Could I have been born as someone else?

[Speakpigeon]

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?

There's equivocation here, on "me". Bad logic.

One "me" is the person you actually are. The other "me" is the counterfactual one. You should realise they can only be two different "me".

But it's up to you if you really want to call somebody else "me".

Suppose you meet this other "me". Suppose the King says only one of you will be allowed to survive. Only the real "me" will be allowed to live. Aren't you going to plead for your life? I bet you would, and you would say "My Lord, I'm me, the other one is not me. I'm the real me." Think of that.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

The paradox of the heap is a good analogy for the problem I'm posing. The issue is that existence, from the first-person subjective perspective, is totally binary. I either exist or I don't. I can't partly exist, or be on my way to existing, as you might say of a small pile gradually becoming a heap.

I'll also add that I'm not talking about what bilby is talking about. The sense in which I am a different physical object over time due to the replacement of atoms or cells is different from what I mean when I say I exist. Regardless of the subtle changes my body and brain undergo, I am still just one specific person, and never anyone else. Out of all of the possible conscious beings, each with their own shuffling particles, each with a brain capable of self-reflection, I am just this one man. I didn't come into existence as anybody else at any other time (so far as I know), but just here and now. This is a fact that seems to be contingent, in that it could have been otherwise, but contingent upon what? I see no plausible argument to favor genetics as the brute explanation, as I could just as easily ask why I wasn't born as someone with totally different genetics--given that I have every reason to believe I'd still exist if my own genetics were only a tiny bit different, or changed during my lifetime via gene editing.

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.

This gets into the Cartesian "disembodied experiencer" idea, where there is a featureless locus of subjective experience that we all share 'tokens' of. I don't know how that could possibly be empirically investigated, so my instinct is to reject it. However, the internal sensation of being one person and not another is quite real to me, and appears to be the kind of thing that deserves an explanation, even if it's just a conceptual one.

 

[PyramidHead]

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?

There's equivocation here, on "me". Bad logic.

One "me" is the person you actually are. The other "me" is the counterfactual one. You should realise they can only be two different "me".

But it's up to you if you really want to call somebody else "me".

Suppose you meet this other "me". Suppose the King says only one of you will be allowed to survive. Only the real "me" will be allowed to live. Aren't you going to plead for your life? I bet you would, and you would say "My Lord, I'm me, the other one is not me. I'm the real me." Think of that.
EB

Fair enough, just call him PyramidHead-B or something. The point being that he is physically indistinguishable from PyramidHead-A (me), but despite that equivalence I am still just PyramidHead-A.

 

[Treedbear]

It comes down to a question of epistemology. We have certain ground rules we use to identify something as having existence. The best one I can think of is continuity, simply because its most often useful. If a small change was made to your DNA shortly after conception you would still be you, but different. Could this occur so that you would at the present time be different? Of course it depends on whether you accept that reality is strictly deterministic. As far as the idea of you being a unique individual with an inner voice is concerned, I believe that it is completely a product of neurological functions that organize perceptions into models of the environment. How it does this is the first question that needs to be addressed. But I believe the result will show that one of these models is of the Self, and that this model includes all of those perceptions that we associate with the Self, including the internal conversation that goes on. Essentially the Self, as well as those other models of external existence, depend on having continuity. Pressed to the limit paradoxes can occur, such as for the Ship of Theseus, but even they can be rationalized by introducing certain rules. For example, the original ship was rebuilt one board at a time, while the new ship (although made from the original boards) didn't begin as a ship. In fact the original ship didn't start out as a ship either, but as individual boards. There was a specific (but basically arbitrary) point at which we began calling it a ship. We tend to confuse issues of epistemology with issues of ontology. I believe this is why consciousness is the hard problem.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

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?

Well, if the DNA fused differently while you were developing in the embryo, you wouldn't be you, you'd be your brother and you would have never existed. Now, that's with a caveat that there's a level of difference in the DNA where the baby born would be someone else. If there's some differences in junk DNA or eye colour or other irrelevancies, it probably doesn't matter. If there's differences in the genes which cause intelligence, body type, penis size, temperament, or any of the other aspects of yourself which can influence personality and behavior, then it would matter. I don't know what that level of difference would be, but that's like asking the question "When does a sound go from quiet to loud?". You can say that 1 decibel is quiet and 100 decibels is loud without needing to know exactly where it is in the range of 30 to 80 decibels that the switch would occur.

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?

Ya, that's where the question gets more iffy. You were you back then and you're you now and you'd still be you if you'd made a different choice. That doesn't mean, however, that the you you'd be then is the same you as you are now. If you had different knowledge and experience and cared about different things as a result, can you be considered the same person? I think not. In a non-dualistic framework, the You is nothing more than the sum total of all of those things and someone with different knowledge, experiences and cares is a different person. When people say "I'm not the same man as I was twenty years ago", they're factually correct. Just like with the DNA and the noise level, there's some point at you actually become somebody else.

