What would be the consequence of giving up the idea of a subjective thread of consciousness?
I wonder if believers in subjective threads of consciousness can perform a thought experiment like Chalmers’ qualia-zombie thought experiment. I gather that advocates of the subjective thread hold that it is something more than just having certain clumps of matter existing at different times holding certain causal relationships with one another. (Otherwise you couldn’t decide which of two future copies of yourself gets to inherit your subjective thread). So, advocates, does this mean that you can imagine an alternate universe in which matter is arranged in the same way as in our own throughout time, but in which no subjective threads bind certain clumps together? That is, do you think that “subjective-thread zombies” are possible in principle?
Just as in the Chalmers thought experiment, subjective-thread zombies would go around insisting that they have subjective threads. After all, their brains and lips would be participating in the same causal processes that lead you to say such things in this universe. And yet they would be wrong. They would not be saying these things because they have subjective threads, since they don’t. And so, it seems, your insistence that you have a subjective thread also cannot have anything to do with whether you in fact do.
It seems that the idea of subjective-thread zombies is subject to all the problems that qualia zombies have. How do advocates of the subjective thread address or evade these problems?
What would be the consequence of giving up the idea of a subjective thread of consciousness?
I wonder if believers in subjective threads of consciousness can perform a thought experiment like Chalmers’ qualia-zombie thought experiment. I gather that advocates of the subjective thread hold that it is something more than just having certain clumps of matter existing at different times holding certain causal relationships with one another. (Otherwise you couldn’t decide which of two future copies of yourself gets to inherit your subjective thread). So, advocates, does this mean that you can imagine an alternate universe in which matter is arranged in the same way as in our own throughout time, but in which no subjective threads bind certain clumps together? That is, do you think that “subjective-thread zombies” are possible in principle?
Just as in the Chalmers thought experiment, subjective-thread zombies would go around insisting that they have subjective threads. After all, their brains and lips would be participating in the same causal processes that lead you to say such things in this universe. And yet they would be wrong. They would not be saying these things because they have subjective threads, since they don’t. And so, it seems, your insistence that you have a subjective thread also cannot have anything to do with whether you in fact do.
It seems that the idea of subjective-thread zombies is subject to all the problems that qualia zombies have. How do advocates of the subjective thread address or evade these problems?