Mental Transference (Mind up-loading): metaphysical controversies around the preservation of personal identity

Abstract

Some science fiction scenarios can represent interesting thought experiments for philosophy, both in terms of checking spontaneous intuitions and trying to rationally clarify the limits of the conceivable and the probable. My purpose in this paper is to analyze, in the light of animalistic and psychologist theories of personal identity, the hypothesis of mental transference (TM), as understood by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers. In short, I will try to show that, if numerical identity is taken as a criterion of human identity, as proposed by animalism, TM is not a satisfactory answer to the problem of death. The reasons for this insufficiency lie in the fact that it does not save the organicity or the spatio-temporal continuity of the individual, at the same time that it raises the potential problem of duplication. Finally, if psychological continuity is appealed to as a necessary and sufficient requirement for personal survival, all the general difficulties of psychologism are incurred and a begging of the question is committed that renders the whole question epistemically undecidable.