The "me-ness" of being me

[PyramidHead]

But I don't want to call "me" the experience of other people, just as I don't want to call "here" the different places where other people are located, even though we're all supposed to be located on strictly identical expenses of three-dimensional space.

That's actually a good analogy. What I suppose is the relation to my point is: just as there is no place in the universe that can be objectively identified as "here", no being can objectively be identified as "me". And Einstein ruled out an objectively identifiable "now" as well. But from the perspective of anything having an experience, the experience is here, mine, and now. If we wish to retain that perspective, we are forced to abandon the notion of a special object that will always and only be me, just as Copernicus made us abandon the same notion with regards to space and Einstein for time. I think we are in near-agreement with some terminological and conceptual differences. My preference is to treat this:

It is my own self which regards itself as enduring. It's not something amenable to rationalisation. I can't argue with my self. It won't listen.

as a brute fact, taking it at face value. Even if we are mistaken about having an enduring self, the thing that is mistaken about being an enduring self must be something like an enduring self. It may well be an illusion, but it's important to me. The self we are talking about is just that thing I believe to have now and to have had all my life, and I wish to continue having. Whether I am mistaken about those beliefs or not, I can draw conclusions about the self by assuming they are true. As we have been saying, if they are false then there is nothing to worry about anyway and nobody to do the worrying.

 

[Speakpigeon]

That's actually a good analogy. What I suppose is the relation to my point is: just as there is no place in the universe that can be objectively identified as "here", no being can objectively be identified as "me". And Einstein ruled out an objectively identifiable "now" as well. But from the perspective of anything having an experience, the experience is here, mine, and now. If we wish to retain that perspective, we are forced to abandon the notion of a special object that will always and only be me, just as Copernicus made us abandon the same notion with regards to space and Einstein for time.

As I see it, the "me" we use doesn't refer to experience. It refers, as does our name, to the unique set of data which is our self. To keep the analogy with space, this works in the same way as street names. The name of a street doesn't refer to a particular location in physical space. It refers to a unique complex of buildings, whose location is known relatively to that of bigger complex of things, like rivers, mountains and countries. In this sense, its reference is objective. We recognise particular people just as we recognise streets, by the way they look and by how they relate to other people we know. Again it's relative, and yet it's objective. It's clearly a pragmatic solution to identify each other easily. Experience is irrelevant in this respect. So, me-ness belongs to the self, or more accurately to the person, i.e. a body and a mind with a personality and the remembered biographical data which the self essentially is.

I'm also agnostic as to the nature of experience. I can conceive of an experience which would be unique and experiencing everything in the universe across space and time, perhaps differently depending on the structure of the things. But at the other end of the scale, I can also conceive of an experience which would somehow emerge from things like brains, in which case there would be one specific experience for each particular brain. However, whatever the solution, it will be irrelevant to me-ness because only the self is relevant. It is the self which identifies itself as "me", to differentiate itself from other selves. Experience is just experience of whatever the self does as long as there is one.

I think we are in near-agreement with some terminological and conceptual differences. My preference is to treat this:

It is my own self which regards itself as enduring. It's not something amenable to rationalisation. I can't argue with my self. It won't listen.

as a brute fact, taking it at face value. Even if we are mistaken about having an enduring self, the thing that is mistaken about being an enduring self must be something like an enduring self. It may well be an illusion, but it's important to me. The self we are talking about is just that thing I believe to have now and to have had all my life, and I wish to continue having. Whether I am mistaken about those beliefs or not, I can draw conclusions about the self by assuming they are true. As we have been saying, if they are false then there is nothing to worry about anyway and nobody to do the worrying.

What I'm still unsure about is whether my self really feels the pain the way I experience it.

Your answer will depend on where your conception of experience is located on the scale of possible natures of experience I just suggested.

Me, I don't know.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

As I see it, the "me" we use doesn't refer to experience. It refers, as does our name, to the unique set of data which is our self.

But you have already said that in the thought experiment with the mad scientist, you would not expect to experience the pain of the perfect clone of you he has in the adjacent lab. You made a distinction between two beings who were stipulated to be identical in every respect, based on what you would anticipate with regard to experience.

