Choose a question from the list asked in Raymond Smullyan’s “An Unfortunate Dualist” and answer it, using the concepts of epistemology, substance/property dualism and/or Cartesian skepticism.
Define “philosophical zombie” and explain whether it is possible for such a thing to exist.
Imagine that you find a transporter which instantly links to any location in the world. If you step into the transporter, there is a 100% chance that your current body will be instantly disintegrated and then perfectly reconstructed from materials found in the location you choose. You will be seemingly empirically identical, down to the location of your neurons at the time of “transfer”, but made of different building blocks. Will you use this transporter? Is what steps out of it on the other side meaningfully able to be described as you?
In the film “Moon”, Sam Clone 5 and 6 learn that the daughter of Sam Bell is actually 15 years old, not a toddler as they were led to believe. In fact, Sam 6 only learned of Eve’s existence from the altered memories of Sam 5. All of the Sams, including the original, believe they have a parental responsibility to Eve. Are they correct? Do their responsibilities have the same epistemic content?
(700 words)
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