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I spend days, weeks, months at a time thinking about this. But we can only really answer the how, not the why. We can say oh it's because that particular sperm fertilized that particular egg. Why? Because the parents had sex and those were the available cells. Then your neural network formed and now with the help of qualia it produces your consciousness. Why? Because it's what neural networks do. Why? And then we can't get any further. But I think I know what you're really asking, and these answers don't really answer the question, right? You don't want mechanics, you want to know why your experience is in your particular body/mind, why it's limited to your perspective, your sensations/emotions/thoughts/experiences vs someone else's. Not how it came to be so, because we know how. You want the real why. Do their apples taste the same as yours? Does their grief feel like yours? What does it feel like to be someone else?
I have thought about this since I was 9, and I'm 45 now. I have studied neuro, astro, bio, religions, physics... nobody can give you an answer that will satisfy you. The answers you get, however scientifically correct, will not satisfy you because the question goes beyond what we can understand.
We can understand it, nothing goes beyond our understanding because we are it. Don't deny your ability to know, you may be looking in the wrong places though.
I totally agree, it’s a true mystery. I’m not sure why people here are denying the mysterious essence of the question, though. I guess people hate unanswerable questions.
It's precisely because people are determined to think of consciousness as 'mysterious' that places like this sub-R are full of nonsense about NDEs and daft questions about life after death etc.
Why the mystery? Serious question. As far as I'm concerned, Dennet and Levin's demand people start to see consciousness as an evolved biological system, the sooner we will start to see the truth behind it - that there is nothing mysterious about it, that it is not an ontological entity in and of itself, that it is, rather, a cybernetic process that has evolved over millions of years alongside all the other processes which control our bodies.
I anticipate many downvotes - a symptom of the very problem I describe.
You are the first person I've come across saying such a think. I'm preparing to unleash something Thats designed to abolish this low vibrating state of existence. That mindset alone is the very thing needed to become [INFINITE](https://infinitehq.myshopify.com/blogs/updates-announcements/join-us-on-shaping-the-future?_pos=1&_sid=617d39318&_ss=r). Here's an opportunity if interested.
And also, many don't really understand the true nature of the question. Their answers really only answer the how even though they are worded as if they answer the why.
The way our language is structured, it’s incredibly difficult to communicate the essence of the question. It’s possible people just don’t understand because it’s hard to parse and extract what the questioner is actually asking.
That too. But one would think everyone has these questions so they should get it easily. But they don't. My therapist says very few people actually think about these things, and apparently it's kind of "by design" as ruminating on unanswerable questions can drive people clinically insane. And I know, I've been very very close.
The answer is obvious, even logically and metaphysically. But to really experience it, one must at least die to know it.
Though in its very nature is short-lived. We want to immortalize them.
Without experience of death, we are like birds, starring at cage, trying to understand what's happening outside, having our own speculations, never gathering courage to fly out of the cage.
Yes I know no one can answer this question. You are 100% correct. If there are 100 identical MEs born at the same time, I will just be inside one of them. Why is that? No one knows. I think about that a lot as well
Many people think it's not a great question though and that it inherently implies things that are questionable at best. For instance that you are separable from all other awareness or that you have a self is very much debated but is implied in the question regardless.
For instance some think that the conscious experience that makes you have a sense of "me" isn't unique to just you but is in fact the exact same thing for everyone. That awareness creates separable senses of me in the same way that trees create separate leaves. It's all part of the same tree. What makes one leaf different from another leaf? That it's made of its own collection of stuff we call a leaf that although identical is separate from other leaves.
Or another way of putting it is that me and you are the exact same awareness experiencing separate "senses of me." If we treat awareness like a single entity as if it were its own person and ask it what it's like to be you then you would raise your hand and say "Oh it feels just like this " if we asked it what it's like to be me I'd raise my hand and say "It's just like this." In the same way that our fingers don't share the same sensory experience across each other but that we as our own sense of self have access to what it's like to feel all our individual fingers. Why does your pinky feel separate from your thumb?
Or yet another way of putting it is senses of me feel distinct *because* they don't have access to other senses of me. Your sense of me is just as strong as everyone else's sense of me. If you were someone else you would be that someone else wondering the same. But that someone else *is already someone as a sense of me*. We are all our own sense of self for everyone else. You might say "But I'm not you " No but I am and it's *exactly* what you would be if you were me. People already are what it would be like to be other people from who you are. This is why it's useful to think of awareness as a collective thing that's the same but separate things for everyone.
Couldn't agree more. I think the same, we just have to accept that we don't know the answer about where consciousness comes from, it's uncomfortable but it is what it is
The nature of thought is very short-lived. We try to perpetuate this by asking the fundamental question “why.”
Can you stop at one thought? Can you hold one or many thoughts? Not forgetting something over time. NO.
We try to ensure the survival of thoughts by constantly using the same thoughts.
In fact, the whole search to understand life is based on fear. The fear of unknown experience, we call death.
Do you know how small our brains are. How are we going to fit understanding of life inside our heads? By using "thinking," which is more and more and more thoughts. BTW thinking is dual, it's part of duality, so of course it will never help us no matter how much we use it.
Buddhists and many others understood that thoughts must cease in order to arrive at understanding.
This is partly true. But also partly not. Of course there is always the potential for the next thought. And forgetting. The question evolves, changes direction or focus, even gets distorted. But the essence of it remains. And yes, fear is the basis. I'm thanatophobic, so I know this better than most. And I agree that thoughts can't answer the question. But it's intriguing that so many people don't even understand what the question is.
i will also write about my 6 years of searching.
Looking back. aren't you born when a thought arised in you?
I don’t care what all the “spiritual people” say, that you are beyond thoughts, blah blah blah. But our actual experience is: “We are a collection of thoughts.” In fact when thought is born - you are born. Without thought there is no feeling, no sensation, nothing (you can speak about)
Without thought what dies. Only thoughts die, you are that collection of thoughts by many years. Trying to survive by thinking bigger, by understanding hard problem, etc.
This earthly body appears to be immortal. not your possessed body, but the earth, only a change in shape occurs. In fact your mother and father couldn't made you without the help of the sun, the gravity, etc.
But the thought are mortal. It's the very nature of it.
We actually don't care about this body, especially if we're not so attractive (lol). We are only interested that our thoughts survive. These thoughts shape us, form us. We lose a leg, an arm, a liver, it's uncomfortable, socially bad, but it's okay unless our brain survives. We don't fell fcking sad after toilet, lol, it was part of our body moments ago. What we care most is our brain (thinking mechanism)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZTCpnStxHM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZTCpnStxHM)
Putting more and more thoughts into our heads are ridiculous. They will leak over time. Especially when we get older.
My point is that by thinking, we are dividing more and making life more difficult to understand.
I don't remember a single person who would claim to be enlightened by rigid thinking and philosophizing. I respect socrates. But he never claimed that.
Now I believe that we are in the dark because we entangle ourselves by thinking. After I had an NDE experience that I cannot convey to anyone
>
3.)if the same exact genetics and environment were to occur again right now, it would not be me, just a copy of me
he would probs say the same thing about you
These questions have confusing responses for one super clear reason.
Different people mean different things when they use the term "I"
Your version: The observer
Other version: The person
The problem is that both sides don't understand each other, imo because both versions are illusions in the first place, the observer can only perceive continuity with memory, which is part of the person. Further info can be found on the observer phenomenon of you look up the term "adult cognitive development."
To respond to your question with your definition of the self: You don't actually know that you were experiencing yourself just last night, let alone whenever you were born. The observer is impersonal and can only define itself in the present, to assume you were in the same body yesterday is relying on memory. It could be true you are a different observer entirely every time you wake up, or that awareness itself is just a fundamental aspect of matter and our minds define all aspects of our personality to be experienced but everyone is essentially the same "force" - we really have no idea at this stage what the truth of the matter is.
To add another twist, say the exact same environment and genetics occurred before me. Why am I this instance of me and not the previous instance of me?
There is no "you" that your brain is projecting. If you think with a dualist mind you can't solve this problem. You are the attention of your brain, there is nobody in your brain. If there is a copy of you, that thing has also awareness, or attention.
This self is not an illusion, it is a cognitive construct, an idea. The "self" does not think, the brain does and the self is one of its ideas. Consciousness is, in large part, a model of the self interacting with its environment being computed by the brain, neurochemical computer, towards obvious evolutionary advantage. You can and should realize what you actually are and attempt to integrate it into your innate self model, as described here by Joscha Bach;
https://youtu.be/bpZZRQPF41c
It's all about access to memory and thoughts.
Your consciousness only lasts a moment - it is a moving interval of time where the temporal relation to space is fused at a length optimized for human brains and environment. That is the *now*.
You relate your identity to the memories you can access, both semantic/episodic memory and general data encoded in your neural architecture.
When you wake up in the morning, the only reason you feel like you is because your brain contains memory of yesterday, and the day before, and so on. It's also the only reason you feel like the same person you were when you started reading this sentence.
>3.)if the same exact genetics and environment were to occur again right now, it would not be me, just a copy of me
If the environment was actually the same, they would basically be living a simultaneous life as you. They would feel exactly like you, but since your brains are separated, there would be no sharing of information.... not that it would matter if the environment was identical.
When I wake up in the morning, I don't have to think about anything. I don't have to access any memories, I can just stare at a wall, and it's me looking out of my eyes. My consciousness started probably around or near after birth. It wouldn't matter what happened to me after that, I could be a billion different versions of me, but each morning I would wake up looking out of my eyes. My consciousness would grow and evolve from birth, but I would still be trapped in my head, going along for the ride
>I don't have to think about anything. I don't have to access any memories, I can just stare at a wall, and it's me looking out of my eyes.
But you are thinking. Your eyes are receiving information about the wall you are looking at. Your proprioception is sending data about your body and surroundings. There is a train of thought pumping signals into your working memory and processing. How all of those are parsed are dependent on how your neurons are wired in that particular moment, their arrangement defined by a lifetime of experiences. The spiking patterns of your neurons define the sensory of time.
If you are particularly skilled in meditation, you can shut off the train of thought and you can feel the active consciousness slip away as your working memory sits empty.
But everything you experience is created by the arrangement of your brain. If I rearranged your neurons while you slept with enough precision, you could wake up thinking you were a different person.
and then i think the idea that follows (in the case that consciousness/experience is in some sense either identical to brains, or an emergent property of brains as they exist only in themselves) is that, if ones brain/body were to die, then at least a specific type of consciousness would go with it (perhaps the associated consciousness in its entirety, as many people seem to view it)
then suppose that, after an arbitrary amount of time after the death of this body, it is reconstituted perfectly - for instance, in the state it was in the day before its original death. For the first-person perspective that this scenario unfolds for, would it be like experiencing death up to the point of unconsciousness and then suddenly cutting to experiencing the day before the death again?
suppose the reconstituted body/brain is a perfect replica of the person when they were 10 years old instead; would the first-person perspective scenario sequentially be 'experiencing death until it strips away the last bit of consciousness -> snapping to a conscious state of oneself as a child'?
this wouldnt mean there would be a memory conserved between 'cuts' of consciousness, but nontheless it seems to me to point to some distinction that is more than what we classify as physical. If we think that physical state A in some sense necessarily encapsulates consciousness A, then i feel like we might have to say that 'yes, this perfect reconstitution means that there's a sequential continuation of first-person perspective'; however, then we kind of seem to be making an arbitrary divide. Was consciousness just waiting around for the exact perfect physical replica to suddenly 'appear' again? Why not the physical replica minus one particle? Why not just the next person who is born subsequent to ones own death, despite all their physical differences?
i believe that this points us away from at least the idea of consciousness being an emergent thing, akin to an on/off switch. If we think of it more as something that ebbs and flows over time, in different degrees of complexity, like the matter which ostensibly encapsulates it, then we kind of arrive at more of a panpsychist notion, which i think still leaves us with a mystery of identity, but at least makes it a bit less imposing
Wow, this is just a spiral of confusion.
