This is an interesting point, but I think you’re missing something fundamental about what originality means. This isn’t a question of map versus territory, it’s a question of what identity is.
The same people who value an original Mona Lisa, or an original NFT, would likely also be wary of treating a copy of someone as equivalent to the original person. Those who see no distinction, would probably see copies of people as fungible, too. This is an argument between pattern identity theory (you are a data pattern with some number of instances) and continuity identity theory (you are a particular instance of a data pattern, picked out by having only gradual change in physical makeup over time).
As a continuity believer, I think that the original Mona Lisa objectively is more valuable and that only something which destroyed the information of which one that is could possibly render it fungible with a copy—for the same reason I believe that my own continuity of consciousness is an absolutely necessary prerequisite for a being to be defined as “me”, and that a perfect copy of me would be another person entirely who just happens to resemble me. The only way you could get me to consider the copy equivalent to myself, is if you erase from existence (or at least from the knowledge I can ever hope to personally access) any evidence of which is which.
NFTs, on the other hand, seem a bit more muddled, as the real original of any digital artwork I’ve ever made (and I’ve made a lot of them—didn’t know NFTs existed though, I may have a lucrative business opportunity now :P) is the copy that lay on my hard drive. And even that may not be the original, since it might have been overwritten or moved to a different region of memory, which would require copying the data and then deleting the original. It’s unclear how continuous any data structure on a computer could be said to be, so in the case of files, there may really be no original.
This, by the way, is why I am uncomfortable with standard ideas of uploading. Besides the obvious dangers of rogue hyper-self-copiers, I suspect that continuity of consciousness in a digital medium might be compromised altogether (as Integrated Information Theory also suggests). I think uploading could only safely occur by gradually migrating into an artificial neural net made as a physical brain (rather than software), with the physical parts instantiating you changing only gradually and continuously as they do in the human body—not a data structure in a standard computer which moves by being copied and deleted, which I worry could be a philosophical zombie.
Great reply. I share your beliefs on consciousness copying, and would have the same concerns.
As a continuity believer, I think that the original Mona Lisa objectively is more valuable and that only something which destroyed the information of which one that is could possibly render it fungible with a copy—for the same reason I believe that my own continuity of consciousness is an absolutely necessary prerequisite for a being to be defined as “me”, and that a perfect copy of me would be another person entirely who just happens to resemble me. The only way you could get me to consider the copy equivalent to myself, is if you erase from existence (or at least from the knowledge I can ever hope to personally access) any evidence of which is which.
I do grant that in some sense there are features of some territory which we could name originality. There’s complicated boundary questions, as we’ve both outlined.
It’s not obvious to me why the Mona Lisa would be objectively more valuable; even if it were objectively original, it doesn’t follow that the fact that it’s original makes it more valuable. Even if there’s a good argument for why it’s objectively more valuable, my broader point is that the reason why it’s more valuable in practice is because people have maps that say that originals are more valuable than copies.
Whether that’s true or not objectively doesn’t change that. And those maps were originally brought on because as a heuristic, getting an original X usually brings more utility in many ways than getting a copy. But we are so used to those maps, that even NFT paintings are enough to trigger them, even though there’s no conceivable advantage of owning the original. Actually, the sole advantage is that because we are so used to applying the map that rewards us for owning originals, we will in fact gain utility/pleasure just from knowing that it’s an original NFT. Very meta.
This is an interesting point, but I think you’re missing something fundamental about what originality means. This isn’t a question of map versus territory, it’s a question of what identity is.
The same people who value an original Mona Lisa, or an original NFT, would likely also be wary of treating a copy of someone as equivalent to the original person. Those who see no distinction, would probably see copies of people as fungible, too. This is an argument between pattern identity theory (you are a data pattern with some number of instances) and continuity identity theory (you are a particular instance of a data pattern, picked out by having only gradual change in physical makeup over time).
As a continuity believer, I think that the original Mona Lisa objectively is more valuable and that only something which destroyed the information of which one that is could possibly render it fungible with a copy—for the same reason I believe that my own continuity of consciousness is an absolutely necessary prerequisite for a being to be defined as “me”, and that a perfect copy of me would be another person entirely who just happens to resemble me. The only way you could get me to consider the copy equivalent to myself, is if you erase from existence (or at least from the knowledge I can ever hope to personally access) any evidence of which is which.
NFTs, on the other hand, seem a bit more muddled, as the real original of any digital artwork I’ve ever made (and I’ve made a lot of them—didn’t know NFTs existed though, I may have a lucrative business opportunity now :P) is the copy that lay on my hard drive. And even that may not be the original, since it might have been overwritten or moved to a different region of memory, which would require copying the data and then deleting the original. It’s unclear how continuous any data structure on a computer could be said to be, so in the case of files, there may really be no original.
This, by the way, is why I am uncomfortable with standard ideas of uploading. Besides the obvious dangers of rogue hyper-self-copiers, I suspect that continuity of consciousness in a digital medium might be compromised altogether (as Integrated Information Theory also suggests). I think uploading could only safely occur by gradually migrating into an artificial neural net made as a physical brain (rather than software), with the physical parts instantiating you changing only gradually and continuously as they do in the human body—not a data structure in a standard computer which moves by being copied and deleted, which I worry could be a philosophical zombie.
Great reply. I share your beliefs on consciousness copying, and would have the same concerns.
It’s not obvious to me why the Mona Lisa would be objectively more valuable; even if it were objectively original, it doesn’t follow that the fact that it’s original makes it more valuable.
Even if there’s a good argument for why it’s objectively more valuable, my broader point is that the reason why it’s more valuable in practice is because people have maps that say that originals are more valuable than copies.
Whether that’s true or not objectively doesn’t change that. And those maps were originally brought on because as a heuristic, getting an original X usually brings more utility in many ways than getting a copy. But we are so used to those maps, that even NFT paintings are enough to trigger them, even though there’s no conceivable advantage of owning the original. Actually, the sole advantage is that because we are so used to applying the map that rewards us for owning originals, we will in fact gain utility/pleasure just from knowing that it’s an original NFT. Very meta.