There is nothing like “my” mind or “your” mind, each one having its own personal history that could, in principle, be tracked back from birth to death.

There is nothing like “my” mind or “your” mind, each one having its own personal history that could, in principle, be tracked back from birth to death. Pretty much like single particles don’t have any individual trajectory in Quantum Physics, single subjects don’t have any individual history either. — Quantum Ethics[0], Sébastien Fauvel So, in a word, yes, "you" can be uploaded to a digital world. Perhaps many different digital worlds. I mean, let's turn the question perhaps into one that is ontologically similar: What about multiverses? Are you your double at some nearby possible world? Admitting that you are, does that "destroy" you at this world? Can a decision do this? Can a decision do the opposite, that is preserve your "you"-ness, or let's call it existential integrity? I think the true philosophy of "Her" is Henry Miller's assertion that Words are loneliness. But there isn't any metaphysic here that re-inforces the divide between mind and body — it is a philosophy of how we feel about the supposed bifurcation of reality (into easily digestable categories like "the physical" and "the mental"). How we feel about Mind-Body dualism's possible truth is not a justification for its truth. That's pragmatism. Who cares about boring old pragmatism? Or at least let us admit that this is only one viewpoint on the whole debate, and it isn't a very compelling one. I absolutely do believe that "uploading one's mind" is possible — but if we treat "copy" just as we do today, we need to be thorough-going. When I copy a file to a new OS, that new OS either understands it or it does not, runs a program by default or it does not. But now wait — we're talking about a file here — a file. All of the existential questions we're asking, we're basing on the notion of "copy" as it relates to files. Why should we suppose that we even know what we're talking about, using this clearly antequated grammar? I'm not a file! (Put another way: Are files ever really "destroyed"? — No! Their "space" is made "available" on the disk. So following your metaphor, if I'm "destroyed" it's merely that the space I take up is made available to something else — which presupposes that everything once maintaining that space is accident, it's all accidental properties of the World). So I'll say here: forget that "categorical divide" which is just another fashion of dualism — humans can extend their consciousness to digital worlds. Chalmers et al. are talking about embodied cognition — we're all talking about extending our consciousness into the world through augmented reality. This talk of "copy-destroy" isn't using the same grammar of philosophical research. We're talking about "me" looking at "me" sans mirrors. Could I have 7 eyeballs? Possibly! Is my neural system plastic enough to manage multiple memories and personality — already demonstrated in mental illness cases! Can I be extended? That is the relevant question — not "can I be copied"? "Copy" is such a barbaric nonterm here. There shouldn't be such a thing as copying one's mind — in order to upload a mind, the project is far more complex than talk about the neural substrate of one person — we need to be talking about Operating Universes. I'm afraid this discussion, as it is currently constructed, is a false-start, a non-starter — a category mistake. [0]: http://quantum-ethics.org/ http://quantum-ethics.org/