A Critical Enquiry into the Metaphysics for Mind Uploading

Abstract

Mind uploading is a fascinating possibility that asks us to imagine a person being instantiated in a substrate other than their biological body, such as a person continuing in a robot/computer. The current thesis takes a philosophical stance and enquires as to what the nature of minds and persons would need to be in order for such a scenario to be feasible and presented multiple realizable physicalism and psychological continuity as the two primary categories of necessary and sufficient metaphysical conditions. The thesis explores the mind within the context of the mind-body problem and presents a novel version of physicalism (multiple realizable physicalism) as the central concept amongst disparate philosophy of mind stances that would allow for the mind upload. The current thesis also introduces various concepts (e.g., nomological boundaries) and emphasised others (e.g., category mistakes) to demonstrate the feasibility of mind uploading through the argument that the mind is likely multiple realizable and of a physical substrate (multiple realizable physicalism). The current thesis then, in relation to persons, explores the persistence problem and determines that a psychological (as opposed to biological) solution is the preferred stance that would allow for mind uploading. In essence, if a person is a mind (psychology) and this mind is said to continue, then it should not matter whether the mind continues in biological body or in an alternative substrate (such as a computer). What matters is the continuity of the mind (the psychological solution). The thesis integrates multiple philosophical stances using these two primary categories of multiple realizable physicalism and psychological continuity and presents various constraints that may emerge in relation to various preferences within these two primary categories. Furthermore, the current thesis argues that a possible solution to the mind–body problem and the persistence problem may be found in identifying both the mind and the person with the processes of the substrate. In this sense, both minds and persons are not the physical substrate that instantiates these phenomena (i.e., minds and persons are not the body) but rather these phenomena (minds and persons) are the processes instantiated. A person/mind is what the body does and not the body that performs these processes. This identification of processes could in principle allow for all forms of mind uploading. In addition the current thesis presents a novel view of the self (here meaning both the mind and the person) as relating to specific types of processes (efferent processes).