Could I have been born as someone else?

[PyramidHead]

If, instead of the ordinary white lower-middle class upbringing I actually had, I was stolen away at birth and raised on a Polynesian island, I would still be me, just with different experiences. That is, I can imagine what it would be like to grow up somewhere else, speak a different language, and spend my time doing totally different things from what I do now; if that turn of events took place, I would simply be that person. Thus, it is conceivable that I would still exist even if many of the details of my life (my upbringing, my location, my values, my physique, my diet, etc.) were different from what they actually are. With me so far?

How far can this be extended? Would I still exist if, instead of the pair of gametes from my parents that fused to create my DNA, a different pair of gametes from my parents that were very similar to those fused instead? Suppose they were the same in every way, except the genes that affect eye color encoded a slightly lighter shade of brown in my irises. If I would still exist even if all the relevant details of my life were different, as in the Polynesian island example, surely I would still exist if something as small as my eye color were different. In other words, the Polynesian island version of me is a lot further away from the lighter-eyed version of me, but I can conceive of being either one without much trouble. So, even if the biological events that determined my DNA had gone a little differently, I'm reasonably confident that I would still exist.

Combining these two concepts together, there doesn't seem to be any logical cutoff point after which I would no longer be 'allowed' to exist. If I would exist even if my DNA and the content of my life were different, couldn't I have been born as a different person entirely? As Thomas Nagel put it, why did the laws of the universe not only result in my existence, but also result in my existence as the particular person I am?

 

[another1]

Would the Polynesian Pyramidhead have the same soul as the one from RI? Someone told me they read something someone else was told... that bodies are traits of souls, yet most people think souls are traits of bodies. I can't remember the exact quote. In my opinion, you'd be you - no matter where you ended up. You'd still have the same inner voice asking this same question?

 

[PyramidHead]

Would the Polynesian Pyramidhead have the same soul as the one from RI? Someone told me they read something someone else was told... that bodies are traits of souls, yet most people think souls are traits of bodies. I can't remember the exact quote. In my opinion, you'd be you - no matter where you ended up. You'd still have the same inner voice asking this same question?

I don't know what a soul is, but if it's anything like the "inner voice" or first-person perspective I seem to have, I guess the point of my thread is to investigate whether that can be talked about as a separate thing, apart from the biological and experiential features of my body and brain. I can imagine a universe where someone with my exact genetic makeup and life experience exists, but I don't. That person would go through all of the events that I experience in this universe, but I wouldn't be the one "inside", so to speak. Is such a universe possible in principle? That's what I'm trying to get at.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Nagel's question seems to be the philosophical equivalent of asking why it is that the shape of a puddle is so perfectly designed for the shape of the water inside of that puddle. It's starting with the assumption that the end result has some deeper meaning and therefore the process which led up to that result must therefore also be part of that deeper meaning.

 

[PyramidHead]

Nagel's question seems to be the philosophical equivalent of asking why it is that the shape of a puddle is so perfectly designed for the shape of the water inside of that puddle. It's starting with the assumption that the end result has some deeper meaning and therefore the process which led up to that result must therefore also be part of that deeper meaning.

I guess, but the shape of the water inside the puddle is completely dependent on the shape of the puddle. The fact that I exist doesn't seem to depend on either my DNA or the particulars of my actual life, as I tried to explain in the OP. In the case of the puddle, it couldn't have been otherwise than the shape of the puddle perfectly matches the shape of the water, but I can conceive of my existence being retained across a variety of alternate scenarios. So, I think it's reasonable to wonder why I exist as a certain person, and whether I could have (or did, or will) exist(ed) as another.

 

[bilby]

'I' is a fiction created by your brain.

Neither souls nor selves exist as physical entities; they are emergent properties of patterns of activity in brains.

The question is only meaningful if you take a dualistic starting point; and dualism is bullshit.

Sorry, but the question cannot be answered, because it's not coherent.

If anything about 'you' was different, then you would not be the same. You are not even the same person you were ten seconds ago.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Nagel's question seems to be the philosophical equivalent of asking why it is that the shape of a puddle is so perfectly designed for the shape of the water inside of that puddle. It's starting with the assumption that the end result has some deeper meaning and therefore the process which led up to that result must therefore also be part of that deeper meaning.

I guess, but the shape of the water inside the puddle is completely dependent on the shape of the puddle. The fact that I exist doesn't seem to depend on either my DNA or the particulars of my actual life, as I tried to explain in the OP. In the case of the puddle, it couldn't have been otherwise than the shape of the puddle perfectly matches the shape of the water, but I can conceive of my existence being retained across a variety of alternate scenarios. So, I think it's reasonable to wonder why I exist as a certain person, and whether I could have (or did, or will) exist(ed) as another.

