I’m confident it doesn’t actually work the way you’re supposing.
How do you think it does work? That is, are you suggesting there is a thread of consciousness that sometimes works differently from how I’ve experienced it so far? I haven’t seen a good model so far.
I’ve read Dennett’s book. It does a good job of deconstructing and disproving existing models, but I don’t remember that it proposed a good new model, just some interesting ideas and pointers.
Meanwhile, your model:
I at every instant am identical to this particular configuration of particles
has its own share of problems. For instance, you have no idea how many configurations identical or epsilon-similar to yours exist elsewhere at any given moment. You can’t know when they’re created or destroyed or modified. How can you not privilege the pattern-instance that right now is posting on LW, if you have no idea if it’s the only instance or one of a million, the others being clones I just created in my basement?
How can you not privilege the pattern-instance that right now is posting on LW, if you have no idea if it’s the only instance or one of a million, the others being clones I just created in my basement?
Okay, I’ll grant you that I privilege the one I am at the moment, but the nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine duplicates will each privilege themselves—and if I knew that they would be created in advance, I would be concerned for what they would experience for the same reason I care about any other future experience of mine.
How do you think it does work? That is, are you suggesting there is a thread of consciousness that sometimes works differently from how I’ve experienced it so far? I haven’t seen a good model so far.
I’ve read Dennett’s book. It does a good job of deconstructing and disproving existing models, but I don’t remember that it proposed a good new model, just some interesting ideas and pointers.
Meanwhile, your model:
has its own share of problems. For instance, you have no idea how many configurations identical or epsilon-similar to yours exist elsewhere at any given moment. You can’t know when they’re created or destroyed or modified. How can you not privilege the pattern-instance that right now is posting on LW, if you have no idea if it’s the only instance or one of a million, the others being clones I just created in my basement?
Okay, I’ll grant you that I privilege the one I am at the moment, but the nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine duplicates will each privilege themselves—and if I knew that they would be created in advance, I would be concerned for what they would experience for the same reason I care about any other future experience of mine.