With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, some believe that one’s consciousness (post-death) will be stored in the cloud with the possibility of it being hooked up to a biological or prosthetic body, thereby yielding a doppelgänger of the original (Figure 33; see Nicolelis 2011, p. 61). Furthermore, it is presumed that irrespective of the body type, all the characteristics of consciousness will be preserved. This thinking is severely flawed, since consciousness is shaped by the sensory feedback it receives through the body (Birbaumer 2006; Fetz 1969; Fetz and Baker 1973; Fetz and Finocchio 1971, 1972; Tehovnik and Chen 2015; Wyler and Burchiel 1978; Wyler et al. 1979). Imagine having Einstein’s consciousness attached to Pelé’s body, a body that was conditioned for football and not physics. This is where René Descartes’s mind-body duality fails neuroscience and biology (Noble and Noble 2023).

The following quotation from Donald Hebb is instructive:

“Yerkes (1912) trained an earthworm to choose one arm of a T-maze, using electric shock as punishment for error and the moist burrow as reward for correct choice. The habit was acquired in twenty trials, 2 days at ten trials per day, about what might be necessary for the laboratory rat. No errors were made on the third day, though the behaviour was somewhat inconsistent in the following week as between good days and bad days (even worms have them). Yerkes then removed the brain, or principal ganglia, by cutting off the head—the anterior four and a half segments. The animal continued to respond correctly, showing that there were sufficient synaptic modifications in the remaining ganglia to mediate the response—until the new head regenerated, at which time the habit was lost. The noise generated by the new ganglia, the irrelevant neural activity of the uneducated brain, was sufficient to disrupt learning completely.” (Hebb 1961, p. 78)

In the foregoing, the new brain cells of the worm had to be reprogrammed by the new feedback coming through the body. What this indicates is that the interaction between the brain, which houses one’s consciousness, and the body assures that every one of us is unique, and that upon death there will never be another Einstein or Pelé, and therefore it will be the written and visual records that will keep these individuals (including us) alive after death.

Figure 33. A brain that can be plugged into any body such that the body will assume the personality of the brain automatically.