21,85% of PNAS survey participants consider transferring the mind to a synthetic device possible
21,85% of PNAS survey participants consider transferring the mind to a synthetic device possible
On July 15, PNAS published an international survey examining how neuroscientists understand the relationship between the mind and the brain, free will, and the future capabilities of their field. The final analysis included 2 657 participants.
The authors sent invitations to researchers who had published in neuroscience journals during the previous ten years. A total of 3 164 people responded. After the questionnaires were checked for completeness, 2 657 were included in the analysis. In the PNAS survey, 21,85% of participants partly or fully agreed that advances in neuroscience would make it possible to duplicate or transfer a person's mental activity to a synthetic device.
The question concerned the future capabilities of neuroscience. Participants were asked whether knowledge of the brain could eventually allow mental activity to be transferred to an artificial medium. Nearly one in five agreed.
In the same questionnaire, 63,62% of participants endorsed reductive physicalism, the view that mental activity is a function of the brain. Agreement with this position was much more common than the expectation that the mind could be uploaded. For most participants, accepting physicalism did not lead to the prediction that a person could be transferred to a device.
The responses concerning free will reveal another distinction. Of the participants, 59,26% rejected the claim that the nervous system completely determines human behavior, while 17,52% agreed with it. The authors suggest that this combination of responses may reflect compatibilism, which holds that free will can coexist with a physical account of the human person. It may also indicate that participants' philosophical views draw on different underlying assumptions.
The survey records how brain researchers approach several related questions: the brain produces the mind, the mind can be understood, and only some participants consider its transfer to a device possible. The authors made the survey's data and code available for further analysis of these responses.