Beyond the Soul

1. Beyond the Soul James J. Hughes Ph.D. Public Policy, Trinity College Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies director@ieet.org

2. Ensoulment Views “The Soul of Trans-Humanism” By Ted Peters (2005) Immortal souls not an orthodox Christian, creedal belief Varieties of Christian Soul Views: • Substance Dualism • Trichotomy • Emergent Dualism • Non-reductive Physicalism • Theological Materialism • Atheistic Materialism

3. Spirit Dualisms • Substance Dualism • Hindu atman and most lay theism • Pre-existing and after death essence • Trichotomy • Body, soul (mind/brain), spirit (supra-physical) • Baptism replaces human spirit with divine spirit • Emergent Dualism • Soul emergent from the brain, but supraphysical • Before the body, no soul

4. Materialist Ideas of the Soul • Non-reductive Physicalism • Soul/Mind cannot be reduced to the brain • No body, no soul • Resurrection of the body necessary • Theological Materialism • Soul is a conscious, physical brain’s attunement to God • (Uploads and robots could have this kind of soul) • Atheistic Materialism • “Soul” is meaningless: there is only consciousness and self-identity

5. Enlightenment and Self • Liberal individualism: rational, autonomous, continuous citizens, consumers, contractors • Individual is fundamental unit of analysis • Hobbes: individuals sacrifice freedom for rational goal of security • Rights of Man, Bill of Rights • Mill: individuals given freedom to pursue own ends will maximize social happiness

6. Locke • Bridge to atheist materialism • God made thinking matter • Theological materialist, but resurrected body will be of different matter • Memory is bridge from life to resurrected body • Subjective identity necessary for Judgment, accountability

7. Self is Thinking, Memory, Identity • …to find wherein personal Identity consists, we must consider what Person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places… (Locke, 1689)

8. Splitting Identity • Locke: if identity is memory in matter, it could be split

9. Hume’s Empiricist Skepticism • All cause-effects are perceptual illusions • The continuity of the self is a perceptual illusion • "…a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement" (Hume, 1739)

10. Threat to Liberal Individualism • If personal identity is an illusion, what of the Enlightenment project of building a new society of rational individuals pursuing self interests through democracy and market exchange? • If we are so confused about the very nature of our selves how is it possible for us to create a society based on the equality of citizens, morally accountable persons and individual rights? • Selfless and irrational individuals might instead validate benevolent despotism towards collective goods.

11. Neuroscience and the Self • No localization in the brain • Many processes: Senses, Proprioception, Awareness, Cognition • Split brain • Memory is narrative fiction • Kahneman: experiencing self vs. remembered self • Thomas Metzinger • Self-identity is fluid, selective

12. Derek Parfit • Reasons and Persons • Identity is probabilistic over time • Eventually our identity with our future selves declines to equal identity with interests of all others • Post-self utilitarianism: act in the interest of all future persons as if own self

13. Transhumanism and Identity “Future Minds: Transhumanism, Cognitive Enhancement and the Nature of Persons” Susan Schneider (2009) drawing on Ray Kurzweil • Ego (Ensoulment) • Materialism (You are your body) • Psychological continuity (Patternism) • No Self

14. Transhumanist FAQ • “Many philosophers who have studied the problem think that at least under some conditions, an upload of your brain would be you. A widely accepted position is that you survive so long as certain information patterns are conserved, such as your memories, values, attitudes, and emotional dispositions, and so long as there is causal continuity so that earlier stages of yourself help determine later stages of yourself.... These problems are being intensely studied by contemporary analytic philosophers, and although some progress has been made, e.g. in Derek Parfit’s work on personal identity, they have still not been resolved to general satisfaction.”

15. Patternists: Cryonics • Replace the body, but maintain the contents of the brain • But how much can be recovered?

16. Patternists: Mark Walker " Cognitive Enhancement and the Identity Objection” (2008) • Changing too quickly could destroy self-continuity • Why does pace of change matter to identity from time A to time B? • Acknowledges that identity is only subjective

17. Patternists: Martine Rothblatt • You are a collection of bemes • Bemes are fundamental, transmissible, mutate-able units of beingness; elements of personality, mannerisms, feelings, recollections, beliefs, values, and attitudes. • Putting back together enough of your bemes will re-create you • Not the kind of rich subjectivity most people associate with identity • Constantly changing? • Multiple copies? Recombinant?

18. Patternists: Max More "The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Transformation“ (1995) • If you maintain strong values, even if you lose all memories, you are still you • Especially if self-transformation is your strong value • Personality erasure not what most transhumanists sign up for

19. Robin Hanson • “If uploads come first” (1994) • If there are a thousand copies of you, who owns your stuff?

20. Transhumanism and No Self • Radical cognitive malleability • Memory recording, erasure, modification, sharing • Conscious identity selection, merged identity • Body identity modification: none, extra, multiple • Supression, selection, enhancement of values • Radical life extension and transmigration • Identity maintenance over millions of years? • Over multiple types of instantiation?

21. End of Liberal Individualism • Anomic disorientation • End of individual accountability • Debate over criminal liability • Borgian communitarianism (self at a higher level) • Buddhist answer: self and no-self

22. Post-Self Society as X-Risk Nick Bostrom (2004): “We can thus imagine a technologically highly advanced society, containing many sorts of complex structures, some of which are much smarter and more intricate than anything that exists today, in which there would nevertheless be a complete absence of any type of being whose welfare has moral significance. In a sense, this would be an uninhabited society. All the kinds of being that we care even remotely about would have vanished… the catastrophe would be that such a world would not contain even the right kind of machines, i.e. ones that are conscious and whose welfare matters. (Bostrom, 2004)

23. Buddhist No Self • Embracing the reality of the constantly changing and illusory nature of self is liberating • We can, and must, use self concept while recognizing its emptiness • Property, legal liability, contracts presume continuity, but we need (arbitrary) agreements about when identity is lost

24. New Enlightenment • Beyond the myth of the liberal self • Beyond the illusive goal of personal immortality • Beyond the identity/rupture of humanity to posthumanity • Consciously embracing the reality of our continual self-imagination • To what ends?

25. For more: • “Contradictions of the Enlightenment: Liberal Individualism versus the Erosion of Personal Identity”http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/hughes20111119 • director@ieet.org