You don't have an argument. Not a shred of a reason for your claim. You just repeat it. — unenlightened

So are you making an argument for a soul that can be embodied by anything? There is an essence outside the physical substantiation? If so, then there is more evidence that there is no evidence for that. What we do know is there was you after birth.

So are you making an argument for a soul that can be embodied by anything? — schopenhauer1

No. Absolutely not! I'm not actually making an argument at all. I'm trying to find out what your argument is.

Are ok with my hairdresser saying "You would look better with short hair."?
Are you ok with my sister saying "I wish I had been born a man."?
Are you ok with my hairdresser cutting my hair and my sister transitioning?

What is the particularity of personhood you are pointing too? Any counterfactual is a false narrative in one sense. I am wearing a blue shirt, so it is a false narrative that I am wearing a red shirt. But yesterday I wore a red shirt. — unenlightened

Are you saying anything about a person that is not true of a shirt?

You don't have to answer my questions, and if you don't I won't keep on asking any more.

Are ok with my hairdresser saying "You would look better with short hair."? — unenlightened

Sure, because there is a "you" there to have shorter hair.

Are you ok with my sister saying "I wish I had been born a man."? — unenlightened

No, because if born differently, she would not be her, she would be someone else. That is precisely what I mean. You can't be born something else without being someone else.

Are you ok with my hairdresser cutting my hair and my sister transitioning? — unenlightened

That is now a person transitioning and a person with existing with shorter hair.

These were good questions to clarify. I hope you see the difference between the 1,3 and 2.

It doesn't matter if you would be oblivious of who "you" are today, in your head that "you" would be much happier and have a better life.

It is saying, "I wish my perspective were with a better being in a better situation then I am right now."
— Philosophim

That's fine, but it's still not true that you could be anything else but you. It is just a turn of phrase in the way you describe it, but not an actual point of fact. — schopenhauer1

I did not fully answer your point. I agree 100% that it is impossible to be anything else but you. All I was doing was describing the thought process behind it. We as human beings can imagine impossible things. It is more of a desire and expression of woe or longing in a manner that is entertaining to ourselves. Humans have "mirror neurons" which allow us to envision ourselves in the place of another being. Since we have this, its natural that people would want to also envision themselves as having their cognition and self while being another being.

Philosophy of mind is disappearing into neuroscience, so metaphysics is best answered through there. Ethically and metaphysically with mirror neurons understood, it means we can envision ourselves as other beings, and likely allows us to sympathize and treat other things better. We can imagine ourselves as that being suffering, so we try not to cause it any suffering ourselves.

Well, look at it this way: what makes you you is a set of thoughts and actions and the fact of the matter is someone else could've written the Tractus Logico-Philosophicus and not Ludwig Wittgenstein and someone else could've painted the Mona Lisa and not Leonardo da Vinci

Philosophy of mind is disappearing into neuroscience, so metaphysics is best answered through there. Ethically and metaphysically with mirror neurons understood, it means we can envision ourselves as other beings, and likely allows us to sympathize and treat other things better. We can imagine ourselves as that being suffering, so we try not to cause it any suffering ourselves. — Philosophim

I would disagree that neuroscience takes over metaphysics, but I agree with your main argument. I am not saying that we cannot use counterfactuals to assess conditions, improvements, etc. once already born. The claim is simply that "you" could not counterfactually have existed as anything but "you".

Well, look at it this way: what makes you you is a set of thoughts and actions and the fact of the matter is someone else could've written the Tractus Logico-Philosophicus and not Ludwig Wittgenstein and someone else could've painted the Mona Lisa and not Leonardo da Vinci — TheMadFool

So this kind of leads into Kripke's Naming and Necessity a bit. You could not be anything but you, but it can possibly be the case that someone else besides X person had done a specific action. It probably would look slightly different, but in the same ballpark. "You" could be no one else, otherwise it is someone else we are talking about.

"You" could be no one else, otherwise it is someone else we are talking about. — schopenhauer1

Sarah could be no one else, otherwise Sarah wouldn't be who she is.

After schopenhauer1 drove antinatalist arguments into Sarah's head she was not herself anymore. The innocent Sarah of my immediate past had changed. She wanted to abort our baby.