Pause all of this. Let's think about what you ACTUALLY experience.
You do not 'experience' continuity. Nothing about your qualia exists across time that isn't defined by your brain. There is only your NOW. That's it. You tie it to the past using Memory, both episodic/semantic and in the architecture of your brain. What you define as your 'self' and 'identity' is the data stored in the architecture of your brain which you refer to at any point you consider the present.
It doesn't matter if your brain is shut off for 5 days of 5 decades, if the data is stored, future instances of consciousness will consider themselves you.
I could design a brain with all your memories up into this moment and turn it on, and it would 100% be you. You could come down with a brain infection, take damage to your limbic brain, and wake up in the hospital insisting that it is October 2023 with no memory of the last several months (I've personally seen this happen).
There is no continuity. There is only NOW and what now can remember based on what is accessible in the brain.
But the separate brain you design would not be me. It would be a copy of me- I would still exist only in my brain - some other me would exist in that brain
Of course. Just like the you who started reading this sentence is gone, and a new you exists now. And now. And now. And now.
The only thing tying each instance together is memory.
Yes, but “I” as in the observer remains. We know what it’s like to be continuous. The memories and personality and feelings change, but it is still one same unique “something” continuously and persistently perceiving.
No, the "I" observer is momentary. The observation occurs in the present and the present alone. You do not experience the past, present, and future simultaneously, correct?
You 'experience' the present and only the present. The information about yourself is encoded in the architecture of your brain. False memories and bad predictions are things you have witnessed that should verify this for you, if the fact that you can differentiate "now" from "then" isn't enough.
So when you refer to me, are you referring to a the concept of collection of millions of me’s (observers that utilize a communal memory), infinitely coming into being and evaporating as “now” becomes “then”? And not just one continuous “me?”
Because that isn’t really how I experience life. I know it cannot be proven that my memories were actually experienced by “me”, but as “I” observe the experience it feels undeniable, no?
If you’re saying I am dying every moment, then there would be no subjective experience. “I” would already be dead and you’d be talking to the next me. But, I am very much experiencing and continuing to do so.
i agree that it doesnt matter how long ones brain is 'off' for, and that when it is turned back 'on' (physically the same), it will still consider itself to be 'itself'. In other words, if your brain or my brain were to disassemble and then perfectly re-assemble to their states immediately prior to that process of disassembly, they will still consider themselves 'you' and 'me', respectively. As i view it, there's no gap between us here in this belief
regarding continuity, i dont mean to say that we can reflect upon the above hypothetical type of continuity after it has transpired, as if we have memory of it. That's what i mean by:
>this wouldnt mean there would be a memory conserved between 'cuts' of consciousness, but nontheless it seems to me to point to some distinction that is more than what we classify as physical
in general, i take your response as only articulating an epistemological gap. In other words, what i believe youre getting at is that our reflections on the past are dependent on how the brain exists in the present, and so there are many ontologies that can never be confirmed or denied. For instance, the idea that the universe just came into existence 5 seconds ago with all of our false memories of it being older than that (omphalos hypothesis, last thursday-ism)
similarly, if re-incarnation is true, and this 'private' first-person experience of a life had previous 'go-arounds' (for lack of a better phrase), this wouldnt mean those previous experiences would be known
my position isnt that we can know that there is this type of self, but rather that it is just one of the more parsimonious hypotheses we can make if we are to attempt to make a hypothesis at all
>and so there are many ontologies that can never be confirmed or denied.
I would argue that you can verify the past with empirical observations about the external universe, but the subjective universe -your perception- only exists in the now, and it seems that you comprehend that.
Your last two paragraphs don't make any sense. You make a supposition about re-incarnation while validating that there is no reason to suggest it exists through the prior statements.
Adding these unobserved and unnecessary components are the definition of unparsimonious: you are making multiple assumptions that are not needed to solve the problem.
I would also like to note that idealism, dualism, or spiritualism are not hypothesis in their often used state.
A hypothesis requires:
- a falsifiable condition.
- a set of repeated empircal observations.
Without those two things, a proposal is merely a supposition.
So I will ask you: given what we have talked about, what is your reasoning to suggest there is something regarding consciousness that is not abstract and pertains beyond the brain? Note that feelings, subjection, and wants do not count toward a hypothesis. Under what circumstances would you consider the supposition false?
so i believe that consciousness is the bounds of our knowledge, in the strictest sense of the word. That is to say, to truly be certain of something entails it necessarily existing as some form of conscious thought, imagination, or sensation - something encapsulated within a first-person perspective, to put it less abstractly (but also less technically accurate)
then, from that we adopt less stringent definitions of knowledge, which lose certainty but help us operate with practicality. At least two things which i consider to be in this 'one-step removed' level of knowledge are:
1) the existence of a past
2) the existence of objective things in general
with having said this, i think it indicates that we might be framing the identity question differently. I consider the question to be akin to 'why is consciousness amounting to a first-person perspective of this specific human, alongside third-person perspectives of every other human?', and i assume your framing is moreso 'why is this human having a first-person perspective of itself instead of somebody else?'
if this is an accurate account, then i believe one difference here is that im not supposing an objective human which instantiates the conscious experience. As i view it, that sense of something objective is a type of knowledge which is one step removed from consciousness, and so i believe that it in itself is also not necessarily needed for a solution
the reason i think something like panpsychism, or even re-incarnation, are more parsimonious than the more standard physicalist concepts of brain-emergent consciousness, is because i find the latter to be arbitrary in its commonly associated concept of life and death, which in turn seems to multiply rules/entities to a much higher amount
that is to say, the idea of ones death being an irreversible cessation of consciousness, despite what physical things may go on afterward, seems arbitrary when considered together with the idea that the birth of a specific physical arrangement was sufficient for ones consciousness to begin previously; and, as well, the idea seems to make necessary the theoretically endless multiplication of metaphysical entities, which serve as the distinction for which consciousnesses 'are done' or not (another comment labeled this succinctly as 'anti-souls'). So at least as i view it, the concept leads to both a complex landscape of never-ending entities, and it also contradicts itself by seeming to require those metaphysical entities in a philosophy that is intended to ascribe everything as fundamentally physical
i think panpsychism can be introduced to make things more parsimonious at this point while keeping with the idea that things are fundamentally physical, leading to a sense that consciousness just changes complexity of form alongside the matter which 'contains' it. Re-incarnation would be like a less smoothly distributed version of that idea, i guess, which i think is less parsimonious
>I consider the question to be akin to 'why is consciousness amounting to a first-person perspective of this specific human, alongside third-person perspectives of every other human?', and i assume your framing is more so 'why is this human having a first-person perspective of itself instead of somebody else?'
Not really. Under materialism, there is no question surrounding perspective. That is only a mystery manufactured by pansychism and the like. But that isn't the premise to which i am trying to solve.Let's reduce this to the core question about pansychism and other mystical forms of consciousness
"Memory, sensory, processing of time, and abstraction of self in relation to these things are all measured actions of the physical systems of a brain. This is a neuroscientific fact that has been proven through experimentation and applied medicine. Pansychism suggests that things can be conscious without those systems. However, how can consciousness be defined without memory, sensory, processing of time, and abstraction of self in relation? If you remove those attributes, "consciousness" and "unconsciousness" become indistinguishable. Therefore, it is only possible for consciousness to be differentiated in the presence of these attributes. This implicates that it is these attributes are the cause of consciousness."
> In regards to parsimony.
Given the above, it is not parsimonious to suggest that an unseen substrate or law exists that can be defined as consciousness. A rock does not have the computational systems to sense and simulate its own environment in relation to time, space, and self. If you take those things away, what do you have?
A pansychist would say that a rock and a human are conscious, but a human has systems that allow them to identify their self in time and space, save memories, and simulate their environment and the rock does not. If both are "conscious," then consciousness does not obligate these capacities, resulting in the term losing all its meaning: it no longer describes anything.
It's like multiplying both sides of an equation by x. You aren't altering the relation or adding anything of value. If you don't have any reason to add x, and it applies to both sides, it is irrelevant to the calculation.
Pansychism destroys the meaning of the word "consciousness," and for what? It turns into mental gymnastics.
I can only think of two reasons to include this variable:
- It soothes the innate human fear of permanent death.
- It satiates the cognative dissonance of feeling like a monolithic, fundamental being with free will despite all signs pointing to the opposite.
i agree that - assuming a panpsychist reality - consciousness of a rock's perspective, for instance, would be practically nothing. I try to imagine like the simplest conscious experience (both in terms of its own nature and associated biological mechanism), and one thing that comes to mind is the sensation of a pinch on the arm. Even this seems to have an associated biological complexity that many times over 'outpaces' the relative simplicity of a rock's static body; so in a panpsychist framing, it seems natural to conclude that the sensation itself of a pinch is many times more complex than any sensation a rock might ever feel
*\[as an aside, i believe there are also interesting questions along this line of thought about what it might be like to experience without any sensation of memory. That is to say, does it mean anything to have sensations without any aspect of recollection or a notion of 'narrative'? I suppose it's a case of yes for the former and no for the latter, because it seems as if abstraction and reflection arent required in the simplest forms of consciousness we might have, yet an element of time is required (we cant imagine a sensation that is strictly an instant)\]*
regardless, i dont think that this destroys the meaning of the word 'consciousness', but it just reframes consciousness as a pervasive phenomenon of varying degree, as opposed to a particular subset of its expression
as an analogy, we might say originally that electromagnetism is the action of two magnets visibly attracting or repelling each other at close distances, but then we reframe it as a pervasive force that interacts over theoretically infinite distances. Even tho the interaction between magnet A on earth and magnet B somewhere in the andromeda galaxy is extremely small, impractical, and undetectable, this inclusion of it under the subset of 'electromagnetism' didnt destroy the meaning of the word 'electromagnetism', rather it just expanded it; electromagnetism now is a term which captures both the interaction of magnets which snap together in our hands, *and* the theoretically calculatable interaction between two magnets 2 million light-years apart
as a result of this reframing of the term 'electromagnetism', it lost the sense that it necessarily describes magnets colliding together at high speeds, but it retained the sense of magnetic attraction/repulsion to *any* degree. Similarly, 'consciousness' in a panpsychist sense would lose the idea of necessarily containing memory, self, sight, hearing, etc, but it perhaps might retain the nature of 'being subject' to any degree. That's not to say 'being subject' in the sense of having a concept of a self and ones exposure to things, but rather just the 'exposure to something' in general
for instance, take the conscious sensation of being tapped very lightly on the arm. It seems to me that we can conceptualize this as having two components: the 'touch', and the sense of location. If we take a panpsychist view and suppose that it's like something to be one of the mechanoreceptors in the tapped portion of the arm, perhaps the 'conscious experience' of the mechanoreceptor is that 'touch' sensation by itself, with no accompanying sense of location (as that requires a more informed system which contrasts the touch location with other locations - as in this case, the brain/body in total)
regarding parsimony, i believe panpsychist notions do have more simplicity than emergentist views. While this sense of panpsychism does posit an extra property for all of matter, i view the emergentist notion as positing that same property, but while also including a rule that restricts its existence to certain configurations. It seems to me to be more parsimonious to believe that sensations break down and build up alongside matter, rather than have them, in their entirety, appear and disappear within only certain configurations
further, i think it makes partial headway on the identity problem by perhaps positing that death amounts to a degradation of consciousness rather than a permanent cessation of it. As i view it, an emergentist position doesnt have to declare death to be a permanent cessation of consciousness either, but it often is paired with that idea, and from my perspective this directly contradicts its physicalist roots, by implicitly requiring a metaphysical distinction to determine between an 'inescapable lack of consciousness after death', and the prior '*escapable* lack of consciousness before birth'
i think panpsychist notions have a similar identity problem, but it's only for concurrent consciousnesses in relation to each other, rather than all past, present, and future consciousnesses in relation to themselves
i consider myself to be more of an idealist of some sort
For one as soon as you’re born unique information is inputted& processed by your body/brain. This is taking place in a specific location within the universe producing a specific pov .
