Are we all the same person?
philosopher
New
Hi there
I am not necessarily a Buddhist, but I do respect Buddhist philosophy a lot.
A couple of years ago I started thinking about death, and came to the incredible conclusion that we might all be the same person.
I realize this might seem insane but I promise it is based on the exact same logic that Buddha used to come to the conclusion that rebirth will happen. And just like the self (or lack thereof) is the cornerstone of rebirth, it is also the cornerstone of the theory of ‘all being the same person’.
I will start with a thought experiment that visualizes the theory.
1. The apartments thought experiment.
We have a drug which is capable to regulate to which part of the brain a person can read/write memory.
We put Bob in the following building; It consists of a central room with a bed, and surrounding it are 10 different apartments which Bob can access from the central room.
Each of these 10 apartments are different, and has different things to do in them.
We will label the apartments with numbers 1,2,3 etc.
Bob will live a day in apartment 1, then goes to sleep in the central room, after which he spends a day in apartment 2 and again sleeps in the central room.
He does this with all the apartments after which he starts again with apartment 1 and continuous this loop during the experiment.
Depending in which apartment Bob will live in the next day, he will be given the correct drug so that he can read/write the memories of that specific apartment. Memories of different apartments are not saved in the same part of the brain.
Because of this when Bob participates with the experiment, he only appears to be experiencing the life of only one apartment.
When he lives a day in apartment 1, and goes to sleep, the next thing he knows is that he once again needs to go to apartment 1.
When Bob experiences apartment 5, it seems to him that he only experiences apartment 5. When apartment 5 is boring or has bad living conditions he can say it was just bad luck that he ‘collapsed’ with apartment 5*.
Also when Bob participates with the experiment, there isn’t a chance that he is going to die doing it. It is not that because there could’ve been 11 apartments, 10/11 of him will survive, and there is a 1/11 chance that Bob will die and be in some sort of ‘eternal nothingness’ because apartment 11 does not exist. In essence Bob can’t collapse with a non-existing apartment**.
We can also expand the experiment:
Bob can communicate with the different apartments via email and we could give each apartment a different job, for example Bob from apartment 1 is a mailman, apartment 2 is a cashier, apartment 3 a taxi driver etc. Each will have different salaries, coworkers and friends. In essence each apartment will have their own live.
2. The self
So why might the apartments thought experiment similar to conscious live in the universe?
It all has to do with the ‘self’.
I will start with a quote from Sam Harris:
“I’m not arguing that consciousness is a reality beyond science or beyond the brain or that it floats free of the brain at death. I’m not making any spooky claims about It’s metaphysics . What I am saying however is that the self is an illusion. The sense of being an ego, an I, a thinker of thoughts in addition to the thoughts. An experiencer in addition to the experience. The sense that we all have of riding around inside our heads as a kind of a passenger in the vehicle of the body. That’s where most people start when they think about any of these questions. Most people don’t feel identical to their bodies. They feel like they have bodies. They feel like there inside the body. And most people feel they are inside their heads. Now that sense of being a subject, a locus of consciousness inside the head is an illusion. It makes no neuro-anatomical sense. There’s no place in the brain for your ego to be hiding. We know that everything that you experience – your conscious emotions and thoughts and moods and the impulses that initiate behavior – all of these things are delivered by a myriad of different processes in the brain that are spread over the whole of the brain. They can be independently erupted. We have a changing system. We are a process and there’s not one unitary self that’s carried trough from one moment to the next unchanging. And yet we feel that we have this self that’s just this center of experience.” – Sam Harris- Neuroscientist and philosopher.
To me, the best word for the self is experiencer. There isn’t an experiencer in addition to the experience.
3. Visualizing the self/experiencer
The best way to understand the concept of the experiencer is by doing a couple of thought experiments.
I will try to approach this as scientifically as I can.
The total information about the experience itself we will call X, this is all the information that can be extracted from a physical/materialistic perspective.
The information about who experiences the experience we will call Y.
You can keep it simple and ignore all other experiences and simply imagine the experience to be light, and the experiencer is what sees that light.
3.1 Conscious computer thought experiment.
There is no reason why humans at some point aren’t capable of creating something that is conscious. Unless a God is required to add the extra ingredient of consciousness, what nature can do with the laws of physics, humans can do with the laws of physics. Even if it takes us another 500 000 years before doing so. I realize some people might be against this statement but still, this is simply a thought experiment to help visualize the experiencer.
Humans create such a conscious machine, one of the inputs is a camera so the experience of light can be created.
The scientists turn the machine on, the information of the experience is X. Experiencer Y1 experiences the experience. Y1 sees the light.
When the scientist turn off the computer, and turn it back on the next morning (A), will the same experiencer see the experience of light? Will the information of Y be the same?
What if the scientists open up the machine and replace some parts (B)? Who will now experience the experiences?
Visually:
The experiencer stays the same:
The experiencer changes:
If experiencers exist, humans must be very careful when creating conscious machines. At which point do you kill an experiencer? The problem is we wouldn’t even be able to test whether the experiencer was killed or not. A conscious machine after (C) will always be convinced that ‘he’ experienced the machine before (C).
3.2 Teleportation
This is an old question, if you teleport a human (T), will the same ‘person’ experience the experiences created by the biological brain before and after teleportation?
Lets say we have Bob. Bob is frightened to use the teleport but is forced to. He will travel from earth to Mars. When Bobs steps out of the teleport on Mars the first thing he thinks is “thank God it worked!”, however a minute or so later Bob realizes that it might not have worked, and that in fact he got ‘born’ a minute ago. He seems to remember his childhood memories, and remembers stepping in the teleport, and the next thing he knew he was right there on Mars. But did ‘he’ actually experience his childhood?
