People whose limbs have been amputated, generally report of phantom limbs. They even experience sweating, itch etc on the phantom limb. Now how come the brain detects all that on a limb that isn't even present? It seems sense originates in the brain and the body parts are just acting mere like sensors and output peripherals.
If that is true you should not worry much about this biological body thing at all. After all we have organ transplants already. Like the argument about Ship of Theseus, you have to ask if a person who underwent organ transplants for more than one organ is actually the original person. If you were to wake that person post surgery, how much less of his original self he is since a good deal of body parts are replaced I am sure to bet he will say nothing changed at all.
Transferring brain to a computer is just brain transplant. If you accept organ transplant you should hardly have any problem with this at all.
On the other hand, if there was a way to "digitalize" a brain and let it run in a simulation, it could still be conscious and have the same possibilities as the brain of a normal person with a normal body, but it would still be a duplicate of it. I don't think it's ever going to be possible to "transfer" yourself to a copy without dying. Sentience is far too intertwined with the physical aspect of the brain for it to be possible to transfer yourself into a copy without dying.
(I also think the underlying problem of thinking the digital copy isn't you may even be an illusory one in that our consciousness experiences a discontinuity every night when we go to sleep.)
Transferring brain to a computer is just brain transplant.
If you accept organ transplant you should hardly have any
problem with this at all.
John Weldon's "To Be" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc) kind of touches on this. It focuses on teleportation, but I think a brain upload is pretty much the same idea at heart.
If someone built a gigantic abacus and used to slowly simulate a brain, would that cause a consciousness to emerge?
So far as I'm concerned, anything which computes accurately "what I would think" is a copy of me. And anything which computes a mind and is temporally descended from me is me, even if we wouldn't recognize each other.
If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, eats like a duck and reproduces like a duck, does it matter that's solid state instead of packs of water inside membranes?