But what are we without bodies?

Reading an essay by Brian Aldiss on machines in SF when he describes a novel as follows: "In Tom Maddox's novel Halo, several characters are ingested by Aleph, a controlling artificail super-intelligence installed on an orbiting satellit. Jerry Chapman is one such character. He asks Aleph what became of his body. 'It was...recycled. A robot tended your remains...'"

How is Jerry Chapman a character? He exists, presumably, as a series of memories, ones that belonged to him when his body was living. But he owes his existence to a machine. Even when he tries to recall those memories, he needs the machine to do so since he doesn't exist outside the machine. Even if his memories are 'his', they belong to a 'him' that existed with a body. Once they are stored in a machine, can he really be said to be different from the machine? Isn't claiming that Jerry is a character a bit like reducing him to the level of a computer program? He can "run" while he's in the computer - talk, remember, reason - but without the computer, he can't do anything, can he? He's not independent. Can he be considered a character if he doesn't have an independent existence? If he can't do anything, in essence, can't be detected as existing outside the computer, is he not then just one dimension of that computer?

Does any character exist without a body? Or is it just the characters with bodies that make the most interesting characters - otherwise it's just all self-involved stream of consciousness drivel...