 

[PyramidHead]

So, me-ness belongs to the self, or more accurately to the person, i.e. a body and a mind with a personality and the remembered biographical data which the self essentially is.

Not if all of those things can change while still being me. I return again to the mad scientist example. Just because he tells me that he will erase my memory before torturing me, does that mean the person he tortures will be a different me, a different self? Psychologically, sure, but the point I'm making is that I will be that being with the altered psychology. The same would be true if the thought experiment were modified so that the scientist transplanted my brain into a different body, and then erased my memory, leaving nothing of my prior body and mind intact, before beginning his painful operations. If I believed this was about to happen, I would react with self-interested concern for the person who would be operated upon, because that person would be me.

But the fact that I can have self-interested concern for a future person with a different body and none of my memories proves that bodily identity and memory access are not required for someone to be the object of my self-interested concern--for someone to be me. And there can be no other criteria that would make the person on the mad scientist's operating table (in a new body and with a wiped memory) worthy of this concern, but not a random person on the street, without invoking a strange mental substance that piggybacks on my brain and follows it through time and space. There is no such ghost in the machine.

My future experience of being painfully manipulated by the mad scientist, in an unfamiliar body and without remembering who I was or how I got there, will be mine just because it will be experienced as first-person. Not because of any causal relationship between my current and future self, not because of any residue of a mental substance that persists from one to the other, but purely on the basis of being a subjective, immediate sensation that I recognize as my own. Therefore, it follows that any being, regardless of its bodily composition or biographical data, has experiences that I should regard as mine if it has experiences at all. Every experience is first-person and immediate.

Otherwise, how do you explain my sense of impending agony at the prospect of the scientist enacting his plan? Am I simply mistaken, and the fact of the matter is that I will cease to exist sometime between changing bodies and losing my memory? That doesn't seem justifiable to me. If I had eaten different food for the past year than what I actually ate, all the physical stuff that makes me would be different, but I'd just be the person with that alternate physical composition. And lots of experiences have happened to me that I don't remember anymore, but that doesn't mean the person who had them has ceased to exist. There is no way to connect my identity to that of my body or its mental continuity, in other words. So, I must be correct that when the scientist does his thing, I will be in a lot of pain! Yet, that can only be true if there is essentially no boundary to what I can call me, apart from its capacity to experience life in an immediate and first-person way.

 

[Speakpigeon]

The self-interest we would have in your thought experiment would be entirely due to our ignorance and uncertainty as to who exactly would be experiencing the pain. I would certainly be worried just not being certain of not experiencing pain myself, but nothing like being certain I am going to experience pain, and even less like effectively experiencing the pain.

In fact, whether I'm worried or not is most likely entirely decided by my brain. Just having the benefit of an abstract description of the mad scientist project wouldn't be enough to trigger instinctive emotional responses from my brain. I know I am going to die and there's no discernible emotional response or worry there, even though I can be very emotional when a singer or a comedian I liked dies.

So, none of your many inferences in that respect has any basis.

You should also be careful how you choose your arguments. For example, when you say "how do you explain my sense of impending agony at the prospect of the scientist enacting his plan?", it is clear that right now you just don't have any sense of impending agony. Right now, it's just an abstract thought experiment and you don't actually know how you would feel exactly in that very hypothetical situation. My guess is that even current science wouldn't know. I also suspect that no science will ever know. Most of what you say here is just as without any convincing value.

My view is that the sense of me-ness is a compound feeling most likely integrated from the biographical data recorded in the brain and current perceptions, impressions and sensations, and all of these and their integration depend on the actual brain concerned. If you changed some of these elements, you would get contradictions between preexisting and new elements and therefore confusion as to me-ness. But pain is essentially a local sensation elaborated by one particular brain. Me-ness in this case would also still be a local compound sense elaborated by the same brain. There would be just one me experiencing pain and it would be the local me.

That's what seems reasonable to assume given our experience.

