A software-based mind that is judged by experts to be close enough in its mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values to a brain-based original mind as to share a single identity.
Published in Chapter:
Mindclone Technoselves: Multi-Substrate Legal Identities, Cyber-Psychology, and Biocyberethics
Martine Rothblatt (Terasem Movement Foundation, USA)
Copyright: © 2013
|Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2211-1.ch006
Abstract
Ethical issues arise with respect to a digitized analog of a person. Such an analog exists when a person transfers an adequate quantity of digitized memories into a database coupled to software capable of discerning, and reproducing, a close facsimile of the person’s apparent consciousness, including personality, mannerisms, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and values. This chapter refers to such a digitized analog of a person as a “mindclone.” The requisite software to create a mindclone is called “mindware,” and the database upon which mindware operates is called a “mindfile.” The purpose of this chapter is to assess two issues with respect to the ethical boundaries and cyber-psychological precepts for mindclone technoselves. First, is the legal identity of the mindclone separate from, or unified with, the identity of the biological original? Second, how does traditional bioethical analysis of biomedical actions toward people morph into a biocyberethical analysis of biomedical actions toward mindclones?