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Laoch comments on "Ray Kurzweil and Uploading: Just Say No!", Nick Agar - Less Wrong
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What question was I asking I think you replied to the wrong post. But for what it's worth brain is a subset of body.
No, I replied to the post I meant to reply to.
I agree that the brain is a subset of the body, and I agree that a not-insignificant portion of "mind" is implemented in parts of the body other than the brain, but I don't think this means anything in particular about the viability of mind uploads.
I can't disagree that there are no parts of the body/brain that aren't amenable i.e. non magical and thus capable of emulation. I guess where I'm having trouble is with 1) the application and 2) how and where do you draw the line in the physical workings of the body that are insignificant to the phenomenon of mind. What colours my think on this are people like von Uexkuell in the sense that what encapsulates our cognition is how we function as animals.
I'm not sure what you mean by the application. Implementing the processes we identify as Dave on a different platform is a huge engineering challenge, to be sure, and nobody knows how to do it yet, so if that's what you mean you are far from being alone in having trouble with that part.
As for drawing the line, as I tried to say originally, I draw it in terms of analyzing variance. If Dave is implemented on some other platform, Dave will still have a body, although it will be a different body than the one Dave has now. The question then becomes, how much difference does that make?
If we come to function differently as animals, or if we come to function as something other than animals, our cognition will be encapsulated in different ways, certainly, but whether we should care or not depends quite a bit on what we value about our current encapsulation.