 

[PyramidHead]

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?

Well, if the DNA fused differently while you were developing in the embryo, you wouldn't be you, you'd be your brother and you would have never existed. Now, that's with a caveat that there's a level of difference in the DNA where the baby born would be someone else. If there's some differences in junk DNA or eye colour or other irrelevancies, it probably doesn't matter. If there's differences in the genes which cause intelligence, body type, penis size, temperament, or any of the other aspects of yourself which can influence personality and behavior, then it would matter.

That's interesting, because I could conceivably change any of those things about myself right now and I'd still exist. You seem to be saying that it's okay to change personality/behavior traits after birth, but if they are changed during gestation then a completely different person will result, and I won't exist.

Ya, that's where the question gets more iffy. You were you back then and you're you now and you'd still be you if you'd made a different choice. That doesn't mean, however, that the you you'd be then is the same you as you are now. If you had different knowledge and experience and cared about different things as a result, can you be considered the same person? I think not.

Then we're using different flavors of the word. I understand the colloquial meaning of "he came back from Europe a different person", and that's a statement about the content of one's personality and so on. When I'm asking whether I would exist, I'm not asking whether someone with my knowledge and experience would exist, but whether I would be that person. If it's conceivable that someone with my exact knowledge, experience, and physical makeup could exist, while I don't exist, then that's a reasonable question to ask. I don't know if it implies dualism or not, and I'm honestly not worried about that one way or another, I'm just exploring the concept and where it leads.

 

[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.

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?

This isn't that hard to explain. Human beings are a very complex molecule that come into existence from one sperm and one ova fusing.

That any human molecule exists is a highly improbable occurrence based on random chance. You aren't anything but the result of a very specific gametic reaction. If other identical gamete pairs fused then they would be other human molecules with identical genetic code, ie not you.

 

[bilby]

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?

No, it wouldn't.

Call the guy in the parallel universe 'B', and call yourself 'A'.

Your last sentence becomes "That would be a clear example of B=A, wouldn't it?"

But look at the italicised part of your post. You emphatically stated "A is not B".

So which is it?

When your argument says "A is not B" and uses this premise as the foundation of an argument that concludes "That would be a clear example of A = B", I need not put much effort into a rebuttal - your logic is obviously broken.

Most likely the problem is that you are equivocating on the definition of 'me' - so before we can discuss this question further, you need to provide a watertight definition of 'me'. Maybe more than one, if you wish to discuss dissimilar concepts but are currently using the same word for all of them.

Beware of dualism though. It seems to me that your only out is to define consciousness as separate from your physical body, and that's a dead end, unless you contend that dualism hasn't been ruled out by the laws of physics. (Hint: it has).

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, if the DNA fused differently while you were developing in the embryo, you wouldn't be you, you'd be your brother and you would have never existed. Now, that's with a caveat that there's a level of difference in the DNA where the baby born would be someone else. If there's some differences in junk DNA or eye colour or other irrelevancies, it probably doesn't matter. If there's differences in the genes which cause intelligence, body type, penis size, temperament, or any of the other aspects of yourself which can influence personality and behavior, then it would matter.

That's interesting, because I could conceivably change any of those things about myself right now and I'd still exist. You seem to be saying that it's okay to change personality/behavior traits after birth, but if they are changed during gestation then a completely different person will result, and I won't exist.

Ya, that's where the question gets more iffy. You were you back then and you're you now and you'd still be you if you'd made a different choice. That doesn't mean, however, that the you you'd be then is the same you as you are now. If you had different knowledge and experience and cared about different things as a result, can you be considered the same person? I think not.

Then we're using different flavors of the word. I understand the colloquial meaning of "he came back from Europe a different person", and that's a statement about the content of one's personality and so on. When I'm asking whether I would exist, I'm not asking whether someone with my knowledge and experience would exist, but whether I would be that person. If it's conceivable that someone with my exact knowledge, experience, and physical makeup could exist, while I don't exist, then that's a reasonable question to ask. I don't know if it implies dualism or not, and I'm honestly not worried about that one way or another, I'm just exploring the concept and where it leads.

Well, from a non-dualist perspective, if "You" are not the sum total of your knowledge, experiences, personality, etc, then what else could "You" possibly be? There's no core aspect of your existence which is separate from your mind and the notion that there is one is just an artifact of our perceptions of ourselves, not something integral to ourselves.

 

[DBT]

A million alternate worlds with versions of 'you' in various states and conditions are not actually you. A mad scientist steals a sample of your DNA and grows a hundred clones, but none of them are actually you, nor each other. None are absolutely identical in body or mind and they all diverge with time and experience.

 

[PyramidHead]

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?

This isn't that hard to explain. Human beings are a very complex molecule that come into existence from one sperm and one ova fusing.

