Person-slices don’t seem suspect when you use the conscion model of consciousness.
I think this is where the argument cracks. Person-slices could still seem suspect due to some other reasoning, not just due to religion. You’re getting a positive conclusion (“consciousness can be based on person-slices”) from nowhere.
I’m not sure at this point what my goal was with this post, it would be too easy to fall into motivated reasoning after this back-and-forth. So I agree with you that my post fails to give evidence for “consciousness can be based on person-slices,” I just don’t know if I ever intended to give that positive conclusion.
I do think that person-slices are entirely plausible, and a very useful analytical tool, as Parfit found. I have other thoughts on consciousness which assume person-slices are a coherent concept. If this post is sufficient to make the burden of proof for the existence of person-slices not clearly fall to me, then it’s served a useful purpose.
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By the way, I did give a positive account for the existence of person slices, comparing the notion of a person slice to something that we more readily accept exists:
What would it be like to be a person-slice? This seems to me to be analogous to asking “how can we observe a snapshot of an electron in time?” We can’t! Observation can only be done over an interval of time, but just because we can’t observe electron-slices doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t expect to be able to observe electrons over time, nor does the fact that we can observe electrons over time suggest that electron-slices are a nonsensical concept. Likewise, if there’s nothing it’s like to be a person-slice, that doesn’t mean that person-slices are nonsense.
I think this is where the argument cracks. Person-slices could still seem suspect due to some other reasoning, not just due to religion. You’re getting a positive conclusion (“consciousness can be based on person-slices”) from nowhere.
I’m not sure at this point what my goal was with this post, it would be too easy to fall into motivated reasoning after this back-and-forth. So I agree with you that my post fails to give evidence for “consciousness can be based on person-slices,” I just don’t know if I ever intended to give that positive conclusion.
I do think that person-slices are entirely plausible, and a very useful analytical tool, as Parfit found. I have other thoughts on consciousness which assume person-slices are a coherent concept. If this post is sufficient to make the burden of proof for the existence of person-slices not clearly fall to me, then it’s served a useful purpose.
***
By the way, I did give a positive account for the existence of person slices, comparing the notion of a person slice to something that we more readily accept exists: