The other comment articulates my thoughts about why higher order preferences are necessarily affected when you alter emotions.
Like preferring that people not suffer, and the feeling of pain at contemplating suffering?
See my reply there, then.
"Affected" is a vague enough word that I suppose I can't deny that my preferences would be affected... but then, my preferences are affected when I stay up late, or drink coffee.
It seems to me that you are equating emotions with preferences, such that altering my emotional profile is equivalent to altering my preferences.
I'm not sure that's justified, as I said there.
But, sure, there are preferences I strongly identify with, such that I would consider a being who didn't share those preferences to be not-me.
And sure, I suppose I can imagine changes to my affect that are sufficiently severe as to effect changes to those preferences, thereby disrupting continuity. I'd prefer not to do that, all things being equal.
But it seems to me you're trying to get from "there exist emotional changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am" to "we shouldn't make emotional changes"... which strikes me as abuot as plausible as "there exist physiological changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am" to "we shouldn't make physiological changes."
But it seems to me you're trying to get from "there exist emotional changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am" to "we shouldn't make emotional changes"... which strikes me as abuot as plausible as "there exist physiological changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am" to "we shouldn't make physiological changes."
That's actually really close to what I am saying, but minor alteration.
I'm going from "there exist emotional changes so disruptive that they effectively ki...
People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.
I'll start in the comments below.
(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)