That any human molecule exists is a highly improbable occurrence based on random chance. You aren't anything but the result of a very specific gametic reaction. If other identical gamete pairs fused then they would be other human molecules with identical genetic code, ie not you.

But what you're saying is that, among a hypothetical array of exactly identical pairs of gametes, there is something about one of the pairs that would result in it becoming you, whereas all of the others would simply result in clones of you. A stipulation of the thought experiment is that they are all physically indistinguishable from one another. What is "specific" about the gametes that react to form you, as opposed to the ones that would just form clones of you?

 

[PyramidHead]

A million alternate worlds with versions of 'you' in various states and conditions are not actually you. A mad scientist steals a sample of your DNA and grows a hundred clones, but none of them are actually you, nor each other. None are absolutely identical in body or mind and they all diverge with time and experience.

We can just change the thought experiment to say that they are absolutely identical, though. What then? I gave an example of an alternate world where the only difference was a tiny acceleration in the axial precession of a planet thousands of light years away. If that alternate universe exists, not as a concept but as an actual physical reality, there is someone on their version of earth (which we have every reason to believe is exactly identical to ours) with the same genetic and experiential history as me. But I exist in this universe, and not that one. This difference between the two universes with respect to the person in question is all that I mean by "me" in this thread. It's not a physical difference, because the only physical variant is causally isolated from earth. Let me see if I can formulate it as a syllogism:

P1. I am no more than the specific combination of my genetic code, my life history, and my physical origins.

P2. If a person exists with the specific combination of my genetic code, my life history, and my physical origins, I am that person. (from P1)

P3. I am only one person and can never be multiple people simultaneously.

P4. It is possible for more than one person with the specific combination of my genetic code, life history, and physical origins to exist.

C. If multiple people exist with the specific combination, I am all of those people (contradicts P3!)

This is an apparent paradox, isn't it? The only way to resolve it is to either drop P3, which seems like a fundamental fact about identity, or drop P1 and its corollary, P2. If we drop those, the paradox is resolved, but where does that leave personal identity?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Why can't you be multiple people simultaneously?

Say, for instance, that you use a Star Trek transporter. It disassembles you and creates an exact duplicate in London. Due to a glitch, it also creates an exact duplicate in New York. Are either of those Not You? I would say that they are both you. Due to then having different experiences in life, they quickly become two different (yet very similar) people from each other, but neither of them is less You than the other one is. Their different experiences in life make them different people, the same as you'd be a different person if you'd had different experiences.

Where this leaves personal identity is as an artifact of our perceptions, not something integral to who we actually are. It's not a paradox, it's a mistake in how we categorize our views of ourselves.

 

[PyramidHead]

Why can't you be multiple people simultaneously?

Say, for instance, that you use a Star Trek transporter. It disassembles you and creates an exact duplicate in London. Due to a glitch, it also creates an exact duplicate in New York. Are either of those Not You? I would say that they are both you. Due to then having different experiences in life, they quickly become two different (yet very similar) people from each other, but neither of them is less You than the other one is. Their different experiences in life make them different people, the same as you'd be a different person if you'd had different experiences.

Where this leaves personal identity is as an artifact of our perceptions, not something integral to who we actually are. It's not a paradox, it's a mistake in how we categorize our views of ourselves.

But to each of those people (let's call them Rikers because this actually kind of happened in one episode), they would only be one of the three duplicates. If the Riker in London cuts himself shaving, the one in New York won't feel it. All of this is an examination of what it's like to exist from the first-person perspective, and what that implies, and I don't think that has come across as well as I wanted it to in this thread.

 

[Treedbear]

... This difference between the two universes with respect to the person in question is all that I mean by "me" in this thread. It's not a physical difference, because the only physical variant is causally isolated from earth. ...

I'm not sure what "the only physical variant is causally isolated from earth" means exactly or why it is relevant. But if your concern has nothing to do with consciousness, why not simplify the problem and say we have two identical circles. Are they the same circle? I'd say no. Perhaps you'd object that they're uniqueness comes from their physical location in space. But we could place them on separate but identical pieces of paper. Still the pieces of paper wouldn't be identical in location with respect to the larger world. The point is that even if there are two identical you's in two identical universes there is always a larger context which makes them unique and therefore not the same.

 

[Treedbear]

...
Say, for instance, that you use a Star Trek transporter. It disassembles you and creates an exact duplicate in London. Due to a glitch, it also creates an exact duplicate in New York. Are either of those Not You? I would say that they are both you. ... neither of them is less You than the other one is. ...

That is to say ... neither is at all you. And you'd never get me into one of those things. Reminds me of the Jehovah's Witness belief that when you die that's it. Nothing remains. But God will recreate the exact you in the hereafter. I wouldn't bet on it. Not even if there's a God. The continuity is broken.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Why can't you be multiple people simultaneously?

