Could I have been born as someone else?

[Speakpigeon]

Accepting this distinction is what made me ask the question in the first place. If it makes sense to talk about my subjective sense of "I exist" apart from the details of my particular experiences, it makes sense to wonder if it could have been connected to a different set of experiences. Of course, we ordinarily think this is true. I would have the same subjective sense of "I exist" if I had decided to have a muffin for breakfast today instead of yogurt. My internal perspective, illusory or not, would obtain in either situation. There is no reason to think it wouldn't obtain under radically different circumstances, as long as they still happen to this body.

And I fail to conceive of a scenario where we would have several instances of the same person that would remain strickly identical over the necessary period of time to form any thought.
EB

A useful way to imagine it is to assume for the sake of argument that parallel universes are all part of the same higher-dimensional multiverse. A pair of universes that are identical except for the position of one hydrogen atom in the center of the Milky Way would thus contain a pair of exactly identical Earths. They would be separated by "distance" along the axes of whatever higher dimensions govern the multiverse. There is nothing in principle preventing this from actually being the case, and the "distance" that separates them is no less real than the distance we ordinarily think of in 3 dimensions. If we accept this as a possibility, then there exists someone with your exact genetic makeup and mental content, living out exactly the same life as you, in a different universe.

Yes, why not. Their bodies would be identical down to the atomic level and they would have the same mental states and contents. But they would still be two different people since they would be in different locations. They would be identical people, not the same person.

And as a result, there would be at least the potential for them to diverge from each other for example just by both coming to know the position of the atom of hydrogen at the centre of their respective Milky Way.

Until such a time, they would be strictly identical to each other but still not the same person. To me, it's no problem. So is it to you, and if so, how so?
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

Accepting this distinction is what made me ask the question in the first place. If it makes sense to talk about my subjective sense of "I exist" apart from the details of my particular experiences, it makes sense to wonder if it could have been connected to a different set of experiences. Of course, we ordinarily think this is true. I would have the same subjective sense of "I exist" if I had decided to have a muffin for breakfast today instead of yogurt. My internal perspective, illusory or not, would obtain in either situation. There is no reason to think it wouldn't obtain under radically different circumstances, as long as they still happen to this body.


A useful way to imagine it is to assume for the sake of argument that parallel universes are all part of the same higher-dimensional multiverse. A pair of universes that are identical except for the position of one hydrogen atom in the center of the Milky Way would thus contain a pair of exactly identical Earths. They would be separated by "distance" along the axes of whatever higher dimensions govern the multiverse. There is nothing in principle preventing this from actually being the case, and the "distance" that separates them is no less real than the distance we ordinarily think of in 3 dimensions. If we accept this as a possibility, then there exists someone with your exact genetic makeup and mental content, living out exactly the same life as you, in a different universe.

Yes, why not. Their bodies would be identical down to the atomic level and they would have the same mental states and contents. But they would still be two different people since they would be in different locations. They would be identical people, not the same person.

And as a result, there would be at least the potential for them to diverge from each other for example just by both coming to know the position of the atom of hydrogen at the centre of their respective Milky Way.

Until such a time, they would be strictly identical to each other but still not the same person. To me, it's no problem. So is it to you, and if so, how so?
EB

It shows that, in principle, it is possible for something to satisfy all of the criteria normally associated with my unique personal existence--DNA, parentage, life experience, etc.--while nonetheless not being me. Therefore, these criteria are not sufficient for bringing me into existence.

The question is, are they necessary criteria? As I and Kern argue, most people readily accept that they would still exist if they had different life experiences or even slightly different DNA. My personal existence, the sense of being in my body and experiencing life as me, would still persist even if decided to have something different for dinner last night. And if I could roll back time and insert a mutation in my embryo's genome that made me genetically predisposed toward type 1 diabetes, I see no reason to think I would have erased my personal existence; I would simply be that person, now, predisposed toward diabetes. If we allow these changes, then the paradox of the heap gets us the rest of the way: there is no obvious threshold of genetic or experiential variation that acts as a demarcating line, before which this body is "me, with some changes" (the locus of my first-person perspective on the world) and beyond which it's "someone else's body" (in exactly the same way that my alternate universe doppleganger is someone else's body).

