De Condorcet suggested in “The Future Progress of the Human Mind” that perhaps parents could eventually upload their intellects to their child’s mainframe so they have a legit head start on progress and advances in science, et cetera, and on dispensing with deleterious superstition and other error.
My first thought is… What would it take to upload our predecessor’s knowledge/wisdom bank into our own brain? Would it bypass the normal method of cognitive processing in the brain, or somehow speed it up?
Our brains are not just computers. We feel. We weight things accordingly. We arrange things within a framework or worldview. And everyone has a different one, even if they think they share the same worldview (religious or seemingly not). They are like fingerprints.
So I’m not sure of the fidelity of uploading someone else’s knowledge/wisdom (and whose would win? … would they be a benevolent guardian?), and if it would even “take” if we had not yet acquired certain parts of what a worldview requires to exist in a mind (consider that phenomenological language, please).
That’s just the logistics part. I apply the same thinking to things like Freud’s id/ego/superego thoughts, in that I wonder what cognitive neuroscience has to say about that sort of thing. Currently taking both Counseling Theory, and Cognitive Processing this semester. Philosophy/psychology double major. Fun.
It reminds me of movies that try to put people’s minds into the minds/bodies of other people, or to insert ideas into their minds whilst they sleep, say… or time travel movies where folks forget they are in the wrong timeline and must still return to the original. Like an organ transplant rejection, something about the way things seem “off” - a memory/emotion that didn’t get wiped, or something like that - clues them in to something being not quite right about the situation. Or, conversely, the new reality (matrix, if you will, heh! I caaaaaan’t waaaait for that to come out!!!) is so convincingly real, it is a successful transplant.
I kind of wonder, if we ever developed the technology that would make possible such uploads of knowledge/wisdom banks (erm… assuming we aren’t currently living in such a reality/simulation) … after you work out kinks like knowing the best time to undertake such an upload so that it does not fail to take in the first place, or is not rejected soon thereafter… Would there be lingering aftereffects? Would we ever question the uploaded data? Would part of the upload include a program that makes it impossible to question it? If so, that would violate human dignity and our freedom of conscience. But I think … it wouldn’t take. Especially not for those who are inclined more than others to question, but for all as part of being human.
Would it be self-imposed tutelage, or guardian-imposed (going back to Kant’s “What is Enlightenment”)? Would a benevolent guardian want to impose with such an upload? Shouldn’t we want to think for ourselves and not have all the answers supplied and arranged for us? Wouldn’t it sort of violate the principles of the enlightenment? How could the data best be arranged so that it is NOT tutelage? …so that we can arrange the data within our worldview as we deem most rational/best (granted the data, if accurate … and if we choose to accept it … may also lead to an adjustment in our worldview…)?
What if the first time such a bank is uploaded, it leads the person to convert to Christianity? Ha! That may require it include all the evidence covered by Christian apologists, but… that may require the guardians be open to such inclusion. Or it may not. All it would really require is a complete coverage of history and philosophy, without leaving anything out, and without tainting it with certain biased interpretations. If all the guardians upload this bank into their own brains first, so that they do not immediately put a stop to further uploads when they discover its effects on their subjects, it may lead to a global revival ironically opposite their original intention. Granted… knowing something is true does not necessarily result in trusting it (faith). These would not be ghastly forced conversions. Some may still reject for reasons other than the reality of the thing. For example, perhaps they would reject any worldview that incarnates the Golden Rule because they harbor a firmly set interpretation/worldview that considers it slave morality? Would be nice to rid the world of that superstition (slave morality), but alas, it is a stubborn one for those who need it. There is data… and then, there is the interpretation of that data. Are we sure that the knowledge/wisdom base of these guardians is uploading the correct interpretation? This is worldview stuff.
And if those who receive the upload have what it takes to maintain a worldview, what if the guardians’ worldview/interpretation clashes too much with their own? What if the paradigm shift is so extreme, so mountain-moving, it leads to an emotional/mental/psychological breakdown or split from reality, merely because it is such a shift…not from everything they know…but from how they framed it…? The guardians better make sure it is the correct framing! What if it is a blinding light that burns into their psyche so much it takes them months to recover? I do not recommend uploading to all minds at once.
If all you want to do is set someone free to think for themselves, so that real progress can be made (whisper: you must first define real progress…)… on the shoulders of giants (some covered by d’Alembert in “The Human Mind Emerged from Barbarism”)… you need not upload anything using technology. You need not even bring them up in public education (with amendments that support and encourage freethinking, of course). Simply feed their hunger from the time they ask their first “Why?”. Never discourage it.
On the other hand… there are psychological tricks to piquing curiosity without looking like you’re willfully encouraging it. Some of the greatest revivals were sparked under the greatest persecution. But never assume or lead them to believe there is no Answer to any Why?.. no real progress/end in which to hope (a progress/hope which de Condorcet seems to take as granted… but which hovers over an abyss if it has no grounding in reality). Even if you feel everyone thus far has got it wrong. There is no hunger without food, even if for the moment it … maybe … exceeds your grasp.