Even before I “experience anything” when the “tabula rasa” condition is in effect the word “I” refers. Even among empty shells that have no personality or that have identical personalities “I” picks out a unique instance.
I don’t think that’s how psychology works. The word “I” is a concept learned with language, not something essential on its own.
To make the view extreme if you spent your life in car one could claim that “you can’t leave the car” because human outside of car and an empty car is a world differently structured than human living in a car. Sure identifying with a radically transformed self might be difficult but most people think they are their future selfs (that is it is not somebody else that wakes up in their bed).
Well, it would make sense to say that it is you that left the car (or the all-encompassing simulation), as long as there is continuity of the sense of self, as long as you keep your memories and everything you’ve learned in your car-life. But if I’d left everything behind before I got into the simulation, I don’t think it makes sense to say I am still “me”.
In programming you have keywords like this and self which refer to the instance of the class. Being able to verbalise or conceptulise selfhood might require conceptual machinery. But that introspective ostension doesn’t require you to know anything about what kind of thing you are.
What if I am undecided whether the car part is an essential part of the “me-system”? I would get that if a “claw” and grabs empty air form the car and then has “liberated” you from the car that nothing has happened. But what if there is clearly something in the claw? For example somebody could object if their skull is left in the car but their brain is brought along. Or maybe their connectome is extracted but their brain is left behind. What if you grab nothing from the stage but do grab the audience?
Does it not make sense if you have a memory disease like alzheimers or concussion and somebody points as a picture and says “that is you” and you have no recollection of that, would they be wrong about it? Does it really flip on whether you feel a sense of connection to your old self? Or before the disease strikes would you be wrong to worry about that person-to-be as your own welfare? Does it mean that because there is total oblivion inbetween that it doesn’t happen to you?
What if you grab nothing from the stage but do grab the audience?
I think, if you truly grab nothing from the stage, then the audience is impersonal. My “experiencer” is exactly the same as your “experiencer”, the only difference is that mine is experiencing “me”, i.e., my thoughts, memories, emotions, etc.
Does it not make sense if you have a memory disease like alzheimers or concussion and somebody points as a picture and says “that is you” and you have no recollection of that, would they be wrong about it? Does it really flip on whether you feel a sense of connection to your old self?
Somebody is not wrong to use it as a social construct, but what we are discussing here, I guess, is how important it would be to me. First, it would be important to me that everyone else sees me as the descendant of that person. Second, I would still be a continuation of that person, in the ways I may not be conscious of, e.g., some past traumas, learned behaviours and so on.
Or before the disease strikes would you be wrong to worry about that person-to-be as your own welfare? Does it mean that because there is total oblivion inbetween that it doesn’t happen to you?
Actually, if you think about it, we care about our future selves not necessarily because they will remember us, but because we really want to project our present selves into the future, and also because we are in the unique position to affect the lives of our future selves like no human can affect another. Both of these hold in your example.
I don’t think that’s how psychology works. The word “I” is a concept learned with language, not something essential on its own.
Well, it would make sense to say that it is you that left the car (or the all-encompassing simulation), as long as there is continuity of the sense of self, as long as you keep your memories and everything you’ve learned in your car-life. But if I’d left everything behind before I got into the simulation, I don’t think it makes sense to say I am still “me”.
In programming you have keywords like this and self which refer to the instance of the class. Being able to verbalise or conceptulise selfhood might require conceptual machinery. But that introspective ostension doesn’t require you to know anything about what kind of thing you are.
What if I am undecided whether the car part is an essential part of the “me-system”? I would get that if a “claw” and grabs empty air form the car and then has “liberated” you from the car that nothing has happened. But what if there is clearly something in the claw? For example somebody could object if their skull is left in the car but their brain is brought along. Or maybe their connectome is extracted but their brain is left behind. What if you grab nothing from the stage but do grab the audience?
Does it not make sense if you have a memory disease like alzheimers or concussion and somebody points as a picture and says “that is you” and you have no recollection of that, would they be wrong about it? Does it really flip on whether you feel a sense of connection to your old self? Or before the disease strikes would you be wrong to worry about that person-to-be as your own welfare? Does it mean that because there is total oblivion inbetween that it doesn’t happen to you?
I think, if you truly grab nothing from the stage, then the audience is impersonal. My “experiencer” is exactly the same as your “experiencer”, the only difference is that mine is experiencing “me”, i.e., my thoughts, memories, emotions, etc.
Somebody is not wrong to use it as a social construct, but what we are discussing here, I guess, is how important it would be to me. First, it would be important to me that everyone else sees me as the descendant of that person. Second, I would still be a continuation of that person, in the ways I may not be conscious of, e.g., some past traumas, learned behaviours and so on.
Actually, if you think about it, we care about our future selves not necessarily because they will remember us, but because we really want to project our present selves into the future, and also because we are in the unique position to affect the lives of our future selves like no human can affect another. Both of these hold in your example.