I’m not nearly as familiar with the literatures on neuroscience, philosophy of mind, or theories of welfare as would be ideal here. I’m writing this up anyway because to my surprise, most of the philosophers (primarily philosophers of mind) with whom I discussed the idea seemed to think it had a reasonable chance of containing something worthwhile and novel
As one of the philosophers in question, I will now say there’s a very high chance this contains something worthwhile. And if it’s not entirely novel, I’m having trouble finding anything that is obviously about this topic, so it’s still very worth laying out.
And another literature pointer: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) specifies an “amount” of consciousness that a given system has. Adam Pautz criticizes IIT’s notion of “amount” as being ambiguous and potentially incoherent. Interestingly, Pautz’s list of potential ways in which experiences can be degreed does not (as far as I can tell) contain anything corresponding to your “size” notion.
And thanks for the IIT / Pautz reference, that does seem relevant. Especially to my comment on the “superlinearity” intuition that experience should probably be lost, or at least not gained, as the brain is “disintegrated” via corpus callosotomy… let me know (you or anyone else reading this) if you know whether IIT, or some reasonable precisification of it, says that the “amount” of experience associated with two split brain hemispheres is more or less than with an intact brain.
As one of the philosophers in question, I will now say there’s a very high chance this contains something worthwhile. And if it’s not entirely novel, I’m having trouble finding anything that is obviously about this topic, so it’s still very worth laying out.
And another literature pointer: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) specifies an “amount” of consciousness that a given system has. Adam Pautz criticizes IIT’s notion of “amount” as being ambiguous and potentially incoherent. Interestingly, Pautz’s list of potential ways in which experiences can be degreed does not (as far as I can tell) contain anything corresponding to your “size” notion.
Thank you!
And thanks for the IIT / Pautz reference, that does seem relevant. Especially to my comment on the “superlinearity” intuition that experience should probably be lost, or at least not gained, as the brain is “disintegrated” via corpus callosotomy… let me know (you or anyone else reading this) if you know whether IIT, or some reasonable precisification of it, says that the “amount” of experience associated with two split brain hemispheres is more or less than with an intact brain.