Subjectivity Before Personal Identity: A Missing Foundation in the Debate on Transhumanism

Abstract

Recent philosophical discussions of transhumanism have focused primarily on the problem of personal identity. Ralph Weir’s analysis of the logical inconsistency of transhumanism is among the most rigorous examples of this approach.This paper argues that Weir’s critique successfully exposes an internal tension within contemporary theories of digital immortality, but that it leaves unexamineda more fundamental assumption shared by both proponents and critics of mind uploading. The debate presupposes that a digital system is capable of being a subject and proceeds directly to the question of whether that subject remains numerically identical after transfer. I argue that this order of inquiry should be reversed. Before the problem of personal identity can be meaningfully addressed, philosophy must first establish the conditions under which any physical system can possess subjectivity. Without such a theory, disputes over identity remain conceptually underdetermined.