The 'choice' argument is flimsy. You think day to day life is as dangerous as teleporters, you just choose not to use the teleporter because you're helplessly resigned to constantly undergoing the same process?
Okay, good point. I need to argue that day-to-day life may not be as dangerous as teleportation.
Remember, in physicalism, saying 'I am the sum of my past configurations' is exactly the same as 'there is causal connection between my past brainstatea and my current one.'
Unless you are a dualist, the past has no influence on the present except for the information transmitted forward by causal rules.
(Emphasis mine.) This is the crux of the problem. If we assume monism/physicalism, I think your claims follow straightforwardly.
You make the scientific observation that physicalism is all we need to make
predictions. I agree. Nevertheless, physicalism has no handle on consciousness, for fundamental reasons.
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The following statement is the starting point for all inquiry: "I exist, and I am conscious." This is the Ultimate Axiom. Call it the first level of knowledge.
The second level is the statement: "I exist in an external world that follows certain rules." Unlike the first statement, this one may be false, but the only sane option is to assume it.
The third level, built on the second, contains models of the external world. This is the objective level, and the domain of science.
The third level is the source of all predictions, while much of philosophy concerns the first and second. ("Why is there something rather than nothing?") The crucial point is that science is confined to the third level. It assumes the second level, which is based on the first. Using the third level to conclude anything about the other two is a logical error, akin to circular reasoning.
Now, consciousness has third-level correlates ("self-awareness", "metacognition", "brain state", etc.) that are theoretically explicable with third-level constructions and reasoning. Chalmers refers to these as "easy" problems. The "hard" problem (why there should be a strong connection between the first and third levels) is in a completely different category.
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I apologize for the pedantry, but I hope my argument is clear now.