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Squark09 OP t1_iwztj7o wrote

Excellent comment!

I'm already pretty committed to open/empty individualism, so this post was really meant to be me thinking through what utilitarianism means in this context. I get that it's controversial, but my own experiences in meditation and thinking about the scientific ambiguity of "self" have convinced me that closed individualism doesn't make sense.

> I don't see how logarithmic scaling helps with repugnant conclusion

You're right that it doesn't make any difference in the pure form of the thought experiment, however I think it does make a difference when you have limited resources to build your world. It's much easier to push someone's conscious valence up than to generate another 1000 miserable beings. The main thing that makes a difference here is open/empty individualism.

> I don't see why boundedness of consciousnesses (restriction from accessing other's consciousness unmediated) isn't enough to ground for individuation

If you go down this line of reasoning, your future self is separate from your past self, they don't share a bound experience either, it's just that your future self has a bunch of memories that it puts together into a story to relate to your past self. Most common sense ethics still tries to reduce suffering for a future self, why is this any different than claiming that you should help others?

> I also don't see the meaning of calling it the "same" consciousness if it doesn't have a single unified experience (solipsistic).

I mean that all consciousness is the same in the sense that two different electrons are the same, all consciousness has the same ontological properties. So if you buy that your own suffering is "real", then so is someone else's.

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