No matter how many questions I posed to this new "Sarah", I could not find the counterfactual essence to which I was attached, nor could I convince her to keep our baby.

But I've used the transporter and materialized a copy of Sarah from two weeks prior to sudden change.
Thank science she is back. I've very carefully disposed of the old copy and have purged the transporter records.

Where did the real Sarah go? She shouldn't be other that who she is. I must shield her from the philosophy forum, less she unbecomes herself again.

The point is, that there is no "could have been born a..". That would not be you then. It invalidates that kind of counterfactual line of thinking. — schopenhauer1

Every point of your life contains counterfactual “could have beens”. Including all the moments before birth.

And any definition of “you” has to be tied to some process of neurobiological and sociocultural development. Unless you are making some claim about a spirit or soul?

Not sure if this will help. Bit messy but it might be what schop has in mind.

1) I am bert1
(assumption)
2) I could have been unenlightened
(target assumption for reductio)
3) bert1 could have been unenlightened
(Substituting "bert1" for "I" from 1,2. Not sure what this move is called in logic (switcheroo?) but it seems valid to me if 1 is a simple statement of identity)
4) NOT bert1 could have been unenlightened
(assumption based on bert1 and Un necessarily being different objects/processes or whatever)
5) bert1 could have been unenlightened AND NOT bert1 could have been unenlightened
(& intro 3,4)
6) Therefore, NOT I could have been unenlightened
(RAA 1,2,3,4,5)

That'll have to do. I'm sure this forum must have a way to set out arguments like this in a clearer format on the page. Am I supposed to use LATEX or something?

Are you ok with my sister saying "I wish I had been born a man."?
— unenlightened

No, becauseif born differently, she would not be her, she would be someone else. That is precisely what I mean. You can't be born something else without being someone else. — schopenhauer1

It seems a very odd position to take, and you still provide no argument for your claim that I can understand. My sister can transition to a man, but cannot express the desire always to have been one.

"You" could be no one else, otherwise it is someone else we are talking about. — schopenhauer1

After schopenhauer1 drove antinatalist arguments into Sarah's head she was not herself anymore. — Nils Loc

This is much more my sense of identity, a sort of virus we infect each other with - old Arthur was infected by Buddhist philosophy and @schopenhauer1 caught pessimism from him and is infecting the forum. Has there been an original thought on the forums, or are we all second and third hand thinkers? I think not only that we could be someone else, but most of the time we are someone else.

What we do know is there was you after birth. — schopenhauer1

Again, your phrasing would suggest that you want to claim there was no you before birth. Yet nothing happened to you at birth except that you moved from one place to another place.

That's an argument, but as a reductio it doesn't quite reach the solid ground of contradiction. bert1 could have been unenlightened (if he had registered the name in time) and not-bert1 could've been unenlightened (and as it happens is). Either of us could have been, but only one of us is.

"I am not bert1" by the way, does not (fortunately) entail that I am everyone who is not bert1.

I think determinism is the most straightforward way to address the idea of multiple possibilities existing at the same time. Saying that anything could have been in a different state is abstract thinking.

The original post is a little vague. Schopenhauer1, what exactly is your stance on these "metaphysics and ethics" you mentioned? Many ethics are based on the notion that one could be another. Does that mean you disagree with all those ethics? Because the reality of what we are is too far from the abstract thinking of what we could be? Or maybe you disagree with the way people describe the justifications of their ethics? What were you getting at?

Not sure that he's literally referring to the act of birth. I interpreted it to mean the beginning of a human consciousness.

...trying to make a table...

So this kind of leads into Kripke's Naming and Necessity a bit. You could not be anything but you, but it can possibly be the case that someone else besides X person had done a specific action. It probably would look slightly different, but in the same ballpark. "You" could be no one else, otherwise it is someone else we are talking about. — schopenhauer1

From where I stand, a person is the sum total of his/her thoughts and actions but, as seems to be the case, there is no necessary connection between thoughts and actions and people i.e. anyone can/could've thought/done the things I could've thought/done.

So this kind of leads into Kripke's Naming and Necessity a bit. You could not be anything but you, but it can possibly be the case that someone else besides X person had done a specific action. It probably would look slightly different, but in the same ballpark. "You" could be no one else, otherwise it is someone else we are talking about. — schopenhauer1

Yes.

