Before Split-Brains: Mind Uploading and the Problem of Multiplicity in Pre-1970s Science Fiction

Author: Oliver Galeotafiore

Field of Study: Undeclared

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 39

Timeslot: Midday

Abstract: The hypothetical process of mind uploading originates in 1920s futurist speculation, though it only began to receive attention as a technological possibility in the 1970s. Simultaneously, groundbreaking research on the corpus callosotomy, a surgical procedure which seems to inadvertently produce independent streams of consciousness in each hemisphere of the brain, prompted a reevaluation of philosophical theories of personal identity. The prospect that split-brain patients might have two minds raised the question of whether personal identity can branch into multiple selves, or whether this “multiplicity” would negate identity as such. Since the 1990s, philosophers have revisited the peculiar ramifications of multiplicity through mind uploading thought experiments in which the uncomfortable implications of multiplicity are brought forward. This paper argues that science fiction containing mind uploading from the late 1920s to 1960s developed valuable but under-utilized perspectives on the problem of multiplicity before philosophers even conceptualized it in the 1970s.