrons, photons, magnetic domains, whatever.  Information is *always* embodied, or it ceases to exist.

Exactly so to the limits of our knowledge.

Keith