My immediate reaction is Occam’s Razor makes the idea of multiple distinct selves pretty unlikely.
That’s not the way Occam’s Razor works. The quantity to minimize is the number of bits needed to specify a theory, not the number of objects the theory describes.
There are multiple humans. Taking the arbitrary number of humans alive at anyone point, and saying that census data must be faked, and that there are only as many humans as I have direct experience of, would be shitty application of Occam’s razor.
Saying I have a second “self’ without giving evidence of the self, without any specifications of what that self would be like, and how that’s different, behaviorwise, from a human with one self, and how that gets us more explanatory power for our postulated entities, is exactly what Occam’s razor is for,
I mean, this whole thing about the person you are “dying” every time you change state seems like empty navel gazing, seems to apply the word “death” in a way that is meaningless, and seems way more like the “wave function collapses and no worlds arise” interpretation of QM than the many worlds one.
Brains are very complex. If we end up with a grand theory of nuerology, and that incorporates the idea of two selves as the simplest explanation, I’ll listen. But my understanding was that we really aren’t there yet. Until then, iy’s just an arbitrary postulation, like saying we have 3 selves or 4 selves or 9 epistemological gremlins.
That’s not the way Occam’s Razor works. The quantity to minimize is the number of bits needed to specify a theory, not the number of objects the theory describes.
There are multiple humans. Taking the arbitrary number of humans alive at anyone point, and saying that census data must be faked, and that there are only as many humans as I have direct experience of, would be shitty application of Occam’s razor.
Saying I have a second “self’ without giving evidence of the self, without any specifications of what that self would be like, and how that’s different, behaviorwise, from a human with one self, and how that gets us more explanatory power for our postulated entities, is exactly what Occam’s razor is for,
I mean, this whole thing about the person you are “dying” every time you change state seems like empty navel gazing, seems to apply the word “death” in a way that is meaningless, and seems way more like the “wave function collapses and no worlds arise” interpretation of QM than the many worlds one.
Brains are very complex. If we end up with a grand theory of nuerology, and that incorporates the idea of two selves as the simplest explanation, I’ll listen. But my understanding was that we really aren’t there yet. Until then, iy’s just an arbitrary postulation, like saying we have 3 selves or 4 selves or 9 epistemological gremlins.