Even if I didn’t believe I had a brain sitting in front of a computer doesn’t mean don’t have one. That I don’t experience my brain doesn’t make me not be it.
MMORPG are usually infiinte games but one could imagine what would happen to the psychology that has only grown up in the MMOPRG if faced with a “game over” screen and the game would not continue. One could imagine being in a movie theather and after the film is over being confused and experiencing novelty about simply walking around a building. And I would guess that being so immersed in a film so deeply that you don’t at that time remember walking into the theather ever happened. You might identify with the point of view charater of the film (“the protagonist”). The instruction to remember your original face would be “no that I, that shoots the aliens, but the me that walked into a theather”. The face is “original” because it was around before the starting credits started to roll.
The koan could be interpreted that silicon servers and biobrains are what exists and the whatever equivalent of Middle Earth the game takes in is illusionary and has always been. It is by virtue of sharing a material plane that the wetware and the hardware unite. Your primary role has always been the player, no matter what game or avatar you slip into. The avatar is you but it is also fictious.
Your point is more that the choice of a “protagonist” is weak and doesn’t make that much sense. If you pay attention to the side characters you might identify with them and it can be “their” story. Or maybe you watch it as not identifying as anybody, “the story happens”. Its all thoughts in the viewers head so they share an ontological type, there is no data type difference between “people” and “cities” on that level (“Rob was wild” and “King’s Landing was wild” are made from the same wood). But then there is the party that is totally unmoved even if the movie ends in a nuclear armageddon (or Fourth Impact). Even if all the character decriptions are of the form “X is dead” the viewers brain is still burning sugar and likely to walk out of the theather in nominal condition.
I think, I am not getting my point across very well. The crux here is this: what is “you” but the footprint of your experience? That would include your memories, intuitions, reactions, associations, and patterns of thinking. I argue there is nothing else. If you remove that, then how “me” entering the simulation is different from “you” entering the simulation? The truly original face is devoid of any self-ness.
Fine the thing that you are pointing at does emcompass a lot. But to me it seems more of a identity or personality “Me the entity that has these and these properties”. Even before I “experience anything” when the “tabula rasa” condition is in effect the word “I” refers. Even amongs empty shells that have no personality or that have identical personalities “I” picks out a unique instance. To have that first footprint there must be something for it to press on.
(Section of evangelion movies rattles in my brain)
If miss-copycat would pick up book reading they would not become Rei. “I can be different?” is a lot about not identifying with a personality but that this anayami-class is able to pick up unique characteristics
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).
I do remember there are parts in Mr Robot that refer to this kind of stuff.
The Architech ends rather than leaves. But who the sister meets she has met before. So when that one made a decision similar to the architect there ends up being a corresponding “arrival” even if the decision can’t be more strongly to be said to be leaving rather than ending. A lot like the teleporter problem even if the transmission mechanism isn’t even guaranteed to be accurate.
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.
Even if I didn’t believe I had a brain sitting in front of a computer doesn’t mean don’t have one. That I don’t experience my brain doesn’t make me not be it.
MMORPG are usually infiinte games but one could imagine what would happen to the psychology that has only grown up in the MMOPRG if faced with a “game over” screen and the game would not continue. One could imagine being in a movie theather and after the film is over being confused and experiencing novelty about simply walking around a building. And I would guess that being so immersed in a film so deeply that you don’t at that time remember walking into the theather ever happened. You might identify with the point of view charater of the film (“the protagonist”). The instruction to remember your original face would be “no that I, that shoots the aliens, but the me that walked into a theather”. The face is “original” because it was around before the starting credits started to roll.
The koan could be interpreted that silicon servers and biobrains are what exists and the whatever equivalent of Middle Earth the game takes in is illusionary and has always been. It is by virtue of sharing a material plane that the wetware and the hardware unite. Your primary role has always been the player, no matter what game or avatar you slip into. The avatar is you but it is also fictious.
Your point is more that the choice of a “protagonist” is weak and doesn’t make that much sense. If you pay attention to the side characters you might identify with them and it can be “their” story. Or maybe you watch it as not identifying as anybody, “the story happens”. Its all thoughts in the viewers head so they share an ontological type, there is no data type difference between “people” and “cities” on that level (“Rob was wild” and “King’s Landing was wild” are made from the same wood). But then there is the party that is totally unmoved even if the movie ends in a nuclear armageddon (or Fourth Impact). Even if all the character decriptions are of the form “X is dead” the viewers brain is still burning sugar and likely to walk out of the theather in nominal condition.
I think, I am not getting my point across very well. The crux here is this: what is “you” but the footprint of your experience? That would include your memories, intuitions, reactions, associations, and patterns of thinking. I argue there is nothing else. If you remove that, then how “me” entering the simulation is different from “you” entering the simulation? The truly original face is devoid of any self-ness.
Fine the thing that you are pointing at does emcompass a lot. But to me it seems more of a identity or personality “Me the entity that has these and these properties”. Even before I “experience anything” when the “tabula rasa” condition is in effect the word “I” refers. Even amongs empty shells that have no personality or that have identical personalities “I” picks out a unique instance. To have that first footprint there must be something for it to press on.
(Section of evangelion movies rattles in my brain)
If miss-copycat would pick up book reading they would not become Rei. “I can be different?” is a lot about not identifying with a personality but that this anayami-class is able to pick up unique characteristics
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).
I do remember there are parts in Mr Robot that refer to this kind of stuff.
The Architech ends rather than leaves. But who the sister meets she has met before. So when that one made a decision similar to the architect there ends up being a corresponding “arrival” even if the decision can’t be more strongly to be said to be leaving rather than ending. A lot like the teleporter problem even if the transmission mechanism isn’t even guaranteed to be accurate.
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.