I think all consciousness (a feature of most animals) is a specific kind of neuro-bio-chemical process.
To put it another way, to improve your focus I can give you Modafinil. To stabilize your mood lithium. To give you hallucinations, lsd. To distort your visual perception, ketamine. To make you more empathetic, trusting and less hostile: mdma. To speed up your thinking, cocaine. To make you aggressive, too much cocaine.
And this applies across the animal kingdom, in large part.
Where in this list is a program?
A program source is a description. A running programming is an electrical field across a piece of silicon. A description has no causal effect (the mere act of writing a description down does nothing). An an electrical field across a piece of silicon has effects, but none meaningful on consciousness.
Consciousness is not hiding somewhere. It takes only a baseball bat to deprive someone of it. And its various parameters are easily enough mapped about by chemical manipulation.
The modern (general/strong) AI sort follow in the tradition of Descartes who imagined that consciousness was its own sort of substance apart from the body. That its effects and structure were idealizable. Whether we call this idealization a "soul" or a "program" seems to make no odds to the mistake being made...
Consciousness is something animal bodies do. It is not a pattern in the sand, or a current in a wire. An certainly not a soul, a number, a program (which is only a number) or any other idealized abstraction.
To be even more explicit: no, you will not be able to upload your consciousness. The suggestion and its homology to heaven ought concern anything modern thinking scientist.
A description of water (H20) is not some water. I can no more upload a drink to amazon, than I can upload a thought you are thinking. A thought is a biochemical reaction. A description of a thought, even if very accurate, doesnt think. The internet may one day hold very detailed descriptions of people's brains. These will sit like textbooks and tombs though, and not care/wish for/consider/want/desire/understanding anything.
If it's purely physical process then it can be simulated. If it is process then it has some state. You can save state.
> The internet may one day hold very detailed descriptions of people's brains. These will sit like textbooks and tombs though, and not care/wish for/consider/want/desire/understanding anything.
Same would be if you saved state of biological world without running(simulating) it.
OK we agree on the basics - that consciousness is not due to some mystical external factor but that it is contained within a brain.
However, your description of consciousness is a particular combination of electrical fields (NB that those chemicals are acting by changing how electricity is transmitted)...
To put it another way, to improve your focus I can give you Modafinil. To stabilize your mood lithium. To give you hallucinations, lsd. To distort your visual perception, ketamine. To make you more empathetic, trusting and less hostile: mdma. To speed up your thinking, cocaine. To make you aggressive, too much cocaine.
And this applies across the animal kingdom, in large part.
Where in this list is a program?
A program source is a description. A running programming is an electrical field across a piece of silicon. A description has no causal effect (the mere act of writing a description down does nothing). An an electrical field across a piece of silicon has effects, but none meaningful on consciousness.
Consciousness is not hiding somewhere. It takes only a baseball bat to deprive someone of it. And its various parameters are easily enough mapped about by chemical manipulation.
The modern (general/strong) AI sort follow in the tradition of Descartes who imagined that consciousness was its own sort of substance apart from the body. That its effects and structure were idealizable. Whether we call this idealization a "soul" or a "program" seems to make no odds to the mistake being made...
Consciousness is something animal bodies do. It is not a pattern in the sand, or a current in a wire. An certainly not a soul, a number, a program (which is only a number) or any other idealized abstraction.
To be even more explicit: no, you will not be able to upload your consciousness. The suggestion and its homology to heaven ought concern anything modern thinking scientist.
A description of water (H20) is not some water. I can no more upload a drink to amazon, than I can upload a thought you are thinking. A thought is a biochemical reaction. A description of a thought, even if very accurate, doesnt think. The internet may one day hold very detailed descriptions of people's brains. These will sit like textbooks and tombs though, and not care/wish for/consider/want/desire/understanding anything.