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Scientifically, why am I me and not someone else?
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>>16920574
This is a retarded answer. I am this person != this person is this person.
https://unfinishablemap.org/topics/vertiginous-question/
>Every attempt to answer the vertiginous question seems to miss its target.
>The biological answer: “You are this person because of your DNA, your developmental history, your particular brain.” But this explains how I came to exist as a distinct organism—not why I am experiencing being this organism rather than another. Someone else could have had this DNA, this brain. What makes the experience mine?
>The psychological answer: “You are this person because of your memories, personality, and psychological continuity.” But memories and personality are contents of experience, not what makes it my experience. Two people could hypothetically have identical memories; the question of which one I am would remain.
>The deflationary answer: “There is no further fact. ‘Why am I this person?’ is like asking ‘Why is this spot here?’—the question presupposes something mysterious where there’s only a brute particular.” But this dismissal doesn’t dissolve the sense that something demands explanation. I don’t merely happen to be this person; I live as this person, from the inside. That lived reality seems to be a fact—but what kind of fact?
>The vertiginous question reveals that first-person indexicality (“I,” “mine,” “here,” “now”) may be irreducible. You cannot translate first-person facts into third-person facts without losing something essential.
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>>16920573
>>16920580
consider
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>>16920573
these are the rules. follow them.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Af-k9sTAYEQ
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>>16920573
>>>/lit/
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/me
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>>16920787
Found the NPC
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>>16920729
>a test tube baby who never knew a parent's love
e.g. pic related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ709yH9NqY
https://vitrifyher.wordpress.com/2019/03/23/the-cruelty-of-limitations /
>Throughout this entire trajectory the main problem with existence for me has been coping with the abstract “could-have-been” with the “why am I this, out of all possible things?” This question seems so central to my being that sometimes I entertain the notion that perhaps I’m not a truth-seeker at all, and was merely attempting to self-medicate when I downloaded solipsism and then open individualism. These intuitively seem like the most rational or perhaps palliative answers to the otherwise arbitrary, inexplicably random circumstance of being me – this boring, limited creature that will never get to experience the naked totality of light which only barely glints behind smoky dreams.
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>>16920792
The concept of an illusion literally only makes sense in the context of an observer who is capable of representing the world with more or less fidelity. You should not use words with established meanings and connotations if you mean something completely different.
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>>16920580
>But this dismissal doesn’t dissolve the sense that something demands explanation
Pure sophistry. Just because you have the "sense" that something demaands explanation doesn't mean that sense is accurate or meaningful. You're trying to extrapolate depth from something that simply isn't deep.
You != !You. Simple as.
>I don’t merely happen to be this person; I live as this person, from the inside. That lived reality seems to be a fact—but what kind of fact?
A trivial one. You = You and !You != You.
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>>16920573
He stands, touch his hair, his shoes untied
Tongue gaping stare
Could I have been a magnet for money?
Could I have been anyone other than me?
Twenty-three and so tired of life
Such a shame to throw it all away
The images grow darker still
Could I have been anyone other than me?
Look up at the sky
My mouth is open wide, lick and taste
What's the use in worrying, what's the use in hurrying?
Turn, turn we almost become dizzy
I am who I am who I am, who am I?
Requesting some enlightenment
Could I have been anyone other than me? Then I
Sing and dance, I'll play for you tonight
The thrill of it all
Dark clouds may hang on me sometimes
But I'll work it out and then I
Look up at the sky
My mouth is open wide, lick and taste
What's the use in worrying, what's the use in hurrying?
Turn, turn we almost become dizzy
Falling out of a world of lies
Could I have been a dancing Nancy
Could I have been anyone other than me?
And then I'll sing and dance I'll play for you tonight
The thrill of it all
Dark clouds may hang on me sometimes
But I'll work it out and then I
Look up at the sky
My mouth is open wide, lick and taste
What's the use in worrying, what's the use in hurrying?
Turn, turn we almost become dizzy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMsoIFt-Yj4
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>>16921698
NPC tier response. Indexical facts are not determined by descriptive facts. Suppose a person could be cloned. To every external observer there would now be two of this person with nothing even in principle to distinguish the two. But it doesn't make sense to say this person now has two viewpoints from which he experiences the world, like a literal hive mind. So what explains indexical facts if the external facts don't?
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>>16921833
Why would you say Clone of You != You? Is it just because they do not share spatiotemporal coordinates? But there is nothing about You that is defined by a very particular set of coordinates, because you are the same person after a day or after walking into a different room.
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>>16922267
>Why would you say Clone of You != You? Is it just because they do not share spatiotemporal coordinates?
No. It's because there can be a distinction made at all. Whether present coordinates or by history.
Are two copies of the same book the same object? Of course not. One was either printed before the other or they were printed on different presses. If I put a stamp on one copy but not the other we could easily tell the two apart. But it didn't become a different book by virtue of it being stamped. For that reason this line of questioning is retarded.
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>>16920573
>Scientifically, why am I me and not someone else?
That's really just a form of "why does X = X". Can you formulate your question sensibly and make it explicit what arbitrariness you're seeking to resolve?
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>>16923076
Only if you're mentally retarded. Which you are, because I've explicitly rubbed your nose in the difference and you still don't see it. But that's part for the course with someone who thinks "why does X = X?" is some major philosophical mystery.
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>>16923084
I think you're getting retarded because you don't have an answer to: >>16923048
>Can you formulate your question sensibly and make it explicit what arbitrariness you're seeking to resolve?
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>>16923086
Let's see if you're dumber than a mindless bot:
> Is there a standard philosophical term for each of the following question? Are they essentially the same question?
>"Why am I me and not someone else?"
>"Why is a qualia associated to this matter in this location of space and this point in time?"
Pic related: yes, you ARE dumber than a mindless bot. Moving on.
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>>16922722
Whether or not we can call the books the same depends on the level of abstraction, of course. We can speak about the book very generally, as in the abstract sequence of text, or we can speak about it very particularly, as in this particular book-object. In the latter case we could distinguish between the books.
The reason why this is a more problematic for personal identity is that it is natural to think that there is some "recipe" (or "program") for one's particular POV. Thus, one's POV is a more abstract entity than just a particular instance. This is the idea that motivates sci-fi concepts like mind uploading or bringing dead people back to life based on a neural level description of their brain.
If you are correct in that there is no more to personal identity than a particular instance of a brain (assuming you are a physicalist), then such sci-fi technologies lose their purpose. It would be a waste of time to hope for such sci-fi forms of eternal life, because the future instance would be a different instance from your own. And the future revived duplicate brain would belong to a person who'd delude himself into thinking he existed earlier, having a completely false sense of identity, as delusional as people who believe they're Jesus Christ.
Also you end up with a particularly nasty version of Theseus' ship, because with enough tech advances we could feasibly replace all sorts of physical parts of our brain/body in a fairly continuous fashion, and the spare parts could be reassembled into another copy. Yet there will be a determinate fact about whose POV *you* would take after such a replacement process.
For these reasons the OP question is certainly not some trivial tautological pseudo-question - it could be a pseudo-question, but if so it would have wider ramifications for how we think about personhood.