During Gregor Mendel's (genes) lifetime, most biologists held the idea that all characteristics were passed to the next generation through blending inheritance, in which the traits from each parent are averaged. Instances of this phenomenon are now explained by the action of multiple genes with quantitative effects. Charles Darwin tried unsuccessfully to explain inheritance through a theory of pangenesis. It was not until the early 20th century that the importance of Mendel's ideas was realized.

By 1900, research aimed at finding a successful theory of discontinuous inheritance rather than blending inheritance led to independent duplication of his work by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns, and the rediscovery of Mendel's writings and laws. — Wikipedia

The defining element of the person Gregor Mendel (genetics) was duplicated in Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns. What do you make of that? :chin:

Does it make sense to say that Hugo de Vries or Carl Correns could've been Gregor Mendel?

@schopenhauer1

Another example of two very different people hitting on the same idea is Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - both discovered Calculus independently of each other at around the same time.

Newton could've been Leibniz and vice versa? :chin:

@schopenhauer1 Sorry for the barrage of posts but the matter is just too interesting (and also confusing).

We cannot have been a being other than who we are now — Schopenhauer1

What defines "who we are now" but the circumstances, physical form, thoughts and actions we are. Have I left anything out? :chin:

However, this definition of identity is problematic for the reason that people speak sentences like "he believes in god" or "he believes in souls". Contained within sentences like these is the assumption/belief that there's something, which "he" refers to, that possesses/has certain beliefs/thoughts whatever they may be. Most importantly these sentences build a wall of separation between beliefs/thoughts and something that has these beliefs/thoughts. Basically, beliefs/thoughts don't determine identity - the real you is the thing with the ability to think/form beliefs and not the thoughts/beliefs themselves.

If this is the case then, it follows that we are distinct from everything else we think defines us - we're not the circumstances we're born into, we're not the acts we commit, we're not the physical form that we possess. Our identity, the you/I, is independent of our thoughts/actions/circumstances/physical form.

Your question presupposes that we're defined by our circumstances, thoughts, actions, physical form and thus begs the question.

And again, I'd like to bring up Kripke..

In the course of making these distinctions, Kripke revived the ancient doctrine of essentialism, according to which objects possess certain properties necessarily—without them the objects would not exist at all. On the basis of this doctrine and revolutionary new ideas about the meaning and reference of proper names and of common nouns denoting “natural kinds” (such as heat, water, and tiger), he argued forcefully that some propositions are necessarily true but knowable only a posteriori—e.g., “Water is H2O” and “Heat is mean molecular kinetic energy”—and that some propositions are contingently true (true in some circumstances but not others) but knowable a priori. These arguments overturned the conventional view, inherited from Immanuel Kant (1720–1804), that identified all a priori propositions as necessary and all a posteriori propositions as contingent. Naming and Necessity also had far-reaching implications regarding the question of whether linguistic meaning and the contents of beliefs and other mental states are partly constituted by social and environmental facts external to the individual. According to Kripke’s causal theory of reference, for example, the referent of a given use of a proper name, such as Aristotle, is transmitted through an indefinitely long series of earlier uses; this series constitutes a causal-historical chain that is traceable, in principle, to an original, or “baptismal,” application. Kripke’s view posed a serious challenge to the prevailing “description” theory, which held that the referent of a name is the individual who is picked out by an associated definite description, such as (in the case of Aristotle) the teacher of Alexander the Great. Finally, Kripke’s work contributed greatly to the decline of ordinary language philosophy and related schools, which held that philosophy is nothing more than the logical analysis of language. — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saul-Kripke#ref918554

the referent of a given use of a proper name, such as Aristotle, is transmitted through an indefinitely long series of earlier uses; this series constitutes a causal-historical chain that is traceable, in principle, to an original, or “baptismal,” application. — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saul-Kripke#ref918554

The transmission of the moniker, "unenlightened" is finite, and a baptismal ritual called "signing-up" was undergone in which the guidelines were read and formally assented to. But this is a cultural matter.

If you were a woman of the last century, or if you were a Native American, you would expect your name to change as you identity changed.

You want to declare that formally meaningless, and make me say instead:

A woman of the last century, or a Native American would expect their name to change as their identity changed.

