electrons and existentialism
Lately I’ve been taking advantage of my Netfl1x account and renting some old seasons of Star Trek: TNG. Today I saw the episode “The Schizoid Man” (ep 32) and saw a theme also seen in a few other sci-fi’s, but notably the anime “Ghost in the Shell.” (GITS)
In this episode, the genius Dr. Ira Graves transfers his consciousness to the android Data just before dying of a terminal disease, thus continuing his existence and cheating death.
In the GITS world, there is a continuing theme (question, rather) of whether the virtual existence of a human being in a network equates to the existence of that person. To put the question another way, if technology advances to a point where I can copy the entire contents of my brain into an android, would the android be me? If I die and the android continues to operate with my knowledge and my emotions and memories, would I continue to exist?
For now I will take the easy way out and leave this question as a question. Answering the question does get a bit easier, if I buy into this theory that we are all a computer program run by some higher being.
