But that's exactly the point. Consciousness, if construed as the container of conscious experience (or the surface upon which experience is written) has no principle of individuation--all conscious experiencers abstracted from their experience are identical. For this reason a consciousness swap is as meaningless as swapping the location of two electrons or shifting the universe 6 feet to the left. This is not at all the route Kolak takes to his conclusion, but suffices as a quick exposition of why one would entertain the position. In short, patterns (complex organisms) emerge in the universe that allow the universe to be conscious of itself. All consciousness is one part of the universe experiencing another part of itself as other.
Course, one could also take the position that there is no experiencer independent of the experience. The experiencer and the experienced are one. In which case you are identical solely with yourself right this moment, and what will wake up in your bed tomorrow will not be you, but something that is merely like you in many ways. Under this view you now and you tomorrow are different persons. This is the view pushed by Parfit. On Wednesday, May 14, 2014, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Wednesday, May 14, 2014, Dennis Ochei > <[email protected]<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> > wrote: > >> Under Daniel Kolak's open >> individualism<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_individualism> there >> exists one numerically distinct person who is everyone at all times. What I >> want to explore is the implications of this theory for a self interested >> individual. For those unfamiliar with Open Individualism, you might instead >> imagine a demon appears to you, and informs you that after you die you will >> experience what it is like to be every person that ever lived. >> >> The only rational course of action seems to be to maximize utility across >> lives. Meaning if $1 will buy you in your current life 1 unit of utility, >> but would afford another person 10 units, it would be rationally self >> interested to donate the money, if you expect to experience what they shall >> experience. This is essentially Singer's Effective Altruism at work. Are >> there any other rational courses of action if Open Individualism is true >> (or if the hypothetical demon appeared) and one is self interested? >> > > If I tell you that this morning I woke up as you and you as me, but > otherwise everything was exactly the same, how is this different to each of > is waking up as ourselves? In other words, what possible evidence, either > subjective or objective, could count either for or against this > transformation having happened? > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/S5Qi3Q_2TTI/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected]<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','everything-list%[email protected]');> > . > To post to this group, send email to > [email protected]<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');> > . > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