I'd say that the fact that you exist is wholely dependent on your DNA and the particulars of your actual life. Someone with different DNA and different particulars of their lives would be a Not You instead of a You. They would be someone, of course, but a different someone than you are.

The fact that you can imagine your existence across a variety of other scenarios doesn't mean that you would therefore hold your existence across those scenarios. Your imagination is taking the endpoint of those scenarios and inserting your current personality onto them, which is a very different thing from having those scenarios result in your personality. When I use the powers of Scorpion from Mortal Kombat to fight white walkers and their zombie hordes north of the Wall in Westeros, it's still ME doing it. When I'm a super-genius tech billionaire who uses my private fortune to build a spaceship that takes me to the moon with my supermodel wife, it's still ME that's doing it. I invent scenarios and insert my current self into the person created for those scenarios. Someone who actually lived an entire life to get to those scenarios, however, would be a distinct Not Me as a result of the process which got them there.

Now, if you accept a dualist interpretation of who we are and feel you have a soul or something which exists distinct from your physical existence and is just inhabiting your body, then it's a different matter. The You would be entirely independent of all that and your current meat sac doesn't really factor into what makes up your existence. However, within a materialist framework, those other existences would have other people existing in them.

 

[another1]

You do talk to yourself inside right? You narrate the things you do before you physically do them. There is like a split second between actions and commands. That was discovered in a lab. The voice that talks to you is something you are aware of, right? It is somehow outside time, according to special official science experminentizations. Where is it? You're agreeing that the voice is there, right? It can be defined as whatever you like, but I'm assuming you're thinking of something similar because you made the thread. I think your voice would be wherever you are, no matter what. But where would you be? It is depressing to consider some of the other things being said.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

You do talk to yourself inside right? You narrate the things you do before you physically do them. There is like a split second between actions and commands. That was discovered in a lab. The voice that talks to you is something you are aware of, right? It is somehow outside time, according to special official science experminentizations. Where is it? You're agreeing that the voice is there, right? It can be defined as whatever you like, but I'm assuming you're thinking of something similar because you made the thread. I think your voice would be wherever you are, no matter what. But where would you be? It is depressing to consider some of the other things being said.

Do you have links to these lab results and official science experminentizations? While I have no problem brushing these claims off as absolute bullshit as a matter of course, it would be nice to see the specific ways that they're bullshit.

 

[another1]

Sorry I'll try. Maybe someone else can help. I'm not sure the right terminology to use in a search.

being given a command on a screen during a neuroscientific experiment resulted in the mind lighting up in the area common for given the command before the command was given.

 

[rousseau]

You are the combination of gametes that actually occurred. If another pair of gametes fused, you wouldn't exist, someone else would. So your analogy between upbringing and genetics doesn't hold up.

However, I'd argue if you were brought up in an entirely different environment than the one in which you were brought up, it's very likely that the two results wouldn't have as much in common as you think, save things like innate intelligence and predisposition to disease.

 

[fast]

You are not even the same person you were ten seconds ago.

Who was he? Or better yet, who is he now? A raging river that constantly changes is not in every way exactly the same as it was ten (or even two) seconds ago, but any particular river is still the same identifiable river. Maybe he's a river.

The word, "I" (not to be confused with the letter I) is a pronoun. If I say that "I went to the store," then that is short for, "Fast went to the store." I didn't go; they all closed at 7:00

 

[Juma]

You are not even the same person you were ten seconds ago.

Who was he? Or better yet, who is he now? A raging river that constantly changes is not in every way exactly the same as it was ten (or even two) seconds ago, but any particular river is still the same identifiable river. Maybe he's a river.

The word, "I" (not to be confused with the letter I) is a pronoun. If I say that "I went to the store," then that is short for, "Fast went to the store." I didn't go; they all closed at 7:00

Another good example is clouds: the cloud is just a part of the space where water condenses. The air, and thus the water, is always replaced, often at a very high speed.

That's why clouds can move in the opposite direction of the wind.

The speed of the cloud has little to do with the speed of the air.

 

[fast]

That's why clouds can move in the opposite direction of the wind.

That's neat; hadn't heard that before. Unintuitive and believable. Cool.

 

[DBT]

''Could I have been born as someone else?''

No. By definition, it would be someone else, not you.

