Редактирование: Whole brain emulation (раздел)

= Philosophy =

== Assumptions ==

=== Philosophical ===

'''Materialism:'''

The notion of mind uploading assumes that the mind arises from activity in the brain. This notion is known as "materialism," as opposed to "dualism," which supposes that the mind (or "soul") exists separately from the brain, but connected to it in some fashion. Descartes, for example, believed that the mind communicated with the body through the pineal gland.

The evidence for materialism is overwhelming. Nearly any aspect of the mind -- temperament, memories, appetite, and so on -- can be disrupted by damage to specific areas of the brain. Modern brain imaging techniques can even detect brain activity correlated with thought.

Nonetheless, the question of exactly how consciousness arises from unconscious matter is a nontrivial problem. Some scientists have suggested that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe, and directly related to information processing; others believe it requires a very particular arrangement of neural circuits, resulting as a by-product of our evolutionary history. [http://web.archive.org/web/20030322214944/http://cns-web.bu.edu/pub/dorman/dorman.html Clark Dorman] has prepared an excellent [http://web.archive.org/web/20010209001423/http://cns-web.bu.edu/pub/dorman/conscious.html review] of some books on consciousness and the brain.

=== Computational ===

The central 'contradiction' of WBE is simultaneously believing that:

# Consciousness and cognitive processes have an entirely material basis, and that there are no spiritual or non-physical factors to the mind.
# That this biological foundation can be removed, with the behavior conserved in some other computational substrate.

=== Neuroscientific ===

'''Braincentrism:'''

== Personhood ==


== Continuity of Consciousness ==

The bottom line is that, when the rubber hits the ground, these virtual models are pretty close to being phenomenologically equivalent to real nervous systems.