On a Method for Researching the Idea of Technological Personal Immortality
“There is a universal struggle between systems,
in this struggle the unstable systems are destroyed,
only the stable ones remain
and they convey to the world its appearance.”
G. Klaus
Summary: The leading concept in the methodology developed here for the study of technological personal immortality is the concept of “over-preservation”. It fully corresponds to the understanding of technological personal immortality as an infinite and unlimited preservation of the human personality (and “I”). The study of such a process cannot be posed and analyzed by conventional means. The concept of over-preservation is specified for the meso-world through the system-information paradigm and, in particular, through the theory of functional systems. The theory of functional systems implies a functional understanding of the phenomenon of information and the new, insufficiently popular concept of “systems of information”. Historically, the first system of information is the genetic one, but here the focus is placed on the human psyche as another functional system of information. Between the psyche and its material carrier – the biological organism (its nervous system) – a positive feedback loop is triggered in the process of evolutionary development. However, this positive feedback loop is limited and even interrupted. The reason is the emergence of human society, where evolution is replaced by social development. The presumed realization of technological personal immortality is essentially the activation of the same positive feedback loop, but at a new and much higher level. It is determined by the replacement of the biological substrate of the organism with a new one – artificial and non-biological in nature. The positive feedback loop in question turns out to be unlimited and radically changes the mode of existence and development, both of the individual and of human society. The expansion of humanity in all dimensions of the Universe becomes unstoppable. A wave of a new order arises in the Universe – human – which transforms the entire physical Universe, and humanity becomes a factor in the Multiverse. This point of view proves decisive both for the establishment and for the study of technological personal immortality. It is a concrete application of the philosophical method: “from the most developed and manifested in the phenomenon to the essence and the general”!
