Why Aren’t I Part of a Whale?

Analysis 83 (2):227-234 (2023)
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Abstract

We start by presenting three different views that jointly imply that every person has many conscious beings in their immediate vicinity, and that the number greatly varies from person to person. We then present and assess an argument to the conclusion that how confident someone should be in these views should sensitively depend on how massive they happen to be. According to the argument, sometimes irreducibly de se observations can be powerful evidence for or against believing in metaphysical theories.

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Author Profiles

Caspar Hare
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David Builes
Princeton University

Citations of this work

The Many-Subjects Argument against Physicalism.Brian Cutter - forthcoming - In Geoffrey Lee & Adam Pautz (eds.), The Importance of Being Conscious. Oxford University Press.

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References found in this work

Sleeping beauty: Reply to Elga.David Lewis - 2001 - Analysis 61 (3):171–76.
Is Consciousness Intrinsic?: A Problem for the Integrated Information Theory.Hedda Hassel Mørch - 2019 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (1-2):133-162(30).
Defeating dr. evil with self-locating belief.Adam Elga - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (2):383–396.

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