Saving My Immortal Self

"I studied it with the sort of zeal Sumerian priests reserved for the divinatory entrails of butchered goats."

I study consciousness. It's what I do. There's no shortage of data; it's glorious. Like the man said, "Every person's mind is a laboratory." Lately I've been focused on the idea of 'self' and it's relationship to others. Heaven help me, I think I may have even had a minor epiphany on that topic within the past few weeks. (I'm still working to hammer out the details.)

I bring this up now because certain areas of the blogosphere have been ripe with talk about preserving the 'self' in the face of illness or death via artificial/technological means. (It's nice to see that a single site can embrace both the practical aspects of consciousness based in an artificial substrate, and the philosophical curiosity and questioning that might lead one to reject such a transfer.) Since the driving purpose of this blog is to figure out what I believe, I had to ask myself - What do I believe about the urge to preserve life/consciousness via technological means?

When the question is phrased like that, you can't help but answer - "But we do that all the time! That is what modern medicine does!" And when viewed that way, cryonics and mind-uploading are simply a logical progression of the belief system that embraces the artificial heart. (Whether those technologies represent a viable way to preserve the 'self', or that complex web of things that defines a life or person, remains to be seen.)

When pressed to answer the question above, I find myself saying - I have no wish to die, but I believe that what is 'me' is a manifestation of this time and place, and every other 'me' that knows 'me'. I believe that my biological substrate is not sufficient to reproduce 'me', therefore cryonics alone doesn't hold the promise of any meaningful 'salvation' from death. I believe that a sense of self might emerge from cryogenic suspension, but that it would not be 'me' in the same sense that I am 'me' now, though it might think it is.

With such a belief about what is 'me', I can also say that I put no more concern into making my 'self' immortal than I do in ensuring the welfare of my immortal 'soul'. While answering the questions about 'self' and consciousness that might eventually enable artificial consciousness intrigues me, I am not driven to do so by an overwhelming desire or belief that I can preserve 'me' or make 'me' immortal in any meaningful way.

Believe it or not, it feels oddly empowering to say that. When freed from a preoccupation with surviving death, we are free to focus on life. This life. Making a difference now. There is a kind of immortality in that for which I believe we can and should strive... "What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."