On 11-Jan-02, Wei Dai wrote: > I don't agree with this, because as I said earlier people expend effort to > obtain results that they'll never see, for example by writing wills. > Clearly what is a gain for a subject is not only based on first person > experiences. Suppose someone offered you $1000, but if you accepted Earth > would be destroyed and everyone on it killed as soon as you die. Would you > take that offer? Even if you did I'm sure most people wouldn't.
I think you take to narrow a view of first person experience. Most people feel anxiety contemplating their surviving children being destitute or the end of life on Earth. That feeling is a first person experience as much as any other. Brent Meeker "Philosophie ist der systematische Missbrauch einer eigens zu diesem Zweck entwickelten Terminologie." ---Wolfgang Pauli