Why am I who I am, and not someone else?

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Yes.

Well on 2'nd thoughts I don't think even 'past life karma' would potentially answer your question fully - If valid, it might explain why you wound up as this particular person for the time being, but not why your soul/mind-stream took its unique trajectory through the infinite eons of beginningless time and not another trajectory.

So we're back with 'chance', or perhaps the possibility that your question has no answer - atleast not one that can be known with the rational mind _ _

Why someone is that person and not another. Is that a question that has no answer? I don't understand fully why you are using the word chance. I would not say it is. The physical explanation to this is that your are nothing. No brain. Then there is the process of sperm and egg. And you evolve in the woumb, with a brain. And you exist. This is you. You were nothing at all, and then you suddenly became this person. There is no other alternative. The physical explanation seems correct, and it explains why you are who you are. Why do you use chance when there are no other factors? You couldn't become any other person. It's consistent. I believe that to think anything else is just a waste of time.

You're still misunderstanding me and the OP at a fundamental level, but I'd suggest that what we're saying isn't something worth understanding - For all practical purposes it is, as you said, a waste of time - You're not missing out

I'll give it one last shot in case anyone else 'groks' this and wonders if they're alone - We're not suggesting that even with genotype&early-environment 'x' you could somehow have become person 'y' instead of person 'x' (which is another topic that I'm thinking of fleshing out on another thread) - We're suggesting that it's uncanny (a word mainly familiar to philosophers in German as 'unheimligkeit') that you started with genotype+environment 'x' rather than genotype+environment 'y' to begin with, a consideration that is irrelevant to any conceivable body of logic or scientific knowledge, except perhaps for mathematics and (ofcourse) metaphysics - Seeing that you could have started life as anyone or anything sentient doesn't grant any specific knowledge or solve any problems, and isn't a normal framework for viewing life to my understanding. For me, though, imagining that I literally am someone else (which this whole 'seeing' thing encourages in and of itself through the conclusion 'I could have started out as so-and-so') is a useful aid to empathising when intuitions are cut short by autism. I also find it very refreshing - as well as wonderfully mind-boggling.

There's only one physical universe to our knowledge, but it contains an enormous number of separate mental 'universes' which pop in and out of apparent existence within its far vaster space-time. Everyone starts off experiencing a different and often very-particular mind within the same universe, so it appears to be pure chance that you began experiencing the mind and life of the particular person you call 'you', rather than those of someone different living in different circumstances nearby. Consider that someone completely different to you is still 'you' (actually 'me', obviously) to themselves.

To 'recap',



-I see on re-reading that you've already grasped the 'empty set' concept of being 'nothing'/pure potential.- Since this 'nothing' is the original state shared by us all, it has unlimited potential outcomes. Following on from this,



-I've tried to show that the number of actual alternatives is extremely large, and that (by extension) the number of conceivable alternatives is infinite.-

Yes. You say it's "irrelevant", not so often worthwhile and "wonderfully mind-boggling". I agree with the first two ^^. And I see what you mean with wonderfully mind-boggling, but I just don't think so. So this differentiates us. I don't know what I'm misunderstanding, I'm just trying to lay it to rest and say why that is better. I understand what you are saying. I think I do at least. But I must say that this is very interesting.

The factors you state are "different and very-particular" minds within the same universe. I'm not so sure if this is, to the core, so true. Why would they be different. What differentiates them. I want to make a point out of how important everything physical in life really is. Like yourself and your body. This is, in how I see it, the only thing that differentiates us, and the mind is attached to these bodies. But the minds are not different. They are consistent and consisting only of common denominators that can explain them. They can be explained. The small defects and problems one would have with his mind are irrelevant. I think that the factors you describe as different and very-particular are not minds in itself, but irrelevant physical circumstances, cultural differences, different side-tracks one may have walked into in ones mind, thinking on very different subjects, and so on and so on. This is interesting and could have been elaborated more. What is important, though, is that it is all consistent and that it all has common denominators!

When you, say some years after you are "created", are sitting down with your own mind. Why does it matter that there was "unlimited potential outcomes" of you. You would have had nothing to do with those other outcomes if you were created as one of them. They are irrelevant. It is constant that you are this one mind, the person you are, and there are no subjective (which I think is important) problems left. They are ruled out. You don't have to think that there could have been anything different that could have happened, because your consciousness would then be completely different. It would have had another consistent "run", and be a person that would been another individual with it's own consciousness, thinking about something that is far away from you and important and subjective to him/herself. I think individualism is somewhat important here.

