Evolution as Purpose

Previously I concluded that the purpose of life is to reproduce.  Thinking about artificial intelligence and uploading has put a spin on that for me.  I suppose it is possible in the future that there could be a sentient being that achieves immortality by not dying rather than by having children.

Today my eleven-year-old son asked me whether a mosquito is alive.  When I asked what he meant, he clarified by asking whether it is conscious.  No, I replied, it is too small for that; it is just like a robot following the instructions of a computer program.  That answer made him chuckle.

If we could snapshot a mind and instantiate a copy as a chatbot, would it be alive?  Suppose further that it could not learn but only respond to prompts in a manner similar to the original based on knowledge acquired prior to the snapshot.  Effectively it would be an interactive memoir.

To me this seems more like a ghost than a living being.  If instead it could continue to learn, I would then say that the copy is a continuation of the original.  Perhaps the hypothetical snapshot process could capture both the memories and the mechanisms for forming new memories.

In Forever for All: Moral Philosophy, Cryonics, and Rational Prospects for Immortality, Revised Edition, the author R. Michael Perry writes of "divinization".  I think the idea there is that if one could live forever as an upload from a snapshot, one would want to progress as a separate individual rather than merely serving as an animatronic artifact dedicated to the original.  Perry describes the goal state of this eternal quest for self-improvement as the "divine attractor".

The fact that we have goals is a byproduct of evolution driving us to survive long enough to propagate our genes.  Even if they can no longer pass on their genes, sentient beings uploaded from evolved life snapshots might continue to evolve in the sense that could adapt over time to their changing environments in responsive pursuit of their goals.  For both the originals and their uploaded snapshots, I conclude that the purpose of evolved life is to evolve.