Would you cast aside your human body if given the choice?
If technology were to advance to such a state that true transhumanism were possible and you could transplant your consciousness into an artificial body, would you do so? Would you still do so if you were uncertain of the continuity of your consciousness? (AKA if you were uncertain that [i]you[/i] would experience this new body and that it may just be an indistinguishable copy of you while the current you would simply die or remain trapped in their current body) Would you want to keep the human you still around to live a natural life or do you think that the new artificial you would prefer to discard your previous fleshy shell?
As someone who has suffered from persistent chronic illness throughout his life as well as an ardent transhumanist I would jump at the opportunity no matter the risks. That said my own personal views on conscious continuity tends to treat such concepts as more akin to a parent-child relationship rather than as a continuation of the conscious predecessor and thus I think both in my current fleshy mind and if I were to be copied into a less fragile and fleshy one I'd allow both to persist simultaneously and perhaps even try to gain some kind of enriching experience out of it. I'm curious what others think of this thought experiment, if anything.
Differing interpretations of the transhuman process are welcome, whether it be partially organic brain transplantation of some kind or a fully artificial recreation from the ground up.
As someone who has suffered from persistent chronic illness throughout his life as well as an ardent transhumanist I would jump at the opportunity no matter the risks. That said my own personal views on conscious continuity tends to treat such concepts as more akin to a parent-child relationship rather than as a continuation of the conscious predecessor and thus I think both in my current fleshy mind and if I were to be copied into a less fragile and fleshy one I'd allow both to persist simultaneously and perhaps even try to gain some kind of enriching experience out of it. I'm curious what others think of this thought experiment, if anything.
Differing interpretations of the transhuman process are welcome, whether it be partially organic brain transplantation of some kind or a fully artificial recreation from the ground up.
31-35, M