 

[bilby]

Turn the question around, and the answer becomes obvious.

Could someone else have been born as me? Of course not.

 

[PyramidHead]

I guess, but the shape of the water inside the puddle is completely dependent on the shape of the puddle. The fact that I exist doesn't seem to depend on either my DNA or the particulars of my actual life, as I tried to explain in the OP. In the case of the puddle, it couldn't have been otherwise than the shape of the puddle perfectly matches the shape of the water, but I can conceive of my existence being retained across a variety of alternate scenarios. So, I think it's reasonable to wonder why I exist as a certain person, and whether I could have (or did, or will) exist(ed) as another.

I'd say that the fact that you exist is wholely dependent on your DNA and the particulars of your actual life. Someone with different DNA and different particulars of their lives would be a Not You instead of a You. They would be someone, of course, but a different someone than you are.

Let's take these separately (DNA and the particulars of my life). How much DNA makes a difference? One base pair? Suppose that deep in the embryo that eventually became me, a strand of non-coding "junk" DNA spontaneously mutated one of its A's to a T or G. Still non-coding, still doesn't affect phenotype. Would I no longer exist in a universe where that happened?

I brought up the example of eye color to illustrate how strange the concept is. If gene editing were easy to do, and I could edit my genome to give me a slightly lighter eye color, I don't believe I would cease to exist. Why, then, would I not exist if the editing had happened at the level of the embryo, or the gamete?

It's even easier to ask this about the particulars of one's life. When I decided to go to college and study biology, I never paused to consider that changing the particulars of my life would end my existence. I'm pretty confident that I would still exist even if I never went to college. There's no magical barrier that would constitute "too many changes" to the particulars of my life for me to still exist. That being the case, why wouldn't I exist if the particulars of my life had changed at the outset, rather than partway through?

The fact that you can imagine your existence across a variety of other scenarios doesn't mean that you would therefore hold your existence across those scenarios. Your imagination is taking the endpoint of those scenarios and inserting your current personality onto them, which is a very different thing from having those scenarios result in your personality. When I use the powers of Scorpion from Mortal Kombat to fight white walkers and their zombie hordes north of the Wall in Westeros, it's still ME doing it. When I'm a super-genius tech billionaire who uses my private fortune to build a spaceship that takes me to the moon with my supermodel wife, it's still ME that's doing it. I invent scenarios and insert my current self into the person created for those scenarios. Someone who actually lived an entire life to get to those scenarios, however, would be a distinct Not Me as a result of the process which got them there.

I agree with your point about imagination. I don't know if it's really possible to conceive of "being" another person without, as you say, bringing your personality or some vestige of it along for the ride.

Now, if you accept a dualist interpretation of who we are and feel you have a soul or something which exists distinct from your physical existence and is just inhabiting your body, then it's a different matter. The You would be entirely independent of all that and your current meat sac doesn't really factor into what makes up your existence. However, within a materialist framework, those other existences would have other people existing in them.

I don't think I have a soul independent of my body and brain, but I think people mean something by "I exist" that is separate from saying "someone with my exact genetic makeup and life experiences exists". It's logically possible for one to be true and not the other. If the multiverse theory is true, there are an infinite number of universes where just such a person exists, but I don't find myself in any of those for some reason; I exist in THIS universe. What I'm struggling to work out for myself is whether this is just a linguistic trick, or an actual phenomenon that makes sense to ask questions about.

 

[PyramidHead]

You are the combination of gametes that actually occurred. If another pair of gametes fused, you wouldn't exist, someone else would. So your analogy between upbringing and genetics doesn't hold up.

This is a very common claim, but I can't see how it could possibly be true. If we allow for even the most inconsequential change in the gametes that combined to form me, and still grant that the person who is born would be me, there is essentially no way to resolve the Ship of Theseus dilemma. See my reply to Tom Sawyer for some questions about this point.

As a thought experiment, imagine a facility containing thousands of identical copies of the gametes that created you. Imagine this facility is operational before you are actually born. What you are saying is that one pair of gametes among those thousands will result in you existing, but none of the others will--before you stop to dispute this second point, try to think of what would happen if ALL of them were turned into people (essentially clones of you); you would still be only one of those people, not all of them or some of them. What makes that pair of gametes, and no other, the one that would bring you into existence?

 

[PyramidHead]

Turn the question around, and the answer becomes obvious.

Could someone else have been born as me? Of course not.