Putting these two arguments together, we arrive at the conclusion that my personal existence cannot be explained by appealing to my DNA or the things I have experienced in life. Neither of those factors shed any light on why I experience the world through this particular body, and so it stands to reason that it could have been a different body, born from different parents, and I would be asking the same question from that perspective. The language starts to break down at this point.

 

[abaddon]

... My personal existence, the sense of being in my body and experiencing life as me, would still persist ...

Would it though? Doesn't "sense of" imply "not really"?

"In my body" strikes me as a highly doubtable conception, regardless that many people claim it. You, and they, seem to take it for granted though. Why? Just cuz it's commonplace to do so? Maybe because that's how language shapes the conception and that shapes (distorts) the perception?

"... we arrive at the conclusion that my personal existence cannot be explained by appealing to my DNA or the things I have experienced in life. ...

Or it could be explained by confabulating that there's a persisting me at all. Consider that your sense of being a me is just a story retold minute-by-minute within a series of mind-states which are configurations made by body/mentation/environment. The different choices that you make, which you think a "me" persists through, might actually just make new me's but with the same "me story" riding like a wave through each successive state, giving a sense of being the same but not really being so.

Did anyone anywhere in the thread bring our stupid fucked-up language and its descriptiveness into doubt? Or do the pronouns just seem too real for that?

Personally I don't feel like the same person all through my life. I imagine... if I don't imagine it very fully... that if I could talk with my 20yo self, there'd be a sense of identity between us. But then I recall how I was more fully and realize that sense of identity would be very tenuous.

In "my" dreams last night, the "me" was several different persons, any one of which would be a stranger if brought into the light of day. It's likely the same for everyone else too, yet everyone recounts dreams using the pronouns "I" and "me" and never doubting it. They don't fully recall the experience, they just let language fill in the gaps and actually dumb it down into an easy-to-tell continuity that it wasn't. And now today I'm something else still because the setting is all different. But the story... the story... is that this is the same me as in days past. And when I look at it in doubt of the language and how it shapes (distorts) experience, I don't see that it's true. I just have a mere "sense of".

 

[Treedbear]

...

"... we arrive at the conclusion that my personal existence cannot be explained by appealing to my DNA or the things I have experienced in life. ...

Or it could be explained by confabulating that there's a persisting me at all. Consider that your sense of being a me is just a story retold minute-by-minute within a series of mind-states which are configurations made by body/mentation/environment. The different choices that you make, which you think a "me" persists through, might actually just make new me's but with the same "me story" riding like a wave through each successive state, giving a sense of being the same but not really being so. ...

... And now today I'm something else still because the setting is all different. But the story... the story... is that this is the same me as in days past. ...

I agree with abaddon on the importance the story plays in how we identify ourselves. Our "me". That, and the ambiguities that arise when trying to factor in our various individual attributes, is why I've come to the conclusion that, when all else is considered, it's continuity (i.e.; the story) that holds me together. Looking at it in more detail, I think what the brain does is create models of its environment and the things within it. One of those models is the self ("Me"). Under normal circumstances that model is the most active and detailed simply because there's so much more available to factor in to that model most of the time. I wouldn't even say it's the model I "identify" with. It's simple the most active model the brain has and therefore the one best known. Most importantly, it's the most predictable. If I could ignore the image of the self (such as experts at meditation are supposed to encounter) then the brain would associate more with other things in its environment. It would perceive a fox out in a field, for instance, and begin assigning probabilities to its next mannerisms and actions. It would be as if the fox had become me for a time. And this is the experience Zen masters report afterward. The subjective experience of consciousness comes down to the ability to predict what the self will do under various circumstances. The self is not a thing but a concept. It's analogous to the virtual image you see when looking at a reflective sphere. It merely reflects its environment.

