If we will very quickly constantly replace a mind with its copies, the mind may not have subjective experiences. Why I think that?
Subjective experience appear only when a mind moves from the state A.1 to the state A.2. That is, between A.I (I see an apple) electric signals move through circuits and in the A.2 moment I say “I see an apple!” Subjective experience of the color of apple is happening after A.1 but before A.2.
Frozen mind in A.1 will not have subjective experience.
Now if I replace this process with a series of snapshots of the brain-states, there will be no intermediate calculations between A.1 and A.2 which produce the subjective experiences of apple and we get something like philozomby.
Obviously, we need to know what will be the mind-state A.2 without performing the needed calculations, or that calculations themselves will have the experience. But if A.2 is simple like just saying “I see apple” we can guess about A.2 without having all internal processes.
It may seem as a minor issue in Mars teleporter thought experiment as in the worst case only a small fraction of a second of consciousness disappears for the copy. But if we will replace a mind million times a second, we will get a p-zombie.
Or we need to take some illusionist position about qualia: they do not exist at all, so they are not an epiphenomena of calculations.
We can escape microscopic blackout during Mars Transporter if the coping will be performed after A.2 has finished, but when the mind state A.3 has not started yet, but this is not how the brain works as processes in it are asynchronous. We don’t know how such microscopic blackout will affect the next qualia after that. We don’t have a theory of qualia. Maybe after microscopic blackout we will get different set of basic qualia, like red and green will change place. In that case, the copy will be subjectively different from me.
If we will very quickly constantly replace a mind with its copies, the mind may not have subjective experiences. Why I think that?
Subjective experience appear only when a mind moves from the state A.1 to the state A.2. That is, between A.I (I see an apple) electric signals move through circuits and in the A.2 moment I say “I see an apple!” Subjective experience of the color of apple is happening after A.1 but before A.2.
Frozen mind in A.1 will not have subjective experience.
Now if I replace this process with a series of snapshots of the brain-states, there will be no intermediate calculations between A.1 and A.2 which produce the subjective experiences of apple and we get something like philozomby.
Obviously, we need to know what will be the mind-state A.2 without performing the needed calculations, or that calculations themselves will have the experience. But if A.2 is simple like just saying “I see apple” we can guess about A.2 without having all internal processes.
It may seem as a minor issue in Mars teleporter thought experiment as in the worst case only a small fraction of a second of consciousness disappears for the copy. But if we will replace a mind million times a second, we will get a p-zombie.
Or we need to take some illusionist position about qualia: they do not exist at all, so they are not an epiphenomena of calculations.
We can escape microscopic blackout during Mars Transporter if the coping will be performed after A.2 has finished, but when the mind state A.3 has not started yet, but this is not how the brain works as processes in it are asynchronous. We don’t know how such microscopic blackout will affect the next qualia after that. We don’t have a theory of qualia. Maybe after microscopic blackout we will get different set of basic qualia, like red and green will change place. In that case, the copy will be subjectively different from me.