And that I can so easily make the same point either way, strongly suggests to me, that your claim is a matter of linguistic grammar and usage merely, and says nothing about identity or personhood.

So the point is that, a proper name is more than a description like "the person who wore X" or "identifies as Y". Rather, in another possible world, that person could have worn A and identified as B. There is something about a person that is the same in all possible worlds. That was about proper names and their referent specifically, but this points to a kind of essentialism about individuals.

Kripke calls designators like ‘The successor of 2’ rigid de facto, rather than rigid de jure: the description happens to be satisfied by the same object in every possible world and never anything else. Compare the intuitively distinct case of de jure rigidity in a name, like ‘Barack Obama’. Here the intent is to refer to this person in all possible worlds, whatever descriptions may designate him. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rigid-designators/#RelBetRigAssTheRef

It doesn't matter what name is used to rigidly designate the individual, the causal baptism rigidly designates in all possible worldsno matter the name. You cannot not be you, in other words in all possible worlds. If you were not you, then there isn't even a "you" to be something else. "You" are more than the sum of a bunch of descriptions that could change in any possible world.

You cannot not be you, in other words in all possible worlds. If you were not you, then there isn't even a "you" to be something else. "You" are more than the sum of a bunch of descriptions that could change in any possible world. — schopenhauer1

Would you admit that my mother might have aborted me? Or that the midwife might have bungled my birth so that i was born with cerebral palsy or some other brain damage? Or that some developmental problem might have made me gay, or intersex? These seem like possible events to me, in the sense that they can happen to people. Even in this world I can be a baby and an old man, and they are very different, so while I concede that "...If you were not you, then there isn't even a "you" to be something else." I can be something else and still be me, in all kinds of ways, and that includes loss of memory, body parts, brain function and most of the things one identifies as one's self.

So the point is... — schopenhauer1

Well your point is your point. And if you only want to make your point and not address my points at any point, there is not much point in my continuing to point out anything, and so at this point I think I'll stop making any further points, to be blunt.

That's an argument, but as a reductio it doesn't quite reach the solid ground of contradiction. bert1 could have been unenlightened (if he had registered the name in time) and not-bert1 could've been unenlightened (and as it happens is). Either of us could have been, but only one of us is. — unenlightened

I took schop to be talking about people with all their non-name-dependent features rather than switchable name-bearers.

"I am not bert1" by the way, does not (fortunately) entail that I am everyone who is not bert1.

:) Indeed. It depends where one puts the brackets I guess. "I am (not-bert1)" means you are everything that isn't bert1. "I am not (bert1)" means just that you are not the one thing that is bert1, but you might or might not be one or more other things.

(Not that I agree with Schop's OP just for the record. I think there are two senses of 'you' in play that are not distinguished. I don't think statements like 'I am bert1' and 'you are unenlightened' are always straightforward statements of identity. I assumed they were in my rendition of Schop's argument to be charitable).

EDIT: removed double-negative

Would you admit that my mother might have aborted me? — unenlightened

Yes, then, you would be no more.

I can be something else and still be me, in all kinds of ways, and that includes loss of memory, body parts, brain function and most of the things one identifies as one's self. — unenlightened

So then what is the you that is the same in all possible worlds? That is the you I am talking about.

Above and beyond this, even if not using all possible worlds logic, there is something unique about the causality and relations you have had as a physical being, with an ego, interacting with the environment that cannot be simply the same as another being.

So then what is the you that is the same in all possible worlds? That is the you I am talking about. — schopenhauer1

You're the one talking about it, you tell me. I don't think there is such a thing. I think an old man has inherited a name from a baby. "Robert *****" is not the name of the DNA, or the name of anything constant in this world, let alone across all possible worlds.

I'm just average, common too
I'm just like him, the same as you
I'm everybody's brother and son
I ain't different from anyone
It ain't no use a-talking to me
It's just the same as talking to you. — Bob Dylan

"Robert *****" is not the name of the DNA, or the name of anything constant in this world, let alone across all possible worlds. — unenlightened

Yet there is something that is the same in all possible worlds. Perhaps it is something like the DNA.

I also want to add, that the implication is that there is no being born "as something else". You could only have been born as you.

I also want to add, that the implication is that there is no being born "as something else". You could only have been born as you. — schopenhauer1

As sure as eggs is eggs.