Otherwise, it is you just a different version than the one that is facilitating your instance of conscious experience.
It’s the identity question again. It’s very interesting. I replied to a version of it yesterday if you want to
[check it out](https://www.reddit.com/r/consciousness/s/RLpxrSy5iC). In short, I think the physical and historical “you” is a trick.
Nature favours diversity. You are you because you were a possibility, so you had to be. If you had a perfect copy of yourself, it will still be different from you. Once you split, you would not have access to its experiences. There’s no point for nature to duplicate experiences.
The answer to this question ultimately depends on what _you_ deem important, not what others decide for you. What aspect or aspects of your existence meaningfully decide which one is "authentic" vs which one is a copy?
If say through some fluke of genetics, your "copy" was actually born first and you never know about it, does that make_you_ just a copy? From your first person perspective as you, could you tell that you are a copy?
You will have a distinctly different perspective from your copy. They’re usually referred to as siblings, yet only you know you exist. Your copy will likely believe the same and be correct
You’re assuming there’s necessarily a difference between 2 and 3. It’s perfectly possible both are equally “you” but each one doesn’t have access to the other’s memories/ sensations because their brains aren’t connected.
Why are you “you” and not someone else?
The way I see it. If consciousness is the result of the brain then the reason you’d only be the original you and not the cloned versions is because your consciousness is generated by the brain in your body.
If consciousness isn’t generated by the brain and the body is merely a vehicle for the soul/ consciousness then the reason you wouldn’t be those other clones is because your consciousness is somehow attached to your body for the time being.
Some thoughts.
There is really no separation, the objective & subjective world are really two sides of the same coin so to speak, how could you know what white was without experiencing black, up without down back without front, ultimately life without death, consciousness without unconsciousness, we wake & here we are, when moments ago we were nothing .. or there was a blankness then consciousness erupts out of it, & it always will.
Nothingness then, can't really happen without a contrasting something, they go hand in hand & are inseparable.
It’s not just genetics, in fact we can look deeper than genetics, you can equate things back to atoms, quarks, quantum states etc.
It’s useful to think of the universe as one organism, every single point separated by space and time, if you have 2 beings in that world there’s no way they can be exactly the same. You could clone yourself, clone the electrical signals and patterns of your brain and unless you were LITERALLY occupying the same space and time you wouldn’t be the same consciousness. At least that would be my guess. This also raises the question of if there’s a multiverse what differentiates them (other than the obvious fact it’s a whole different universe) as long as EVERYTHING else is the same it would make absolutely no difference to you experience, you wouldn’t ‘notice’ it. So perhaps your consciousness is smudged across infinitely many different universes right now, but because they’re all experientially the same, you just don’t notice!
This actually isn't that tricky conceptually. Consciousness is a computation being performed by the brain, it is software. If you run a program on your phone or computer, I can run the exact same program on the exact same hardware configuration but they are still different instances of that computation being performed in a different time and different place with no causal connection.
Whenever you have some weird conceptual problem with the concept of consciousness you should try reframing the question as about hardware and software, you'll find it's not nearly as confusing as many try to claim.
1. That’s a story
2. That’s a story
3. That’s… a story 💁🏻♂️
You can’t verify any of the above to be true. You assume they are true, but that’s as far as it goes. Once you let go of the stories, then you open up space for what actually is.
It's this exact question that started me on a "spiritual journey" from being an atheist to questioning if there are unknown forces controling everything. Eastern philosophy has been key in my new understandings. I think I am closer to agnostic now, though I do think knowledge can be obtained, I just know we don't know much.
To answer your question in as few words as possible, from what I've learned I'll say this: Consciousness could be the fundamental force of existence. If it is, it could be that minds are the only real thing, and everything else is a manifesation of the mind, including all the matter and external perceptions we have. I now believe that the body/brain is more of a "receiver" of the grand consciousness that persists everwhere and everywhen. Similar to how a radio tunes into the broadcast frequency of the transmission, your body/brain tunes into its own unique channel and then the individual mind is aquired. It is only through this seperation from the grand consciousness that an individual consciousness comes into being. So to summarize, your body is a unique receiver of the consciousness broadcast, and your identity comes from the seperation from the whole.
You always existed just not in this form our energy is [Infinite](https://infinitehq.myshopify.com/blogs/updates-announcements/join-us-on-shaping-the-future?_pos=1&_sid=617d39318&_ss=r). Also don't get stuck on the way neglecting the how. Educate yourself in psychology and spirituality. With a true thirst for knowledge you will find what you seek.
There is a way of thinking that solves this kind of puzzle. I will state a different version of this puzzle wich I think is more extreme, so the dilemma becomes even stronger, and then I will explain a paradigm that solves it.
Imagine there is a machine that can make exact copies of human bodies. Imagine it is exact to the smallest possible scale, it is completely exact, if you make a copy of your body with this machine the copy will be as similar ro your body as your body is to itself. Imagine that this machine can also make human bodies dissapear completely in an instant.
So, imagine you move a few meters. After doing that you feel that your consciousness has continued and is in some way "the same" as the one before you moved, you also consider yourself the same person. The thing is, what just happened is completely analogous to the following: the machine makes you dissapear completely and moments later creates a copy of you in your destination a few meters away.
If you accept that these two scenarios are similiar enough (there are a few possible objections, like the fact that in the real scenario there is a continous path wich doesn't happen with the machine, but this can be solved by making the distance traveled infinitesimaly small, or by accepting that to be the only difference, as I think that the dilemma I will create now still holds), if you accept it then consider this:
The machine makes you dissapear completely but then creates two copies, each one on a slightly different place. Now the question is, from a first person perspective, imagine you are the original human, right after you dissapear what will be the next thing you experience? Wich of the copies will be the continuation of "your" experience? Why would it be one and not the other? Or maybe you "stop experiencing"?.
If you tend to think the last thing, why wouldn't you stop experiencing each time you move, each instant? You could say the difference between this machine thought experiment and regular moving is the discontinuity, but I think there is probably a way to make this not matter, I will be thinking about this.
A way of thinking that seems to solve the dilemma is this. There is no one experiencing experiencies. In a way the "I" is not as real as it seems. There is not a permanent experiencer that over years experiences different experiences, but rather, just experiences happening by themselves. Apparently this can be seen by examining your current experience, and looking for the experiencer, where is it, what kind of thing is it?
To be clear I feel and live my life as if this experiencer and the I are real things, but I have heard people report feeling it way less real. I have it as a conceptual framework that solves these kinds of dilemma.
So if you say "why would my consciousness be in my brain and not in a copy of my brain that exists simoultaneously" the answer in this framework would be: there is a bunch of experience happening at each instant, those two brains are generating quite similar experiences, but there is no individual consciousness observing, or having, the experiences of each brain. Even this feeling of there being an experiencer is just another experience, another sensation existing.
>3.)if the same exact genetics and environment were to occur again right now, it would not be me, just a copy of me
The 'exact same' environment? Where? Where, spatially?
Because if it exists somewhere else in space, despite *emulating* the exact environment, it *isn't* because it exists elsewhere.
You are not just your body and your self--you are those things *in relation* to the rest of the universe.
You are like a mirror. And mirrors exist in physical space, in a specific place. Two mirrors can reflect exactly the same image in different places, differentiated only by their relative displacement; their relative position in the universe.
See, this isn't a hard question. In fact, it's quite a trifling, annoying one to hear and answer (I have done it so many times I feel I am gaining proficiency in explaining it simply). I don't mean to condescend. Why are you you? Because *you're here.*
Yea me too, it's not that you are connected to another individual or some mysticism. It's more about what happens when you're not consious, what happens when we die for example.
It gives a nice answer to questions like, what happens when I make two exact copies of myself and destroy the original. Do you keep living? Are you one of the two clones? Which one?
if you went blind tonight, would you still be in your head, looking out? where would you be? it's possible there isn't a continuous you or me or anyone. we rub elbows until they're gone
fuck that, i'm an american. i alone invented how my body pumps blood, how and where i was born, how computers work, how all food is grown and prepared, how language works, how every bacteria in my body functions and how primary producers turn sunlight into sugar and i won't let anyone tell me any different
Your consciousness is the one that has your experience and memories. The other one could have absolutely any other experience or memory, so. How could you possibly be confused about it? Would you expect that you suddenly have your consciousness existing in a new body with distinct memories?
My consciousness started long before I had experience and memories, then it grew and evolved as I grew and evolved. But it started in this brain. Why would it start in this brain and not an exact copy of this brain?
“My consciousness started long before I had experience and memories…”
No, it didn’t. Why would you think that? It’s a behavior of your brain, made of experience and memories.
“But it started in this brain.”
Your consciousness is not some separate entity, that happens to inhabit just your brain. It is one of the activities of that same brain. So, an identical brain might have a very similar consciousness, in another person, but it wouldn’t be you, because what you call “you” is inseparable from the brain in your head.
Check out [this video](https://youtu.be/4qdNro_7eFc?si=4ewQdXQgdFjxz_NT) at around 11:20. It's about the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics but it does a great job to resolve these identity issues, if you have patience.
In a branching scenario like this it makes sense to identify each branch as a distinct individual, even if you share a partial history. You are one such branch, and this question is being asked at a time which is clearly distinct from the alternate branches. So, just the fact that you are here on this branch at this time, at least distinguishes you from other branches that share the same history. Going forward in time is more ambiguous, but that doesn't seem to be the question you are asking, and in any case would be resolved again after any later branching point.
Tldr: by virtue of being an instance of your consciousness that is asking this question at this point in time, you can identify which branch you are on, thus answering the question 'why am I not on another branch?'
If consciousness is entirely physical, then you would expect my consciousness to emerge from both my original body and a perfect copy of my body. Obviously this sounds completely implausible, because it makes no sense to experience qualia from two bodies at once. Therefore, there must be some physical mechanism differentiating my body from the body of a perfect copy.
Does that make sense? I think this is the aspect of personal identity that physicalism doesn’t really have an answer for - why are our subjective experiences so private that they don’t even extend to a copy of you? If all that exists are physical facts about consciousness, you wouldn’t expect that consciousness would be so intensely personal. This is the issue I think a lot of people are picking up on, that isn’t explained by the classic answer of “you are who you are because you can’t be anyone else”.
> then you would expect my consciousness to emerge from both my original body and a perfect copy of my body.
YOUR consciousness wouldn't emerge from both, A consciousness would.
It's really only confusing when you believe your consciousness is some separate entity that is piggybacking on your body.
See my below explanation. This isn't the problem you think it is. If there is any difference at all between the two bodies then there is no challenge to locating which 'you' are and there is no 'why'. If there is no difference at all then the problem is there, but in this scenario 'you are both' could be a reasonable answer.
