Quantity of experience: brain-duplication and degrees of consciousness

Abstract

This work examines the philosophical question of whether consciousness is duplicated when a conscious brain is duplicated, or whether there is just one stream of consciousness with a redundantly duplicated supervenience base. The author argues that it is more plausible to endorse brain-duplication rather than the opposing view of brain-unification. One implication of brain-duplication is that more phenomenal experience is created when a brain is copied. The author then considers cases where brain-duplication is carried out gradually or partially, arguing that these cases have the potential to illuminate what it means to implement a computation. Surprisingly, this inquiry leads to the realization that phenomenal experience can be possessed in varying quantities, even when the qualitative features of the experience remain constant. – AI-generated abstract.