Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: ClearCase_guy
As new plastic surgeries came on line more and more people adopted the latest greatest. If transhumanism comes to fruition the same will be true for these more sophisticated augmentations.

We will have to confront a Ship of Theseus paradox (See also Identity over Time for a more thorough discussion).

At what point does the soul leave the body or body leave the soul when the skin has been replaced by radiation-proof cladding and the brain is a silicon-based CPU running neural net algorithms?

What happens to the person's soul when his consciousness is uploaded into the cloud and then copied thousands of times later to be downloaded into a slew of various bodies?

What happens when a person can be a man on Mondays, a woman on Tuesdays, neutered on Wednesdays, and hermaphroditic on the weekends?

Will these highly altered "humans" have souls?


16 posted on 10/05/2015 7:58:21 AM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]


To: who_would_fardels_bear
I have to say I was not aware of the Ship of Theseus paradox. But I do remember a comedian (probably in the 70s) who juggled dangerous objects, one of which was the actual axe that George Washington had used to chop down the famous cherry tree. Of course, the wooden handle had long since rotted away and been replaced. And he had lost the metal head at one point and bought a new one. But the point was: it was the same axe.

A lot of comedy really surfs on top of deep philosophy.

17 posted on 10/05/2015 8:04:54 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (I've switched. Trump is my #1. He understands how to get things done. Cruz can be VP.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson