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[The following is tentative material for my presentation at the Society for Philosophy & Technology Conference this summer.]
Enhancement technologies may someday give us capacities far beyond what we consider humanly possible. We could become post-human. Nick Bostrom & Anders Sandberg suggest that we might survive our body's death by living as a computer simulation. They issued a report from a conference(Oxford 2007) where experts in all relevant fields collaborated to determine the path to "whole brain emulation." This technology will in the very least be an effective research tool for the neurosciences. It could even aid philosophical research too. Their "roadmap" defends certain philosophical assumptions required for this technology's success. So by determining the reasons why it succeeds or fails, we can obtain empirical data for philosophical debates regarding our mind and selfhood. The scope ranges widely. So we merely survey some possibilities. I argue that this technology could help us determine 1) whether the mind is an emergent phenomenon, 2) if analog technology is necessary for brain simulation, 3) if chance plays a role in creativity and self-development, and 4) if this randomness is so wild that a complete simulation is logically impossible.
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