You are far more scientific about this than me. Is that right (like in more correct)? I may have failed hard with this, of course ^^

I said it's irrelevant to science. I didn't mention worthwhile (which this isn't - if it 'grabs' you it places no demands on your time in any case), and am not sure what you mean by "1'st 2".

In the UK we say 'you either love Marmite (a malt-based spread ) or you hate it'. To try and force everyone else to either love or hate Marmite would be absurd, particularly if (as I suspect) you're only just reaching the age at which we become physically able to taste this particular kind of 'Marmite'. {I meant earlier that I could only understand this 'Why am I me' question after I'd matured, my mum having introduced it to me as the basis of her belief in pre-birth existence.} Moreover, the more words we spend on the topic, the less likely you may be to understand it, given that words and concepts are alien to what me and the OP are trying to say and muddy the waters way too easily.



The autism spectrum for one thing. Even if all minds were identical they would still be different in the sense of being necessarily separate, because you can only ever experience your own mind directly. In the same way, you can only ever experience direct attachment to your own body, unless perhaps you are a Siamese Twin

I take it you're looking at the issue, here, through the specialised context and angle of conscious awareness - the common denominator of all conceivable instances of 'mind' according to any intelligible definition of that concept - The experience of consciousness that underlies mind is a single phenomenon as far as we can tell, but it has a potentially-unlimited number of instances across space at any time, and across time at any space. In practice, however, all minds are different (as well as separate instances) in the sense that they all feature different mental states at any one time - even the minds of identical twins.

Your argument in this paragraph (which sounds superficially like something from Advaita Vedanta fyi) obviously 'sticks out' when set against much of what you wrote in the rest of this thread (such as where you tout individualism - which was originally conceived simply as a defence against more-powerful individuals btw). There, your argument (to my mind) can only rest comfortably on the unspoken (and perhaps unacknowledged) assumption that an abstract and eternal 'I' is in some way fundamental to your particular mind, such that you had (eternally) to have it. This concept is unsupported by any universally-acknowledged evidence from either neuroscience or genuine experience, and I don't think you'd sign up to it now it's out in the open.



It seems that nothing of us can exist without ordinary physical supports, but if NTs really do spend more of their time reflecting on different mental states, then 'the physical' is likely to take up less of their mental lives than it does of us auties'. I don't see the relevance to this thread, though.



I'm not trying to pose a logical problem that could be either 'correct' or 'incorrect' (or have points that either 'mattered' or were 'irrelevant' to everyone) here - subjective or otherwise. Philosophy -despite its hunger for technical language (English having way too 'practical' a bias for its needs)- is more an art than a science - hence its academic pigeonholing within 'Arts-&-Humanities' - It doesn't need to explain things so much as to set light on valid ways of seeing the picture. All I'm saying is that the OP question is valid, although atfirst it's hard for any of us to see why it should be so.

I suspect this topic is causing you some irritation, but there's no shame in either being won over to another widely-held point of view, or to just drop it and say 'live and let live'.

Much of your argument could be used to support my position, other parts form unsupported assertions, and you seem to have dismissed my use of the mathematical 'empty sets' concept without explaining why, but if there is in fact a supernatural reason why you had to be you and I had to be me, then it turns out that you were right and I was wrong after all

Nonetheless, if anything makes me feel alive, then rather than any belief in souls and the like, it's:

Last edited by undefineable on 16 Aug 2012, 11:56 am, edited 5 times in total.

I have no better answer than the anthropic principle. You're who you are, because if you were someone else then you would be someone else

My take on 'empty sets' completes this picture - If one witnesses something (in this case oneself) 'popping' into existence, one concludes it to be pure chance that it was this particular thing that so 'popped' into view.

I realise this is 'putting the cart before the horse' to many ways of seeing, but can't see why it should be seen as invalid.

Ok ok. The philosophy books all over again.
I can't argue with you on many points in this discussion.

1. I meant that I agree that it is irrelevant and not so worthwhile. But I don't agree that it is wonderfully mind-boggling.
2. Your second pharagraph didnt' really say much to me. That I am too young and that things can't be explained etc. is, as I think you are saying, very hypothetical.
3. You are separating minds by saying they are different. To organize them in a system, like the sciences does. We are thinking differently here.
4.

I give up

I am scared that you can push this even farther I am trying to stop this and you are continuing it ^^ You will win most definitely.

All agreed! What's funny is that I got all the same feelings from your posts