A Disembodied Soul Resurrected Inside a Computer

If you are about to die sometime in the future when technology has advanced, it might be possible for almost all of your soul to be captured and preserved.  It could then be made dynamic again by being put into a suitable computer; a computerized soul.  We will explore what it might feel like to be a computerized soul.  In the more distant future, in addition to restoring your soul, you might be given a robotic body that would appear very much like your own body (perhaps when you were younger!).  Prior to the time of full robotic hosts, you might just have a sort of bedridden body whose only mechanical functions were limited to facial movements (eye, mouth and expressions) much like a severe paraplegic.  In yet earlier times, (or, at less cost) you might just be an image of yourself on a computer screen, talking through a loudspeaker, seeing with a TV camera and hearing with a microphone.

There are two major possibilities to consider with respect to becoming a computerized soul.  First, that the purpose is to avoid the loss of your soul to both yourself and the rest of mankind and to keep it functioning and active.  This would mean that your soul would be able to conduct discourse with normal living beings and with other computerized souls.  The second possibility would be, in essence, to be able to go to heaven.  These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.  A soul in heaven could be allowed some form of communication with souls not in heaven.

Let us assume that sometime in the future you are near biological death, and your soul is to be computerized.  It would be necessary to do quite a bit to get ready.  Your DNA would be analyzed in order to help with the task of determining P, the nature of some aspects of your brain-body system that interprets Q.  At a point when your brain and mind are still intact but your body is near biological death, (or perhaps at some earlier time) the process of soul extraction would begin.  You might be put to sleep as though in preparation for major surgery.  The process of computerization would might involve surgery and microsurgery on the brain, but then again it might be possible to develop non-invasive technologies such as MRI.  Exactly how this could be done is not known today, but it would be similar to the problem of looking into a working RAM chip to read out the state of the bits stored in it and looking into a particular processor chip to figure out exactly how it processes data.  It may also be possible to get the brain to recall many memories that could be picked up as they were transferred from one part of the brain to another.  Such a method would be far too slow for the capture of data, but could give some clues as to the informational organization of the data.  Most likely, some combination of these and other methods would be employed.

The information that defines P, obtained from both DNA and somehow from the brain would need to be tested and debugged.  The information that defines Q, obtained from DNA, the brain and more evanescent state information would be recorded and saved.  It would be entered into a computer capable of interpreting P, which would then be used to interpret Q.  A great deal of testing and debugging might be required to obtain a satisfactory result.  Most of this process could be automatic as the totality of the reborn soul comes into operation. Many questions and answers would be given to the newly reborn computerized soul to ensure the correctness of the process.  Once all had been worked out, the computerized soul would be restored to its state at the time of biological death, and then brought directly into its more complete and correct state in order to avoid having the intensive process of getting it into good working order adversely affect it.

In order to not overly complicate the description of what would happen when your soul awoke in a new host, we will describe a single possible experience, instead of trying to explain the variety of possible experiences.  Once your computerized soul is transferred into a proper host computer, and set into operation, it would be ready to wake up.  If the process is done well, it would wake up feeling much like itself.  As it come back to consciousness, it might hear sounds or conversation.  When it opened its eyes, it would feel its eyelids opening and it would be conscious of various other bodily feelings.  All these feeling would probably be coming from programs designed to provide them.  A doctor might ask “Good morning, how do you feel?”  He would judge the degree of success of the process from the reactions he observed.  There would most likely be a continuing need, for some period of time, to make various adjustments in P and Q in order to obtain the best results.  Depending upon the state of the art in robotics, the computerized soul would get various kinds of differing reactions from attempts to move parts of its body.  Until the state of the art of soul computerization reached a very high level, it would no doubt notice many differences, but they would be things that would either be quickly adjusted to or complained about (for the doctor to fix).  For example, if the soul had poor vision in its prior incarnation and had needed glasses, its vision could be fixed.  It would not make sense to change too much at once, so vision improvement would probably be done in a number of small steps as it become ready and used to all the other changes.  If it was blind from birth, it would be important to introduce vision in a careful and controlled manner because of all the other simultaneous changes. It would probably find that some sounds, such as people’s voices, were somehow different at first.  It might not recognize someone’s voice the first time it spoke to them on the phone.  It would also take time to adjust to the various limitations imposed by the state of robotic technologies.

Not every difference would be negative (or a loss).  For example, when a phone rang, if the soul so desired, it could simply become aware of who was calling and think whether to answer or not.  If it chose to answer, it could use real sound or it could, in a thought, opt for ESP conversation, where its unvocalized mental version of what it wanted to say would be transmitted over the phone in its voice.  The soul could hear the other party without recourse to the need for sound.  Of course, the private thoughts that it was having during the conversation would not be transmitted over the phone.  There would be many possible enhancements that would require intelligent evaluation.  The question is, are various changes and so-called improvements actually a good thing?  It is possible that soul might be, in a sense, corrupted merely to partake of things that never could have been a part of it while it was alive.

As to the question as to whether or not a computerized soul would be conscious, what can be said is that if you asked a computerized soul whether or not he was conscious, he or she would reply “Definitely!”  If you asked a jury to determine  whether or not they thought a computerized soul was conscious by engaging it in conversations, they would also reply “Definitely!”