RE: Would you rather
October 4, 2016 at 11:22 pm
(This post was last modified: October 4, 2016 at 11:23 pm by emjay.)
(October 4, 2016 at 11:12 pm)Excited Penguin Wrote:(October 4, 2016 at 11:08 pm)Emjay Wrote: The first definitely... quality over quantity. But my ideal goes even further back than that to zero people living a phenomenally conscious life... because all conscious life is suffering IMO... so my ideal is a world of philosophical zombies... the non-existence of phenomenal consciousness.
That's sad... No wrong answer with thought experiments, of course, but I still think your ideal is kind of sad. Hope you don't mind.
Yeah, I know it's sad... but it just doesn't make any sense to me it existing in the first place because in my view as a 'functionalist epiphenomenalist' it's entirely impotent... so it seems to me that all over the world, for millions of years, there have been all these consciousnesses, all experiencing their own pain and suffering, needlessly. A philosophical zombie would behave exactly the same way... the world would be exactly the same as it is now... there would be the same effects of and responses to pain, but no pain would be felt.