It seems to me your idea also doesn't have any practical value. It also doesn't seem to be able to receive any empirical confirmation. It's also not founded on our experience, the experience we have of being ourselves. So, I guess it's just a clever idea.
EB

 

[ryan]

Drop the idea that there is anything important about Ryan. That organism is just one conscious being, and you are any conscious being. You think that you are only Ryan because part of being Ryan (or any individual organism) is that only the information coming through from that particular conduit is presented to you in an integrated way. But you are still experiencing everything that is being presented through the other conduits, the other neurological inputs that are not integrated with Ryan. So, I'm not saying that all experience belongs to the organism that is Ryan, but that it belongs to you, which is much more than just Ryan.

Also, Ryan happens to be my name too.

Okay I am back.

I do not agree that "I" am experiencing anything other than what my present or past self is experiencing.

That is not to say that there isn't a universal consciousness that has access to me/I.

Whatever this universal consciousness is experiencing, I know that I am not experiencing it.

There may not be something important about Ryan, but there is something special about Ryan. Ryan has a unique experience of being only Ryan, and any other consciousness is not only Ryan.

 

[bilby]

Drop the idea that there is anything important about Ryan. That organism is just one conscious being, and you are any conscious being. You think that you are only Ryan because part of being Ryan (or any individual organism) is that only the information coming through from that particular conduit is presented to you in an integrated way. But you are still experiencing everything that is being presented through the other conduits, the other neurological inputs that are not integrated with Ryan. So, I'm not saying that all experience belongs to the organism that is Ryan, but that it belongs to you, which is much more than just Ryan.

Also, Ryan happens to be my name too.

Okay I am back.

I do not agree that "I" am experiencing anything other than what my present or past self is experiencing.

That is not to say that there isn't a universal consciousness that has access to me/I.

Whatever this universal consciousness is experiencing, I know that I am not experiencing it.

There may not be something important about Ryan, but there is something special about Ryan. Ryan has a unique experience of being only Ryan, and any other consciousness is not only Ryan.

That's what they all say.

 

[ryan]

Drop the idea that there is anything important about Ryan. That organism is just one conscious being, and you are any conscious being. You think that you are only Ryan because part of being Ryan (or any individual organism) is that only the information coming through from that particular conduit is presented to you in an integrated way. But you are still experiencing everything that is being presented through the other conduits, the other neurological inputs that are not integrated with Ryan. So, I'm not saying that all experience belongs to the organism that is Ryan, but that it belongs to you, which is much more than just Ryan.

Also, Ryan happens to be my name too.

Okay I am back.

I do not agree that "I" am experiencing anything other than what my present or past self is experiencing.

That is not to say that there isn't a universal consciousness that has access to me/I.

Whatever this universal consciousness is experiencing, I know that I am not experiencing it.

There may not be something important about Ryan, but there is something special about Ryan. Ryan has a unique experience of being only Ryan, and any other consciousness is not only Ryan.

That's what they all say.

My self is limited and the universal consciousness isn't. That's the difference. My limited consciousness is not identical to the UC because they are not interchangeable.

 

[PyramidHead]

That's what they all say.

My self is limited and the universal consciousness isn't. That's the difference. My limited consciousness is not identical to the UC because they are not interchangeable.

There is no universal consciousness and nobody is saying there is.

 

[ryan]

That's what they all say.

My self is limited and the universal consciousness isn't. That's the difference. My limited consciousness is not identical to the UC because they are not interchangeable.

There is no universal consciousness and nobody is saying there is.

Then what do you mean by one consciousness?

 

[Speakpigeon]

Drop the idea that there is anything important about Ryan. That organism is just one conscious being, and you are any conscious being. You think that you are only Ryan because part of being Ryan (or any individual organism) is that only the information coming through from that particular conduit is presented to you in an integrated way. But you are still experiencing everything that is being presented through the other conduits, the other neurological inputs that are not integrated with Ryan. So, I'm not saying that all experience belongs to the organism that is Ryan, but that it belongs to you, which is much more than just Ryan.

