“Why do I think I was born as myself rather than someone else?”
So we adopt the intensional stance towards other humans. We imagine they have some “deciding” homunculus inside them, that makes choices. We don’t know how it works or any of its internal structures, but it is influenced by beliefs, desires, memories, etc.
We know that much can change about the “mere body”, while the homunculus seems the same. We age over decades. We lose a limb or eyesight in an accident. We get a heart transplant from a cadaver. We learn to drive a car, and “become one” with the vehicle. It appears that much can change with these external things, but we see both in ourselves (and our memories of our younger selves), and in the self-reported feelings of others, that despite drastic changes the core “us” is relatively unchanged. We see lifelong criminals attempt to “turn over a new leaf”, and yet at some point their core surfaces again, apparently never having changed at all; only the surface facade was different.
So it’s not at all unreasonable (or so it seems) to suppose that the mysterious and apparently-constant “I” (perhaps a soul of some kind) could have arrived much the same, but in drastically different circumstances. Perhaps 1000 years ago. Or black instead of white. Or a king instead of a peasant.
Hence it MUST have been just a random lottery that caused me to be “born as myself, rather than someone else.”
(The truth, of course, is that we’re “nothing more” than the product of our genetics plus our environmental history. If our circumstances had been different, we wouldn’t have been the same person. For that matter, you aren’t the same person today that you were a decade ago, despite your illusion that there is some core “I” that is conserved.)
“Why do I think I was born as myself rather than someone else?”
So we adopt the intensional stance towards other humans. We imagine they have some “deciding” homunculus inside them, that makes choices. We don’t know how it works or any of its internal structures, but it is influenced by beliefs, desires, memories, etc.
We know that much can change about the “mere body”, while the homunculus seems the same. We age over decades. We lose a limb or eyesight in an accident. We get a heart transplant from a cadaver. We learn to drive a car, and “become one” with the vehicle. It appears that much can change with these external things, but we see both in ourselves (and our memories of our younger selves), and in the self-reported feelings of others, that despite drastic changes the core “us” is relatively unchanged. We see lifelong criminals attempt to “turn over a new leaf”, and yet at some point their core surfaces again, apparently never having changed at all; only the surface facade was different.
So it’s not at all unreasonable (or so it seems) to suppose that the mysterious and apparently-constant “I” (perhaps a soul of some kind) could have arrived much the same, but in drastically different circumstances. Perhaps 1000 years ago. Or black instead of white. Or a king instead of a peasant.
Hence it MUST have been just a random lottery that caused me to be “born as myself, rather than someone else.”
(The truth, of course, is that we’re “nothing more” than the product of our genetics plus our environmental history. If our circumstances had been different, we wouldn’t have been the same person. For that matter, you aren’t the same person today that you were a decade ago, despite your illusion that there is some core “I” that is conserved.)
So in a nutshell, you aren’t someone else because then you wouldn’t be you, correct? :P