Abstract

Would you survive if your consciousness branched into two or more streams? Commonly discussed within the context of split-brain scenarios, this possibility might soon become commonplace with mind uploading technology. Cerullo suggests that after nondestructive mind uploading and other branching scenarios, personal identity would continue in two streams of consciousness. Thus he argues for what he calls branching identity. In this discussion, I evaluate the theory of branching identity and Cerullo’s arguments for it, concluding that branching identity is insufficiently justified and does not yield a better interpretation of branching cases than provided by Parfit.