Mind Uploading Research Articles

Heaven on Earth: The Mind Uploading Project as Secular Eschatology

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses the greatest aspiration of the transhumanist movement: achieving immortal life through a procedure known as mind uploading. This procedure consists in keeping our minds fully and indefinitely operative after death by transferring them to a non-biological substrate that allows man to be liberated from his bodily confinement. My main thesis is that the mind uploading project presupposes a secular eschatology, consummating the Promethean utopia according to which human beings could redeem themselves, expelling God definitively from their existential horizon. On this basis, the paper offers meaningful contrasts between the uploading as secular eschatology and the Christian tradition.

MIND UPLOADING AND EMBODIED COGNITION: A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE

AbstractOne of the more radical transhumanist proposals for future human being envisions the uploading of our minds to a digital substrate, trading our dependence on frail, degenerating “meat” bodies for the immortality of software existence. Yet metaphor studies indicate that our use of metaphor operates in our bodily inhabiting of the world, and a phenomenological approach emphasizes a “hybridity” to human being that resists traditional mind/body dichotomies. Future scenarios envisioning mind uploading and disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) share an apocalyptic category with more traditional religious eschatologies, though they differ markedly in content; therefore, the insights of embodied cognition and their uptake in technological innovation are considered as they apply to theological concerns. Theology often functions in debates over the technological future to critique or to caution. However, theologians may learn from their technological dialogue partners when it comes to the future of embodiment and its implications for the construction and practice of theology.

New Research Shall Be Initiated in Regard With the Effects of Mood Alternation During Neurological Shutdown

In 1994 the Death With Dignity Act was first passed by Oregon voters successfully, and it became the first law in American history permitting physician-assisted suicide. Pain and negative mental feelings and physical unconsciousness about the future events in the Universe are getting considered as the only disadvantages of the death. Aside of the issues of human cloning and mind uploading for making progress towards eternity of life, complementary researches in-regard-with the effects of mood alternation during neurological shutdown shall be initiated. Alternation on the human feelings by stimulation of the brain's synapses would lead to a more peaceful mental shutdown. The pain's circuit (the circuit of negative emotions during the death) shall be extracted and gets stimulated during the death. The stimulation of the circuit usually begins right after the act of suicide and suppression of the oxygen follow, and then gets followed for about 15 minutes. Since the Brain Research Initiative began in 2013, NIH and the Brain Research Initiative are responsible for further researches on a variety of different brain circuits. The BRAIN Initiative, is a collaborative, public-private research initiative announced by the Obama administration with the goal of supporting the development and application of innovative technologies that can create a dynamic understanding of brain function.

From Birth to the Grave in the New Age: The Challenges of Whole Brain Emulation in the Portuguese Legal Concepts of Personhood and Death

From Birth to the Grave in the New Age: The Challenges of Whole Brain Emulation in the Portuguese Legal Concepts of Personhood and Death

(Un)Human Relations: Transhumanism in Francesco Verso’s <i>Nexhuman</i>

Transhumanism is an international movement which es­pouses the idea that any human organ, function, sense, ability, can be augmented and ameliorated with the judicious use of technology. The ethical, cultural, social, biological, economic implications for this view are far-reaching and point to a number of complex ques­tions whose solution eludes researchers so far. One of the possible sources for answers to these is found in science fiction. While trans­humanism is a relatively recent phenomenon (last 25 years or so), science fiction published in English that mirrors some of its issues and ideas has been flourishing for at least as long. In Italy, science fiction is starting to enjoy popularity and critical depth in no small measure due to the untiring abilities of a number of authors. This article analyzes the intersections between human and machine as they are portrayed in Francesco Verso’s Nexhuman. Francesco Verso has published 4 award-winning science fiction novels and a number of short stories. Nexhuman offers a considerable narrative construct which paints a dystopian future where trash is formed and re-formed, sold and reworked; however, strong emotions are not absent, since love may flourish in this “kipple”-laden setting, as well as violence and obsession. Transhumanist ideas explicitly dealt with in the novel include the end of death, the question of the soul, mind uploading, limb prosthesis, the co-existence of humans with mind-uploaded be­ings. The amalgam between human and machine does away with the Self and the Other(s) as separate entities and constructs a completely different Weltanschauung. Nexhuman is not only a transhumanist trailblazer within the flourishing arena of Italian science fiction, but also a springboard for deeper understanding of what makes us human and the extent to which binary categories need to be overcome in order to create a more accommodating world.