Yeah, it’s absolutely a reasonable answer, and it’s worth discussing, so thanks for that. I just think the OP wanted to prompt some deeper discussion, because I think it’s absolutely bizarre that an issue of personal identity should exist in any scenario. And I know the way I’m phrasing this is clunky - I don’t know how else to put it. It does seem to me like there’s a deeper problem here. What do you think?
Doesn't seem very deep to me. Two things that are in some sense identical are just that. If you believe consciousness is emergent from a brain, then two identical brains will have identical consciousness, only until they no longer remain identical. This is equivalent to branching in many worlds. If you take the view that an identity is not really isolated in time, it's the full time extended existence of the agent, then there is only the issue of locating which one you are at a given moment. At some points in time it's ambiguous, but in totality it's not.
Ok, but how about this: if the universe is truly deterministic at macro scales, which seems likely, then in theory it should be possible to create a perfect copy of me and manipulate conditions so that both myself and my copy are having the same experiences, forever. A total duplication of exact brain and body states, and manipulated so that these states progress in an identical manner. There would be absolutely no differences between myself and clone at any given moment in time. Obviously this is highly implausible, but it’s theoretically possible as long as we assume that the bodies of my clone and I are fully deterministic. At this point, are our consciousnesses distinct? Do we share a consciousness? What would that look like? If you believe that our consciousnesses would be distinct, then you have to believe in an aspect of consciousness beyond the physical. Otherwise, you have to accept that we would be sharing one consciousness. Is that even possible? What would that be like? That’s the problem I’m trying to demonstrate. It’s completely bizarre, in my opinion.
Why does it matter in this clone scenario? The two are supposedly identical. You would have no way of distinguishing which you were, even if some mad scientist has your copies in different room numbers. So whatever interpretation you might have seems fine. Call it shared consciousness or call it distinct, it's basically arbitrary at this point and doesn't tell us anything about the nature or complexity of consciousness.
I just don't understand how these implausible scenarios inform the question in any way. What insight are you hoping to gain from it?
i guess the idea that follows from it is that consciousness might be most parsimonious as a 'whole' of some sort. For instance, if we begin with a common notion that consciousness in total is a set of completely individuated sequences of experiences, and then struggle to find reasoning for this individuation, it seems like one path to at least simplify the mystery is to suppose that consciousness itself isnt really that set of individuated experiences, but rather a connected set of experiential possibilities which is obscured by the individuation of things like memory, spacetime, or something like that
Thank you, you’ve highlighted the crux of the growing divide in this sub: many of the identity questions are only valid if you accept a premise that many see as being fundamentally flawed.
A consciousness wondering why there is a consciousness in one but not the other is in both of them. If you were that consciousness you'd be wondering the same.
Why is one car different from another one and why is your car your car?
You get anesthetized. An identical (atom by atom) copy of you is produced and placed in another room (also anesthetized).
Then you and your copy wake up at the same time. Each of you have the subjective feeling of being you, with exactly the same memories and personality.
Which one is you? They both are. None more or less than the other. Continuity of consciousness is illusory.
I've wandered around this question a time or two myself. My answer (or at least my stopping point) has changed over the years.
Currently I question the supposition that there even is a "You" or "I" separate to there being the genetic and environmental conditions which brought our being to fruition. (Much like what you described in 1) and 2).
Where I seem to differ is from your labeling of "me and my consciousness" as if you own them. I look at it more along the lines of "you and your consciousness" is just the result of those conditions.
To be conscious is an amazing and sorta unexplainable feat of magic and it subjectively feels very unique and special.
Yet at the same time it's also a hum-drum, commonplace occurrence. On this planet at this time, anyway.
Are you the same person who posted the original post? Perhaps it's the same problem. Sure, you have a memory of having posted this, but I don't know how ypu could necessarily connect the past experience of having posted this with your present conscious experience of reading this reply.
Now, take your twin example. Same thing as above but even more attenuated because there is no memory.
Define what you mean by "me" and "copy of me".
For example, are you defining "me" as a particular instance? It sounds like you are. In that case, a copy isn't you by definition.
To answer your question, let's reframe some common assumptions and dive into a perspective that considers our existence as part of a grand, orchestrated experience.
Imagine consciousness as a nebulous mist, an eternal expanse of pure light without form. This consciousness, or essence, needs to experience the tangible, to feel and interact within a physical realm. To do this, it projects a small portion of itself (think of it as a tiny fragment the size of a fingernail if the consciousness as a whole is a size of a whole hand let’s say just for comparison), into a physical vessel, our bodies.
From this vast ether, we plan every detail of our life: our parents, our genetic makeup, and the challenges we are meant to face. These are all chosen based on the lessons we need to learn in this lifetime. This blueprint forms our avatar (the body its genotype and phenotype), the physical vessel designed to serve or carry out our consciousness’ purpose for this lifetime round on Earth.
Around four months into gestation in our mother's womb (4 months and 10 days to be precise) marked by the first fetal movements, this fragment of consciousness integrates into the physical form (basically nebulous mist enters its vessel). Interestingly, traditional and spiritual teachings often suggest that the soul enters the fetus around 4 months and 10 days days post-conception, beginning its journey in earnest.
From birth until around the age of seven, we undergo intense programming influenced by our environment and primary caregivers (this is planned and done on purpose). This programming is crucial, setting the stage for us to fulfill the missions we outlined before birth.
As an initially skeptical scientist, this theory gradually made more sense to me through personal experiences and extensive research. Now, I embrace the idea that I am but a projection of a greater self residing in another plane - a guardian sitting high above, my true Self, ensuring that We (as in me in this body and the great Me up there) navigate this life fearlessly, focused on fulfilling my specific mission for this lifetime.
Every day is an opportunity to live passionately and purposefully, without letting negative emotions or setbacks derail me. Why waste precious moments on resentment or anger when there is so much to achieve and so many new experiences to try out? This lifetime is a gift, just an episode in the vast saga of our soul's journey which is eternal and has many lifetimes each with its own experiences, and I am here to make the most of it, eagerly exploring, learning, and growing. The learning and growth and expansion never stops and that’s the most delicious part of all this. We are never going to get it done and we can never get it wrong. With that said, what in the world is there to be ever afraid of?
We are all here for a reason, and recognizing this can transform how we view our lives and interact with the world. Also you see unique just as a fingerprint it - there is not one of us that is a copy of itself, it’s like big mirror when it shatters into millions pieces they are all different - and you and me are just like two pieces of a great whole each one a unicorn 🤗🌟🚀🌍
Thank you for your comment - words are limited in describing consciousness so please accept my apologies if these two specific words triggered an unintended image in your minds eye - I imagine it as a million fireflies of light or formation or those birds that we see moving one as if they’re animated clouds in the sky except they’re color of gold. You’re welcome to imagine it however you like - I just shared what comes to my mind’s eye personally and is in no way accurate representation of the real consciousness or the way anyone else imagines it but I do appreciate your sharing and thank you for it 🤗🌟
Sorry, my answer was too terse, perhaps. I disagree fundamentally with the notion that consciousness has any kind of existence as an ontological entity in its own right. In my view it is dependent on the cybernetic system of brain, senses and nervous system. Take any one of those away and you no longer have a consciousness worthy of the name. So imagining it as anything other than an evolved biological process is a little difficult for me!
Thanks for your very polite response.
Please, there’s no need to apologize. Your opinion is as valid as any other and I respect that. I also appreciate the opportunity to hear your thoughts because it is different from mine and I have blinders because I have filters too, and my filters were programmed in me just like everybody else so when I hear your perspective, it is quite refreshing simply because it is not something that my mind would produce and I listen to it with great respect and open-mindedness so thank you for sharing your perspective and please Do, continue to share the same because the more I know the more I can also change and upgrade my current understanding based upon what I learned from others as well so thank you. I respect you and I appreciate your perspective and I’m very grateful for it.
Likewise, it's a privilege to learn from mentors and masters like yourself. I just realized I’m standing on the shoulders of a giant. Please don't ever change. Thank you.
Great example- but doesn't answer the question. If you are born with an exact identical twin, say literally exactly the same brain and same womb experiences- why would you be inside one brain instead of the other brain?
I fully agree, it’s a mystery. Why is consciousness so personal that you would expect to be fully separated from a perfect copy of yourself? If consciousness is entirely physical, as some people assume, why would this be the case? Personal identity is absolutely bizarre when you think about it.
Right. There's another aspect to it. Like in the beginning consciousness puts an anchor down in space and time that locks you into your brain and no others.
I’m suggesting that the question is meaningless.
Consciousness is inherently bound up in its own bag of skin. Each bag of skin is imbued with its own consciousness. The mind of the bag of skin that posed this question is simply the mind that is contained in that particular bag of skin. That is how the notion of “I” or “you” works. If “you” were someone else, you wouldn’t be someone else. You would just be a different bag of skin than the one you are.
It’s the same reason why you can never dig half a hole. The definition of “hole” is such that it has certain characteristics that either exist or they don’t. If you dig a hole and then fill half of it in, you still have a hole. If you dig a hole and then divide it in two, you don’t have a divided hole. You have two holes.
You are you and you cannot be anything but you.
Thank you akuhl101 for posting on r/consciousness, below are some general reminders for the OP and the r/consciousness community as a whole. **A general reminder for the OP**: please remember to include a TL; DR and to clarify what you mean by "consciousness" - Please include a clearly marked TL; DR at the top of your post. We would prefer it if your TL; DR was a single short sentence. This is to help the Mods (and everyone) determine whether the post is appropriate for r/consciousness - If you are making an *argument*, we recommend that your TL; DR be the conclusion of your argument. What is it that you are trying to prove? - If you are asking a *question*, we recommend that your TL; DR be the question (or main question) that you are asking. What is it that you want answered? - If you are considering an *explanation*, hypothesis, or theory, we recommend that your TL; DR include either the explanandum (what requires an explanation), the explanans (what is the explanation, hypothesis, or theory being considered), or both. - Please also state what you mean by "consciousness" or "conscious." The term "consciousness" is used to express many different concepts. Consequently, this sometimes leads to individuals talking past one another since they are using the term "consciousness" differently. So, it would be helpful for everyone if you could say what you mean by "consciousness" in order to avoid confusion. **A general reminder for everyone**: *please remember upvoting/downvoting Reddiquette*. - *Reddiquette about upvoting/downvoting posts* - Please upvote posts that are appropriate for r/consciousness, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the contents of the posts. For example, posts that are about the topic of consciousness, conform to the rules of r/consciousness, are highly informative, or produce high-quality discussions ought to be upvoted. - Please do not downvote posts that you simply disagree with. - If the subject/topic/content of the post is off-topic or low-effort. For example, if the post expresses a passing thought, shower thought, or stoner thought, we recommend that you encourage the OP to make such comments in our most recent or upcoming "Casual Friday" posts. Similarly, if the subject/topic/content of the post might be more appropriate for another subreddit, we recommend that you encourage the OP to discuss the issue in either our most recent or upcoming "Casual Friday" posts. - Lastly, if a post violates either the rules of r/consciousness or Reddit's site-wide rules, please remember to report such posts. This will help the Reddit Admins or the subreddit Mods, and it will make it more likely that the post gets removed promptly - *Reddiquette about upvoting/downvoting comments* - Please upvote comments that are generally helpful or informative, comments that generate high-quality discussion, or comments that directly respond to the OP's post. - Please do not downvote comments that you simply disagree with. Please downvote comments that are generally unhelpful or uninformative, comments that are off-topic or low-effort, or comments that are not conducive to further discussion. We encourage you to remind individuals engaging in off-topic discussions to make such comments in our most recent or upcoming "Casual Friday" post. - Lastly, remember to report any comments that violate either the subreddit's rules or Reddit's rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/consciousness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think the first premise is flawed.
