Page - 173 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

Cyberneuroethics • 173 its own deliberative nature, while remaining harmonised with all the other monads online.334 As a result, each monad would be a microcosm making up a macrocos- mic individuality through a meta-network.335 But the way in which these two levels of individuality would work remains uncertain. Indeed, questions remain whether monads in a meta-network could be considered as individu- als as such, and whether individuality would even persist.336 Moreover, if they do persist in cyberspace, any distinction between real- ity and virtuality would disappear. As a result, cyber-individuals could even be trapped in an existence in which virtual dangers and nightmares become as real as their own reality. This was developed in the already-mentioned science-fiction film Tron, in which a computer programmer becomes trapped in a terrifying cyber-existence. Something close to the notion of mind uploading and monads is very briefly mentioned by the American writer and biochemist Isaac Asimov (ca. 1920–92) in his 1956 short story The Last Question, in which: ‘One by one Man fused with . . . [the supercomputer], each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.’337 A universal consciousness, or a kind of hive mind, could then emerge, which would only be limited by the universe itself. This could be considered as a form of super- and supra-intelligence with a wonderful breadth and width of capacities. But this will be further examined below in the ‘Network Consciousness’ section. Identity Questions With mind uploading, it is possible to ask how it would be feasible to demonstrate that what had been created was really a human in a computer. For many, the Turing test remains the experiment of choice for such a conundrum. Proposed in 1950 by the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–54), the test sets out a means to assess whether a computer could imitate a real human being.338 A machine is said to have passed the test if a human judge cannot tell whether he or she is having a conversation with a person or a machine. However, the key problem with this test is that one will always be left wondering whether there was not one more question that could have revealed a distinction. A final conclusion may thus never be achievable.339 Ethical concerns relating to uploading a mind into a computer also include the fact that mechanical decision-making by the computer may be considered far superior to the decisions made by human beings.340 Moreover, such uploading would certainly challenge the concept of personal identity and have implications for the meaning of personhood. This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.