Great reply. I share your beliefs on consciousness copying, and would have the same concerns.
As a continuity believer, I think that the original Mona Lisa objectively is more valuable and that only something which destroyed the information of which one that is could possibly render it fungible with a copy—for the same reason I believe that my own continuity of consciousness is an absolutely necessary prerequisite for a being to be defined as “me”, and that a perfect copy of me would be another person entirely who just happens to resemble me. The only way you could get me to consider the copy equivalent to myself, is if you erase from existence (or at least from the knowledge I can ever hope to personally access) any evidence of which is which.
I do grant that in some sense there are features of some territory which we could name originality. There’s complicated boundary questions, as we’ve both outlined.
It’s not obvious to me why the Mona Lisa would be objectively more valuable; even if it were objectively original, it doesn’t follow that the fact that it’s original makes it more valuable. Even if there’s a good argument for why it’s objectively more valuable, my broader point is that the reason why it’s more valuable in practice is because people have maps that say that originals are more valuable than copies.
Whether that’s true or not objectively doesn’t change that. And those maps were originally brought on because as a heuristic, getting an original X usually brings more utility in many ways than getting a copy. But we are so used to those maps, that even NFT paintings are enough to trigger them, even though there’s no conceivable advantage of owning the original. Actually, the sole advantage is that because we are so used to applying the map that rewards us for owning originals, we will in fact gain utility/pleasure just from knowing that it’s an original NFT. Very meta.
Great reply. I share your beliefs on consciousness copying, and would have the same concerns.
It’s not obvious to me why the Mona Lisa would be objectively more valuable; even if it were objectively original, it doesn’t follow that the fact that it’s original makes it more valuable.
Even if there’s a good argument for why it’s objectively more valuable, my broader point is that the reason why it’s more valuable in practice is because people have maps that say that originals are more valuable than copies.
Whether that’s true or not objectively doesn’t change that. And those maps were originally brought on because as a heuristic, getting an original X usually brings more utility in many ways than getting a copy. But we are so used to those maps, that even NFT paintings are enough to trigger them, even though there’s no conceivable advantage of owning the original. Actually, the sole advantage is that because we are so used to applying the map that rewards us for owning originals, we will in fact gain utility/pleasure just from knowing that it’s an original NFT. Very meta.