**"A Bodiless Future? Any Objection? "**

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The concept that we might be able to upload a human mind to a computer might become a reality but it seems very unlikely that the mind uploaded will sense being in a computer. It will perhaps be a complete copy of a human mind and observers may sense the personality but the original human mind will surely merely remain in the human brain with the copy operating as a copy.

Some might argue that the idea of leaving our bodies behind is rather impossible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodiment

The idea of consciousness severed from body is, under this (if I remember correctly) considered a remnant of dualism. It's been rather a while since I've dealt with the subject, but I distinctly remember them claiming that achieving strong AI in a robot would not work unless the robot had a body much like a persons. Although there seem to be many easy objections to their position...

The culture of the bodiless human. Intriguing, as Data would say.

How to re-write culture without referring to anything physical? Do all our tragic weaknesses reside in the realm of the flesh?

All neurophysiological studies have strong indications that consciousness is no different than other body functions and is the result of an active nervous system. Neural damage can result in modifications of consciousness.This is a well known phenomenon.

There is no doubt that there is much to be learned about consciousness. But that does not mean it is either insoluble or that fantasy suppositions would be useful in finding out. All phenomena outside of quantum effects are the result of cause and effect and consciousness will most likely be found to have a solid physical basis.

I eagerly away the day I'm a brain in a jar with a terabyte synchronous connection to the internet.

I get the impression, ( I may be wrong, if so please correct me), that most people are approaching this issue from the point of view of all or nothing; either the situation today in which too much internet use or sitting still is seen as bad, etc, or an imagined future in which the entire body has been removed from the equation, and the science of this possibility is argued.

I don't think that it is necessary to divide up the options/prospects like that. The present day already gives us fairly concrete examples of partial disembodiment of all sorts, and about which feelings are already running high on the basis of "how bad for you it is", addiction, etc.

The use of cars, internet, portables/mobiles, i-pods, TV, etc etc, already involves very little physical interaction with the world. Is this bad or good? If bad why?

We don't have to completely and entirely transfer people's brains to computers, or replace their neurones etc, ( impossible anyway because they change all the time, subject to chemical messengers, clean up agents, etc which "weed" the brain constantly , to make room for new connections and so on), to experience "bodilessness" to some very real extent.

It is happening, and it is often called "addiction, laziness, depression, withdrawal from reality", etc, when it is done for more than a few hours daily in the home for personal pleasure, and "work" when it happens in an office.

And I wonder whether it could possibly be bad for us, unless people with severe physical disabilities also experience loss of cognitive function, or narrowing of capacities, of horizons, of thought, being confined to wheelchairs.

Is the human less human for being physically immobile? As machines make super sensory strides out into space, and into our bodies, to the molecular and sub atomic, is there any reason to remain attached to our bodies? ( other than our eyes and ears, hands, and digestive system to support it all )

The universe is not particularly kind to living things that ignore it. If humanity wanders off into some technological dreamland there are hungry things out there eager to gulp down dumb protoplasm more interested in their own bellybuttons than the real forces controlling the cosmos.