Even what you assume here, which is already a tall order, doesn't even entail the kind of me-ness you say. I don't see there's anything special about brains in your theory so you would have to assume the kind of "me" you're talking about should also somehow be experiencing reality outside brains. In which case, this "me" would be somewhat more like space, and the experience of a particular person would be analogous to a particular location in space. And, of course, while we may want to assume there's no substantial difference between distinct locations in space, we don't think of any location as being somehow the same location, i.e. just one unique location that would somehow reach out across the universe to experience everything. In other words, reality seems defined by the locality of things, only putatively united by the universality of its laws of nature.

I have to say, your perspective baffles me. I would grant you that you are at liberty to call "me" the thing that would be common to all subjective experiences across the universe, or even across just all human brains, but it should be clear to you, and it seems it is, that whatever is experienced anywhere is whatever brains somehow produce, perhaps in terms of information, or in terms of qualia, perhaps the sense-data of B. Russell, or "mental data" as I prefer to call them, whatever, and that each set of "data" presumably is specific to one particular brain and that whatever would be common to all the subjective experiences people have is therefore not any one particular set of "data". Thus, the "me" you're talking about would be nothing if not a perfectly blank slate, an impersonal observer, a complete nobody, which is the very opposite of what the word "me" suggests. Again, I would be comfortable with the idea of something like a universal consciousness, or the idea that we would all have something like distinct but strictly identical "bare consciousnesses", but I don't see how this would lead to the idea of one unique "me" for all human beings as you claim. And your thought experiment about the mad scientist isn't conclusive as it doesn't falsify the idea that the "me" in question is more like a nobody than a me.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Are you and the cartoon saying that there is only one me in the universe instead of a me for each person?

Yes; just like there is not a separate "literature" for every written work, but just one, that exists as long as there is at least one example of it.

You've just made the case against your own claim.

There's nothing remotely analogous between the idea of "literature" and your idea of "me". Each book is literature, indeed any scrap of writing would be, but literature is not any one particular book. In fact, the best way to define literature, which is far from being a trivial task, is probably by saying that literature is the collection of all books, including those written hundreds of years ago, like, say, the Bible. However you choose to define literature, it's not any one particular book. A book is possibly an instance of literature. Or literature is a property of books. Etc. Nothing in this relation between literature and books looks remotely analogous to your idea of "me" in relation to individual human beings.

Case closed.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm not saying that all experience belongs to the organism that is Ryan, but that it belongs to you, which is much more than just Ryan.

Also, Ryan happens to be my name too.

There may not be something important about Ryan, but there is something special about Ryan. Ryan has a unique experience of being only Ryan, and any other consciousness is not only Ryan.

That's what they all say.

Hell, no!

Not all people called Ryan say that. These two certainly seem to disagree about it!
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

Are you and the cartoon saying that there is only one me in the universe instead of a me for each person?

Yes; just like there is not a separate "literature" for every written work, but just one, that exists as long as there is at least one example of it.

You've just made the case against your own claim.

There's nothing remotely analogous between the idea of "literature" and your idea of "me". Each book is literature, indeed any scrap of writing would be, but literature is not any one particular book. In fact, the best way to define literature, which is far from being a trivial task, is probably by saying that literature is the collection of all books, including those written hundreds of years ago, like, say, the Bible. However you choose to define literature, it's not any one particular book. A book is possibly an instance of literature. Or literature is a property of books. Etc. Nothing in this relation between literature and books looks remotely analogous to your idea of "me" in relation to individual human beings.

But that's exactly what I've been saying for the entire thread! For something to be literature, it does not need to have any particular qualities with regard to the exact words used, their order, the plot, the characters, and so on. It just needs to have the abstract quality of being a written work of some kind. In the same way, for an experience to be mine, it does not need to happen to something with a specific DNA sequence, set of memories, or biographical history. It just needs to have the abstract quality of being immediate and first-person, a quality that is shared among all experience, regardless of where or when it occurs. I cannot fathom why you think this analogy refutes my point.

- - - Updated - - -

There is no universal consciousness and nobody is saying there is.