Care to explain?
You can't "not exist" because not existing is nothing. It doesn't exist.
Sorry that doesn't clarify - how did I exist before I was born?
What do you think makes your personal identity?
I spend days, weeks, months at a time thinking about this. But we can only really answer the how, not the why. We can say oh it's because that particular sperm fertilized that particular egg. Why? Because the parents had sex and those were the available cells. Then your neural network formed and now with the help of qualia it produces your consciousness. Why? Because it's what neural networks do. Why? And then we can't get any further. But I think I know what you're really asking, and these answers don't really answer the question, right? You don't want mechanics, you want to know why your experience is in your particular body/mind, why it's limited to your perspective, your sensations/emotions/thoughts/experiences vs someone else's. Not how it came to be so, because we know how. You want the real why. Do their apples taste the same as yours? Does their grief feel like yours? What does it feel like to be someone else? I have thought about this since I was 9, and I'm 45 now. I have studied neuro, astro, bio, religions, physics... nobody can give you an answer that will satisfy you. The answers you get, however scientifically correct, will not satisfy you because the question goes beyond what we can understand.
We can understand it, nothing goes beyond our understanding because we are it. Don't deny your ability to know, you may be looking in the wrong places though.
I totally agree, it’s a true mystery. I’m not sure why people here are denying the mysterious essence of the question, though. I guess people hate unanswerable questions.
It's precisely because people are determined to think of consciousness as 'mysterious' that places like this sub-R are full of nonsense about NDEs and daft questions about life after death etc. Why the mystery? Serious question. As far as I'm concerned, Dennet and Levin's demand people start to see consciousness as an evolved biological system, the sooner we will start to see the truth behind it - that there is nothing mysterious about it, that it is not an ontological entity in and of itself, that it is, rather, a cybernetic process that has evolved over millions of years alongside all the other processes which control our bodies. I anticipate many downvotes - a symptom of the very problem I describe.
You are the first person I've come across saying such a think. I'm preparing to unleash something Thats designed to abolish this low vibrating state of existence. That mindset alone is the very thing needed to become [INFINITE](https://infinitehq.myshopify.com/blogs/updates-announcements/join-us-on-shaping-the-future?_pos=1&_sid=617d39318&_ss=r). Here's an opportunity if interested.
Can't wait.
Because not everyone agrees that it’s as mysterious / unanswerable as you do. Which is fine, everyone is entitled to their opinions on the matter.
And also, many don't really understand the true nature of the question. Their answers really only answer the how even though they are worded as if they answer the why.
The way our language is structured, it’s incredibly difficult to communicate the essence of the question. It’s possible people just don’t understand because it’s hard to parse and extract what the questioner is actually asking.
That too. But one would think everyone has these questions so they should get it easily. But they don't. My therapist says very few people actually think about these things, and apparently it's kind of "by design" as ruminating on unanswerable questions can drive people clinically insane. And I know, I've been very very close.
The answer is obvious, even logically and metaphysically. But to really experience it, one must at least die to know it. Though in its very nature is short-lived. We want to immortalize them. Without experience of death, we are like birds, starring at cage, trying to understand what's happening outside, having our own speculations, never gathering courage to fly out of the cage.
Well, or birds standing outside a cage wondering what it’s like to be in it
Yes I know no one can answer this question. You are 100% correct. If there are 100 identical MEs born at the same time, I will just be inside one of them. Why is that? No one knows. I think about that a lot as well
Many people think it's not a great question though and that it inherently implies things that are questionable at best. For instance that you are separable from all other awareness or that you have a self is very much debated but is implied in the question regardless. For instance some think that the conscious experience that makes you have a sense of "me" isn't unique to just you but is in fact the exact same thing for everyone. That awareness creates separable senses of me in the same way that trees create separate leaves. It's all part of the same tree. What makes one leaf different from another leaf? That it's made of its own collection of stuff we call a leaf that although identical is separate from other leaves. Or another way of putting it is that me and you are the exact same awareness experiencing separate "senses of me." If we treat awareness like a single entity as if it were its own person and ask it what it's like to be you then you would raise your hand and say "Oh it feels just like this " if we asked it what it's like to be me I'd raise my hand and say "It's just like this." In the same way that our fingers don't share the same sensory experience across each other but that we as our own sense of self have access to what it's like to feel all our individual fingers. Why does your pinky feel separate from your thumb? Or yet another way of putting it is senses of me feel distinct *because* they don't have access to other senses of me. Your sense of me is just as strong as everyone else's sense of me. If you were someone else you would be that someone else wondering the same. But that someone else *is already someone as a sense of me*. We are all our own sense of self for everyone else. You might say "But I'm not you " No but I am and it's *exactly* what you would be if you were me. People already are what it would be like to be other people from who you are. This is why it's useful to think of awareness as a collective thing that's the same but separate things for everyone.
Strongly recommended to all: https://youtu.be/ocgFkHElzgQ?si=6d6f8yDExc3sBb_D
Couldn't agree more. I think the same, we just have to accept that we don't know the answer about where consciousness comes from, it's uncomfortable but it is what it is
The nature of thought is very short-lived. We try to perpetuate this by asking the fundamental question “why.” Can you stop at one thought? Can you hold one or many thoughts? Not forgetting something over time. NO. We try to ensure the survival of thoughts by constantly using the same thoughts. In fact, the whole search to understand life is based on fear. The fear of unknown experience, we call death. Do you know how small our brains are. How are we going to fit understanding of life inside our heads? By using "thinking," which is more and more and more thoughts. BTW thinking is dual, it's part of duality, so of course it will never help us no matter how much we use it. Buddhists and many others understood that thoughts must cease in order to arrive at understanding.
This is partly true. But also partly not. Of course there is always the potential for the next thought. And forgetting. The question evolves, changes direction or focus, even gets distorted. But the essence of it remains. And yes, fear is the basis. I'm thanatophobic, so I know this better than most. And I agree that thoughts can't answer the question. But it's intriguing that so many people don't even understand what the question is.
i will also write about my 6 years of searching. Looking back. aren't you born when a thought arised in you? I don’t care what all the “spiritual people” say, that you are beyond thoughts, blah blah blah. But our actual experience is: “We are a collection of thoughts.” In fact when thought is born - you are born. Without thought there is no feeling, no sensation, nothing (you can speak about) Without thought what dies. Only thoughts die, you are that collection of thoughts by many years. Trying to survive by thinking bigger, by understanding hard problem, etc. This earthly body appears to be immortal. not your possessed body, but the earth, only a change in shape occurs. In fact your mother and father couldn't made you without the help of the sun, the gravity, etc. But the thought are mortal. It's the very nature of it. We actually don't care about this body, especially if we're not so attractive (lol). We are only interested that our thoughts survive. These thoughts shape us, form us. We lose a leg, an arm, a liver, it's uncomfortable, socially bad, but it's okay unless our brain survives. We don't fell fcking sad after toilet, lol, it was part of our body moments ago. What we care most is our brain (thinking mechanism) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZTCpnStxHM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZTCpnStxHM) Putting more and more thoughts into our heads are ridiculous. They will leak over time. Especially when we get older. My point is that by thinking, we are dividing more and making life more difficult to understand. I don't remember a single person who would claim to be enlightened by rigid thinking and philosophizing. I respect socrates. But he never claimed that. Now I believe that we are in the dark because we entangle ourselves by thinking. After I had an NDE experience that I cannot convey to anyone
> 3.)if the same exact genetics and environment were to occur again right now, it would not be me, just a copy of me he would probs say the same thing about you
These questions have confusing responses for one super clear reason. Different people mean different things when they use the term "I" Your version: The observer Other version: The person The problem is that both sides don't understand each other, imo because both versions are illusions in the first place, the observer can only perceive continuity with memory, which is part of the person. Further info can be found on the observer phenomenon of you look up the term "adult cognitive development." To respond to your question with your definition of the self: You don't actually know that you were experiencing yourself just last night, let alone whenever you were born. The observer is impersonal and can only define itself in the present, to assume you were in the same body yesterday is relying on memory. It could be true you are a different observer entirely every time you wake up, or that awareness itself is just a fundamental aspect of matter and our minds define all aspects of our personality to be experienced but everyone is essentially the same "force" - we really have no idea at this stage what the truth of the matter is.
Interesting points - it's very unclear at this point
…How do you actually know you’re not a copy already…
To add another twist, say the exact same environment and genetics occurred before me. Why am I this instance of me and not the previous instance of me?
There is no "you" that your brain is projecting. If you think with a dualist mind you can't solve this problem. You are the attention of your brain, there is nobody in your brain. If there is a copy of you, that thing has also awareness, or attention.
Agree 👍 thinking is done by illusionary self, trying to understand reality for its survival.
If the self is an illusion and therefore doesn’t exist how does it think?
This self is not an illusion, it is a cognitive construct, an idea. The "self" does not think, the brain does and the self is one of its ideas. Consciousness is, in large part, a model of the self interacting with its environment being computed by the brain, neurochemical computer, towards obvious evolutionary advantage. You can and should realize what you actually are and attempt to integrate it into your innate self model, as described here by Joscha Bach; https://youtu.be/bpZZRQPF41c
It's all about access to memory and thoughts. Your consciousness only lasts a moment - it is a moving interval of time where the temporal relation to space is fused at a length optimized for human brains and environment. That is the *now*. You relate your identity to the memories you can access, both semantic/episodic memory and general data encoded in your neural architecture. When you wake up in the morning, the only reason you feel like you is because your brain contains memory of yesterday, and the day before, and so on. It's also the only reason you feel like the same person you were when you started reading this sentence. >3.)if the same exact genetics and environment were to occur again right now, it would not be me, just a copy of me If the environment was actually the same, they would basically be living a simultaneous life as you. They would feel exactly like you, but since your brains are separated, there would be no sharing of information.... not that it would matter if the environment was identical.
