Uploading: The Path to Transcendence or Illusionary Escapism? A Philosophical Approach

Abstract

Transcendence has always been one of the human being’s greatest desires. The hope of a real world that exists after death, in which we somehow continue living, has been the subject of multiple proposals since ancient times. Today, the consideration of the beginning and end of life has ceased to be an irremovable biological examination thanks to many advances in science. In this context, in which the borders between the biological and the artificial become increasingly blurred, the most radical transhumanist philosophy looks for an absolute abstraction of organic matter through the download or ‘uploading’ of our mind to a computer. This is a very complex and controversial proposal, but perhaps the only viable one when faced with the futuristic hypothesis of the definitive disappearance of the human species.