Please elaborate. My immediate reaction is Occam’s Razor makes the idea of multiple distinct selves pretty unlikely. But then I think maybe you’re defining self differently than I would, and it’s certain that the brain and mind have a certain amount of modularity. Even if our self can be divided into several functioning parts, and even if we are using/ experiencing some part stronger than others, that doesn’t seem to be evidence of multiple individual selves. Even when you have modularity that results in some weird behavior, that doesn’t suggest multiple selves would be split between the past and present. From science, I think about the fact that say, we can see things in the present and imagine things in the past and I’ve never heard about them being done by distinct parts of the brain. But the strongest intuitive reason and evidence I’d put forth, would just be my experiences with friends who have PTSD. When undergoing a flashback they don’t experience things as if it were a memory of the past. That combined with the lack of evidence that people with/ who get PTSD don’t seem to be any different than nuero typicals. (There’s some evidence that some people are more likely to get PTSD, but no evidence that anyone is immune.)
In the naive model of the self, where “you” make a decision, and then your body executes that decision, and it’s the same “you” every time. And it’s true that this is a very simple model, and if we didn’t have any other evidence, that’s what we would probably go with.
But that model that doesn’t explain the Peak-end rule very well—how is it that a certain experience is worse while experienced, but better when remembered? Similarly, it’s hard to explain hyperbolic discounting in terms of a continuous self. And how would self-talk be effective (and it is) if the self were indivisible—whom would you be trying to convince? Finally, how can we make a decision before becoming conscious of it?.
A better mode of the self would say that there’s not one thing that you can call your “self”—instead, your mind is basically bodged together from a bunch of random parts. So when we say that there are different experiencing vs remembering selves, what we’re really saying is that reasoning about your preferences as though you only had one set of preferences, doesn’t work. At the time, you really prefer to avoid the additional bit of small pain at the end. But when you remember the experience, you really do remember it as being better than you otherwise would. So what do “you” prefer? There’s no single sensible answer to that.
“But that model that doesn’t explain the Peak-end rule very well—how is it that a certain experience is worse while experienced, but better when remembered?”
Anchoring bias. Forgetting. Contemplation of past events in a broader context. Rewriting memories. All these things happen.
“And how would self-talk be effective (and it is) if the self were indivisible—whom would you be trying to convince?”
That’s a good point. Although, I already think that the brain is modular, and it could be very possible for different parts of your brain to be experiencing different things, the biggest problem is the point at which one self ends and another begins. You explain this a little bit in the next paragraph, which makes it seem like you basically agree with me, although it seems very vaguely defined. Even if they’re like a baseball team, trading modules ocassionally, there’s a lot of vagueness that seems not to form many expectations given specifics, so experimentation would be very hard.
How many selves are there? Do they vary with time? Is there really any reason to suspect there’s only two? Is the peak end rule the best evidence for how they’re divided? What are the expectations based of of this? What experiments are being done?
I agree there isn’t a sensible utility function for individual humans. I think as far as that goes, they must be on the right track. I just wish there was more evidence, and more expectations we could derive from the model.
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.
Please elaborate. My immediate reaction is Occam’s Razor makes the idea of multiple distinct selves pretty unlikely. But then I think maybe you’re defining self differently than I would, and it’s certain that the brain and mind have a certain amount of modularity. Even if our self can be divided into several functioning parts, and even if we are using/ experiencing some part stronger than others, that doesn’t seem to be evidence of multiple individual selves. Even when you have modularity that results in some weird behavior, that doesn’t suggest multiple selves would be split between the past and present. From science, I think about the fact that say, we can see things in the present and imagine things in the past and I’ve never heard about them being done by distinct parts of the brain. But the strongest intuitive reason and evidence I’d put forth, would just be my experiences with friends who have PTSD. When undergoing a flashback they don’t experience things as if it were a memory of the past. That combined with the lack of evidence that people with/ who get PTSD don’t seem to be any different than nuero typicals. (There’s some evidence that some people are more likely to get PTSD, but no evidence that anyone is immune.)
In the naive model of the self, where “you” make a decision, and then your body executes that decision, and it’s the same “you” every time. And it’s true that this is a very simple model, and if we didn’t have any other evidence, that’s what we would probably go with.
But that model that doesn’t explain the Peak-end rule very well—how is it that a certain experience is worse while experienced, but better when remembered? Similarly, it’s hard to explain hyperbolic discounting in terms of a continuous self. And how would self-talk be effective (and it is) if the self were indivisible—whom would you be trying to convince? Finally, how can we make a decision before becoming conscious of it?.
A better mode of the self would say that there’s not one thing that you can call your “self”—instead, your mind is basically bodged together from a bunch of random parts. So when we say that there are different experiencing vs remembering selves, what we’re really saying is that reasoning about your preferences as though you only had one set of preferences, doesn’t work. At the time, you really prefer to avoid the additional bit of small pain at the end. But when you remember the experience, you really do remember it as being better than you otherwise would. So what do “you” prefer? There’s no single sensible answer to that.
Anchoring bias. Forgetting. Contemplation of past events in a broader context. Rewriting memories. All these things happen.
That’s a good point. Although, I already think that the brain is modular, and it could be very possible for different parts of your brain to be experiencing different things, the biggest problem is the point at which one self ends and another begins. You explain this a little bit in the next paragraph, which makes it seem like you basically agree with me, although it seems very vaguely defined. Even if they’re like a baseball team, trading modules ocassionally, there’s a lot of vagueness that seems not to form many expectations given specifics, so experimentation would be very hard.
How many selves are there? Do they vary with time? Is there really any reason to suspect there’s only two? Is the peak end rule the best evidence for how they’re divided? What are the expectations based of of this? What experiments are being done?
I agree there isn’t a sensible utility function for individual humans. I think as far as that goes, they must be on the right track. I just wish there was more evidence, and more expectations we could derive from the model.
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.