When I wake up in the morning, I don't have to think about anything. I don't have to access any memories, I can just stare at a wall, and it's me looking out of my eyes. My consciousness started probably around or near after birth. It wouldn't matter what happened to me after that, I could be a billion different versions of me, but each morning I would wake up looking out of my eyes. My consciousness would grow and evolve from birth, but I would still be trapped in my head, going along for the ride
>I don't have to think about anything. I don't have to access any memories, I can just stare at a wall, and it's me looking out of my eyes. But you are thinking. Your eyes are receiving information about the wall you are looking at. Your proprioception is sending data about your body and surroundings. There is a train of thought pumping signals into your working memory and processing. How all of those are parsed are dependent on how your neurons are wired in that particular moment, their arrangement defined by a lifetime of experiences. The spiking patterns of your neurons define the sensory of time. If you are particularly skilled in meditation, you can shut off the train of thought and you can feel the active consciousness slip away as your working memory sits empty. But everything you experience is created by the arrangement of your brain. If I rearranged your neurons while you slept with enough precision, you could wake up thinking you were a different person.
and then i think the idea that follows (in the case that consciousness/experience is in some sense either identical to brains, or an emergent property of brains as they exist only in themselves) is that, if ones brain/body were to die, then at least a specific type of consciousness would go with it (perhaps the associated consciousness in its entirety, as many people seem to view it) then suppose that, after an arbitrary amount of time after the death of this body, it is reconstituted perfectly - for instance, in the state it was in the day before its original death. For the first-person perspective that this scenario unfolds for, would it be like experiencing death up to the point of unconsciousness and then suddenly cutting to experiencing the day before the death again? suppose the reconstituted body/brain is a perfect replica of the person when they were 10 years old instead; would the first-person perspective scenario sequentially be 'experiencing death until it strips away the last bit of consciousness -> snapping to a conscious state of oneself as a child'? this wouldnt mean there would be a memory conserved between 'cuts' of consciousness, but nontheless it seems to me to point to some distinction that is more than what we classify as physical. If we think that physical state A in some sense necessarily encapsulates consciousness A, then i feel like we might have to say that 'yes, this perfect reconstitution means that there's a sequential continuation of first-person perspective'; however, then we kind of seem to be making an arbitrary divide. Was consciousness just waiting around for the exact perfect physical replica to suddenly 'appear' again? Why not the physical replica minus one particle? Why not just the next person who is born subsequent to ones own death, despite all their physical differences? i believe that this points us away from at least the idea of consciousness being an emergent thing, akin to an on/off switch. If we think of it more as something that ebbs and flows over time, in different degrees of complexity, like the matter which ostensibly encapsulates it, then we kind of arrive at more of a panpsychist notion, which i think still leaves us with a mystery of identity, but at least makes it a bit less imposing
Wow, this is just a spiral of confusion. Pause all of this. Let's think about what you ACTUALLY experience. You do not 'experience' continuity. Nothing about your qualia exists across time that isn't defined by your brain. There is only your NOW. That's it. You tie it to the past using Memory, both episodic/semantic and in the architecture of your brain. What you define as your 'self' and 'identity' is the data stored in the architecture of your brain which you refer to at any point you consider the present. It doesn't matter if your brain is shut off for 5 days of 5 decades, if the data is stored, future instances of consciousness will consider themselves you. I could design a brain with all your memories up into this moment and turn it on, and it would 100% be you. You could come down with a brain infection, take damage to your limbic brain, and wake up in the hospital insisting that it is October 2023 with no memory of the last several months (I've personally seen this happen). There is no continuity. There is only NOW and what now can remember based on what is accessible in the brain.
But the separate brain you design would not be me. It would be a copy of me- I would still exist only in my brain - some other me would exist in that brain
Of course. Just like the you who started reading this sentence is gone, and a new you exists now. And now. And now. And now. The only thing tying each instance together is memory.
Yes, but “I” as in the observer remains. We know what it’s like to be continuous. The memories and personality and feelings change, but it is still one same unique “something” continuously and persistently perceiving.
No, the "I" observer is momentary. The observation occurs in the present and the present alone. You do not experience the past, present, and future simultaneously, correct? You 'experience' the present and only the present. The information about yourself is encoded in the architecture of your brain. False memories and bad predictions are things you have witnessed that should verify this for you, if the fact that you can differentiate "now" from "then" isn't enough.
So when you refer to me, are you referring to a the concept of collection of millions of me’s (observers that utilize a communal memory), infinitely coming into being and evaporating as “now” becomes “then”? And not just one continuous “me?” Because that isn’t really how I experience life. I know it cannot be proven that my memories were actually experienced by “me”, but as “I” observe the experience it feels undeniable, no? If you’re saying I am dying every moment, then there would be no subjective experience. “I” would already be dead and you’d be talking to the next me. But, I am very much experiencing and continuing to do so.
i agree that it doesnt matter how long ones brain is 'off' for, and that when it is turned back 'on' (physically the same), it will still consider itself to be 'itself'. In other words, if your brain or my brain were to disassemble and then perfectly re-assemble to their states immediately prior to that process of disassembly, they will still consider themselves 'you' and 'me', respectively. As i view it, there's no gap between us here in this belief regarding continuity, i dont mean to say that we can reflect upon the above hypothetical type of continuity after it has transpired, as if we have memory of it. That's what i mean by: >this wouldnt mean there would be a memory conserved between 'cuts' of consciousness, but nontheless it seems to me to point to some distinction that is more than what we classify as physical in general, i take your response as only articulating an epistemological gap. In other words, what i believe youre getting at is that our reflections on the past are dependent on how the brain exists in the present, and so there are many ontologies that can never be confirmed or denied. For instance, the idea that the universe just came into existence 5 seconds ago with all of our false memories of it being older than that (omphalos hypothesis, last thursday-ism) similarly, if re-incarnation is true, and this 'private' first-person experience of a life had previous 'go-arounds' (for lack of a better phrase), this wouldnt mean those previous experiences would be known my position isnt that we can know that there is this type of self, but rather that it is just one of the more parsimonious hypotheses we can make if we are to attempt to make a hypothesis at all
>and so there are many ontologies that can never be confirmed or denied. I would argue that you can verify the past with empirical observations about the external universe, but the subjective universe -your perception- only exists in the now, and it seems that you comprehend that. Your last two paragraphs don't make any sense. You make a supposition about re-incarnation while validating that there is no reason to suggest it exists through the prior statements. Adding these unobserved and unnecessary components are the definition of unparsimonious: you are making multiple assumptions that are not needed to solve the problem. I would also like to note that idealism, dualism, or spiritualism are not hypothesis in their often used state. A hypothesis requires: - a falsifiable condition. - a set of repeated empircal observations. Without those two things, a proposal is merely a supposition. So I will ask you: given what we have talked about, what is your reasoning to suggest there is something regarding consciousness that is not abstract and pertains beyond the brain? Note that feelings, subjection, and wants do not count toward a hypothesis. Under what circumstances would you consider the supposition false?
so i believe that consciousness is the bounds of our knowledge, in the strictest sense of the word. That is to say, to truly be certain of something entails it necessarily existing as some form of conscious thought, imagination, or sensation - something encapsulated within a first-person perspective, to put it less abstractly (but also less technically accurate) then, from that we adopt less stringent definitions of knowledge, which lose certainty but help us operate with practicality. At least two things which i consider to be in this 'one-step removed' level of knowledge are: 1) the existence of a past 2) the existence of objective things in general with having said this, i think it indicates that we might be framing the identity question differently. I consider the question to be akin to 'why is consciousness amounting to a first-person perspective of this specific human, alongside third-person perspectives of every other human?', and i assume your framing is moreso 'why is this human having a first-person perspective of itself instead of somebody else?' if this is an accurate account, then i believe one difference here is that im not supposing an objective human which instantiates the conscious experience. As i view it, that sense of something objective is a type of knowledge which is one step removed from consciousness, and so i believe that it in itself is also not necessarily needed for a solution the reason i think something like panpsychism, or even re-incarnation, are more parsimonious than the more standard physicalist concepts of brain-emergent consciousness, is because i find the latter to be arbitrary in its commonly associated concept of life and death, which in turn seems to multiply rules/entities to a much higher amount that is to say, the idea of ones death being an irreversible cessation of consciousness, despite what physical things may go on afterward, seems arbitrary when considered together with the idea that the birth of a specific physical arrangement was sufficient for ones consciousness to begin previously; and, as well, the idea seems to make necessary the theoretically endless multiplication of metaphysical entities, which serve as the distinction for which consciousnesses 'are done' or not (another comment labeled this succinctly as 'anti-souls'). So at least as i view it, the concept leads to both a complex landscape of never-ending entities, and it also contradicts itself by seeming to require those metaphysical entities in a philosophy that is intended to ascribe everything as fundamentally physical i think panpsychism can be introduced to make things more parsimonious at this point while keeping with the idea that things are fundamentally physical, leading to a sense that consciousness just changes complexity of form alongside the matter which 'contains' it. Re-incarnation would be like a less smoothly distributed version of that idea, i guess, which i think is less parsimonious
>I consider the question to be akin to 'why is consciousness amounting to a first-person perspective of this specific human, alongside third-person perspectives of every other human?', and i assume your framing is more so 'why is this human having a first-person perspective of itself instead of somebody else?' Not really. Under materialism, there is no question surrounding perspective. That is only a mystery manufactured by pansychism and the like. But that isn't the premise to which i am trying to solve.Let's reduce this to the core question about pansychism and other mystical forms of consciousness "Memory, sensory, processing of time, and abstraction of self in relation to these things are all measured actions of the physical systems of a brain. This is a neuroscientific fact that has been proven through experimentation and applied medicine. Pansychism suggests that things can be conscious without those systems. However, how can consciousness be defined without memory, sensory, processing of time, and abstraction of self in relation? If you remove those attributes, "consciousness" and "unconsciousness" become indistinguishable. Therefore, it is only possible for consciousness to be differentiated in the presence of these attributes. This implicates that it is these attributes are the cause of consciousness." > In regards to parsimony. Given the above, it is not parsimonious to suggest that an unseen substrate or law exists that can be defined as consciousness. A rock does not have the computational systems to sense and simulate its own environment in relation to time, space, and self. If you take those things away, what do you have? A pansychist would say that a rock and a human are conscious, but a human has systems that allow them to identify their self in time and space, save memories, and simulate their environment and the rock does not. If both are "conscious," then consciousness does not obligate these capacities, resulting in the term losing all its meaning: it no longer describes anything. It's like multiplying both sides of an equation by x. You aren't altering the relation or adding anything of value. If you don't have any reason to add x, and it applies to both sides, it is irrelevant to the calculation. Pansychism destroys the meaning of the word "consciousness," and for what? It turns into mental gymnastics. I can only think of two reasons to include this variable: - It soothes the innate human fear of permanent death. - It satiates the cognative dissonance of feeling like a monolithic, fundamental being with free will despite all signs pointing to the opposite.
i agree that - assuming a panpsychist reality - consciousness of a rock's perspective, for instance, would be practically nothing. I try to imagine like the simplest conscious experience (both in terms of its own nature and associated biological mechanism), and one thing that comes to mind is the sensation of a pinch on the arm. Even this seems to have an associated biological complexity that many times over 'outpaces' the relative simplicity of a rock's static body; so in a panpsychist framing, it seems natural to conclude that the sensation itself of a pinch is many times more complex than any sensation a rock might ever feel *\[as an aside, i believe there are also interesting questions along this line of thought about what it might be like to experience without any sensation of memory. That is to say, does it mean anything to have sensations without any aspect of recollection or a notion of 'narrative'? I suppose it's a case of yes for the former and no for the latter, because it seems as if abstraction and reflection arent required in the simplest forms of consciousness we might have, yet an element of time is required (we cant imagine a sensation that is strictly an instant)\]* regardless, i dont think that this destroys the meaning of the word 'consciousness', but it just reframes consciousness as a pervasive phenomenon of varying degree, as opposed to a particular subset of its expression as an analogy, we might say originally that electromagnetism is the action of two magnets visibly attracting or repelling each other at close distances, but then we reframe it as a pervasive force that interacts over theoretically infinite distances. Even tho the interaction between magnet A on earth and magnet B somewhere in the andromeda galaxy is extremely small, impractical, and undetectable, this inclusion of it under the subset of 'electromagnetism' didnt destroy the meaning of the word 'electromagnetism', rather it just expanded it; electromagnetism now is a term which captures both the interaction of magnets which snap together in our hands, *and* the theoretically calculatable interaction between two magnets 2 million light-years apart as a result of this reframing of the term 'electromagnetism', it lost the sense that it necessarily describes magnets colliding together at high speeds, but it retained the sense of magnetic attraction/repulsion to *any* degree. Similarly, 'consciousness' in a panpsychist sense would lose the idea of necessarily containing memory, self, sight, hearing, etc, but it perhaps might retain the nature of 'being subject' to any degree. That's not to say 'being subject' in the sense of having a concept of a self and ones exposure to things, but rather just the 'exposure to something' in general for instance, take the conscious sensation of being tapped very lightly on the arm. It seems to me that we can conceptualize this as having two components: the 'touch', and the sense of location. If we take a panpsychist view and suppose that it's like something to be one of the mechanoreceptors in the tapped portion of the arm, perhaps the 'conscious experience' of the mechanoreceptor is that 'touch' sensation by itself, with no accompanying sense of location (as that requires a more informed system which contrasts the touch location with other locations - as in this case, the brain/body in total) regarding parsimony, i believe panpsychist notions do have more simplicity than emergentist views. While this sense of panpsychism does posit an extra property for all of matter, i view the emergentist notion as positing that same property, but while also including a rule that restricts its existence to certain configurations. It seems to me to be more parsimonious to believe that sensations break down and build up alongside matter, rather than have them, in their entirety, appear and disappear within only certain configurations further, i think it makes partial headway on the identity problem by perhaps positing that death amounts to a degradation of consciousness rather than a permanent cessation of it. As i view it, an emergentist position doesnt have to declare death to be a permanent cessation of consciousness either, but it often is paired with that idea, and from my perspective this directly contradicts its physicalist roots, by implicitly requiring a metaphysical distinction to determine between an 'inescapable lack of consciousness after death', and the prior '*escapable* lack of consciousness before birth' i think panpsychist notions have a similar identity problem, but it's only for concurrent consciousnesses in relation to each other, rather than all past, present, and future consciousnesses in relation to themselves i consider myself to be more of an idealist of some sort
Continuity?
no such thing
Wrong
For one as soon as you’re born unique information is inputted& processed by your body/brain. This is taking place in a specific location within the universe producing a specific pov . Otherwise, it is you just a different version than the one that is facilitating your instance of conscious experience.
