If P(I’m a foobar) > P(A foobar can be conscious), then there are worlds where you are not conscious (and also a foobar). Assuming you are conscious, “I’m a foobar” becomes “A foobar can be conscious, and this specific thing is a conscious foobar”, so P(I’m a foobar) ⇐ P(A foobar can be conscious) and the equality holds only if you believe that if foobars can be conscious then you have to be one—that it is completely impossible to be some other kind of thing that is also conscious.
The important bit being that all this depends very little on what foobars are (not at all except the last assumption). It does depend on you being almost certainly conscious, but if you didn’t have lots of evidence for it you wouldn’t think much of this whole consciousness concept, now would you?
I feel like I am really missing something here. I don’t see how the modal argument is supposed to work. I have lots of evidence that I am conscious in this world. But how is that evidence supposed to help when I move to a different world—one in which I may or may not be a foobar?
At a first pass, I just don’t know how to parse the claims you are making. Are you saying, for example, that P(I am a foobar in this world) < P(A foobar is conscious in this world), or P(I am a foobar in some possible world) < P(A foobar is conscious in some possible world), or … ?
At a second pass, I’m not sure how to evaluate the probability of modal claims.
At a third pass, I’m worried that your argument equivocates on the interpretation of probability in your two assumptions. The first assumption—that P(I’m a foobar) > P(A foobar can be conscious) -- seems to use a modal relative frequency interpretation: where the probability of an event is the frequency of possible worlds in which the event occurs. The second assumption—that P(I’m conscious) is nearly one—seems to use an evidentialist or maybe personalist view of probability. But I don’t think these two can be combined unless you have some principle by which evidence that I am conscious in this world is also evidence that I am conscious in nearly every possible world.
Assuming a very low probability of your not being conscious, “A can be conscious” is strictly more likely than “I am a ”.
Could you explain how you are calculating (or intuiting?) the relevant probabilities?
If P(I’m a foobar) > P(A foobar can be conscious), then there are worlds where you are not conscious (and also a foobar). Assuming you are conscious, “I’m a foobar” becomes “A foobar can be conscious, and this specific thing is a conscious foobar”, so P(I’m a foobar) ⇐ P(A foobar can be conscious) and the equality holds only if you believe that if foobars can be conscious then you have to be one—that it is completely impossible to be some other kind of thing that is also conscious.
The important bit being that all this depends very little on what foobars are (not at all except the last assumption). It does depend on you being almost certainly conscious, but if you didn’t have lots of evidence for it you wouldn’t think much of this whole consciousness concept, now would you?
I feel like I am really missing something here. I don’t see how the modal argument is supposed to work. I have lots of evidence that I am conscious in this world. But how is that evidence supposed to help when I move to a different world—one in which I may or may not be a foobar?
At a first pass, I just don’t know how to parse the claims you are making. Are you saying, for example, that P(I am a foobar in this world) < P(A foobar is conscious in this world), or P(I am a foobar in some possible world) < P(A foobar is conscious in some possible world), or … ?
At a second pass, I’m not sure how to evaluate the probability of modal claims.
At a third pass, I’m worried that your argument equivocates on the interpretation of probability in your two assumptions. The first assumption—that P(I’m a foobar) > P(A foobar can be conscious) -- seems to use a modal relative frequency interpretation: where the probability of an event is the frequency of possible worlds in which the event occurs. The second assumption—that P(I’m conscious) is nearly one—seems to use an evidentialist or maybe personalist view of probability. But I don’t think these two can be combined unless you have some principle by which evidence that I am conscious in this world is also evidence that I am conscious in nearly every possible world.
Could you try explaining in more detail?
Agreed.