X-Message-Number: 25060
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:41:23 -0800
Subject: Yvan & Terminology
From: <>

Dear Yvan:

You wrote:

"You take a purely religious view here. I am myself mostly 
interested in uploading."

Just because I use the term 'soul', doesn't mean I am using it in a 

religious sense. Quite the contrary, I define soul as the neural 
circuit responsible for the subjective experience of qualia. There 
is nothing religious in this definition. If you like, don't use the 

word 'soul', use the term, 'qualia experiencer', as I have been 
trying to do in some of my messages. My arguments will not change.

Mind uploading, on the other hand, requires the existence of a non-
physical innermost-self, which can be transfered from one physical 
host to another. In my own view, this is clearly a religious 
viewpoint, one which cannot be verified, even in principle; and 
requires, as Jappie has pointed out, that the universe have some 
unknown (and unknowable) set of rules for associating innermost-
selves with physical hosts (which means even if the non-physical 
view of the self is correct, you aren't guaranteed personal 
survival by uploading).

This viewpoint isn't scientific, and as far as I can tell, isn't 
likely to be true. Why take the chance? Do you really not enjoy 
living?

You wrote:

"You can't repair a body without a map giving you a state of the 
problems.  When you have that molecular scale map, you far from a 
real repair system. On the other hand, you are very near the 
uploading solution. So that uploading will comes first. If you 
forbid it, you forbid any potential reanimation."

No, reanimation might not be possible until many years after 
uploading is possible. But at least it will happen for those who 
choose that option. (Destructive) uploaders will never be 
reanimated; what most uniquely defines them will be destroyed, 
never to exist again. Meanwhile, the qualia experiencer of the CPU 
will bear no useful connection to the uploaded individuals. Quite 
the contrary, the CPU will merely apply rules to a list of bits. 
That the list of bits could be construed to encode a brain program 
is not useful from the point of view of personal survival. The bits 

themselves have no objective meaning and don't experience anything--

-it's the hardware that does the experiencing.

You wrote:

"In June my mother had a repiratory problem. [snip] What is the 
soul content of medrol? Is it worth a life?"

I'm sorry for your loss. It is unfortunate we live in a world where 

others are so threatened by the differences between our values, 
choices, and beliefs, they go to such great lengths to assure we 
conform to their way of living.

Best Regards,

Richard B. R.

PS. By the way, Yvan, whether or not you admit it, you do have a '
qualia experiencer' (what I have been calling 'soul'). Either that, 

or you are fundamentally different from the rest of us humans. 

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