MIND UPLOADING AND THE BODY

1. 

   In discussions of mind uploading, the body seems absent. Why is this? One reason, I think, is we assume that, since the brain is ‘the most complex thing in the known universe’, any civilization with the technology to create emulations of particular brains is bound to be able to make nice shiny new bodies to go with them.

   But I also suspect it is because we have an overly-simplified view of the body. We think of it as being this sort of vehicle controlled by the brain that is just there at the mind’s convenience. This point of view is revealed most strongly in those science fiction and fantasy scenarios where the mind of person A somehow finds itself in the body of person B. In such scenarios the assumption is always that this is really person A and, aside from some initial confusion upon finding a radically different person staring back goggle-eyed in the mirror, no change has occurred to A’s subjective self. That this scenario makes sense is testament to how naive we are about the deeply symbiotic relationship of THIS body and THIS brain in making THIS self. If such a body swapping scenario were to happen, probably the result would not be person A or person B but a some confused, disorientated person who is neither.

   How did we come to this naive view of the body? I think the blame can be placed in large part on the approach Western science takes in understanding complex systems. That is, via a mechanistic, reductionist approach in which the system is broken down into simpler components. But each component is still complex enough to warrant a lifetime’s study to understand thoroughly (as thoroughly as it can be understood without understanding the whole of which it is part) and so specialists devote their lives to understanding tiny parts of a complex system.

   Now, the mechanistic, reductionist approach has its uses. The triumphs of Western science are testament to that. But it has it’s limitations too and, arguably, these limitations are most starkly revealed in the hard problem of consciousness. The hope Western science has always had is that some thing will be found that is responsible for consciousness (it is the soul; it is the brain) and if we can just understand that, we will have cracked the hard problem of consciousness. For all I know this hope may turn out one day to be justified, but I harbour a suspicion that it is a fool’s hope. I tend to think that the reductionist approach of breaking complex things down into manageable components to be studied largely in isolation is a necessary but insuffient step. It is only when we can conceptually assemble those components back into the systems of which they are inseparable parts and see those systems as parts of a network that spans brain-body-environment, in other words, when we can acquire an holistic view of reality in which nothing is seperate but all is deeply related and interconnected, that qualia will advance from a mystery (where we do not even know what an answer would look like) to a problem (where we do not know the answer but we do at least have an inkling of what we are looking for).

   The reductionists’ hope that consciousness just is the brain reveals itself in uploading discussions. If only we could map the structure and functions of the brain and copy all that into a great big powerful computer, we could transfer/ copy that self. Never mind the body, bin it. They are bound to have lovely bipedal robots and simulations of bodies in virtual environments. Your uploaded consciousness can use those forms of embodiment. This attitude is revealed in that option cryonics offers- ‘neuropreservation’- in which just your head is preserved and your body is left to rot. Of course, they are really only interested in the brain, not the whole head, but it is just simpler to preserve a head than to safely seperate the brain from it. This is the opposite of what the ancient Egyptians did, because they went to great lengths to preserve the body but they scooped the brain out through the deceased’s nostrils. Silly Egyptians for not noticing the importance of the brain in creating the subjective self, you might say. But what if we are just as ignorant in our understanding of your body’s role in creating your subjective self? What if THIS brain must be uploaded with THIS body, the one it has always been in inseparable symbiotic relations with, in order for there to be a copy/transference of THIS mind? I rather suspect that if those neuropreserved patience are taken from the freezer and a functional model of their brain is created and that brain is embodied in a form that does not match the profoundly personal relationship the original brain had with the body it was born with, the result will not be person A waking up, memories and personality intact ready to carry on enjoying life, but a brand new person, bewildered, confused, and disorientated.

   AFTERWORD.

   Since posting this essay, I came across the following passage in the book ‘Connectome’ by Sebastian Seung. The passage is worth quoting, because it argues that providing a body to go with the upload may not be all that difficult, at least not for any future civilization with the science and technology needed to perform whole brain emulations of a high-enough quality to count as an upload…

   “Any future civilization advanced enough to create a brain simulation would also be able to handle its input and output. Actually, input and output would be easy in comparison, because the connections between the brain and the external world are far less numerous than the connections within the brain. The optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain, carries visual input through its million axons. That may sound like a lot, but there are many more axons running within the brain….On the output side, the pyramidal tract carries signals from the motor cortex to the spinal cord, so that the brain can control movement of the body. Like the optic nerve, the pyramidal tract contains a million axons. Therefore, our future civilization could hook the simulation up to cameras or other sensors, or to an artificial body. If these “peripherals” were well crafted, the upload would be able to smell a rose and enjoy all the other pleasures of the real world”-Sebastian Seung.