‘Mind uploading’ featured in academic journal special issue for first time

June 26, 2012

(Credit: stock image)

The Special Issue on Mind Uploading (Vol. 4, issue 1, June 2012) of the International Journal of Machine Consciousness, just released, “constitutes a significant milestone in the history of mind uploading research: the first-ever collection of scientific and philosophical papers on the theme of mind uploading,” as Ben Goertzel and Matthew Ikle’ note in the Introduction to this issue.

“Mind uploading” is an informal term that refers to transferring the mental contents from a human brain into a different substrate, such as a digital, analog, or quantum computer. It’s also known as “whole brain emulation” and “substrate-independent minds.”

Serious mind uploading researchers have emerged recently, taking this seemingly science-fictional notion seriously and pursuing it via experimental and theoretical research programs, Goertzel and Ilke’ note.

For example, Neuroscientist Randal A. Koene (a contributor of two papers to this volume) has formed a nonprofit organization called Carbon Copies (carboncopies.org) to promote mind uploading research.

At the request of KurzweilAI, the publishers have kindly made both the Introduction and the first paper by Koene, Fundamentals Of Whole Brain Emulation: State, Transition And Update Representations, open access, available in full text on the International Journal of Machine Consciousness website.

Editor Ben Goertzel has also gathered links to informal, “preprint” versions of the papers in this Special Issue, hosted on the paper authors’ websites. These preprint versions are not guaranteed to be identical to the final published versions, but the content should be essentially the same, he advises.

Introduction
Ben Goertzel And Matthew Ikle’

Fundamentals Of Whole Brain Emulation: State, Transition And Update Representations
Randal A. Koene

A Framework For Approaches To Transfer Of A Mind’s Substrate
Sim Bamford

Experimental Research In Whole Brain Emulation: The Need For Innovative In Vivo Measurement Techniques
Randal A. Koene

Available Tools For Whole Brain Emulation
Diana Deca

Electron Imaging Technology For Whole Brain Neural Circuit Mapping
Kenneth J. Hayworth

Non-destructive Whole-brain Monitoring Using Nanorobots: Neural Electrical Data Rate Requirements
Nuno R. B. Martins, Wolfram Erlhagen And Robert A. Freitas, Jr.

The Terasem Mind Uploading Experiment
Martine Rothblatt

Whole-personality Emulation
William Sims Bainbridge

When Should Two Minds Be Considered Versions Of One Another?
Ben Goertzel

My Brain, My Mind, And I: Some Philosophical Assumptions Of Mind-uploading
Michael Hauskeller

Seeking Normative Guidelines For Novel Future Forms Of Consciousness
Brandon Oto