Lets say we call the conscious experiences that the brain created before teleportation X1 and the experiences after teleportation X2.
When X2 thinks about whether ‘he’ experienced X1 or not, then X2 doesn’t feel as if it is X2, X2 has the feeling of being ‘something’ which is experiencing X2, and X2 questions whether this ‘something’ also experienced X1. This feeling of being ‘something’ which experiences experience, is the illusion of the self. Most people identify themselves to be this ‘entity’, to be a this ‘thinker of thoughts’ as Sam Harris calls it.
4.The experiencer does not exist.
From a scientific/materialistic standpoint, the information of Y is 100% invisible. Not only is it invisible, the experiencer doesn’t make any logical sense.
The experiencer is almost a different word for the soul. The experiencer isn’t the brain, it isn’t even the conscious experience created in the brain, it is an invisible ‘entity’ which experiences the experiences created in the brain.
4.1 The illusion of the experiencer
There are obvious reasons why we have the illusion of an experiencer:
1 Information:
When Bob has an experience (A) in which he thinks about what he ate yesterday (B)
This experience (A) is an experience that exists. In it is visual and other information encoded recorded by (B).
(A) also knows that the recording of this information was coupled with experience.
Naturally (A) will think it also experienced (B) and the feeling of an experiencer emerges.
2.The body:
The most logical place for consciousness to be created in a law based universe is in the form of life.
Because of this, conscious experience that share information are also always found in the same ‘body’ or evolution thereof.
Sure you might not remember your dream, but ‘you’ must have experienced it, since it happened in the same body. The same counts for your baby.
I have to leave it at this for now since I'm getting a warning that my post is getting too long.
Comments
It sure is! TL;DR.
No, we're not, but we are interconnected. There's a difference.
I'm sure others will explain it better, if they can wade through that lot....
Welcome, by the way.
Some nice lazy Sunday food for thought. I'll do my best.
I think you've laid out well the argument for no-self presented in Buddhism in general. There are several different subtle school of thought on the matter if you want to dig in deeper, the four tenant systems in Tibetan Buddhism comes to mind. Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti are also some good original thinkers on the topic.
My understanding is that after negating an owner of experience they avoid then reifying or positing a larger identity of some cosmic experiencer. So no "self" but also no "Self" if you get the meaning.
Regarding the ontological nature of conscious experience. I think in general Buddhism has posited the existence of some type of "mind stuff" that is distinct from the body/brain. But actual definitions or explanations seem vague or unavailable, though gross, subtle and very subtle mind also from the Tibetans does a good job. For myself, I like David Chalmers and Giulio Tononi with his Integrated Information Theory
Edit: Also to address your idea in 3. The stream of conscious experience is said to never fully cease. Even in deep sleep or at death some level of continuation is claimed. Obviously this isn't scientifically verified, any verification comes by way of first person testimony from experienced meditators.
No
Here to help
So much simpler and to the point.
Welcome @philosopher. Hope you find something useful here.
Eg. Buddhism is a hell of a lot easier when anyone stops trying to outflank it with thought. It's not that cud-munching is somehow naughty or bad. It simply doesn't work and most people who want to be happy prefer that their chosen direction actually works.
PS. Above, someone mentioned "no self." This is not what Gautama taught. He did teach that there was no abiding self. "No self" is good for cud-munchers and for frightening little children, but no abiding self works much better where the sun goes up and the sun goes down.
Best wishes.
Can you really blame the Tibetans for all their cud-munching, there's so many yaks its nigh impossible not to.
And here I thought I'd come to a resolution on this. I guess I'm a nihilist but since I aspire to be a Dudeist priest instead I'll just relax and tell you, that's just like, your opinion man.
Right on, dude, like keep a limber mind.
OP, you have given quite a lot of material to support "no-self", but I'm not seeing much to support the idea that we are all part of a "super-self". Your apartment theory ( No. 1 ) sounded a little like the parallel reality theory of multiverses?
Would your "super-self" be anything like Atman/Brahman?
It's plagiarism. I already said that.
Yes. In brief, Hyper-analysis causes paralysis.
Yes. Basically, who you are today is not who you were yesterday, and is not who you'll be tomorrow.
"Just as, with an assemblage of parts,
The word 'chariot' is used,
So, when the aggregates are present,
There's the convention 'a being.'"
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn05/sn05.010.bodh.html
Scary for some Buddhists too, it seems!
It seems to be tricky area in Buddhist thought, I don't see a concensus.
This
It's really quite strange how some people seem to think convention means not real when it is just a coming together or how something is done.
It explains a lot actually.
@philosopher ;
It seems to me that we could be likened to the infinite and unique aspects of the same ever-changing process but not one person.
That's not a belief or anything, it's just what makes the most sense to me at the current time.
That means you cannot point and say that is my "true" self. Anything that you can point at isn't the "true self". True self is a false evidence appearing real(fear).
"Self" is the experienced. No experience, no self.
or
World(conscious experience) and "self" arises and passes away.
I always preferred the ocean analogy myself. The ocean is a lot of drops. Together they make the whole of the ocean. But you can remove a droplet, and it contains the ocean, but is not the ocean as a whole. I think we are much the same. We are separate in our human existence. But still part of the ocean of humanity as one. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about interconnectedness a lot in his books. His method of looking at it has always made the most sense to me, and it is what I feel/sense about the world I am part of.
Lots of great responses folks.
As is sometimes the case, the OP only put in an appearance when the post was submitted.
I'll await their return, for them to read the replies, and a request to re-open the thread for them, for further discussion.
Thanks to all for their contributions.