You know, I do have this nagging doubt: why am I me, and not someone else? I do see a problem with subjective experience. On the one hand, it doesn't make intuitive sense in a universe that runs on math, but on the other, what could there be beyond the causal stuff? I sense something fishy.
I too view reductionistic materialism as mainly an empirical claim. What I do view as necessary is the mere existence of something. I think, therefore "something" is. Maybe that "something" is limited to my personal experience, but whatever it is, it works somehow, and what I think won't change it (unless magical thinking works, but then that is how the world runs).
I am not confident mind uploading should work. But I have empirical reasons to believe it may. First, we have cut&paste transportation. I'm confident it works because current physics says so. The universe doesn't care whether I landed in vulcan by shuttle or by energy beam, it's the same configuration. Current laws of physics could be mistaken (they're not even complete, so they are mistaken somewhere), but this "no identity" stuff looks like something that won't go away.
Second, I imagined this thought experiment: suspend you, restart you in a green room, suspend you again, then restart you in the laboratory. Result: you have the memory of having been in a green room. The other possibility is, suspend you, scan your brain, run the emulation in a simulated green room identical to the real one, pause the em, rewire your brain to match the em end state, restart you in the laboratory. Result: you have the memory of having been in a green room. It's the same configuration in both case, so no memory is less real than the other. Conclusion: you have been in a green room. It doesn't matter if it was physically or in uploaded form.
Note that I become much less confident when I think about leaving up my physical brain (edit: I mean, my original protoplasm wetware) for good.
If uploading doesn't work, it still can be valuable: If I have goals beyond my own existence, a ghost may be better at achieving them rather than nothing at all. It also prevents total oblivion.
what could there be beyond the causal stuff?
Maybe my basic point is that there is more to the "stuff" than just "being causal". This is why I talk about abstracted causal models as ontologically deficient. Describing yourself or the world as a state machine just says that reality is a merry-go-round of "states" which follow each other according to a certain pattern. It says nothing about the nature of those states, except that they follow the pattern. This is why functionalist theories of mind lead to patternist theories o...
From Being a Realist (even if you believe in God):
My mother, who doesn't call herself a theist (I think she's agnostic), doesn't even accept realism. She doesn't even agree with this:
That's little more than tautologies here. Yet it elicited an impression of being forced to believe. I know because she told me about the totalitarian dangers from such narrow thinking.
I'm happy to have finally found the root cause of our ongoing disagreement, but now, how can I deal with that? It looks pretty hopeless, but just in case, does someone have a suggestion, or should I just leave it at that? (My ego doesn't like it, but giving up is an option.)
Now I'm relieved to know that in near mode, she's a complete realist. This craziness only shows up in far mode.