You can't upload the actual consciousness of the original creature itself. It's just a copy and even using the word "copy" may be a stretch.
Maybe it is physically possible, but we can't do anything close to it with current human technology.
If it really were possible I would be open to transhumanism but... just me being dead (or even still alive) with digital facsimile of me wondering around holds zero appeal to me.
I like me because I experience my life. If it's not my experience then... what is the point?
I guess one might think they are so awesome the world needs a being like them in it, but I don't think that. I have a lot of good qualities and I think I'm above average in many respects but I'm not so incredible that humanity needs a bunch of immortal copies of me. There are better templates for that.
I'm going to watch BSG 2004 and contemplate this.
I like me because I experience my life. If it's not my experience then... what is the point?
But in a theoretical exact copy scenario, you wouldn't feel like a copy. It would just feel like you fell asleep (die), then they'd copy you, and you'd wake up as that copy.
Something would wake up. It wouldn't be me though.
Consciousness is an event. A chain of reactions across billions of neurons. The reactions stop, I stop. Because that is what I actually am; the reactions, not the matter nor the energy. Those are only the substrate.
You could copy the map of my neurons and start a new event that acted an awful lot like me, but it would be separate event with a rather hard discontinuity.
An engineering professor named Bart Kosko recognized this a long time ago and his solution was to replace one neuron at a time. That way the event that is you never actually stops but immortality is achieved at the end of the metamorphosis to 100% cybernetic neurons.
I think his essay was called "chipping away at your brain".
Other people still reject this and say it's a cute way of ignoring a robot slowly killing you by eating your brain.
I'm undecided. I still don't understand the nature of subjective experience well enough to say.
I'm 100% confident that straight copy would not be me though.
Bart Kosko is wrong though, as your neurons and their interconnections are evolving and changing all the time. It would end up as a mess.
I'm 100% confident that straight copy would not be me though.
It wouldn't be you, but for that copy, it would feel exactly like it is you.