Report from the Workshop on the Philosophy and Ethics of Brain Emulation (27-28 January 2025)
The Mimir Center recently hosted a workshop at the Institute for Futures Studies that brought together philosophers and neuroscientists to explore the intersecting domains of digital minds, whole brain emulation (WBE), and their ethical implications. Distinguished speakers included Olle Häggström, Tomi Francis, Logan Thrasher Collins, Jeff Sebo, Brad Saad, Petra Kosonen, Randal Koene, and Maria Avramidou.
WBE represents a hypothetical future technology aimed at creating software models of biological nervous systems and bodies, with the goal of reproducing their structure, behavior, cognitive functions, and potentially their subjective experiences. While long relegated to philosophical thought experiments and science fiction, WBE is gaining credibility within computational biology. Recent advances support this trajectory: researchers are successfully mapping increasingly complex connectomes, demonstrating emergent behaviors in connectome simulations, and developing sophisticated methods for large-scale scanning of both structural and molecular compositions. Combined with growing computational power for massive simulations, these developments have sparked serious roadmapping initiatives to achieve WBE within a foreseeable timeframe.
The goal of the workshop was to let philosophers and neuroscience practitioners explore new topics together and help develop considerations for the technology.
The workshop created a unique forum for philosophers and neuroscientists to collaboratively explore emerging questions in this field. Discussions centered on several key themes: the technological and definitional challenges in processing brains to create successful emulations; the ethical implications of such technology, including whether there might be compelling moral reasons to avoid its development; and the implications for personal identity and value in a world where minds could potentially be copied and exist independent of their original substrate.
As we enter a new era in computational neuroscience, we face both promising opportunities and serious ethical considerations. While this field offers potential for groundbreaking scientific insights and technological advances, it also raises the possibility of creating digital minds that may qualify as moral patients. The workshop successfully mapped out critical considerations for upcoming projects while identifying deeper philosophical challenges that warrant further exploration.
Workshop organizers: Anders Sandberg and Tim Campbell