Often times, consciousness, subjectivity and valence get thrown away from rationalist discussions as a material object of concern due to the lack of empirical evidence such notions exist—materially—as a thing above and beyond the semantic token our brains used to allude to the object of future optimizations of utility.
Sometimes the large philosophical questions get transposed to exist in the realm of the standard ‘something from nothingness’ inquiry. I think that is easier answered than the question of ‘indexicality’. We can obtain that things surely exist—that much is for certain. But why does reality exist, to itself, seeming always with some kind of border or boundary? Why is experience as is not just that of all minds? Or some arbitrary cross section of being and matter that is no more exclusionary or principled than say—the front half of your house, to some arbitrary cross section of air particles in the sky to an underground slice of dirt reaching into the earths core.
Why is being (to me), somehow isolated to one brain and not that arbitrary cross section? The question to me really is not, why is there consciousness, why there is something rather than nothing, or why I am this person. Rather it is, why does reality seemingly need to require an boundary, the center of which being an indexical position, to obtain itself?
I ask this, because in my opinion, one of the hardest problems facing creating a coherent meta philosophical position that stands time and the reasoning bar for things that may sustain past an SI event horizon is the question of whether one can make a dent in the unrescuability of moral internalism which connects moral reasoning and motivation.
Surely if one can induce enough indexical uncertainty in any agent that it is not any other, then ethics become decision theoretically favoured by self interest under dominance arguments. And making an argument robust enough to sustain rationalist inquiry for that—surely—needs a principled understanding or explanation of, the indexical itself.
This is an interesting line of thinking. and I suspect you’ve identified one of the cruxes in these discussions. There is no outside view, there’s no way to have identity and indexical uncertainty. Identity IS indexical. That’s all it is.
Surely if one can induce enough indexical uncertainty in any agent that it is not any other
um, I fear that we call this “psychosis”, and it has significantly worse problems.
um, I fear that we call this “psychosis”, and it has significantly worse problems.
Other names for it when philosophically adopted are Empty Individualism or Open Individualism. When religiously obtained: Hinduism or Buddhism.
The point not being that either or any of these things are ‘true’ or ‘false’ in their own right—it being that indexical uncertainty can be induced in a forward looking way which does not necessarily require having a confused historical notion over what one has been—only uncertainty about whom one will find out they are.
For example, are you the real world version of you, or the version of you that exists to make Omega’s prediction? If you have ever had some form of amnesia and retroactively re-assembled an interval of self, one can posit that indexicality is not exclusionary in a forward looking way solely based off retrospective boundaries. If we were to merge minds, I’m sure we would feel, after the fact, that both of us were really ‘me’ or ‘you’, all along.
Often times, consciousness, subjectivity and valence get thrown away from rationalist discussions as a material object of concern due to the lack of empirical evidence such notions exist—materially—as a thing above and beyond the semantic token our brains used to allude to the object of future optimizations of utility.
Sometimes the large philosophical questions get transposed to exist in the realm of the standard ‘something from nothingness’ inquiry. I think that is easier answered than the question of ‘indexicality’. We can obtain that things surely exist—that much is for certain. But why does reality exist, to itself, seeming always with some kind of border or boundary? Why is experience as is not just that of all minds? Or some arbitrary cross section of being and matter that is no more exclusionary or principled than say—the front half of your house, to some arbitrary cross section of air particles in the sky to an underground slice of dirt reaching into the earths core.
Why is being (to me), somehow isolated to one brain and not that arbitrary cross section? The question to me really is not, why is there consciousness, why there is something rather than nothing, or why I am this person. Rather it is, why does reality seemingly need to require an boundary, the center of which being an indexical position, to obtain itself?
I ask this, because in my opinion, one of the hardest problems facing creating a coherent meta philosophical position that stands time and the reasoning bar for things that may sustain past an SI event horizon is the question of whether one can make a dent in the unrescuability of moral internalism which connects moral reasoning and motivation.
Surely if one can induce enough indexical uncertainty in any agent that it is not any other, then ethics become decision theoretically favoured by self interest under dominance arguments. And making an argument robust enough to sustain rationalist inquiry for that—surely—needs a principled understanding or explanation of, the indexical itself.
This is an interesting line of thinking. and I suspect you’ve identified one of the cruxes in these discussions. There is no outside view, there’s no way to have identity and indexical uncertainty. Identity IS indexical. That’s all it is.
um, I fear that we call this “psychosis”, and it has significantly worse problems.
Thanks, Dagon!
Other names for it when philosophically adopted are Empty Individualism or Open Individualism. When religiously obtained: Hinduism or Buddhism.
The point not being that either or any of these things are ‘true’ or ‘false’ in their own right—it being that indexical uncertainty can be induced in a forward looking way which does not necessarily require having a confused historical notion over what one has been—only uncertainty about whom one will find out they are.
For example, are you the real world version of you, or the version of you that exists to make Omega’s prediction? If you have ever had some form of amnesia and retroactively re-assembled an interval of self, one can posit that indexicality is not exclusionary in a forward looking way solely based off retrospective boundaries. If we were to merge minds, I’m sure we would feel, after the fact, that both of us were really ‘me’ or ‘you’, all along.