The kicker here is that we’ll be just as able to derive meaning from owning the “original”; it’ll be satisfying in the same way that hanging the Mona Lisa in your living room would.
Unless you value having the original. Imagine a private collector and the head of an art gallery, both happy they have the Mona Lisa. And only the thief who promised the private collector they’d switch it out for a forgery knows which is the forgery, and which, is the original.
Let’s say scientists devised a way to create a perfect copy of a painting. They manufactured a machine that can read the exact configuration of atoms in DaVinci’s Mona Lisa, and create a perfect “clone” with the exact same type of atoms arranged in the exact same order. Would those clones be just as valuable as the Mona Lisa that hangs in the Louvre?
Certainly not.
This thought experiment is probably right, although it hasn’t been performed.
If the value of the original is derived from it being the original—that knowledge—then if a forgery was switched out for the original successfully, it would obtain that value (or price).
Unless you value having the original. Imagine a private collector and the head of an art gallery, both happy they have the Mona Lisa. And only the thief who promised the private collector they’d switch it out for a forgery knows which is the forgery, and which, is the original.
Indeed. That maps well to the idea that we value “originals” more for the sake of them being originals, even if they don’t provide any additional utility to us compared to copies besides that fact.
Unless you value having the original. Imagine a private collector and the head of an art gallery, both happy they have the Mona Lisa. And only the thief who promised the private collector they’d switch it out for a forgery knows which is the forgery, and which, is the original.
This thought experiment is probably right, although it hasn’t been performed.
If the value of the original is derived from it being the original—that knowledge—then if a forgery was switched out for the original successfully, it would obtain that value (or price).
Indeed. That maps well to the idea that we value “originals” more for the sake of them being originals, even if they don’t provide any additional utility to us compared to copies besides that fact.