I concur fully that the notion of cloned data structures, even down to the quantum level, will never provide the soul-perspective you have rightly named as the missing piece, Bon. The funny thing is that this notion that enough information, data or switches stacked together will add up to life is completely illogical -- or at least becomes so the moment you differentiate between the motivating power of "life" (ability, knowing, intent) and the structural qualities of all the other elements -- form, structure, mass, spacetime fixing, etc.). OF course, this distinction itself seems illogical if you are already locked into the physical boundaries of existence to begin with.

And philosophically, this distinction is not very popular in the Western soup of data and beliefs. One of the best to articulate it was Henri Bergson, the French philospher who coined (or at least popularized) the expression elan vital. But he got left in the dust of materialism and the life-as-mud school of thought in the post-war era.

If you accept the premises of brain==>data==>person that Kurzweiler uses, (which I personally do not), it is a fascinating piece of thinking though. I would be interested to hear what Wolfgang's specific objections to it are.

A