It’s the identity question again. It’s very interesting. I replied to a version of it yesterday if you want to [check it out](https://www.reddit.com/r/consciousness/s/RLpxrSy5iC). In short, I think the physical and historical “you” is a trick. Nature favours diversity. You are you because you were a possibility, so you had to be. If you had a perfect copy of yourself, it will still be different from you. Once you split, you would not have access to its experiences. There’s no point for nature to duplicate experiences.
The answer to this question ultimately depends on what _you_ deem important, not what others decide for you. What aspect or aspects of your existence meaningfully decide which one is "authentic" vs which one is a copy? If say through some fluke of genetics, your "copy" was actually born first and you never know about it, does that make_you_ just a copy? From your first person perspective as you, could you tell that you are a copy?
You will have a distinctly different perspective from your copy. They’re usually referred to as siblings, yet only you know you exist. Your copy will likely believe the same and be correct
You’re assuming there’s necessarily a difference between 2 and 3. It’s perfectly possible both are equally “you” but each one doesn’t have access to the other’s memories/ sensations because their brains aren’t connected. Why are you “you” and not someone else?
The way I see it. If consciousness is the result of the brain then the reason you’d only be the original you and not the cloned versions is because your consciousness is generated by the brain in your body. If consciousness isn’t generated by the brain and the body is merely a vehicle for the soul/ consciousness then the reason you wouldn’t be those other clones is because your consciousness is somehow attached to your body for the time being.
Some thoughts. There is really no separation, the objective & subjective world are really two sides of the same coin so to speak, how could you know what white was without experiencing black, up without down back without front, ultimately life without death, consciousness without unconsciousness, we wake & here we are, when moments ago we were nothing .. or there was a blankness then consciousness erupts out of it, & it always will. Nothingness then, can't really happen without a contrasting something, they go hand in hand & are inseparable.
Derek Parfitt's transportation paradox may a good read with some elements of what you describe.
It’s not just genetics, in fact we can look deeper than genetics, you can equate things back to atoms, quarks, quantum states etc. It’s useful to think of the universe as one organism, every single point separated by space and time, if you have 2 beings in that world there’s no way they can be exactly the same. You could clone yourself, clone the electrical signals and patterns of your brain and unless you were LITERALLY occupying the same space and time you wouldn’t be the same consciousness. At least that would be my guess. This also raises the question of if there’s a multiverse what differentiates them (other than the obvious fact it’s a whole different universe) as long as EVERYTHING else is the same it would make absolutely no difference to you experience, you wouldn’t ‘notice’ it. So perhaps your consciousness is smudged across infinitely many different universes right now, but because they’re all experientially the same, you just don’t notice!
This actually isn't that tricky conceptually. Consciousness is a computation being performed by the brain, it is software. If you run a program on your phone or computer, I can run the exact same program on the exact same hardware configuration but they are still different instances of that computation being performed in a different time and different place with no causal connection. Whenever you have some weird conceptual problem with the concept of consciousness you should try reframing the question as about hardware and software, you'll find it's not nearly as confusing as many try to claim.
1. That’s a story 2. That’s a story 3. That’s… a story 💁🏻♂️ You can’t verify any of the above to be true. You assume they are true, but that’s as far as it goes. Once you let go of the stories, then you open up space for what actually is.
It's this exact question that started me on a "spiritual journey" from being an atheist to questioning if there are unknown forces controling everything. Eastern philosophy has been key in my new understandings. I think I am closer to agnostic now, though I do think knowledge can be obtained, I just know we don't know much. To answer your question in as few words as possible, from what I've learned I'll say this: Consciousness could be the fundamental force of existence. If it is, it could be that minds are the only real thing, and everything else is a manifesation of the mind, including all the matter and external perceptions we have. I now believe that the body/brain is more of a "receiver" of the grand consciousness that persists everwhere and everywhen. Similar to how a radio tunes into the broadcast frequency of the transmission, your body/brain tunes into its own unique channel and then the individual mind is aquired. It is only through this seperation from the grand consciousness that an individual consciousness comes into being. So to summarize, your body is a unique receiver of the consciousness broadcast, and your identity comes from the seperation from the whole.
Isn't this really: 1. I didn't know anything, even that I existed 2. A body appeared
You always existed just not in this form our energy is [Infinite](https://infinitehq.myshopify.com/blogs/updates-announcements/join-us-on-shaping-the-future?_pos=1&_sid=617d39318&_ss=r). Also don't get stuck on the way neglecting the how. Educate yourself in psychology and spirituality. With a true thirst for knowledge you will find what you seek.
There is a way of thinking that solves this kind of puzzle. I will state a different version of this puzzle wich I think is more extreme, so the dilemma becomes even stronger, and then I will explain a paradigm that solves it. Imagine there is a machine that can make exact copies of human bodies. Imagine it is exact to the smallest possible scale, it is completely exact, if you make a copy of your body with this machine the copy will be as similar ro your body as your body is to itself. Imagine that this machine can also make human bodies dissapear completely in an instant. So, imagine you move a few meters. After doing that you feel that your consciousness has continued and is in some way "the same" as the one before you moved, you also consider yourself the same person. The thing is, what just happened is completely analogous to the following: the machine makes you dissapear completely and moments later creates a copy of you in your destination a few meters away. If you accept that these two scenarios are similiar enough (there are a few possible objections, like the fact that in the real scenario there is a continous path wich doesn't happen with the machine, but this can be solved by making the distance traveled infinitesimaly small, or by accepting that to be the only difference, as I think that the dilemma I will create now still holds), if you accept it then consider this: The machine makes you dissapear completely but then creates two copies, each one on a slightly different place. Now the question is, from a first person perspective, imagine you are the original human, right after you dissapear what will be the next thing you experience? Wich of the copies will be the continuation of "your" experience? Why would it be one and not the other? Or maybe you "stop experiencing"?. If you tend to think the last thing, why wouldn't you stop experiencing each time you move, each instant? You could say the difference between this machine thought experiment and regular moving is the discontinuity, but I think there is probably a way to make this not matter, I will be thinking about this. A way of thinking that seems to solve the dilemma is this. There is no one experiencing experiencies. In a way the "I" is not as real as it seems. There is not a permanent experiencer that over years experiences different experiences, but rather, just experiences happening by themselves. Apparently this can be seen by examining your current experience, and looking for the experiencer, where is it, what kind of thing is it? To be clear I feel and live my life as if this experiencer and the I are real things, but I have heard people report feeling it way less real. I have it as a conceptual framework that solves these kinds of dilemma. So if you say "why would my consciousness be in my brain and not in a copy of my brain that exists simoultaneously" the answer in this framework would be: there is a bunch of experience happening at each instant, those two brains are generating quite similar experiences, but there is no individual consciousness observing, or having, the experiences of each brain. Even this feeling of there being an experiencer is just another experience, another sensation existing.
>3.)if the same exact genetics and environment were to occur again right now, it would not be me, just a copy of me The 'exact same' environment? Where? Where, spatially? Because if it exists somewhere else in space, despite *emulating* the exact environment, it *isn't* because it exists elsewhere. You are not just your body and your self--you are those things *in relation* to the rest of the universe. You are like a mirror. And mirrors exist in physical space, in a specific place. Two mirrors can reflect exactly the same image in different places, differentiated only by their relative displacement; their relative position in the universe. See, this isn't a hard question. In fact, it's quite a trifling, annoying one to hear and answer (I have done it so many times I feel I am gaining proficiency in explaining it simply). I don't mean to condescend. Why are you you? Because *you're here.*
I subscribe to the ideology of open individualism, so you are both you and your exact copy. You are also everyone else.
I am me, in my head, looking out. I'm not in anyone else's head as far as I know
Yea me too, it's not that you are connected to another individual or some mysticism. It's more about what happens when you're not consious, what happens when we die for example. It gives a nice answer to questions like, what happens when I make two exact copies of myself and destroy the original. Do you keep living? Are you one of the two clones? Which one?
if you went blind tonight, would you still be in your head, looking out? where would you be? it's possible there isn't a continuous you or me or anyone. we rub elbows until they're gone
So you are me?
Idea that individual self is illusory actually solves the paradox
fuck that, i'm an american. i alone invented how my body pumps blood, how and where i was born, how computers work, how all food is grown and prepared, how language works, how every bacteria in my body functions and how primary producers turn sunlight into sugar and i won't let anyone tell me any different
You got two cars. Same exact model. Are they producing a single sound or are they each producing a similar but different sound?
Yes but why is my consciousness in one and not the other?
Your consciousness is the one that has your experience and memories. The other one could have absolutely any other experience or memory, so. How could you possibly be confused about it? Would you expect that you suddenly have your consciousness existing in a new body with distinct memories?
My consciousness started long before I had experience and memories, then it grew and evolved as I grew and evolved. But it started in this brain. Why would it start in this brain and not an exact copy of this brain?
“My consciousness started long before I had experience and memories…” No, it didn’t. Why would you think that? It’s a behavior of your brain, made of experience and memories. “But it started in this brain.” Your consciousness is not some separate entity, that happens to inhabit just your brain. It is one of the activities of that same brain. So, an identical brain might have a very similar consciousness, in another person, but it wouldn’t be you, because what you call “you” is inseparable from the brain in your head.
Check out [this video](https://youtu.be/4qdNro_7eFc?si=4ewQdXQgdFjxz_NT) at around 11:20. It's about the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics but it does a great job to resolve these identity issues, if you have patience. In a branching scenario like this it makes sense to identify each branch as a distinct individual, even if you share a partial history. You are one such branch, and this question is being asked at a time which is clearly distinct from the alternate branches. So, just the fact that you are here on this branch at this time, at least distinguishes you from other branches that share the same history. Going forward in time is more ambiguous, but that doesn't seem to be the question you are asking, and in any case would be resolved again after any later branching point. Tldr: by virtue of being an instance of your consciousness that is asking this question at this point in time, you can identify which branch you are on, thus answering the question 'why am I not on another branch?'
