[ExI] Time and Personal Identity

[efc at disroot.org]

>       > Can we:
>       >  *  Can we change the clothes you are wearing? ✅
>       >  *  Change elements in your experience? ✅
>       >  *  Can we change atoms in your body? ✅ (had you eaten some other food
>       >  yesterday, you would still be here, having some experience)
>       >  *  Can we change atoms in your brain? ✅ (likewise, had you drank something
>       >  different, these different water molecules would now be in your brain)
>       >  *  Can we change which neurons are active? ✅ (depending on what random word
>       >  I wrote, different neurons are now active in your brain)
>       >  *  Can we change how neurons are wired? ✅ (since I gave you a particular
>       >  random word, and not the other, different patterns and memories being laid
>       >  down as altered neural connections)
>       >  *  Can we change your genes? 
>       >  *  Can we change who your parents were?
>       > Very quickly, we get to questions that have less and less obvious answers (short of having a theory of personal
>       identity).
>
>       True. I would add to that, the rate of change, and the eternally slippery amount
>       of change, and how that change is made (that is, a thought experiment, or a
>       change aligned and consistent with our laws of physics).
> 
> Good points. Those are also cases of concern that various theories of personal
> identity contend with.

I liked the closest continuer idea. I tried to grasp at something similar when
talking about the natural paths the electrons take, within the contraint of the
laws of physics to try and distinguish the system in its natural state, vs
changes to the system from without in the form of teleporting.

>       > Are you able to consider counterfactual situations? If not then this
>       > conversation is going to be very difficult, if not impossible.
>
>       Sorry, what do you mean? Could you please give an example?
> 
> I interpreted your "See above." As referring to when you wrote:
> 
> "If you mean, what would have happened  _if_ I did this earlier this morning,
> the question makes little sense, since this is impossible."
> 
> A counterfactual situation is one that concerns something which didn't happen.
> For example if someone asks "How hungry would you feel right now, if you
> didn't eat breakfast this morning?" And the person says "Well I did eat
> breakfast this morning." And if that person does not, or refuses to consider
> or address that hypothetical question because it concerns something that
> didn't actually happen, then that person isn't able to handle counterfactuals.
> 
> It is possible I misinterpreted your meaning of "since this is impossible" or
> what you meant by "see above."
> 
> But if I did interpret your answer correctly, then not being able to answer or
> consider questions involving alternative possible pasts (counterfactual
> events), imposes a severe limitation on the situations we can consider and
> which are especially important to developing theories of personal identity.

Ahhh... got it! Thank you for the explanation. This did send me down a
rabbithole. I like the fact that through you, and our discussions, I get exposed
to new questions. What I do not like, is the demand on my time to do you and
your arguments justice, and to form a somewhat informed opinion on the matter.
;)

When it comes to empirical evidence for hypotheses, I am not a fan of
counterfactuals, since they deal with potential, historical events we cannot
change. Therefore they do seen like pointless speculation to me, for the purpose
of getting some kind of empirical evidence for various ideas.

If it comes to counterfactuals I do think they have a valid place when it comes
to testing theories, when we can in fact test and change variables to see how
our theories are affected, as long as we can then _actually_ perform those
experiments and verify that what we see matches our speculation.

When it comes to questions such as what I ate this morning it might have its
place in trying to track down if I have a kind of allergy, since I can then
change my diet, but note that this again means that the variable I reason with
is something I am able to change in the real world and measure the result of. So
I could start with some counterfactual reasoning, am I allergic to substance a,
b, c, and then I proceed by just changing that variable in my diet, and then
track how I feel.

If we talk counter factuals such as if the Nazis would have won ww2, then we'd
see Dicks stories come to life I do not find useful when it comes to finding
truth, since we can never do that, so just like the principle of deductive
closure, while valid when doing logic puzzles, might lead us astray if we cannot
test the end result and verify, I think counterfactual reasoning that depends on
assumptions outside time and space equally lead us astray.

>       >       > All these questions probe at personal identity. What, and how much can be
>       >       > changed without losing who you are? What is the minimum that would have had to
>       >       > have changed before you were born to make sure you would never live?
>       >
>       >       I think perhaps this is an example of where thought experiments lead us astray,
>       >       since this is all in the past. If we cannot change the past, these types of
>       >       questions are difficult to answer. That does however, _not_ exclude various
>       >       experiments when it comes to the future.
> 
> I'm not asking you to change the past. Only to consider what might have
> happened, had something in the past occurred differently.

