Moral dilemma?

[upthecreekyetagain]

I recently watched a very ordinary film called ‘Debug’.  Not a particularly good film but one that got me thinking - essentially the films central character is a computer program that has self awareness and consciousness. 

I believe that as a species we have evolved in such a way that our brain is what makes us human - it allows us to reason, make decisions and choices.  We have memories stored in our brain, it is our brain that allows us to be sad, happy and everything in between.  We can feel embarrassed and a whole range of other emotions.  It is our brain that decides our moral values, our conscience if you prefer.  When our brain ‘stops’ we are dead and everything we were, ends.

So my question is if at some time in the future we can develop computer hardware and software that can do everything the human brain can what will our moral obligations to that entity be - will we have the right to enslave it to our bidding and end its ‘life’ as and when we like?  Should we be concerned if it feels pain, is sad or depressed?

[right-then-petal]

Hello Creeky, As You Said In The Future Any Parts Not Up To Par Will Be Replace With New Parts Made By Softwhare

[cee-dee]

That might well apply to some body parts but not the brain unless they do a transplant from someone else and then you'd be that "someone else"?

[upthecreekyetagain]

The thing is that if the brain is essentially little more than a computer made up of 100 billion or so switches and that could be duplicated in a non-organic form then it should be possible to take a snapshot of the state of all those switches and transfer that information to a new computer.  This is common practice on the simple systems we have today when making a system backup.

The question is though would, (should), the new system with the transferred information from the brain have the same rights as the human they were duplicated from.

[fallen-archie]

I think it would be nice to keep the information stored for access at a future date and for reference a bit like a painting, photograph or a CD but if you give a computer feelings then you are advancing it too far imho, I am not convinced of the merit of doing that and I think it would be potentially dangerous too!

[cee-dee]

If the brain was dead, there would be no way to transfer the information because there'd be no information to transfer!

[upthecreekyetagain]

The potential ‘merit’ in duplicating a brain may be questionable but if it is possible you can bet your life someone will do it.

[upthecreekyetagain]

The idea would be to carry out the duplication whilst the brain is still active - in the same way that you take a system snapshot of a computer for backup purposes whilst it is still running.