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[Wise Fool]

If I copied someone's memory/ personality from a computer and pasted into another synthetic/ inactive brain, is that person human?

I've been thinking about how cybernetics and biology can blur the lines of what it means to be human, so this question came into my mind.

Let's say I volunteered to copy my own memories and personality into a computer so that it can be transferred into another human brain of another unrelated person/ clone, is that person a human or even me?

Would that person have a soul and thus eligible for salvation?

[jimwalton]

These are always interesting questions and fun to toy with. I think we could pretty firmly agree, however, that it takes more than memories and personality to make someone human. Our identity as individuals is more than that, and is characterized also by knowledge, experiences, body, and gender, and probably more. We are even told that if a being were cloned, the result would not be identical to the original. In other words, we couldn't just clone Einstein at this point and fully expect an identical Einstein would be the result. Nurture and experiences matter.

But you want to know more basically than that: would this resultant "thing" be human? Your premise was that your memories and personality would be transferred into another HUMAN, so I think it's fair to say that would be human. Whether it would be you is another question altogether.

Speculations about soul and salvation are way out there. Since we are nowhere near this capability, it's sort of like asking, "Suppose we were able to change monkeys into whales. Would the resultant creature be a monkey or a whale?" Such speculations at this point in technology and science are nothing more than wild guesses and superficial conversation.