Do you believe you are a typical conscious being or an atypical conscious being?
Let’s try this question out on some other examples of conscious beings first.
Walking this morning, I noticed a small bird on the ground that hopped a few times like a kangaroo before it took off.
I just searched google news for the words “indian farmer”. This was the first article. I ask you to consider the person at the top and center of the picture, standing thigh-deep in water.
OK, I’ve singled out two quasi-arbitrary examples of specific conscious beings: the bird I saw this morning; the person in the Bloomberg news photo.
We can ask about each of them in turn: is this a typical or an atypical conscious being?
The way we answer the question will depend on a lot of things, such as what beings we think are conscious. We might decide that they are typical in some respects and atypical in others. We might even go meta and ask, is the mix of typicality and atypicality, itself typical or atypical.
My point is, these are questions that can be posed and tentatively answered. Is there some reason we can’t ask the same questions about ourselves?
Let’s try this question out on some other examples of conscious beings first.
Walking this morning, I noticed a small bird on the ground that hopped a few times like a kangaroo before it took off.
I just searched google news for the words “indian farmer”. This was the first article. I ask you to consider the person at the top and center of the picture, standing thigh-deep in water.
OK, I’ve singled out two quasi-arbitrary examples of specific conscious beings: the bird I saw this morning; the person in the Bloomberg news photo.
We can ask about each of them in turn: is this a typical or an atypical conscious being?
The way we answer the question will depend on a lot of things, such as what beings we think are conscious. We might decide that they are typical in some respects and atypical in others. We might even go meta and ask, is the mix of typicality and atypicality, itself typical or atypical.
My point is, these are questions that can be posed and tentatively answered. Is there some reason we can’t ask the same questions about ourselves?