Philosophy of Mind Uploading. Subjectivism vs. Objectivism

Mind uploading. Is it a viable option of personal life extension or not? Does it create problem of a copy? How it can be solved if so? What is I? Answers on these and similar questions depend on the viewpoint of an individual. That is why two opposite philosophical viewpoints are chosen for an inquiry -- subjectivism and objectivism -- answers will differ in each case. An appropriate philosophy can be chosen to accomplish the goal of survival once the technology of mind uploading becomes available.

GW28-e0157 3D printing in nanoscale – A pivot technique to emulate brain in neuromorphic engineering

Whole brain emulation (WBE) is a hypothetical theory that scans the mental state (long-term memory and “self”) of a particular brain and then transfer/copy to a computational substrate. Neuromorphic algorithms and neuromorphic engineering are attracting greater interest than before, since they

Against Branching Identity

Would you survive if your consciousness branched into two or more streams? Commonly discussed within the context of split-brain scenarios, this possibility might soon become commonplace with mind uploading technology. Cerullo (Minds and Machines, 25, 17–36, 2015) suggests that after nondestructive mind uploading and other branching scenarios, personal identity would continue in two streams of consciousness. Thus he argues for what he calls branching identity. In this discussion, I evaluate the theory of branching identity and Cerullo’s arguments for it, concluding that branching identity is insufficiently justified and does not yield a better interpretation of branching cases than provided by Parfit (1984).

Connecting the Brain to Itself through an Emulation.

Pilot clinical trials of human patients implanted with devices that can chronically record and stimulate ensembles of hundreds to thousands of individual neurons offer the possibility of expanding the substrate of cognition. Parallel trains of firing rate activity can be delivered in real-time to an array of intermediate external modules that in turn can trigger parallel trains of stimulation back into the brain. These modules may be built in software, VLSI firmware, or biological tissue as in vitro culture preparations or in vivo ectopic construct organoids. Arrays of modules can be constructed as early stage whole brain emulators, following canonical intra- and inter-regional circuits. By using machine learning algorithms and classic tasks known to activate quasi-orthogonal functional connectivity patterns, bedside testing can rapidly identify ensemble tuning properties and in turn cycle through a sequence of external module architectures to explore which can causatively alter perception and behavior. Whole brain emulation both (1) serves to augment human neural function, compensating for disease and injury as an auxiliary parallel system, and (2) has its independent operation bootstrapped by a human-in-the-loop to identify optimal micro- and macro-architectures, update synaptic weights, and entrain behaviors. In this manner, closed-loop brain-computer interface pilot clinical trials can advance strong artificial intelligence development and forge new therapies to restore independence in children and adults with neurological conditions.

New Technologies—Old Anthropologies?

Eighty years ago, Nicholas Berdyaev cautioned that new technological problems needed to be addressed with a new philosophical anthropology. Today, the transhumanist goal of mind uploading is perceived by many theologians and philosophers to be dangerous due to its violation of the human person. I contrast transhumanist “patternist” views of the person with Brent Waters’s Augustinian view of the technological pilgrim, Celia Deane-Drummond’s evolutionary Thomistic view of humanity, and Francis Fukuyama’s insistence on the inviolability of “Factor X”. These latter three thinkers all disagree with the patternist position, but their views are also discordant with each other. This disagreement constitutes a challenge for people of faith confronting transhumanism—which view is to be taken right? I contend that Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies can enrich our understanding of the debates by highlighting the transmutation of philosophical view into scientific theory and the intermingled nature of our forms of knowledge. Furthermore, I contend that STS helps Christians understand the evolution of their own anthropologies and suggests some prospects for future theological anthropology.

