Mitchell Atkinson III
(Polish Academy of Sciences)
Abstract:
A central goal of the transhumanist community, that of “migrating” personality from an organic substrate to a non-organic or otherwise artificially constituted substrate, is troubled by myriad philosophical difficulties. Although the range of these difficulties is broad and includes thorny problems of the structure of consciousness requiring phenomenological analysis, here I will begin with Lebniz Law arguments on the structure of identity. Starting with the problems of identity, it can be seen that emulations and ancestors must be different sorts of thing if they are to be clearly defined. Further, I will address phenomenological issues related to criteria for salience of functions of consciousnesses attempting migration, and the problems associated with construing those salience criteria personalistically, naturalistically, or transcendentally. All of the preceding leaves open the question as to whether something like substrate migration can take place, and more pressingly, whether such “migrations” will yield creatures who believe that they share an identity, however tortured, with their ancestors.
Mitchell Atkinson III is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School for Social Research in the Polish Academy of Sciences. He works on phenomenology and social theory.