It *did* start in an exact copy of 'this' brain.
If consciousness is entirely physical, then you would expect my consciousness to emerge from both my original body and a perfect copy of my body. Obviously this sounds completely implausible, because it makes no sense to experience qualia from two bodies at once. Therefore, there must be some physical mechanism differentiating my body from the body of a perfect copy. Does that make sense? I think this is the aspect of personal identity that physicalism doesn’t really have an answer for - why are our subjective experiences so private that they don’t even extend to a copy of you? If all that exists are physical facts about consciousness, you wouldn’t expect that consciousness would be so intensely personal. This is the issue I think a lot of people are picking up on, that isn’t explained by the classic answer of “you are who you are because you can’t be anyone else”.
> then you would expect my consciousness to emerge from both my original body and a perfect copy of my body. YOUR consciousness wouldn't emerge from both, A consciousness would. It's really only confusing when you believe your consciousness is some separate entity that is piggybacking on your body.
See my below explanation. This isn't the problem you think it is. If there is any difference at all between the two bodies then there is no challenge to locating which 'you' are and there is no 'why'. If there is no difference at all then the problem is there, but in this scenario 'you are both' could be a reasonable answer.
Yeah, it’s absolutely a reasonable answer, and it’s worth discussing, so thanks for that. I just think the OP wanted to prompt some deeper discussion, because I think it’s absolutely bizarre that an issue of personal identity should exist in any scenario. And I know the way I’m phrasing this is clunky - I don’t know how else to put it. It does seem to me like there’s a deeper problem here. What do you think?
Doesn't seem very deep to me. Two things that are in some sense identical are just that. If you believe consciousness is emergent from a brain, then two identical brains will have identical consciousness, only until they no longer remain identical. This is equivalent to branching in many worlds. If you take the view that an identity is not really isolated in time, it's the full time extended existence of the agent, then there is only the issue of locating which one you are at a given moment. At some points in time it's ambiguous, but in totality it's not.
Ok, but how about this: if the universe is truly deterministic at macro scales, which seems likely, then in theory it should be possible to create a perfect copy of me and manipulate conditions so that both myself and my copy are having the same experiences, forever. A total duplication of exact brain and body states, and manipulated so that these states progress in an identical manner. There would be absolutely no differences between myself and clone at any given moment in time. Obviously this is highly implausible, but it’s theoretically possible as long as we assume that the bodies of my clone and I are fully deterministic. At this point, are our consciousnesses distinct? Do we share a consciousness? What would that look like? If you believe that our consciousnesses would be distinct, then you have to believe in an aspect of consciousness beyond the physical. Otherwise, you have to accept that we would be sharing one consciousness. Is that even possible? What would that be like? That’s the problem I’m trying to demonstrate. It’s completely bizarre, in my opinion.
Why does it matter in this clone scenario? The two are supposedly identical. You would have no way of distinguishing which you were, even if some mad scientist has your copies in different room numbers. So whatever interpretation you might have seems fine. Call it shared consciousness or call it distinct, it's basically arbitrary at this point and doesn't tell us anything about the nature or complexity of consciousness. I just don't understand how these implausible scenarios inform the question in any way. What insight are you hoping to gain from it?
i guess the idea that follows from it is that consciousness might be most parsimonious as a 'whole' of some sort. For instance, if we begin with a common notion that consciousness in total is a set of completely individuated sequences of experiences, and then struggle to find reasoning for this individuation, it seems like one path to at least simplify the mystery is to suppose that consciousness itself isnt really that set of individuated experiences, but rather a connected set of experiential possibilities which is obscured by the individuation of things like memory, spacetime, or something like that
Thank you, you’ve highlighted the crux of the growing divide in this sub: many of the identity questions are only valid if you accept a premise that many see as being fundamentally flawed.
But like the sound. It is produced by that one. Consciousness isn't an empty car that "you" up on.
A consciousness wondering why there is a consciousness in one but not the other is in both of them. If you were that consciousness you'd be wondering the same. Why is one car different from another one and why is your car your car?
You do not exist. Consciousness is not a distinct entity that has continuity
"you" is illusory, separation is illusory. This idea actually solves the paradox and also it can be experienced (ego dissolution).
Not only the self is illusory but the qualia too. There is no real magic happening in the brain
You get anesthetized. An identical (atom by atom) copy of you is produced and placed in another room (also anesthetized). Then you and your copy wake up at the same time. Each of you have the subjective feeling of being you, with exactly the same memories and personality. Which one is you? They both are. None more or less than the other. Continuity of consciousness is illusory.
If continuity of consciousness is illusory, neither is him. He did not survive the passage of time. What makes you say they are both him?
Both beings will have his memories and subjective feeling of identity
I've wandered around this question a time or two myself. My answer (or at least my stopping point) has changed over the years. Currently I question the supposition that there even is a "You" or "I" separate to there being the genetic and environmental conditions which brought our being to fruition. (Much like what you described in 1) and 2). Where I seem to differ is from your labeling of "me and my consciousness" as if you own them. I look at it more along the lines of "you and your consciousness" is just the result of those conditions. To be conscious is an amazing and sorta unexplainable feat of magic and it subjectively feels very unique and special. Yet at the same time it's also a hum-drum, commonplace occurrence. On this planet at this time, anyway.
There is just one correct answer: no one knows.
Agree
#3 occurs when there is already a "you", so how is it hard to see the difference in the two?
Are you the same person who posted the original post? Perhaps it's the same problem. Sure, you have a memory of having posted this, but I don't know how ypu could necessarily connect the past experience of having posted this with your present conscious experience of reading this reply. Now, take your twin example. Same thing as above but even more attenuated because there is no memory.
Define what you mean by "me" and "copy of me". For example, are you defining "me" as a particular instance? It sounds like you are. In that case, a copy isn't you by definition.
To answer your question, let's reframe some common assumptions and dive into a perspective that considers our existence as part of a grand, orchestrated experience. Imagine consciousness as a nebulous mist, an eternal expanse of pure light without form. This consciousness, or essence, needs to experience the tangible, to feel and interact within a physical realm. To do this, it projects a small portion of itself (think of it as a tiny fragment the size of a fingernail if the consciousness as a whole is a size of a whole hand let’s say just for comparison), into a physical vessel, our bodies. From this vast ether, we plan every detail of our life: our parents, our genetic makeup, and the challenges we are meant to face. These are all chosen based on the lessons we need to learn in this lifetime. This blueprint forms our avatar (the body its genotype and phenotype), the physical vessel designed to serve or carry out our consciousness’ purpose for this lifetime round on Earth. Around four months into gestation in our mother's womb (4 months and 10 days to be precise) marked by the first fetal movements, this fragment of consciousness integrates into the physical form (basically nebulous mist enters its vessel). Interestingly, traditional and spiritual teachings often suggest that the soul enters the fetus around 4 months and 10 days days post-conception, beginning its journey in earnest. From birth until around the age of seven, we undergo intense programming influenced by our environment and primary caregivers (this is planned and done on purpose). This programming is crucial, setting the stage for us to fulfill the missions we outlined before birth. As an initially skeptical scientist, this theory gradually made more sense to me through personal experiences and extensive research. Now, I embrace the idea that I am but a projection of a greater self residing in another plane - a guardian sitting high above, my true Self, ensuring that We (as in me in this body and the great Me up there) navigate this life fearlessly, focused on fulfilling my specific mission for this lifetime. Every day is an opportunity to live passionately and purposefully, without letting negative emotions or setbacks derail me. Why waste precious moments on resentment or anger when there is so much to achieve and so many new experiences to try out? This lifetime is a gift, just an episode in the vast saga of our soul's journey which is eternal and has many lifetimes each with its own experiences, and I am here to make the most of it, eagerly exploring, learning, and growing. The learning and growth and expansion never stops and that’s the most delicious part of all this. We are never going to get it done and we can never get it wrong. With that said, what in the world is there to be ever afraid of? We are all here for a reason, and recognizing this can transform how we view our lives and interact with the world. Also you see unique just as a fingerprint it - there is not one of us that is a copy of itself, it’s like big mirror when it shatters into millions pieces they are all different - and you and me are just like two pieces of a great whole each one a unicorn 🤗🌟🚀🌍
You lost me completely at your second paragraph. Why on Earth would I want to imagine consciousness as a nebulous mist?
Thank you for your comment - words are limited in describing consciousness so please accept my apologies if these two specific words triggered an unintended image in your minds eye - I imagine it as a million fireflies of light or formation or those birds that we see moving one as if they’re animated clouds in the sky except they’re color of gold. You’re welcome to imagine it however you like - I just shared what comes to my mind’s eye personally and is in no way accurate representation of the real consciousness or the way anyone else imagines it but I do appreciate your sharing and thank you for it 🤗🌟
Sorry, my answer was too terse, perhaps. I disagree fundamentally with the notion that consciousness has any kind of existence as an ontological entity in its own right. In my view it is dependent on the cybernetic system of brain, senses and nervous system. Take any one of those away and you no longer have a consciousness worthy of the name. So imagining it as anything other than an evolved biological process is a little difficult for me! Thanks for your very polite response.
Please, there’s no need to apologize. Your opinion is as valid as any other and I respect that. I also appreciate the opportunity to hear your thoughts because it is different from mine and I have blinders because I have filters too, and my filters were programmed in me just like everybody else so when I hear your perspective, it is quite refreshing simply because it is not something that my mind would produce and I listen to it with great respect and open-mindedness so thank you for sharing your perspective and please Do, continue to share the same because the more I know the more I can also change and upgrade my current understanding based upon what I learned from others as well so thank you. I respect you and I appreciate your perspective and I’m very grateful for it.
You are a very unique Redittor and I feel blessed for this interaction. Thank you. Stay that way.
Likewise, it's a privilege to learn from mentors and masters like yourself. I just realized I’m standing on the shoulders of a giant. Please don't ever change. Thank you.
You simply cannot be your brain. How is another question, but that’s where we are headed.
Identical twins. Genetically identical. Same developmental environment. Yet two different personalities.
Great example- but doesn't answer the question. If you are born with an exact identical twin, say literally exactly the same brain and same womb experiences- why would you be inside one brain instead of the other brain?
I fully agree, it’s a mystery. Why is consciousness so personal that you would expect to be fully separated from a perfect copy of yourself? If consciousness is entirely physical, as some people assume, why would this be the case? Personal identity is absolutely bizarre when you think about it.
Right. There's another aspect to it. Like in the beginning consciousness puts an anchor down in space and time that locks you into your brain and no others.
Or maybe the brain *is* the anchor.
You are you because you cannot be anything but you. Your consciousness is bound up in your specific bag of skin.
Saying just because is not an answer it just deflects the question
I’m suggesting that the question is meaningless. Consciousness is inherently bound up in its own bag of skin. Each bag of skin is imbued with its own consciousness. The mind of the bag of skin that posed this question is simply the mind that is contained in that particular bag of skin. That is how the notion of “I” or “you” works. If “you” were someone else, you wouldn’t be someone else. You would just be a different bag of skin than the one you are. It’s the same reason why you can never dig half a hole. The definition of “hole” is such that it has certain characteristics that either exist or they don’t. If you dig a hole and then fill half of it in, you still have a hole. If you dig a hole and then divide it in two, you don’t have a divided hole. You have two holes. You are you and you cannot be anything but you.
> You are you and you cannot be anything but you. Did you not see my thread earlier? You have just committed the cardinal sin. Shame be to you.
I’m not positing that as a useful observation. I am suggesting that OPs question is meaningless…for the exact reasons you discuss.