Embodiment in Whole-Brain Emulation and its Implications for Death Anxiety

The awareness of death is a central motivating force behind human activity. Their capacities for abstract and symbolic reasoning give human beings a unique foresight of their finite lifetime and forthcoming demise. Because of the overwhelming nature of this realization, we try to cope with the ensuing anxieties by means of various cognitive and existential strategies. One such strategy is to create a meaningful legacy during one’s lifetime that will outlive the single individual. Whole-brain emulation (WBE) is another approach, but is unusual because of its literal promise to abolish death. Starting from the premise that WBE is feasible and will advance to such a level that we can speak of uploaded minds, we explore the implications of an allegedly immortal existence in a computational substrate: for our embodiment in the first place, and for death anxiety in the second. We argue that uploading would change the nature of, but could ultimately never abolish, embodiment. Instead, the defining characteristic of all brains are their vital links to the bodies that contain them and their interactions with the environment that are mediated by the body. In this light, we discuss the limits of WBE’s potential to mitigate death anxieties: limits related to the (objective) probability of ceasing to exist, but also those that stem from the perception of the body as a proxy for death.

Post-umano versus trans-umano. Contesti di interlocuzione e potenziamento umano

In this contribution, I aim to develop a philosophical account of post-human that allows us to conceive a future society of humanoids who are free and equal. ‘Post-human’ is to be interpreted here as material, not anthropocentric but rather interspeciesist, intercultural and syncretic dimension, as horizon of effective sharing of practices. In contrast, trans-human is meant to refer to the transcending of humans into an ‘ideal’, an immaterial network made up only of software, and lacking of relations with any material beings. The trans-humanism is an ideology directed towards the passing/abolition of the status of ‘being human’ in terms of finite and incarnate living beings, of which the myth/prevision of mind uploading is one of the most emblematic goals

From GUI to GPU: A toolchain for GPU code generation for large scale Drosophila simulations using SpineML

From GUI to GPU: A toolchain for GPU code generation for large scale Drosophila simulations using SpineML

The Fallacy of Favoring Gradual Replacement Mind Uploading Over Scan-and-Copy

Mind uploading speculation and debate often concludes that a procedure described as gradual in-place replacement preserves personal identity while a procedure described as destructive scan-and-copy produces some other identity in the target substrate such that personal identity is lost along with the biological brain. This paper demonstrates a chain of reasoning that establishes metaphysical equivalence between these two methods in terms of preserving personal identity.

Post-and Transhumanism: An Introduction ed. by Robert Ranisch, and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (review)