 

[Malintent]

I would still be me, just with different experiences

I believe that is an oxymoron. You would be the same but different.
No, in my opinion what you "are" is the product of your experiences. .therefore "you" with other experiences is "not you", but "someone else".

 

[Speakpigeon]

Yes, why not. Their bodies would be identical down to the atomic level and they would have the same mental states and contents. But they would still be two different people since they would be in different locations. They would be identical people, not the same person.

And as a result, there would be at least the potential for them to diverge from each other for example just by both coming to know the position of the atom of hydrogen at the centre of their respective Milky Way.

Until such a time, they would be strictly identical to each other but still not the same person. To me, it's no problem. So is it to you, and if so, how so?
EB

It shows that, in principle, it is possible for something to satisfy all of the criteria normally associated with my unique personal existence--DNA, parentage, life experience, etc.--while nonetheless not being me. Therefore, these criteria are not sufficient for bringing me into existence.

The question is, are they necessary criteria? As I and Kern argue, most people readily accept that they would still exist if they had different life experiences or even slightly different DNA. My personal existence, the sense of being in my body and experiencing life as me, would still persist even if decided to have something different for dinner last night. And if I could roll back time and insert a mutation in my embryo's genome that made me genetically predisposed toward type 1 diabetes, I see no reason to think I would have erased my personal existence; I would simply be that person, now, predisposed toward diabetes. If we allow these changes, then the paradox of the heap gets us the rest of the way: there is no obvious threshold of genetic or experiential variation that acts as a demarcating line, before which this body is "me, with some changes" (the locus of my first-person perspective on the world) and beyond which it's "someone else's body" (in exactly the same way that my alternate universe doppleganger is someone else's body).

Putting these two arguments together, we arrive at the conclusion that my personal existence cannot be explained by appealing to my DNA or the things I have experienced in life. Neither of those factors shed any light on why I experience the world through this particular body, and so it stands to reason that it could have been a different body, born from different parents, and I would be asking the same question from that perspective. The language starts to break down at this point.

Same data, different conclusion.

Just because two things are identical it doesn't mean that each one could have been the other.

If we are talking of 'could' here as physical possibility, which you seem to accept as the only actual kind of possibllity to consider, you are what you are as a result of your local environment's history. As such, you could not have been somebody else. I agree it is conceivable that there might be somebody identical to you somewhere but there's not way you could have been this person rather than yourself.

Your problem may be in the fact that as a subject you could not possibly distinguish, in principle, between yourself and somebody that would be identical to you (as long as it remains identical to you). But this can't justify your claim that you could have been this other person, at least if you accept 'could' to mean physical possibility only. The idea that you could have been this other person just because he would be identical to you rests on a kind of possibility that may be said to be metaphysical, if not mystical, or possibly just 'imaginary'.

What would be true in your scenario of two identical people would be that none of them could possibly exhibit any difference with each other. Yet, they would still be different people, i.e. not the same person. Essentially, your scenario shows how it would be like to be another person, i.e. somebody identical to you but effectively somewhere else. So, you can conceive of how it would feel, exactly, if you would be somebody else. Yet, you still couldn't, in the physical sense, have been this other person, even if it existed.
EB

 

[bilby]

It's just a question of perspective. You can't be anyone other than yourself, because 'myself' is what you call the person with your perspective.

Imagine a really simple universe. It's population are all identical beings; and they number each being they encounter, starting at 1. They do nothing else; they are completely identical in all respects, other than their memories of which beings have which numbers.

Two individuals have each met the same number of other beings. So their memories are identical - 1 is me, and I have met n others.

These beings are only different in their physical location. Both agree that number 1 is 'me'. But not only are they not the same individual; they both agree that they are not the same individual. Every individual is number 1; but it's not possible for any individual to be a different individual.

You are you. Everyone is themself. If you were someone else, then they would be you, so you wouldn't be someone else - you would be you.

'Me' is not a summary of my attributes or a quality of my overall particle state. It's a point of view.

From where I'm standing, there's only one me; and that can't change no matter how similar another person might be to me.

 

[DBT]

That sums it up nicely, Bilby.