Then what do you mean by one consciousness?

I'm not sure I ever said anything about there only being one consciousness. If I did, it was a poor choice of words.

 

[PyramidHead]

Drop the idea that there is anything important about Ryan. That organism is just one conscious being, and you are any conscious being. You think that you are only Ryan because part of being Ryan (or any individual organism) is that only the information coming through from that particular conduit is presented to you in an integrated way. But you are still experiencing everything that is being presented through the other conduits, the other neurological inputs that are not integrated with Ryan. So, I'm not saying that all experience belongs to the organism that is Ryan, but that it belongs to you, which is much more than just Ryan.

Even what you assume here, which is already a tall order, doesn't even entail the kind of me-ness you say. I don't see there's anything special about brains in your theory so you would have to assume the kind of "me" you're talking about should also somehow be experiencing reality outside brains. In which case, this "me" would be somewhat more like space, and the experience of a particular person would be analogous to a particular location in space. And, of course, while we may want to assume there's no substantial difference between distinct locations in space, we don't think of any location as being somehow the same location, i.e. just one unique location that would somehow reach out across the universe to experience everything. In other words, reality seems defined by the locality of things, only putatively united by the universality of its laws of nature.

I have to say, your perspective baffles me. I would grant you that you are at liberty to call "me" the thing that would be common to all subjective experiences across the universe, or even across just all human brains, but it should be clear to you, and it seems it is, that whatever is experienced anywhere is whatever brains somehow produce, perhaps in terms of information, or in terms of qualia, perhaps the sense-data of B. Russell, or "mental data" as I prefer to call them, whatever, and that each set of "data" presumably is specific to one particular brain and that whatever would be common to all the subjective experiences people have is therefore not any one particular set of "data". Thus, the "me" you're talking about would be nothing if not a perfectly blank slate, an impersonal observer, a complete nobody, which is the very opposite of what the word "me" suggests. Again, I would be comfortable with the idea of something like a universal consciousness, or the idea that we would all have something like distinct but strictly identical "bare consciousnesses", but I don't see how this would lead to the idea of one unique "me" for all human beings as you claim. And your thought experiment about the mad scientist isn't conclusive as it doesn't falsify the idea that the "me" in question is more like a nobody than a me.
EB

If you continue to think of "me" as only referring to the content of your existence, then you will not be able to make sense of the claim that everyone is me. But the "me" that people invoke when they say "I will be at work tomorrow" is not a statement about content. If it were, then a clone with their exact content could be substituted in their place tomorrow without negating the proposition being made. This is absurd; when someone says "I will be at work tomorrow", they do not just mean "a human being with a certain DNA sequence, brain wiring, and historical background will be at work tomorrow"--they are making the ADDITIONAL statement of "that human being will be me."

The purpose of this thread is to ask whether this additional statement conveys any information. The ordinary view states that, yes, it must convey some information because it could have been otherwise. If a perfect duplicate of the speaker arrived at work the next day, his being there would satisfy one meaning of "I will be at work tomorrow" (the content-centered one) but not the other (the claim about personal existence). So, in the case of two identical universes, each with its own physically indistinguishable version of that individual showing up at work, the ordinary view forces us to say that there must be some non-physical difference between the universes, namely that in one of them I am the person who shows up to work, and in the other universe it's someone else. If I can only be one person at one time, then I cannot be both an individual and its exact duplicate.

The point of view I have been arguing for says that there is actually no additional statement to be made about the individual being me or not. The two universes are just identical and I don't have to figure out how I exist in one but not the other, because I exist in both of them. And it does not need to be specified that the human being with xyz qualities who shows up at work tomorrow will be me, because I would be whoever shows up (in the second sense of personal existence, not the content-centered sense of course). I'm not saying there is something like a "self substance" that adheres to every conscious being, connects them in any mystical way, or anything like that. What universalism says is that connection among different things that are me is not necessary for those things to still be me.

 

[ryan]

I'm not sure I ever said anything about there only being one consciousness. If I did, it was a poor choice of words.

