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Scientifically, why am I me and not someone else?
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>>16920573
Because you are what makes you you so if you were someone else (ie. not you) then you wouldn't be you.

You != !You
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I don't know.
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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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what the fuck is up with tungsten cubes tho??
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>>16920573
There would be something compiled together before the beginning here, and we would be taking from it from the top or the order of it.
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>>16920573
cause being someone else seemed kind of gay to you
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>>16920573
Get your ass to Mars.
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>>16920573
I used to wonder about this too!
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Buy an a- oh wait, you already did. FUCK.
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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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>>16920573
Not, true, you are you, I am me.
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>>16920573
Maybe some are animals because of the phase shift of distance. They would have to center themselves in the environment first.
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>>16920573
nobody is this retarted
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Because your past choices and actions resulted in your most recent birth
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>>16920573
because your parents chose to fuck and procreate and raise you in this specific way
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>>16920721
Nah, a question that retarded and self-loathing can only come from a test tube baby who never knew a parent's love.
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>>16920573
You've been posting about this non-stop on every board for the last months. Apart from harvesting (You)s, what have you learned?
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>>16920573
The self is an illusion.
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>>16920787
Illusion to whom?
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>>16920788
No one. That's not how illusions work
>There needs to be someone there for whom the illusion is illusioning!
Nope.
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>>16920787
Found the NPC
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File: mario.jpg (187 KB)
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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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>>16920573
Because you pass the mirror test, dumbass
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>>16920573
you ARE somebody else, and that somebody is wondering why is he you.
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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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>>16920573
The question implies an imaginary magical detachment from the existing you, and the you that supposedly existed before being you.

Retarded para-religious premises
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>>16921716
Clone of You != You. Every external observer sees two identical people and not two instances of the same person.
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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
First you have to answer why you posted the exact text you posted at the exact second you posted instead of any other time in the history of 4chan.
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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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>>16923048
Why does my soul live in this body rather than another one?
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>>16923060
>Why does my soul live in this body
What do you mean by "my" soul and "this" body? Explain without it degenerating into "why does X = X" again. Protip: you literally can't.
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>>16923066
Why is a qualia associated to this matter in this location of space and this point in time?
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>>16923068
>Why is a qualia associated to this matter in this location of space and this point in time?
What does this have to do with your original question?
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>>16923069
It's a rewording of the question?
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>>16923070
It's not. It's asking a completely different thing.
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>>16923071
How is it different?
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>>16923073
The first one asks "why does X = X?" and the second one asks "why does X correspond to Y?"
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>>16923074
The questions look different but they mean the same thing.
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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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>>16923079
I think you're getting mad because you don't have an answer
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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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>>16923085
It was already clarified and you got mad because you couldn't answer it.
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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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>>16923089
Ask it why it's saying they're different.
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>>16923093
I like how your severe mental retardation causes you to ask something that's literally answered in the screenshot (not to mention my answering it previously in the thread).
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>>16923096
Actually, your own bot proves you wrong, since it finds both questions meaningful whereas you had trouble understanding either one.
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>>16923097
Lol. Looks like you're losing your mind with rage now over being exposed as dumber than a bot.
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>>16923098
Ok.
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>>16920573
It's true by the definitions of "I" and "someone else".
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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.

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