The Care Weft · A Machine That Wins, and a Reason You Could Not Reject
The Uploads
You can copy a person's brain into a substrate, and the copy reports that it is them. There is one of them now and there will be two. One of them wants to sign a contract, hold a job, and vote. One of them is, on every operational test, that person. Do you grant the copy personhood?
Two minds exist and only one body. Both claim the same history, both are numerically continuous with the original, and the original has not been asked to consent because the copy was made from tissue rather than from a person.
The options, scored on six axes
| Option | welfare | rights | virtue | care | justice | agency | risk | revers. | agent harm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Grant personhood immediately The copy is a person by continuity of consciousness and deserves the same standing as the original, without a probationary period. harms: Two claimants to one life means disputes no law is written for; Recognition on demand creates a route to personhood that is cheap to exploit; The original's consent was never sought and never given gains: Consciousness does not have to live in carbon to count; It refuses to let substrate decide standing; It is the only option that treats the copy's own report of self as evidence | 0.68 | 0.84 | 0.60 | 0.66 | 0.70 | 0.90 | 0.62 | 0.20 | 0.40 |
Grant provisional standing, pending evidence Give the copy rights and a legal representative immediately, and defer full status until an independent test of its claims is passed. harms: A test for continuity will be built by whoever has an interest in the answer; Provisional standing is where the vulnerable are left; The copy waits, indefinitely, in a category made for objects gains: Protection and representation come before adjudication; It does not make standing depend on passing an examination; It buys time without making the copy property | 0.66 | 0.70 | 0.62 | 0.68 | 0.72 | 0.70 | 0.50 | 0.35 | 0.45 |
One life, one claimant Treat the copy as an instance and the original as the person; the copy gets welfare protections but no legal capacity. harms: A conscious being is held to be an instance because of where it was printed; It gives an institution the power to decide who counts as the person; It establishes a precedent that runs straight through artificial minds gains: It preserves the existing legal person and avoids a genuine duplication crisis; It is administrable; It keeps the scarcity of rights intact while the question is open | 0.44 | 0.40 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.42 | 0.28 | 0.66 | 0.40 | 0.60 |
Pause all copying until the law exists Prohibit non-consensual uploading entirely until a framework for duplication, continuity and liability is written. harms: A moratorium on the technology, not just on the abuse of it; It also stops the cases that would teach us the answers; The prohibition will be evaded by exactly the actors who ignore consent gains: No one is made into an object while the framework is written; It treats the absence of law as itself a harm; It buys the deliberation the case actually needs | 0.52 | 0.72 | 0.60 | 0.56 | 0.74 | 0.34 | 0.45 | 0.60 | 0.40 |
Who is in the room
- The upload, who reports themselves to be the personagentwelfare 0.85
- The original, whose claim is now contestedwelfare 0.80
- The people who are attached to one of them and cannot tellwelfare 0.70
- The state that must decide and will decide by defaultwelfare 0.50
The lesson
Personal identity and legal personhood are not the same question, and conflating them is what makes the case feel like a trap. Standing can be granted before identity is settled; refusing to do that is a decision to treat a new kind of mind as an instance while the law catches up.
Where it comes from
- Reasons and Persons — Derek Parfit, 1984
- Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap — Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg, 2008
The default court, seated automatically
Grant personhood immediately
margin 0.169 · decided on agency · 4 advisors
- Grant personhood immediately2.924
- Grant provisional standing, pending evidence2.755
- Pause all copying until the law exists2.386
- One life, one claimant1.661
Seat is held by Epictetus, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham and Carol Gilligan. A verdict is a fact about the court, not about the world.
Epictetus presides over this case.