You seemed to have changed your stance.

I said, "Are you and the cartoon saying that there is only one me in the universe instead of a me for each person?"

You replied with, "Yes; just like there is not a separate "literature" for every written work, but just one, that exists as long as there is at least one example of it."

I can see how there might be something constant to all people, thus possibly a universal element. But there is also something that isn't common to all people and those are our unique experiences.

Now what I don't understand is why the cartoon says that my existence is improbable after the fact. I mean if the cartoon would have been able to ask what the chances of there being me as I am today 14.5 billion years ago or even 200 years ago, then yeah there would be something wrong with me appearing in a single universe.

I guess I just don't get the need for universalism.

 

[PyramidHead]

I'm not sure I ever said anything about there only being one consciousness. If I did, it was a poor choice of words.

You seemed to have changed your stance.

I said, "Are you and the cartoon saying that there is only one me in the universe instead of a me for each person?"

You replied with, "Yes; just like there is not a separate "literature" for every written work, but just one, that exists as long as there is at least one example of it."

That does not imply that there is a universal consciousness. You inserted that notion, not me.

I can see how there might be something constant to all people, thus possibly a universal element. But there is also something that isn't common to all people and those are our unique experiences.

Separate organisms have unique experiences. What I am saying is that my existence is not tied to the existence of any one set of experiences, to the exclusion of any others. That's what Zuboff calls "the tail wagging the dog". For there can be nothing that defines an experience as uniquely mine based on any of the objective features of a singular organism having that experience, because I could easily imagine those features being different but the experience still being mine. There are thus no criteria to determine which set of experiences belongs to me, rather than someone else, based solely on contingent details of a particular organism. The only criterion that always identifies an experience as mine is its first-person quality, its immediacy in subjective consciousness. Not its integration with other experiences, not memory connections to past experiences, just the simple tangibility of it. Acknowledging this means loosening the conditions for calling an experience mine, and the thing that experiences it me.

Now what I don't understand is why the cartoon says that my existence is improbable after the fact. I mean if the cartoon would have been able to ask what the chances of there being me as I am today 14.5 billion years ago or even 200 years ago, then yeah there would be something wrong with me appearing in a single universe.

It's very basic: there were infinitely many ways that things could have happened and resulted in you not existing as you are today, and (under the ordinary view) just ONE way they could have happened for you to exist as you are today. Statistically, this is from your perspective a fantastic stroke of luck, since under any of those other sets of conditions your existence would be null, a blank, asleep for all eternity. If you reject universalism, you would have to infer that something immensely improbable has taken place. Of course, from someone else's perspective it wouldn't be improbable for you to exist. The point is that all probabilities have a perspective-dependent quality, and in this case, the perspective of being someone whose existence depended on things going one way and not an infinite number of other ways must rationally conclude that they dodged a hail of bullets bigger than all the gun battles in all of history and fiction, beating odds bigger than winning the lottery a thousand times in a row, to end up existing rather than not. In ordinary life, we usually favor hypotheses that do not carry such a large probabilistic burden in order to accept them as true.

 

[ryan]

That does not imply that there is a universal consciousness. You inserted that notion, not me.

So you are using universalism for the consciousness, but then saying that the consciousness is not a universal? I have no idea how you can have it both ways.

I can see how there might be something constant to all people, thus possibly a universal element. But there is also something that isn't common to all people and those are our unique experiences.

Separate organisms have unique experiences. What I am saying is that my existence is not tied to the existence of any one set of experiences, to the exclusion of any others. That's what Zuboff calls "the tail wagging the dog". For there can be nothing that defines an experience as uniquely mine based on any of the objective features of a singular organism having that experience, because I could easily imagine those features being different but the experience still being mine. There are thus no criteria to determine which set of experiences belongs to me, rather than someone else, based solely on contingent details of a particular organism. The only criterion that always identifies an experience as mine is its first-person quality, its immediacy in subjective consciousness. Not its integration with other experiences, not memory connections to past experiences, just the simple tangibility of it. Acknowledging this means loosening the conditions for calling an experience mine, and the thing that experiences it me.

