You know, if there was a hypnotic drug such that I could be sure I'd remember nothing (and many, many similar caveats), I'd volunteer to be caused all kinds of pain, because I don't see why I should care. The only moral angle I can see is the question of who would want it and why. Research maybe? In of itself, it doesn't seem bad.
You’re showing a lack of empathy for the instance of yourself that is experiencing all that pain. Simply forgetting it doesn’t make it right to not have empathy for the version of yourself that went through all the pain and suffering.
Yes, I am! Why isn't that fine? Not "right", you say.
Bear in mind that the "version of me" is me, and cognitively is in agreement that this is fine. Instinctively I would very much not think it was fine while undergoing the pain, but I'd also think I was wrong about that at the same time. I don't suppose I'd be all stoic about it like Giles Corey*, but it's the cognitive side of me that has the valid opinion and eventually the executive function.
I guess this might be a matter of subjective disagreement, but I'm personally opposed to all forms of consensual human suffering and death. I'd be fine with wrestling being banned, a law mandating contact sports amend rules to become non-contact, ban MAID (voluntary/consensual human euthanasia), ban anything that involves violence or harm done to any human being, including consenting adults consenting to violent acts performed on them. But that's just my opinion, and others are free to disagree with me on that. Although I will add that if I had legislative power I would not have an issue enacting such bans into law, even if people may say it taking away "rights"; to which I'd respond that certain rights like free speech are essential to a functioning free society, but certain other rights have no moral basis for being a right. The U.S. Congress (and various U.S. states) over the years progressively banned dueling. And notably, dueling was a consensual activity between two consenting adults, one that sadly took the life of Alexander Hamilton, amongst many others.
Yea, this is where the argument has the biggest problems. If your heart explodes or you tear vessels in your eyeballs, or you have long term stress related tissue damage the fact you don't remember at all doesn't matter much.
The problem with memory is it exists in a lot of different places. Screw around too much and you can mess up organs or even your gene expressions. Nothing to do with your brain at all.
I used to suffer from night terrors until well into my teenage years. It made me think, I would never know how much I was supposedly suffering in the moment. But what does it matter, if I can't remember it?
I haven't seen it, but the premise is that you have a second self who is trapped at work and wants to escape. That's really not the same thing, and misses the point of my drug scenario, which is that pain and (simple) suffering outside of meaning don't have moral weight. In this TV show the inside-work-selves are leading meaningfully miserable lives, with the frustrated cognitive desire to escape. They have knowledge-forming thought processes that are being wasted.
I mean, OK, there's plenty of further tricky sci-fi dilemmas along these lines. But I was interested in pain in the context of animal rights, obviously, this being a thread about whales.
No, there's a difference, in that my clone would get PTSD or some similar trauma as a result, which is a waste of a large part of that clone's life. In the version where I'm drugged into forgetfulness, I've only wasted a day, for science and profit.
PTSD and other results of trauma do not require a memory of the thing happening to you. In fact often people don't remember the thing that caused the trauma.
It's enough that your nervous system adapts to the unsafe environment. It doesn't have to know why.
Version 1: A mad scientist swaps your mind with another person's (Linda's), then asks which resulting body he should torture. Intuition says spare the one with your personality, so personality looks like the key to identity.
Version 2: He's going to torture you, but first gives you amnesia, then makes you believe you're Linda, then gives Linda your memories. Intuition says don't torture your body, so the body looks like the key.
Premised on being utterly selfish and not caring about Linda.
Leaving that aside, is this really a great and clever question? In version 2, your minds are swapped, so it's the same question. The difference is that you have been "driven crazy" and "deluded", but in what sense? If the objective is to avoid yourself being tortured, it's unclear which one is yourself, simply because the question relies on the unclear fictional process of "making you believe you're the other person", and the question itself implies you shouldn't trust that process.
It could be made shorter: "A mad scientist comes along and does something mysterious, so that you might not be yourself any more! So, are you? Ah, you don't know! Gotcha!"
The original is in Problems of the Self, 1973. (Or it's an essay titled The Self and The Future.) I've got hold of that, am reading. The original version is really long.
The first six pages are just really making a meal out of describing all the ramifications of the simple sci-fi concept of a body swap.
Yes, unfortunately it seems to be not very good. "He now further adds that at the moment of torture I shall not only not remember the things I am now in a position to remember, but will have a different set of impressions of my past, quite different from the memories I now have. I do not think that this would cheer me up, either." So, the problem with this is that it's nonsense, like saying "You are not you, but you are! Now if something happens to that person, does it happen to you?" Well I don't know, Bernard, it depends what your rather silly words mean. He's just playing the shell game with the word I.
Then at the end (ten pages later) there's a messier version: "he could have gone on and produced two persons each with A-like character and memories, as well as one or two with B-like characteristics". So it seems that the confusion and non-neatness of the swap is the whole point. Thing is, I'm not even very concerned which one is me. I suppose, alright, I do prefer me-like characteristics. So I'll take the half-dozen clones who seem vaguely right, that's good enough for me. Whatever.
