I agree that “Why is this rock this rock instead of that rock?” is a good place to start, even if they aren’t perfectly analogous. Now, it isn’t entirely clear what is being asked. The first question that we could be asking is: “Why is this rock the way that it is instead of the way that rock is?”, in which case we could talk about the process of rock formation and the rock’s specific history. Another question we could be asking is, “Why is this rock here at this time instead of that rock?” and again we’d be talking about history and how people or events moved it. We could even make anthropic arguments, “This rock isn’t a million degrees because if it were that hot it would not longer be a rock” or “This rock isn’t a diamond and this is unsurprising as they are rare”. Here we’d be asking, “Given a random rock, why are we most likely to be observing certain characteristics?”
One difference with the human example is that the human is asking the question, “Why am I me instead of someone else?” So you can also reason about your likely properties on the basis of being the kind of being who is asking that question. Here the question is interpreted as, “Why is the entity asking this question this entity instead of another entity?”.
Another issue which becomes clearer is the symmetry. Barrack Obama might ask, “Why am I me instead of the Pope?” whilst at the same time the Pope asks, “Why am I me instead of Barrack Obama?”. So even if you had been someone else, you might very well of been asking the same question. I think this ties well into the notion of surprise. Let’s suppose a million people receive a social security number and you receive 235,104. You might argue, “How surprising, there was only a one in a million chance of receiving this number!”. However you could have said this regardless of which number you’d been given, so it isn’t that surprising after all.
Another question that could be asked is, “Why is my consciousness receiving the qualia (subjective experience) from this physical body?” In this case, the answer depends on your metaphysics. Materialists would say this is a mistaken question as qualia don’t exist. Christianity might say it’s because God chose to attach this soul to this body. Other spiritual theories might have souls floating around which inhabit any body which is free (although this raises questions such as: what if no soul chooses to inhabit a body and which soul gets to inhabit which body). Lastly, there’s theories like property dualism where the consciousness is a result of the mental properties of particles so that the consciousness corresponding to any one particular body couldn’t be attached to anyone else without breaking the laws of the universe. So as described in my post Natural Structures and Definitions, this last interpretation is one of those questions that is conditionally meaningful to ask.
I agree that “Why is this rock this rock instead of that rock?” is a good place to start, even if they aren’t perfectly analogous. Now, it isn’t entirely clear what is being asked. The first question that we could be asking is: “Why is this rock the way that it is instead of the way that rock is?”, in which case we could talk about the process of rock formation and the rock’s specific history. Another question we could be asking is, “Why is this rock here at this time instead of that rock?” and again we’d be talking about history and how people or events moved it. We could even make anthropic arguments, “This rock isn’t a million degrees because if it were that hot it would not longer be a rock” or “This rock isn’t a diamond and this is unsurprising as they are rare”. Here we’d be asking, “Given a random rock, why are we most likely to be observing certain characteristics?”
One difference with the human example is that the human is asking the question, “Why am I me instead of someone else?” So you can also reason about your likely properties on the basis of being the kind of being who is asking that question. Here the question is interpreted as, “Why is the entity asking this question this entity instead of another entity?”.
Another issue which becomes clearer is the symmetry. Barrack Obama might ask, “Why am I me instead of the Pope?” whilst at the same time the Pope asks, “Why am I me instead of Barrack Obama?”. So even if you had been someone else, you might very well of been asking the same question. I think this ties well into the notion of surprise. Let’s suppose a million people receive a social security number and you receive 235,104. You might argue, “How surprising, there was only a one in a million chance of receiving this number!”. However you could have said this regardless of which number you’d been given, so it isn’t that surprising after all.
Another question that could be asked is, “Why is my consciousness receiving the qualia (subjective experience) from this physical body?” In this case, the answer depends on your metaphysics. Materialists would say this is a mistaken question as qualia don’t exist. Christianity might say it’s because God chose to attach this soul to this body. Other spiritual theories might have souls floating around which inhabit any body which is free (although this raises questions such as: what if no soul chooses to inhabit a body and which soul gets to inhabit which body). Lastly, there’s theories like property dualism where the consciousness is a result of the mental properties of particles so that the consciousness corresponding to any one particular body couldn’t be attached to anyone else without breaking the laws of the universe. So as described in my post Natural Structures and Definitions, this last interpretation is one of those questions that is conditionally meaningful to ask.