There is probably at least part of my consciousness that is universal, but certainly not all of it because of the experiences.

Now what I don't understand is why the cartoon says that my existence is improbable after the fact. I mean if the cartoon would have been able to ask what the chances of there being me as I am today 14.5 billion years ago or even 200 years ago, then yeah there would be something wrong with me appearing in a single universe.

It's very basic: there were infinitely many ways that things could have happened and resulted in you not existing as you are today, and (under the ordinary view) just ONE way they could have happened for you to exist as you are today. Statistically, this is from your perspective a fantastic stroke of luck, since under any of those other sets of conditions your existence would be null, a blank, asleep for all eternity. If you reject universalism, you would have to infer that something immensely improbable has taken place. Of course, from someone else's perspective it wouldn't be improbable for you to exist. The point is that all probabilities have a perspective-dependent quality, and in this case, the perspective of being someone whose existence depended on things going one way and not an infinite number of other ways must rationally conclude that they dodged a hail of bullets bigger than all the gun battles in all of history and fiction, beating odds bigger than winning the lottery a thousand times in a row, to end up existing rather than not. In ordinary life, we usually favor hypotheses that do not carry such a large probabilistic burden in order to accept them as true.

I will try to explain it again.

Imagine I roll a die 30 times. There will be a string of numbers presented to us that we would not think were unlikely because we did not give those numbers special conscious thought beforehand. However, if someone were to guess those numbers before they were rolled, then that would be a small probability.

So if there is a potential me out of zillions that does not exist yet, I cannot be crossing my fingers hoping to beat the odds and come into existence. It has already happened like the die numbers have already been rolled.

I don't see the problem.

 

[Speakpigeon]

You've just made the case against your own claim.

There's nothing remotely analogous between the idea of "literature" and your idea of "me". Each book is literature, indeed any scrap of writing would be, but literature is not any one particular book. In fact, the best way to define literature, which is far from being a trivial task, is probably by saying that literature is the collection of all books, including those written hundreds of years ago, like, say, the Bible. However you choose to define literature, it's not any one particular book. A book is possibly an instance of literature. Or literature is a property of books. Etc. Nothing in this relation between literature and books looks remotely analogous to your idea of "me" in relation to individual human beings.

But that's exactly what I've been saying for the entire thread! For something to be literature, it does not need to have any particular qualities with regard to the exact words used, their order, the plot, the characters, and so on. It just needs to have the abstract quality of being a written work of some kind. In the same way, for an experience to be mine, it does not need to happen to something with a specific DNA sequence, set of memories, or biographical history. It just needs to have the abstract quality of being immediate and first-person, a quality that is shared among all experience, regardless of where or when it occurs. I cannot fathom why you think this analogy refutes my point.

I can see clearly you don't understand what I said.

What I don't know is why that is, because what I said seems pretty unproblematic to me.

__________________________________

It just needs to have the abstract quality of being immediate and first-person, a quality that is shared among all experience, regardless of where or when it occurs.

The abstract quality of subjective experience, what must be common to all experience if anything, is not "first-person". This is because we can have subjective experience without even knowing or realising we're a person at all.

Most of the time, in ordinary circumstances, we do have some sense of being somebody in particular, but that's precisely because at those times we're able to remember some of our biographical data, and even without that, we will still experience some sensory sensation or other, which as such is directly related to us individually, and gives the sense of being a person. And that's what is meant by "me" and that's what can only be specific to one person in particular.

For all I know, bare subjective experience might well be identical through the human species, possibly across all species with some kind of brain, but bare subjective experience doesn't include any sense of being a person, and indeed it doesn't include any sense at all. There is no you there. There is no "me" any longer.

You view is interesting enough but it just happens to be false.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

If you continue to think of "me" as only referring to the content of your existence, then you will not be able to make sense of the claim that everyone is me.

I think of the word "me" as referring to my existence because that's how it is used by everybody else, except you apparently.

me
pron (objective) refers to the speaker or writer: that shocks me; he gave me the glass.

EB