This is true, but the fact remains that this is not possible, so basing our
reasoning on something which is impossible I thinks risks causing confusion and
leads to wrong conclusions, or perhaps, meaningless conclusions.

>       > Okay, I would like to reframe this entirely as an equivalent thought
>       > experiment concerning the future. I hope you will oblige and consider this
>       > question thoroughly to give an answer. Here is the scenario:
...
>       > If you can answer this question (noteL it is not a trick question, but one
>       > meant to be straight-forward and one that nearly everyone can agree on) then
>       > we can proceed.
>
>       For the sake of discussion, let's go with yes. I think I know where you will go
>       with this, but I am curious.
> 
> In the field of personal identity, there is also an "easy game" and a "hard
> game".
> 
> Closed individualism conditions your existence on being born as a specific
> individual having a specific material body and specific genetic make up.
> (Empty individualism goes even further, conditioning it on a specific state of
> mind). By placing such tight constraints on coming into existence, one must
> overcome incredible odds in order to exist.

I think there is another way to analyze this, and that is a descriptive way. I
was born, and as a result I have a body, brain and a unique identity.

There is not condition here, it is just an event along a long chain of causes
and effects. It is the same with reality. It happens to us, we have no choice. I
think this also shows us that probability is part of the language of math, that
is only meaningful for us as conscious human beings. Without human beings,
"speaking" the language of math and probability, the concept is meaningless.

So going back to our thread about the world, what can be infered and what not, I
think you are committing the same kind of mistake here.

Another favourite example of mine is Pascals wager that shows you the mistakes
and error you end up with when you do probability with ideas, and especially
when adding infinities, and start to "weigh" probabilities.

That is why I think that grounding calculations in empirically verifiable
experiments is very valuable. Without that grounding, they tend to lead us
astray and distracts us from what we actually can find out.

With that in mind, as we have already established, with my strict criterias
there is a greater risk that I will miss things, or dismiss things, which you
are not susecptible to, and that is a good thing.

> Closed individualism is therefore (I argue) equivalent to the "hard game"
> described above, where "being awakened" requires a stroke of incredible luck.
> The difference is that winning in closed individualism requires winning a
> series of ancestral "sperm cell lotteries" rather than winning a series of
> coin tosses.) -- Note that the 1 in 2^1000 is reached and exceeded after
> considering 37 ancestor conceptions, which is just 5 prior generations.
> 
> Open individualism, is the equivalent of the easy game. No luck is required,
> no special circumstances were needed, you would always be born (awakened), no
> matter what.
> 
> So accepting that one is justified (based on one's observation of having been
> awakened) in concluding it is almost certain that they played the easy game,
> rather than the hard game. Your task is this:
> 
> To show why we are not similarly justified in concluding open individualism
> (the easy game) rather than closed individualism (the hard game).
>

That would be my arguemnt regarding counterfactuals. I think your intuition was
the right one here.

But if I look at the AI:s definition of open individualism vs closed
individualism:

"Closed individualism is a philosophical concept that posits that each person is
a distinct, separate individual with a unique identity that does not extend
beyond their own consciousness. In this view, individuals are seen as isolated
entities, and their experiences, thoughts, and identities are confined to
themselves. This perspective contrasts with open individualism, which suggests
that all individuals share a common identity or consciousness, implying a deeper
connection among all people." (GPT 4o mini)

and

"Open individualism is a philosophical concept that suggests that all
individuals share a common identity or consciousness. In this view, the
distinction between different people is seen as superficial, and at a deeper
level, everyone is considered to be the same self or consciousness experiencing
life through different perspectives. This perspective implies that the
experiences, thoughts, and feelings of one person are fundamentally connected to
those of others."

I would argue from the basis of our every day experience. Based on that, it
seems like closed individualism is what is the right view.

In addition, I would ask myself what experiment we could design to show that
thoughts and feeling and experiences are connected to those of others?
Empirically, I can only come up with scenarios that would confirm closed
individualism.

We are born, we have bodies and brains, and unique identities, interviews seem
to confirm this. We have no evidence of telepathy.

