The main problem I see is with probabilities of my future observer-moments. You said: ”...should be based on first-person experience. The current me can say I have the past first-person experience (memory) of being dadadarren” That is ok for current and past observer-moments, but if we apply it to the future observer-moments, we will have a problem:
Either I can say: “Any future observer-moment which will have memory of being avturchin, will be me, and now I can calculate their distribution and probabilities”. But here I am using God’s view perspective.
Or I can observe that any future observer-moment is not me-now. Therefore, there is no way to assign probabilities to “me being that moment”. There is no future and planning is impossible. Here, being in the first-hand perspective, I am ending with something like “empty individualism”, the idea that I exist only now.
So we either return to the outside view perspective, or conclude that we can’t predict anything.
The problem may be not trivial, as Hume first mentioned, when he wrote about the impossibility of induction. For example, in the forking everettian multiverse, future probabilities are different from the past ones.
Yes, I do think there is no direct way to define who is the “future self”. Since there is no experience of the future. Self-identity only works up to the current moment. There is no direct way to identify the future me or the future first-person. Heck, I can’t even be sure there would be someone who considers the current me as their past self the next morning. For all I know, this physical person could die of a heart attack tonight.
It is Ok to say all agents who consider the current me as their past first-person are the “future self”. From any of those agents’ perspectives looking retrospectively, the current me is their past self. Yet there is no way to give a distribution or probability among them as to which one will be the “real me”. Not without making some made-up assumptions.
As for future planning, if all “future selves” are affected by my decision the same way then there is no problem with how to make “selfish” decisions. Just max their utility. If the “future selves” have conflicting interests, like guessing if “I” am L or R in the cloning example, then there is no rational way to make selfish decisions at all.
It is interesting that you mentioned “empty individualism”. I don’t think my argument qualifies that. As in I can identify myself up to the current moment is quite different from I only exist now. But more importantly one of my original motivations is to argue against “open individualism”, that everything in the universe is a part of me, which Arnold Zubuff, the original author of the Sleeping Beauty Problem, regarded as the fundamental reason for Thirding, the correct answer in his opinion.
I see “empty individualism” as an opposite to open individualism. In this view, I exist only now, just one moment, so there is no any continous identity. But only I-now have qualia. There are no past or future qualia.
I don’t fully endorse this view. In my view, there are two Selves, historical and momentary, which are constantly interwined.
They are definitely polar opposites. But disagreeing with one does not automatically means endorsing another.
Open individualism: there is no reason to say dadadarren is the self while Britney Spears is not. Me: no reasoning is needed. I know the subjective experience of dadadarren not Britney. So I am dadadarren not Britney. That’s it.
You saying there are two selves makes me wonder if we are having similar thoughts. IMO, the current dadadarren and yesterday’s dadadarren are definitely two different persepectives. So one MAY say I am an empty individulist? (I will disagree though)
However that is not to say the current dadadarren regard yesterday’s dadadarren the same way it regards yesterday’s Britney Spears: just objects with their own persepctives. Reason being the current dadadarren has the subjective memory of first-person experience of yesterday’s dadadarren, but not Britney Spears.
Actually, we could define three levels of Self and they will correspond to different types of individualism.
“Atman” level—universal light of attention, which is present in any observer. It corresponds to open individualism if I care only about pure attention.
Qualia level—the combination of qualia which I experience now. Empty individualism.
Long-term memory level or “historical Self”—closed individualism.
Some think that the atman level is real and it is a universal observer which looks through all really existing observers. In that case, we could calculate chances that the universal observer will observe some peculiar observer-moment. But in physicalism “atman” is not real.
The ideas of “death” and “personal identity” are applicable only on the third level.
Most philosophers tend to say that only one of these three levels are real and-or valuable and thus they have to chose between the types of individualism. For me all three are valuable.
If I am interested in self-location believes, I mostly think about them using the third level,
The main problem I see is with probabilities of my future observer-moments. You said: ”...should be based on first-person experience. The current me can say I have the past first-person experience (memory) of being dadadarren” That is ok for current and past observer-moments, but if we apply it to the future observer-moments, we will have a problem:
Either I can say: “Any future observer-moment which will have memory of being avturchin, will be me, and now I can calculate their distribution and probabilities”. But here I am using God’s view perspective.
Or I can observe that any future observer-moment is not me-now. Therefore, there is no way to assign probabilities to “me being that moment”. There is no future and planning is impossible. Here, being in the first-hand perspective, I am ending with something like “empty individualism”, the idea that I exist only now.
So we either return to the outside view perspective, or conclude that we can’t predict anything.
The problem may be not trivial, as Hume first mentioned, when he wrote about the impossibility of induction. For example, in the forking everettian multiverse, future probabilities are different from the past ones.
Yes, I do think there is no direct way to define who is the “future self”. Since there is no experience of the future. Self-identity only works up to the current moment. There is no direct way to identify the future me or the future first-person. Heck, I can’t even be sure there would be someone who considers the current me as their past self the next morning. For all I know, this physical person could die of a heart attack tonight.
It is Ok to say all agents who consider the current me as their past first-person are the “future self”. From any of those agents’ perspectives looking retrospectively, the current me is their past self. Yet there is no way to give a distribution or probability among them as to which one will be the “real me”. Not without making some made-up assumptions.
As for future planning, if all “future selves” are affected by my decision the same way then there is no problem with how to make “selfish” decisions. Just max their utility. If the “future selves” have conflicting interests, like guessing if “I” am L or R in the cloning example, then there is no rational way to make selfish decisions at all.
It is interesting that you mentioned “empty individualism”. I don’t think my argument qualifies that. As in I can identify myself up to the current moment is quite different from I only exist now. But more importantly one of my original motivations is to argue against “open individualism”, that everything in the universe is a part of me, which Arnold Zubuff, the original author of the Sleeping Beauty Problem, regarded as the fundamental reason for Thirding, the correct answer in his opinion.
I see “empty individualism” as an opposite to open individualism. In this view, I exist only now, just one moment, so there is no any continous identity. But only I-now have qualia. There are no past or future qualia.
I don’t fully endorse this view. In my view, there are two Selves, historical and momentary, which are constantly interwined.
They are definitely polar opposites. But disagreeing with one does not automatically means endorsing another.
Open individualism: there is no reason to say dadadarren is the self while Britney Spears is not. Me: no reasoning is needed. I know the subjective experience of dadadarren not Britney. So I am dadadarren not Britney. That’s it.
You saying there are two selves makes me wonder if we are having similar thoughts. IMO, the current dadadarren and yesterday’s dadadarren are definitely two different persepectives. So one MAY say I am an empty individulist? (I will disagree though)
However that is not to say the current dadadarren regard yesterday’s dadadarren the same way it regards yesterday’s Britney Spears: just objects with their own persepctives. Reason being the current dadadarren has the subjective memory of first-person experience of yesterday’s dadadarren, but not Britney Spears.
Actually, we could define three levels of Self and they will correspond to different types of individualism.
“Atman” level—universal light of attention, which is present in any observer. It corresponds to open individualism if I care only about pure attention.
Qualia level—the combination of qualia which I experience now. Empty individualism.
Long-term memory level or “historical Self”—closed individualism.
Some think that the atman level is real and it is a universal observer which looks through all really existing observers. In that case, we could calculate chances that the universal observer will observe some peculiar observer-moment. But in physicalism “atman” is not real.
The ideas of “death” and “personal identity” are applicable only on the third level.
Most philosophers tend to say that only one of these three levels are real and-or valuable and thus they have to chose between the types of individualism. For me all three are valuable.
If I am interested in self-location believes, I mostly think about them using the third level,