> There is this extreme, and I would argue unscientific bias towards treating the mind as something that's recreatable in a digital system probably because it enables this science-fiction speculation and dreams of immortality of people living in the cloud.
I would argue differently: perhaps your point of view that's unscientific (or at least I don't see any scientific path to concluding mind emulation is impossible!).
Say there are complex processes going inside each neuronal cell. It should not be impossible to simulate those as well with arbitrary fidelity.
I think what is practically questionable is mind uploading -- we don't know if reading all this information is feasible, and it should be even more remote that reading it non-destructively would be possible. If it is feasible, then there's the question of cost.
I don't see why with a large enough computer we couldn't emulate a mind (or any other existing system). It is possible a quantum computer may be necessary, but there's still little evidence of entangled processes in the brain (indeed we strongly expect no large-scale entanglement due to high temperatures).
I think it's quite radical, and difficult to understand, the possibility of mind emulation and its impact in our society. The rights of the individuals, all the possibilities like making copies, backups, modifications, pausing a simulation, running an emulated mind faster than real minds, expanding memory, and much more. This goes all completely outside usual human experience (live out your consciousness, with occasional pauses in sleep and sedation, until you die and it stops). I predict it'll take very long until we come to gripes with all consequences of it.
It should be noted almost certainly Agent-AGI (AGI that acts like a person) will come before trying to emulate exactly a human mind. AGI has its own very interesting ethical questions. I think the main point we need to start taking in is that those beings will be conscious like us, thus we need to give them rights, take care with their experience, make sure they aren't exploited (by say simulating many AGI-individuals in terrible conditions). Again there is much outside of human experience, because they will have much more freedom. An AGI doesn't necessarily need to feel pain. Any real system might be able to override pain signals if convenient (something we can't do); but still, if it has motivators, I think it will be able to "suffer" (when things it cares about go bad).
One of the ways we will tackle this questions is through fiction. It's been ongoing, from what I know at least since William Gibson's Neuromancer there have been simulated minds (and robots existed long before, although they are not always treated as equals, or the possibility of different cognitive natures is explored).