The growth of technology and Artificial Intelligence(AI) is on track to provide us with:

• Singularity: A merging of human intelligence and AI, resulting in Superstrong AI.
• Virtual Immortality: Our mental selves including our memories being u...

... or self-awareness is something many scientists and philosophers are discussing. The fact that there is consciousness inside us, is a big problem for those developing AI, as no matter what they do, and how technologically superior the product is, nobody can explain or even fathom the juggernau...

Qualia relates to the raw sensations of experience, like colours, smells, sounds.

It is through our actual experience that we know what something tastes, looks or smells like, and it is not some information already drilled inside our brains on birth. We have to experience ...

• Computers and AI can never have a real, conscious mind, even if they appear to behave, talk and act in the same way a human being does(like self-driving cars, for example).
• Simulation of consciousness, however sophisticated, is merely a duplication, not the real thing.
• Com...

... is a ripe area of debate, with some neuroscientists saying that it is not possible to transfer the entire person in a computer, and even if it is done successfully, the resulting entity would not be that person, but a ‘zombie’ who acts like that person.

These computers, armed with our...

1. The nature of artificial intelligence singularity with a consciousness (hypothetically) is vastly different and superior to ‘Superstrong AI’ which may be supremely intelligent, and even appear to be conscious. Being conscious beats appearing conscious.
2. The human in...

1. The consciousness can be entirely physical, a product of the brain.
2. It is an independent, unique entity, a special feature of physical reality, and can be a different reality in itself.
3. Everything that exists has some form of ‘proto-consciousness’, or varying levels of con...

1. If consciousness were completely physical then it is easy for Superstrong AI to be aware like humans are.
2. If consciousness is an independent unique entity, then one cannot say if computers, AI, and other non-biological entities can ever experience any real awareness.
3. In th...

Virtual Immortality follows a similar path, depending on how we define consciousness.

1. It is possible to upload a virtual self if consciousness is entirely physical.
2. In case of consciousness being an independent entity, if it is understood and studied, then it is possible to ...

In case a digital replication procedure does work perfectly, there is an unanswered question of where the self would be, if, for example, it is replicated five times. It can lead to various possibilities in the self:

1. Each of the five replicas can be super-identical twins, with their ...