You Are Not "Your Brain"

1. Brain activity isn't the same as thinking, feeling, or seeing.

2. No one has remotely shown how molecules acquire the qualities of the mind.*

3. It is impossible to construct a theory of the mind based on material objects that somehow became conscious.

4. When the brain lights up, its activity is like a radio lighting up when music is played. It is an obvious fallacy to say that the radio composed the music. What is being viewed is only a physical correlation, not a cause.

"Consciousness - The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of equating consciousness with self-consciousness—to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it has evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it."

"The most compelling argument for the existence of consciousness is that the vast majority of mankind have an overwhelming intuition that there truly is such a thing.[20] Skeptics argue that this intuition, in spite of its compelling quality, is false, either because the concept of consciousness is intrinsically incoherent, or because our intuitions about it are based in illusions. Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousness depends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in the world. Thus, by speaking of 'consciousness' we end up misleading ourselves by thinking that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic understandings.[21] More generally, many philosophers and scientists have been unhappy about the difficulty of producing a definition that does not involve circularity or fuzziness.[17]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

So, I don't find the word very useful.

And to understand the inner workings of the brain and how it theoretically functions:

Society of Mind by Marvin Lee Minsky

I believe the idea that the mind is just a "set of agents" is best explained in "Society of Mind".

As far as the original article, I think anyone who tries to argue that you are not your brain is ignoring over a hundred years of scientific evidence that suggests otherwise.

One thing remains inconsistent though. I understand that we remove our legs, arms, organs, torso, head, etc. in pursuit of becoming immortal via a virtual life, but... isn't the brain itself also within the same classification as the aforementioned body parts? It's biodegradable.

Say we find a way to preserve the brain eternally, wouldn't it then become irrelevant to live through a virtual life? For if we can preserve the brain, the same method can be applied to preserve the rest of the body that we earlier considered ridding ourselves from.

The mind is a metaphysical repository. The brain is not the cause of the mind; it is only a channel that allows us to associate with--and add to--it. If we were to say that the brain is the cause of the mind, then--by necessity--upon physical death, the mind would have to vaporize, vanish, cease to exist. Now.. our identity IS our mind. We generally don't identify who we are through our bodies. Our memories, habits, traits, tendencies, affinities, aversions, and reactions all emanate from our mind. And if we subscribe to the latter notion--that our minds continue to exist even after we end our mortal lives--then that postulates that there must exist another world, an accentuated world, devoid of time and space, that allows an endless progression of fulfillment and enlightenment and an infinite array of things to do, only without an aging body to drag us around as we attempt to do them.