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Mind-upload. The ultimate challenge to the embodied mind theory

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Abstract

The ‘Mind-Upload’ hypothesis (MU), a radical version of the Brain-in-a-Vat thought experiment, asserts that a whole mind can safely be transferred from a brain to a digital device, after being exactly encoded into substrate independent informational patterns. Prima facie, MU seems the philosophical archenemy of the Embodied Mind theory (EM), which understands embodiment as a necessary and constitutive condition for the existence of a mind and its functions. In truth, whether and why MU and EM are ultimately incompatible is unobvious. This paper, which aims to answer both questions, will not simply confirm that MU and EM actually are incompatible. It will also show the true reason of their incompatibility: while EM implies that a mind’s individual identity is contingent upon the details of its physical constituents, MU presupposes that minds can be relocated from one material vessel to another. A systematic comparison between these conflicting assumptions reveals that the real shortcoming of MU is not the one usually discussed by the philosophical literature: it has nothing to do with MU’s functionalist or computationalist prerequisites, and is only secondarily related to the artificial implementability of consciousness; the real problem is that MU presupposes that minds could still be individuated and numerically identified while being reduced to immaterial formal patterns. EM seems committed to refute this assumption, but does it have sufficient resources to succeed?

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Notes

  1. While other methods have been conceived (Wiley 2014), I will examine only these two methods of destructive upload described by Chalmers (2010) because they provide the best-case scenario for MU and illustrate its mechanics in the most compelling way.

  2. Chalmers (2012, p. 159) denies that multiple simultaneous upload would be possible, arguing that the particular integrated mechanics of the procedure would engender causal overdetermination. Even if that was true, what does prevent us from simultaneously replicating Digi-Dave’s mind at will in multiple concurrent emulations, once it has been fully digitalized for the first time? For M1, any emulation so produced would count as a distinct upload.

  3. “First-wave” extended mind theorists (Clark and Chalmers 1998) tend to characterize minds as being extended on an occasional, not constitutive, basis.

  4. See note 3.

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  1. UAE University, Maqam Campus, 15551, Al Ain, Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Massimiliano Lorenzo Cappuccio

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Cappuccio, M.L. Mind-upload. The ultimate challenge to the embodied mind theory. Phenom Cogn Sci 16, 425–448 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-016-9464-0

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