Amusing, but kind of meaningless—there is no territory behind that map. Replace “particle” with “collection of particles” and you get roughly the same argument. Replace with “large collection of particles” and it starts to fall apart. Replace with “person” and you get a very different conclusion, with no real change in the fundamentals.
Particles have behaviors, it’s just that they’re simple enough to model really well. As collections get bigger, models get more statistical and error-prone. Where is the line between “unmodeled behavior” and “choice”?
Until you give me an operational test for thinking or suffering, I can’t answer what things are capable of it.
Replace “particle” with “collection of particles” and you get roughly the same argument.
Not really. A collection of particles can occupy any of an astronomical number of states, while two “distinct” electrons are demonstrably identical in almost every respect. So an electron really can’t have an inner life. It’s pretty surprising that physics answers this question as decisively as it does, it’s only possible because exact identity has a distinguished role in quantum mechanics (basically, two sequences of events can interfere constructively or destructively only when they lead to exactly identical outcomes, so we can test that swapping the location of two electrons literally doesn’t change the universe at all).
That said, I basically agree with habryka that the OP doesn’t really address the possible view that simple physical operations are responsible for the vast majority of moral weight (expressed here).
Amusing, but kind of meaningless—there is no territory behind that map. Replace “particle” with “collection of particles” and you get roughly the same argument. Replace with “large collection of particles” and it starts to fall apart. Replace with “person” and you get a very different conclusion, with no real change in the fundamentals.
Particles have behaviors, it’s just that they’re simple enough to model really well. As collections get bigger, models get more statistical and error-prone. Where is the line between “unmodeled behavior” and “choice”?
Until you give me an operational test for thinking or suffering, I can’t answer what things are capable of it.
Not really. A collection of particles can occupy any of an astronomical number of states, while two “distinct” electrons are demonstrably identical in almost every respect. So an electron really can’t have an inner life. It’s pretty surprising that physics answers this question as decisively as it does, it’s only possible because exact identity has a distinguished role in quantum mechanics (basically, two sequences of events can interfere constructively or destructively only when they lead to exactly identical outcomes, so we can test that swapping the location of two electrons literally doesn’t change the universe at all).
That said, I basically agree with habryka that the OP doesn’t really address the possible view that simple physical operations are responsible for the vast majority of moral weight (expressed here).