>>>In other words, your mind would pretty much be unaffected?
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>>I didn't say there. If my physical aspect is changed, it WILL affect my mind. If I were to be uploaded into a virtual space, or were to be transplanted into a different body or whichever displacement you may want to imagine, it'd still be me, in a way, just a different me.
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>You think so? I think that if you were uploaded into a different body, the mere fact that you would be inhabiting a different brain with it's differently forged neural pathways

Ah, but then that's not upload. If the target CNS is so read-only, where am I written?

>I know it's nice to think of this in the standard SF way, but afaic, a different brain would render you a different person. For all you know, you might end up as a republican. I guess this means I remain unconvinced of the existence of the aspect we refer to as the 'spirit'.

IMO, that so-called "spirit" is our self-image. And if it gets lost in translation to a different environment, then translation failed.

>>I feel this connection between these aspects all the time - I cannot think straight if I didn't sleep well, my blood pressure may rise for a minute if something I hear starts my adrenaline, I may be thinking of food if I'm hungry or I may become hungry when we talk about food. It goes both ways for me, and I don't think I'm any exception at that.
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>I don't see anything in any of that that is not strictly biological.

Because there isn't. Thought process, even the praiseworthy human achievement of abstract thinking, is still the same old neural pathways and the same biochemistry as it was for the first homo sapiens.

>>But there is - it's a process in your brain. You start thinking about life, universe and everything, you're going metaphysical. You start thinking about your relationship with the rest of your species, you're shaping your spirit, i.e. your private set of attitudes, behaviors, ways of thinking.
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>Hmmm... no, I think that when I think about that stuff, I'm simply forging new neural pathways. I don't see anything metaphysical in thinking about metaphysics. Nor do I see anything spiritual in it.

We seem to have somewhat different definitions of these two words. For me, metaphysics is just a discipline of human thought, pretty much like aesthetics or chess - it's something abstract that we still can talk about and think about. And for the spirit I said above.

>>If for any reason you may have thought that I envisioned a spirit of a person as something that may exist separately from that person, sorry for the confusion - I had no such intention.
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>The confusion was probably mine. For me, there is the physical, and there is the physical. The metaphysical is entertaining to think about, but that's about it.

Um... I was thinking of metaphysics in its original sense, as in the opening paragraphs of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics, not as in the latter: More recently, the term "metaphysics" has also been used more loosely to refer to "subjects that are beyond the physical world". A "metaphysical bookstore", for instance, is not one that sells books on ontology, but rather one that sells books on spirits, faith healing, crystal power, occultism, and other such topics.