Enhancement has rather moral overtones. An aim of transhumanism is, for instance, to help people to live longer. But still, to live longer does not necessarily mean that it is also better. However, prolonging our life is an improvement and this improvement relates to something essential in humans. It regards their autonomy.

Humanity is essentially characterized by its striving for autonomy. This pertains to humanity altogether, but also to every single human existence. As soon as a human being is born, it is completely dependent on their parents, or rather, their immediate environment. As a result of their education, people progressively cross the path from heteronomy to autonomy. Thus, education enables a person to arrange their life according to their ideas within the society. Unfortunately, autonomy is never absolute, but it always takes place within certain limits. Such a limit is the freedom of the others. There is a moral law that forbids us to disregard the freedom of the others (their dignity). Another limit is set by the laws of nature. At a first glance, it makes no difference, if we ignore this limit. The fact that we get older and our body gradually weakens occurs regardless of whether we realize or ignore it. Most people accept it sooner or later that we become old and weak and that we will eventually die one day.

However, it is undeniable that physical decay, which is associated with the aging process, is a form of heteronomy. In this case, it is not other people or society who determine us, but nature. It is also undeniable that we humans have been always fighting against this heteronomy of the nature. The Prometheus myth is an early testament of this fight. Provided that education helps humans to stand up against heteronomy, it should be considered that it also clarifies transhumanistic ideas and procedures. This seems only reasonable because both education and transhumanism aim at the same thing, i.e. to help people achieve more autonomy.

A radical form of autonomy is mind emulation, also known as “uploading”. It is a process of scanning and then modeling the computational structure of the brain. The whole procedure can be explained like this: The brain consists of cells, called neurons. Neurons have dendrites and axons, which function as signal inputs and outputs respectively. If axons get connected to dendrites, we call their junctures synapses. By means of brain emulation, the electronic and chemical properties of the synapses and neurones are scanned and transferred into a model. Ideally, the neurones behave then exactly like their biological equivalents.

There are at least two problems linked to uploading. The first problem pertains to its technical feasibility, while the second to the question of consciousness. Lets have a closer look at the first one: In order to reproduce a mind, this needs to get scanned firstly. Nowadays, in the first half of year 2015, this is only possible, if the mind gets at the same time destroyed. Basically, the brain has to be cut into tiny slices, which can then be seen with the aid of a contrast agent and afterwards scanned with an electronic microscope. The processing power and memory capacity of the computer determine how detailed a process then takes place. Nick Bostrom considers that in order to accomplish a brain emulation that acts in an intelligent way, it is sufficient to catch enough relevant properties. Others assume that the virtual image of the brain needs to pass the Turing Test. This is to say, that the image should behave in a realistic simulated environment exactly like the biological original would do in the real world.

The pure scanning and virtual modeling of the brain are not enough for emulation. It is crucial to discover the dynamic processes of axons, dendrites, synapses and neurons and to be able to depict them. So far, this is not managed even with the Coenorhabditis elegans, a nematode about 1 millimeter in size with only 300 neurons. There may be a promising way to scan the brain without destroying it in the development of the so-called nanobots. These are extremely small machines that penetrate the body and send data to the outside, so that it can then be read and processed. Developments in the field of nanotechnology are promising, but their use is still postponed to the future.

And so we arrive to the second problem: consciousness. Is it possible to emulate consciousness through uploading? This question is difficult to answer because the current brain science can not explain yet how consciousness arises. But we know that the material foundation of consciousness is the brain. Simply put: If the brain of a human being is removed, they no longer have a consciousness. In addition, we know that the substance of which the brain is consisted (the atoms) can change relatively quickly, i.e. the already existing atoms are constantly being replaced with new ones. Although substance is constantly being changed, consciousness and our personality are maintained. It seems, therefore, that structure rather substance is important for our consciousness and our personality.

If that is indeed the case, it is then conceivable, that the material substance of our consciousness is not necessarily the wobbly mass in our head, but it can also be consisted of bits and bytes. It is crucial that the structure or the information is retained. To the point: We are not our body or our brain, but this which our brain generates. If we want to eliminate aging and the associated physical deterioration, if we want to rise up against the heteronomy of nature, then we must preserve the information and the structure that produces the brain. And we can possibly achieve this by uploading.

Regardless of whether it is morally good or bad to enhance our self-determination by Uploading, we can say that the transhumanist idea of brain emulation is one expression of the educational aim, i.e. to expand our freedom and self-determination and to overcome all forms of foreign rule. It is not about whether this aim becomes completely accomplished. As a matter of fact, absolute autonomy is impossible, because – as already mentioned – it can only take place within certain limits. It is actually all about the pursuit of autonomy and therefore perfection.