CAN MIND UPLOADING AND DIGITAL IMMORTALITY PRESERVE PERSONAL IDENTITY?

Abstract

At the core of questions surrounding mind uploading is the problem of personal identity. In philosophy, the problem of personal identity is concerned with how one can identify a single person over a time interval. It raises the questions “What makes it true that a person at one time is the same thing as a person at another time?” In contemporary metaphysics, the matter of personal identity is referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem borders on what features and traits characterize a person at a given time. This work is concerned with the question of whether mind uploading and digital immortality preserves personal identity. In doing this, using the method of hermeneutics and analysis, the work evaluates the two hypothetical methods of gradual replacement and instantaneous scan and copy, as well as the distinction made between destructive and non-destructive processes. The work finds out that both of the two pairs are metaphysically equivalent in terms of their outcomes, unless in the case of the gradual replacement, the same body is maintained. Generally, the work considers the result of the mind uploading as simply a functional isomorph, a simulacrum which though may have a qualitative identity with the original, does not ensure personal immortality lacking as it is, numerical identity. This is even more as the body is completely discarded in embrace of an entirely digital frame.