Randal Koene
Carboncopies Foundation
Builder The claim is about what the hardware does, and the philosophy is left open
Randal Koene is a Dutch neuroscientist and neuroengineer who co-founded the Carboncopies foundation, an organization devoted to substrate-independent minds. He holds a doctorate in computational neuroscience from McGill University and a master’s in information theory from Delft University of Technology.
Koene contributed to the Oxford working group that produced the 2007 whole brain emulation roadmap, which ranked the levels of detail at which a brain could be copied. His own research includes NETMORPH, a framework for simulating the morphological development of neural circuitry, and a sustained agenda on the interfaces and validation criteria that a mind transfer would require.
His work is the engineering wing of the substrate-independence thesis this site develops. Where the site argues the position, Koene specifies it, identifying the structural and functional information that would have to be captured and reimplemented for a mind to survive a change of substrate. He does not claim that such a transfer has been demonstrated, and the phenomenal residue remains an open problem in his own framing.
Known for. Substrate-independent minds, whole brain emulation, the Carboncopies foundation, cortical interfaces
Coverage on this site
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Randal Koene is listed with the other builders, who hold that the claim is about what the hardware does, and the philosophy is left open. The positions themselves are set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.