Say, for instance, that you use a Star Trek transporter. It disassembles you and creates an exact duplicate in London. Due to a glitch, it also creates an exact duplicate in New York. Are either of those Not You? I would say that they are both you. Due to then having different experiences in life, they quickly become two different (yet very similar) people from each other, but neither of them is less You than the other one is. Their different experiences in life make them different people, the same as you'd be a different person if you'd had different experiences.

Where this leaves personal identity is as an artifact of our perceptions, not something integral to who we actually are. It's not a paradox, it's a mistake in how we categorize our views of ourselves.

But to each of those people (let's call them Rikers because this actually kind of happened in one episode), they would only be one of the three duplicates. If the Riker in London cuts himself shaving, the one in New York won't feel it. All of this is an examination of what it's like to exist from the first-person perspective, and what that implies, and I don't think that has come across as well as I wanted it to in this thread.

But how is it any different from the multiverse example or the being raised in another culture example? If there is some core aspect of "You", which is preserved unchanged throughout your life, regardless of the details of that life, then would duplicates of you not be the same person no matter how they lived their lives after the duplication?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

...
Say, for instance, that you use a Star Trek transporter. It disassembles you and creates an exact duplicate in London. Due to a glitch, it also creates an exact duplicate in New York. Are either of those Not You? I would say that they are both you. ... neither of them is less You than the other one is. ...

That is to say ... neither is at all you. And you'd never get me into one of those things. Reminds me of the Jehovah's Witness belief that when you die that's it. Nothing remains. But God will recreate the exact you in the hereafter. I wouldn't bet on it. Not even if there's a God. The continuity is broken.

Through all the various threads on this subject, nobody's ever been able to give me a decent explanation of why this "continuity" thing is somehow important.

So you die at Point A and are then recreated exactly identically at Point B - big fucking deal. What's the essential difference between that and not dying at Point A and then just walking over to Point B? If you include dualism, I see the key difference between the two, but don't see it from a materialist perspective. What is "lost" in the first scenario which is not "lost" in the second?

 

[Treedbear]

... The continuity is broken.

Through all the various threads on this subject, nobody's ever been able to give me a decent explanation of why this "continuity" thing is somehow important.

So you die at Point A and are then recreated exactly identically at Point B - big fucking deal. What's the essential difference between that and not dying at Point A and then just walking over to Point B? If you include dualism, I see the key difference between the two, but don't see it from a materialist perspective. What is "lost" in the first scenario which is not "lost" in the second?

That's a good question which I've never been asked before. I guess it seemed obvious to me. Walking from one location to another has continuity. To better explain I need to tie it to the rest of my philosophy which says that the basis of all knowledge (ie, epistemology), and actually all existence (ontology), is in how things are related to other things. Even the words that make up languages are defined by other words. We talk in metaphors whenever we find the chance. So if you recognize the importance of relatedness in understanding reality then it follows that to simply recreate some thing out of something else breaks all of those relationships. You create a new thing. This a useful perspective in both the epistemological sense that atoms and molecules are known by how they interact with other things, and also in the ontological sense that every object exists uniquely within some larger context, whether it interacts with it or not. Why flirt with dualism when this way of reasoning avoids the existential paradox?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Through all the various threads on this subject, nobody's ever been able to give me a decent explanation of why this "continuity" thing is somehow important.

So you die at Point A and are then recreated exactly identically at Point B - big fucking deal. What's the essential difference between that and not dying at Point A and then just walking over to Point B? If you include dualism, I see the key difference between the two, but don't see it from a materialist perspective. What is "lost" in the first scenario which is not "lost" in the second?

That's a good question which I've never been asked before. I guess it seemed obvious to me. Walking from one location to another has continuity. To better explain I need to tie it to the rest of my philosophy which says that the basis of all knowledge (ie, epistemology), and actually all existence (ontology), is in how things are related to other things. Even the words that make up languages are defined by other words. We talk in metaphors whenever we find the chance. So if you recognize the importance of relatedness in understanding reality then it follows that to simply recreate some thing out of something else breaks all of those relationships. You create a new thing. This a useful perspective in both the epistemological sense that atoms and molecules are known by how they interact with other things, and also in the ontological sense that every object exists uniquely within some larger context, whether it interacts with it or not. Why flirt with dualism when this way of reasoning avoids the existential paradox?

Ya, it used to seem obvious to me as well until I asked myself why and couldn't come up with a decent reason. I now think that it's just an artifact of the way we perceive ourselves and not really anything real in and of itself.

What I don't see from your example, though, is why breaking and recreating the relationships would create a new thing as opposed to simply remaking the old thing. If all we are is the sum total of our (for lack of a better phrase) neural patterns, then I don't see why it would matter if the existence of those neural patterns is continuous or staggered.