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JenniferRM comments on Resurrection through simulation: questions of feasibility, desirability and some implications - Less Wrong Discussion
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See also: Neuroimaging as alternative/supplement to cryonics?
Ahh thanks. I agree with your train of thought.
I thought that the same slippery slope argument for identity from patternism entails that details are unimportant, but that view is perhaps less common here than I would have thought.
Is "patternism" a private word that you use to refer to some constellation of philosophic tendencies you've personally observed, or is it a coherent doctrine described by others (preferably used by proponents to self-describe) in a relatively public way? It sounds like something you're using in a roughly descriptive way based on private insights, but google suggests a method in comparative religion or Goertzel's theory of that name...
I thought I first heard that term from Kurzweil in the TSIN or his earlier work, but I've read or skimmed some of Goertzel's writing, so perhaps I picked it up from there. I'm realizing the term probably has little meaning in philosophy, but suggests computationalism and or functionalism.
For politico-philosophical l stuff, I kind of like the idea of taking the name that people who half-understand a mindset apply from a distance to distinguish from all the other mind sets that they half-understand... in which case the best term I know is "cybernetic totalism".
However, in this case the discussion isn't a matter of general mindset but actually is a falsifiable scientific/engineering question from within the mindset: how substrate independent is the mind? My sense is that biologists willing to speculate publicly think the functionality of the mind is intimately tangled up with the packing arrangements of DNA and the precise position of receptors in membranes and so on. I suspect that its higher than that, but also I don't think enough people understand the pragmatics of substrate independence for there to be formal politico-philosophic labels for people who cherish one level of abstraction versus another.
I remember and loved Jarod Lanier's piece where he coined that term, and I considered myself a cybernetic totalist (and still do). It just doesn't exactly role off the tongue.
At some point in college I found Principa Cybernetica, and I realized I had found my core philosophical belief set. I'm not sure what you call that worldview though, perhaps systemic evolutionary cyberneticism?
Patternist at least conveys that the fundamental concept is information patterns.
Yes!
They may, and they may or may not be correct, but in doing so they would be speculating outside of their domain of expertise.
The questions of which level of abstraction is relevant is also a scientific/engineering question, and computational neuroscience already has much to say on that, in terms of what it takes to create simulations and or functional equivalents of brain components.