The only way to some kind of open individualism I see, is just the way of
definition or agreement, where we look at what we _do_ share. We share our DNA
to 99.9% (?), we are all links in the chain of causation, the electricity in our
brains and nervoussystem is the same electricity, so it could be said from that
point of view that the same "power" powers us all, and this power came from a
common source way down the tree of life. It could argued that we are also
shared components of the global ecosystems, so looking at the planet as a whole,
we could see that we are all components in that system.

I think from a definition point of view, I'd try to go that route to establish a
concept of open individualism.

> (The first instinct many people have when confronted with this argument is to
> say "Well someone had to win" but note this doesn't make it one bit more
> likely that *you* should be a winner. Even if *someone* wins the lottery on
> every drawing, it remains unlikely that *you* should be the one who wins.)

True, but this is an after interpretation expressed after the fact in the
language of mathematics (see above).

>       Why not? Closed individualism is easy to prove.
>
>       I'm an individual, I have
>       continuity of mind and body, and so do other healthy people.
> 
> This is a fact all theories of personal identity agree with. No theory of
> personal identity rejects the idea that bodies, brains, memories, etc. exist
> and are generally experienced as if they occur continuously, and are generally
> limited to the memories accessable to a single nervous system.
>
> But none of this esteblishes closed individualism as true.

See above. I got a bit ahead of myself here. I'll add that to me, closed
individualism seems to be the simpler definition here.

>       They can be
>       interviewed, queried about memories, they act every day as if they were
>       individuals, completely aligned with closed individualism.
> 
> This is equally aligned with open individualism (and empty individualism too, for that matter).

Open individualism, as per the definition above, must account for the sharing,
and how boundaries are drawn, and it must also explain away the ilusion of
closed individualism. Closed doesn't suffer from this, it perfectly explains our
every day ordinary experience.

>       I think those are all good arguments for closed individualism, in addition to my
>       intuition of course, which aligns well with closed individualism.
> 
> Closed individualism is intuitive, and it makes sense (evolutionarily
> speaking) that we should be programmed to believe it by default. But that
> something feels a certain way should not be considered sufficient grounds of
> proof. It feels like Earth isn't moving, for example.

True, but neither should it be disregarded. We do feel heat, and that is
definitely reason enough to move the hand away from the stove.

An argument could be made, just like when it comes to the material world, that
we don't need to do or think anything in order to "live" closed individualism,
and that what we should do is to come up with a way to falsify closed
individualism.

> Also consider that the intuitive nature of closed individualism breaks down as
> soon as one strays away from ordinary situations of common experience. When
> you consider transporters, duplication machines, fission or fusion of minds or
> bodies, memory erasures and implantations, etc. Then closed individualism
> begins to seem ill-equipped to provide intuitive answers.

True, but these are all thought experiments, and links to our previous
discussion.

>       So with that in mind, how would you empirically prove open individualism?
> 
> Using the argument I outlined above. We can take the empirical observation
> that somehow one has awakened into existence. 

Do you have any other way that does not depend on statistics and
counterfactuals?

>       > Closed individualism makes the further (unnecessary and unwarranted)
>       > assumption of "soul pinning". This assumption should be discarded, if
>       > simplicity is what you are after.  
>
>       I don't think it does. In my opinion all it says, is that today, what you see is
>       what you get.
> 
> I think "soul pinning" is a metaphysical assumption implicit in closed
> individualism.
> 
> It is the idea that *your experiences* are locked into being only the
> experiences that happen to some particular bundle of matter (your body) and
> it's continuous transformations.

But based on neurology and researched into memories, they are stored in our
brain. This is empirically proven. We have no evidence for that they are stored
in some collective substrate or leak across people.

> But if you make a copy, or if one collection is destroyed and another remade
> with different materials, you say those experiences aren't yours, because this
> metaphysical thing (that you say is tied to this one bundle of matter) isn't
> there, present in that other copied or reformed bundle of matter.

Hmm, I think maybe we should fold our offlist email discussion into this thread?
We started to discuss this in the email I think.

> But *what is* this metaphysical thing pinned to some bundle of matter (a thing
> which can't be measured) which you maintain is necessary for the experiences
> to *be yours*?

A process of electrons in a brain? We do know to some extent where various
functions that are part of our identity or feed it reside in the brain.

