Open Individualism (another thread about personal existence)

[PyramidHead]

In this paper by Iocopo Vettori, the argument is made that we should be deeply suspicious of two facts about our existence.

1. Given the existence of a universe capable of supporting conscious life, there was no guarantee that the physical events that caused my particular body and brain to exist would actually occur. My parents might never have met, or might have copulated at a different time, or might have had a miscarriage, and in any of those cases I would not be here because my actual body and brain would not exist anywhere in the universe.

2. Beyond that, even if all of the physical events necessary for generating my human body took place, there was never any guarantee that I would be that person. Vettori insists that this does not imply dualism:

The bare fact that there exist other people different from me leads me to imagine that even the individual with my body and my brain could well be another person (or “other people”) instead of being “me”, in the same way that a perfect copy of me would not really be me, especially if I am still alive at the same time. You may advocate any number of reasons to justify why I should not wonder about it, but they are condemned to be ineffective. And this is not imputable to the fact that I am not intelligent enough or willing to follow your reasoning: it is because from the first-person point-of-view standpoint, it is always legitimate for me (or for anybody else) to consider all the reasons you may advocate to explain my own existence as not being fully explanatory, as these reasons should encompass and give an account for all the elements that concurred to define precisely my own personal identity. This is impossible for the same reasons that make personal identity so hard to define: that actually nothing has an absolute identity, but rather all identities eventually appear to be founded on arbitrary conventions or some hidden and indemonstrable dualist concept, and eventually it is my (illusory) personal identity that makes it possible to define the identity of my body, not the other way around. I know that I am the individual that I am just because I find myself already being it, but this does not demonstrate that I will come into existence each time a body exactly as mine is somehow created.

Following this reasoning, the first point means that something other than what happened to cause my body to exist could have taken place, and I would not exist. Therefore, my existence is contingent. The second point means that, since I did come into existence along with my body, it must have always been possible for me to exist as someone. Therefore, the possibility of my existence is necessary. However, I can easily imagine a universe where it was not even possible for me to exist as anyone. It is this second point, the fact that I am a member of the set of possible beings at all, that is hard to justify. To illustrate this point, the analogy of a lottery is used:

To understand the problem, I find useful the metaphor of the owner of a lottery ticket. Imagine that you find yourself to be the owner of a lottery ticket. The ticket has a univocal number that identifies you as the owner. You may assume that the number is composed of millions of digits, codifying in some way all the conditions that you may think are necessary to bring you into existence. The lottery is going on, with numbers being extracted. Imagine that every time that a number is extracted, the owner of the ticket with the corresponding number comes into existence. Despite the extremely huge number of tickets around, if the extractions continue to be done indefinitely, sooner or later your number has to be extracted, and you come to life. [...]

The real disconcert with the metaphor of the owner of a lottery ticket comes if you consider that, after all, you are the recipient of one ticket; you are participating in the lottery. [...] If you think that each individual has their own personal identity, and that your personal identity is different from all the others, then you have to answer to the fact that you are engaged in “the game of all the possible lives” despite the fact that the game would have existed and would be going on even if you never existed. Thus, you cannot give any rational reason to explain why your participation had to be necessary. Do not be misled by thinking that it never had to be necessary, that it was just your birth by chance that made your participation become a fact of the game. [...] It is like saying that the lottery can’t start until you buy a ticket. Then the lottery started and eventually you won. It sounds like a fraud.

This is of course just a metaphor, not a claim that we were all disembodied souls waiting to be born. It merely shows that, if I agree that a certain combination of physical events (my parents meeting, the specific sperm fertilizing the specific ovum, etc.) was necessary to bring me into existence, it remains yet to be explained why it was sufficient to bring me into existence. Since those events could in principle be replicated many times, resulting in many identical humans, each one believing he is himself and I am someone else, I know that the existence of someone physically identical to me is not enough to guarantee my existence.

The solution to this problem is to modify our concept of self. Vittori suggests we replace "Closed Individualism" (the idea that we are each one person who comes into existence at a specific time and place, exists for a certain duration, and then stops existing forever) with "Open Individualism": we all share the same first-person perspective, which exists anytime an entity with the right biology for consciousness exists.

I can understand how it happens that I am the owner of my lottery ticket: actually, I am the owner of all the tickets.

All it requires is that we accept that our subjective experience of time as flowing in one direction is not indicative of the actual nature of time, which we can imagine as a single dimension of a static 4-dimensional object within which multiple subjective times coexist. This is not incompatible with what contemporary physics suggests. In exactly the same way that I can only experience one moment of my own life at a time, I can only experience being one person at a time. The difference between me right now and me 20 years ago is exactly the same as the difference between me and another human being, under this interpretation. So, even though at this moment I am bound to experience the life of this particular human being, just as I am bound to experience this moment and no longer able to experience the moment that just passed, this is not a good reason to deny the possibility that I may also experience the lives of other conscious beings.

It may turn out to be the case that, as per Derek Parfit, rather than being the same person as everyone just as I'm the same person I was a moment ago, I'm not actually the same person as I was a moment ago. This seems less intuitive, and harder to reconcile with my first-person experience, but it cannot be ruled out.

 

[Juma]

What the heck is "same person" supposed to mean here?

 

[PyramidHead]

What the heck is "same person" supposed to mean here?

A person is defined here as just a conscious subject of experience that persists through time. For example, to be the same person as you were last year is to be the same subject of experience as the person who experienced whatever happened to you last year.

 

[Speakpigeon]

In this paper by Iocopo Vettori, the argument is made that we should be deeply suspicious of two facts about our existence.

1. Given the existence of a universe capable of supporting conscious life, there was no guarantee that the physical events that caused my particular body and brain to exist would actually occur. My parents might never have met, or might have copulated at a different time, or might have had a miscarriage, and in any of those cases I would not be here because my actual body and brain would not exist anywhere in the universe.

It doesn't follow that there was 'no guarantee'. What's for sure is that you don't know but that's very different from actual possibility.

This also contradicts the notion you advocate of a static 4-dimensional universe in which time basically doesn't exist as we think of it. Instead we would have to think in terms of a big chunk of reality that you have to accept as it is.

2. Beyond that, even if all of the physical events necessary for generating my human body took place, there was never any guarantee that I would be that person. Vettori insists that this does not imply dualism:.

Since you seem to know nothing significant in relation to this problem except that you are yourself I suggest you take it on face value, i.e. you are yourself and you don't know whether you could or couldn't have been someone else.

Following this reasoning, the first point means that something other than what happened to cause my body to exist could have taken place, and I would not exist.

Even that you don't know. If to be the same person is to react in exactly the same way to exactly the same situation then it's conceivable that two different universe histories could produce the same person, in theory or in practice.

Therefore, my existence is contingent.

That's what you don't know.

The second point means that, since I did come into existence along with my body, it must have always been possible for me to exist as someone. Therefore, the possibility of my existence is necessary.

It doesn't follow from the second point, which on the contrary entails that it was always possible for you not to exist (and the second point is unfounded). It is the fact that you exist that entails that it was always possible for you to exist.

However, I can easily imagine a universe where it was not even possible for me to exist as anyone. It is this second point, the fact that I am a member of the set of possible beings at all, that is hard to justify.

You are confusing conceivability and possibility, which is a category mistake.

I stop here but the rest is on a par.
EB