Uploading argument for the multiplicity of the self
From Aware Theory
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- Uploading argument for the multiplicity of the self
- It has been proposed that when a person gets old or sick enough that he is about to die a process of uploading his brain functioning to an electronic device like a complex computer will allow him to experience a continuation of his consciousness. If this is possible without destroying the original body or brain or if the information that is derived from his body is storable and reusable then it seems that there can be more than one isoidentireplica created that have the ixperiencitness of the original. This implies the multiplicity of ixperiencitness. The fact that you can change the structure of a material object and it can still produce the same ixperiencitness is a big step toward the multiplicity of the self. If at any stage of your life you can upload that version of yourself means that there can be many conscious versions of yourself produced by different material bodies that can exist at the same time with your ixperiencitness but different consciousnesses. Once the current version of yourself, produced by your human body, is uploaded into an electronic device that maintains the same ixperiencitness, by producing the ixperiencitness that is or was produced by the human body, should itself be reproducible in another identical electronic device. The TV analogy would then directly apply to these isoidentireplicas or tridentireplicas. If uploading of the self is possible then it is likely that the multiplicity of the self is true, and the unique singularity of the self is not.