I don't see how it's obvious. There is nothing preventing someone with my exact DNA and exact (down to the subatomic level) life experiences existing in a parallel universe that only differs from ours by the slightly faster axial precession of a faraway planet orbiting a star in a different galaxy. That person would, in every physical sense, be me, but I am not that person. I'm the person who exists in this universe, with its slower axial precession of the faraway planet. With the right technology, I could prove it by measurement of the variable in question.

In a counterfactual situation, suppose that there is no multiverse, and the only universe that exists is what I have just called a "parallel universe" with the faster axial precession. If everything I have said so far holds up, I would not exist in this counterfactual situation, but someone else with my exact makeup and history would. That would be a clear example of someone else being born as me, wouldn't it?

 

[Speakpigeon]

If, instead of the ordinary white lower-middle class upbringing I actually had, I was stolen away at birth and raised on a Polynesian island, I would still be me, just with different experiences. That is, I can imagine what it would be like to grow up somewhere else, speak a different language, and spend my time doing totally different things from what I do now; if that turn of events took place, I would simply be that person. Thus, it is conceivable that I would still exist even if many of the details of my life (my upbringing, my location, my values, my physique, my diet, etc.) were different from what they actually are. With me so far?

How far can this be extended? Would I still exist if, instead of the pair of gametes from my parents that fused to create my DNA, a different pair of gametes from my parents that were very similar to those fused instead? Suppose they were the same in every way, except the genes that affect eye color encoded a slightly lighter shade of brown in my irises. If I would still exist even if all the relevant details of my life were different, as in the Polynesian island example, surely I would still exist if something as small as my eye color were different. In other words, the Polynesian island version of me is a lot further away from the lighter-eyed version of me, but I can conceive of being either one without much trouble. So, even if the biological events that determined my DNA had gone a little differently, I'm reasonably confident that I would still exist.

Combining these two concepts together, there doesn't seem to be any logical cutoff point after which I would no longer be 'allowed' to exist. If I would exist even if my DNA and the content of my life were different, couldn't I have been born as a different person entirely? As Thomas Nagel put it, why did the laws of the universe not only result in my existence, but also result in my existence as the particular person I am?

this reminds me of the paradox of the heap. You start with a decent heap, of say, grains, an remove one grain. It's still a heap of grain. You remove another and it's still a heap. Etc. Same thing with paint. You start with pure yellow paint and then add a drop of blue paint. Still yellow right? And then go on.

I would say that any difference between two things makes for two different things. So, as bilby already said, you're not the same person as ten seconds, or even one second, ago. But, Ok, it would still be fair to say that A ressemble B whenever there is only a small difference between A and B. No big deal. so, a girl ressembles her twin. And a very small difference makes for a very close ressemblance, so very close that it must be somewhat disturbing to experience although I do look at myself in the mirror every morning. But a difference is a difference. We can even imagine the same person, at least initially, in two different locations. initially, they would be, by hypothesis, absolutely identical. Yes, but only for a split second because different locations come with different environments and therefore interactions. The two identical persons would immediately look at two different surroundings, so, the contents of their brains in the vision area would almost immediately be completely different. And so for sound, temperature, etc. Still, these two people would still have much in common, essentially in terms of genetic make-up and memories. And then what? Two cows look very similar to me and it's not the end of the world. When I look at a sparrow, God could play a trick on me by making sure it's always the same sparrow no matter what and I wouldn't know! There's nothing special in being a particular person as opposed to another although obviously the experience can be very different. Still, there's no problem in different people sort of being as nearly the same as possible while still being two different persons. Spooky perhaps but why not. No problem. They are two different people because at the very least they are in different locations but they may be very nearly the same person... without actually being the same person. I guess they are not going to experience spooky phenomena like action at a distance and entanglement. No, they would just look and behave very nearly the same.

I personally would make a distinction between the informational content of our minds, which could conceivably become very similar for two persons for some very improbable reason, and the subjective experiencing of our own mind as it were. Our minds will always be different, no matter what, even if the actual difference could conceivably become very small. But it seems to me that our subjectively experiencing our minds must be essentially the same thing, though of course experiencing a different mind probably makes for a very difference experience, but not an essential difference. In effect all the difference between two people would be entirely in the difference in the informational contents of their minds. Which, again is no big deal. So, if you'd be born as somebody else, you could have a nearly identical mind, which would make you nearly identical to who you are now, and you would have essentially the same subjective experience because it's probably in the nature of it, so it would be all in all very nearly the you you are now. Again, that's no big deal. but, as time would pass, you would slowly drift away from what you are now and become more of somebody else, although the subjective experience would remain the same in its essence so to speak.
EB