Ranisch, Robert, and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, eds. 2014. Post-and Transhumanism: An Introduction. New York: Peter Lang. $51.95 hc. 313 pp.What is at stake philosophically, ideologically, and aesthetically in distinguishing between transhuman and posthuman? What are people saying about themselves and their beliefs when they choose to self-identify as or posthumanist? Readers may explore these questions with the aid of this excellent collection of nineteen essays, edited by Robert Ranisch and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner. editors begin by describing the lay of the land in this new, beyond-human territory. Noting the geology of its ideas and the tectonic forces of controversy they inspire, the editors trace the developments that brought the terrain into being and shaped its intellectual landscape. Their map shows two distinct regions, separated by body of water that looks distinctly like the English Channel. On the north side is the realm of the transhumanists, who hold neo-Darwinian worldview and pursue ideals which might to some seem like an extension of the Enlightenment. On the south side are the posthumanists: postmodernists chary of technology and bemused by the lack of aesthetic sensibilities among those across the water.Transhumanists and posthumanists are somewhat at odds with respect to their use of terminology. This is not unlike the situation epitomized in Winston Churchill's quip that the British and the Americans are two peoples separated by common language. For both posthumanists and transhumanists, the summum bonum is post-human state, but the two sides do not agree on what this means.However, the trans/posthumanist divide is more than merely semantic, as Sorgner and other contributors to this volume attest. Drawing from the writings of James Hughes (a contributor to this volume), Sorgner fairly states in his Pedigrees chapter, The great majority of transhumanists have this-worldly, materialist, naturalist, relationalist or immanent understanding of the (30). Sorgner discusses the human enhancements that transhumanists advocate, via modification of their genetic endowment, pharmaceuticals, implants, and so on, in order to develop super intelligence, increased memory, long health span, extended lifespan, increased physical beauty, and improved morality. Sorgner refers to these bodily improvements as carbon-based transhumanism, since carbon is the essential element in our biochemistry. At least few of these modifications may be considered objectionable by some who are not transhumanists, but such objections are mild when compared to the heated condemnations that often accompany the transhumanist goal of mind uploading, or whole brain emulation. Many transhumanists imagine that our ultimate future-our truly posthuman future-can only reach its maximum potential when our minds are freed from their fleshy brains and re-instantiated in cyberspace, where space, time, and matter are all malleable and subject to our will: virtual heaven. Sorgner refers to the advocates for this course of development as the silicon-based transhumanists.Turning towards posthumanism, we cross the Channel south to arrive on different terrain. Sorgner suggests that if the transhumanist's notion of 'posthuman' implies the membership in new species then it is at odds with the Continental understanding of that term. He claims that the Continental tradition posits a new understanding of human beings via the deployment of a special methodology and continental philosophical way of thinking that attempts to get rid of categorical dualities by grasping the world through propositional form (32). This is in stark contrast to the transhumanists-most especially the silicon-based transhumanists-who, Sorgner writes, presuppose dualist understanding of human beings (31). It also contrasts with the evolutionary orientation of all transhumanists who hope to become posthuman someday, case made for example in the essay by Sascha Dickel and Andreas Frewer, which raises the question of the continuity of identity between human and posthuman conditions. …

Whole Brain Emulation Requires Enhanced Theology, and a “Handmaiden”

Providing a theological assessment of whole brain emulation, also called “uploading,” I argue that there is no insurmountable theological objection to the idea that uploading can transfer and preserve personal identity. However, from a philosophical perspective, the duplication argument (a copy cannot be identical to the original) presents a serious problem. So, uploading cannot be viewed as preserving identity, at least until we have an explanation of how uploading can be limited to a single, unique thread of personality. An alternative, which would require theological response, is to treat an upload as a related but not strictly identical person.

Superintelligence: paths, dangers, strategies

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation? To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations. Read the book and learn about oracles, genies, singletons; about boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime; about humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development; indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings; Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution; artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence. This profoundly ambitious and original book picks its way carefully through a vast tract of forbiddingly difficult intellectual terrain. Yet the writing is so lucid that it somehow makes it all seem easy. After an utterly engrossing journey that takes us to the frontiers of thinking about the human condition and the future of intelligent life, we find in Nick Bostrom's work nothing less than a reconceptualization of the essential task of our time.

Ethics of brain emulations

Whole brain emulation attempts to achieve software intelligence by copying the function of biological nervous systems into software. This paper aims at giving an overview of the ethical issues of the brain emulation approach, and analysing how they should affect responsible policy for developing the field. Animal emulations have uncertain moral status, and a principle of analogy is proposed for judging treatment of virtual animals. Various considerations of developing and using human brain emulations are discussed.

Overview of Neurogenesis Growth and Glia Cell to Cloudle Architecture in Cloud Manufacturing

By realizing on future view of manufacturing, demand intelligent became a challenge for any manufacturers. Many manufacturing concepts emphasize rapid responses to demand change or fluctuation demand in the current market. Cloud manufacturing offers better service between a supplier to manufacturer and user to a manufacturer. In cloud manufacturing, all manufacturing process is linked together in cloud pool and this lead to time reduction in data processing. However, this concept will be successful if cloudle as agent-based searching engine able to implement brain emulation in the cloud Short Research Article Norazlin et al.; JSRR, Article no. JSRR.2014.24.008 3127 manufacturing system. Brain emulation is emphasizing the neurogenesis phenomenon in the system by supporting with glia cells concept to expedite the searching process.

Erratum to: On the irrationality of mind-uploading: a reply to Neil Levy

Erratum to: On the irrationality of mind-uploading: a reply to Neil Levy