>       Who knows? There might be some kind of uploading able to preserve
>       continuity in a way that conclusively proves that our consciousness and identity
>       are subtrate independent, but we have no evidence of this yet.
> 
> Substrate independence is a concern of philosophy of mind. I don't see it as
> related to theories of personal identity.

I can see a cross over depending on the definition of identity. As for
philosophy of mind, substrate independence I hope is a question that might one
day take the leap from philosophy to science.

>       I think science might be able to answer, or at least give indications of this in
>       time.
>
>       I also think you can have closed individualism without soul-pinning as an
>       assumption.
> 
> What would that look like?

Just like what is described in any text book on the body, the brain, coupled
with the empirical experience we all have. This is based on a kind of
behavioural definition of consciousness.

> I think if one drops the notion of soul pinning from closed individualism,
> then are left with open individualism.

How come?

>       >       The animalism argument: Closed individualism is often associated with animalism,
>       >       the view that human beings are animals and that our identity is determined by
>       >       our biological nature. This perspective emphasizes the importance of our
>       >       embodied existence and the role that our physical bodies play in shaping our
>       >       experiences and identities.
>
>       I think this is a weak argument for closed invidiualism. I like simplicity and
>       how it confirms intuition much better.
> 
> I thought it was pretty nonsensical to mention animalism as an argument. You
> can argue it is simpler and more intuitive, but as I see it, open
> individualism makes fewer assumptions about what is required to be you, and it
> provides more intuitive answers than closed individualism when it comes to
> less than ordinary situations.

When it comes to less ordinary situations, if I think back to what you wrote
above, some of them are just thought experiments, some might be impossible, and
some we might get closer to answering scientifically. Don't you think?

>       >       The practicality argument: Closed individualism has practical implications for
>       >       how we think about personal identity and its relation to moral and legal
>       >       responsibility. For example, it suggests that we should hold people accountable
>       >       for their actions based on their biological continuity, rather than on more
>       >       abstract or psychological criteria.
>
>       This is interesting. From a pragmatic point of view, closed individualism works
>       well.
> 
> It may work well, but I don't think pragmatism holds any weight when the
> concern is finding what is true rather than deciding how to organize society.

This is true, but can we? And given the fact that it does work well, wouldn't it
be interesting to see if it can be falsified empirically somehow?

>       Let's assume open individualism is true, how would you see that changing the way
>       society works in terms of crime and punishment?
> 
> If more people believed open individualism, I think there would be more
> compassion, more charity, more concern for the future, and less harming and
> cheating of others.
> 
> As far as crime and punishment, the goal should always be harm minimization
> never inflicting pain for the purpose of pain alone, though punishment may
> serve the purpose of reducing pain overall (via deterrence). It is a complex
> question.

True! Both are interesting questions, maybe better for a separate thread?

>       >       The common sense argument: Closed individualism is often seen as the most
>       >       intuitive and common-sense view of personal identity, as it aligns with our
>       >       everyday experience of ourselves and others as continuous biological entities.
>       >       This common-sense appeal makes it a more accessible and relatable theory than
>       >       more esoteric alternatives.
>
>       This I'd lump in under simplicity.
> 
> I would also note that most of the great breakthroughs of science came about
> by demonstrating common sense was wrong.

This is true! We must always be ready to update our mental
models in the face of new evidence.

>       >       The naturalism argument: Closed individualism is often associated with a
>       >       naturalistic worldview, which emphasizes the importance of understanding human
>       >       beings as part of the natural world. This perspective suggests that our identity
>       >       is determined by natural processes and phenomena, rather than by supernatural or
>       >       non-physical factors.
>
>       This is nonsense.
>
>       > Did AI help write this? The verbosity and lack of coherence seems unlike your
>       > usual style.
>
>       My apologies! Yes, I should have told you that. =( My idea was to bring in some
>       starting points for discussion, and to discuss these myself (see comments
>       above), and then ask what you think. This was my mistake, sorry about that.
> 
> No worries! I was pretty sure it wasn't written by you by how far off base it
> seemed with it's answers. AI is good for generating a lot of ideas, but at
> least here, not so good at judging the relevance of those ideas.

Thank you! Yes, it is kind of hit or miss. Sometimes I find that they give nice
summaries, and sometimes they are way off. That's why I do not use them for
work. The consequences are too important, so I have to proof read, and then I
can just write what I need myself regardless.

Best regards, 
Daniel