It’s worth not taking the common-sense concept of consciousness seriously, as it more or less just looks like the idea of a soul dressed up in 21st century jargon. However, as you noted, this idea doesn’t rely on the existence of consciousness, but rather is a sort of panpsychist frame of looking at the world. I tend to agree with this view.
If one truly internalizes this view—not just intellectually, but on a deep emotional level—I think that it is probably the best argument for altruism that exists. If I told you that you were going to be in excruciating pain in five minutes unless you did something to avoid it, you would probably go to great lengths to avoid the suffering. The human mind is good at internalizing future person-slices as a continuation of its current self, and therefore acts altruistically towards those future selfs. If only we were able to do the same for all person slices on Earth.
This is precisely the kind of gymnastics you need to do if you want to justify the foundational claim of altruism, that other people should matter to you. But what you’ve said is not sufficient to justify that. Why should I care about the person-slices the conscion visits if they are not my own?
Perhaps I did not make my point clear. If you are asking for me to justify the terminal value of altruism, I can’t. By definition, terminal values cannot be justified by appealing to other values. However, I was simply pointing out that our concept of identity can break very easily, as you noted as well. If one thinks that all they should care about are “continuations of their current self” and then they think that only this chunk of matter is a continuation of their current self, then no, this is insufficient to justify altruism. However, as your post reveals, one can imagine switching between person slices spatially, just as one switches between time slices temporally.
Asking “Why should I care about person-slices the conscion visits if they are not my own?” well, you’ve presupposed that they aren’t your own. I am making the opposite connection.
It’s worth not taking the common-sense concept of consciousness seriously, as it more or less just looks like the idea of a soul dressed up in 21st century jargon. However, as you noted, this idea doesn’t rely on the existence of consciousness, but rather is a sort of panpsychist frame of looking at the world. I tend to agree with this view.
If one truly internalizes this view—not just intellectually, but on a deep emotional level—I think that it is probably the best argument for altruism that exists. If I told you that you were going to be in excruciating pain in five minutes unless you did something to avoid it, you would probably go to great lengths to avoid the suffering. The human mind is good at internalizing future person-slices as a continuation of its current self, and therefore acts altruistically towards those future selfs. If only we were able to do the same for all person slices on Earth.
This is precisely the kind of gymnastics you need to do if you want to justify the foundational claim of altruism, that other people should matter to you. But what you’ve said is not sufficient to justify that. Why should I care about the person-slices the conscion visits if they are not my own?
Perhaps I did not make my point clear. If you are asking for me to justify the terminal value of altruism, I can’t. By definition, terminal values cannot be justified by appealing to other values. However, I was simply pointing out that our concept of identity can break very easily, as you noted as well. If one thinks that all they should care about are “continuations of their current self” and then they think that only this chunk of matter is a continuation of their current self, then no, this is insufficient to justify altruism. However, as your post reveals, one can imagine switching between person slices spatially, just as one switches between time slices temporally.
Asking “Why should I care about person-slices the conscion visits if they are not my own?” well, you’ve presupposed that they aren’t your own. I am making the opposite connection.