I Am You Synthese Library
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I AM YOU SYNTHESE LIBRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editor-in-Chief: VINCENT F. HENDRICKS, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark JOHN SYMONS, University of Texas at El Paso, U.S.A. Honorary Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University, U.S.A. Editors: DIRK VAN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University of Groningen, The Netherlands TEDDY SEIDENFELD, Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A. PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California, U.S.A. JAN WOLEN´SKI, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland VOLUME 325 I AM YOU The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics By DANIEL KOLAK William Paterson University of New Jersey, Wayne, NJ, U.S.A. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 1-4020-2999-3 (HB) ISBN 1-4020-3014-2 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Springer, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Springer, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2004 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed in the Netherlands. “To my four fathers: Horst Ungerer Ray Martin Jaakko Hintikka and Miro” TABLE OF CONTENTS Preliminary Acknowledgments xiii Chapter 1. PERSONAL BORDERS 1 §1.1 Individuation, Identification, and Identity: Take One 1 §1.2 Closed Individualism, Empty Individualism, and Open Individualism: The Three Views of Personal Identity 6 §1.3 Philosophical Explanations 22 §1.4 The Apparent Excluders of the Open Individual View Of Personal Identity 24 §1.5 Dissolving Our Boundaries 26 §1.6 Philosophy Without Proof 30 §1.7 Isn’t Open Individualism Already Known to be False? 35 §1.8 Consciousness and the Cosmic Towers: a Parable 36 Chapter 2. BORDER CONTROL 43 §2.1 Apparent Excluder (1): The Fact of Exclusive Conjoinment 43 §2.1.1 Consciousness Explained: The Dream Analog As a Conceptual Boundary Dissolve of the Metaphysical Significance of the FEC Border 47 §2.1.1.1 Consciousness Refined: The Dream Analog and I, The Subject-In-Itself 51 §2.1.2 The Relata of the FEC Relation: Subject and Object, Three Caveats 55 §2.1.3 World Boundaries and I, Take One; or, The One and the Many, Take Three: Letting the Nullteilig Out of Klein’s Bottle 59 §2.1.4 The Causal Barrier 60 §2.2 Apparent Excluder (2): Alter Subject Identification 61 §2.2.1 The Epistemological Barrier 62 §2.2.2 In Search of Zombies: Is FEC + ASI An Inter-Personal Boundary? 63 §2.2.3 Dream Analog II: Can a Person Be the Subject of More Than One (Disjoint) Set of Experiences Simultaneously? 67 §2.2.3.1 Arguing With Myself Over Everything and Nothing: Non-pathological Phrenic Amnesia, Shuffled Memories, and Multiphrenia 72 §2.2.3.2 Askew Modalities: Weak (Closed World) vii TABLE OF CONTENTS viii Nonlocality, Strong (Many Worlds) Nonlocality, and Ultra-Strong (Open World) Nonlocality 75 §2.2.3.3 Time and Consciousness: Some Objections to Dream Analog II 81 §2.3 Is the Dream Analog Self-Defeating? 86 §2.4 The Problem of Other Persons: An Implication For the Problem of Other Minds 88 §2.5 The Problem of Personal Non-Identity 91 Chapter 3. PHYSIOLOGICAL BORDERS 107 §3.1 Moving Beyond Subjective Experience 109 §3.2 Apparent Excluder (3): The Physiological Border 110 §3.2.1 Physiological vs. Psychological Individuation and Identification: Does Matter Matter? 114 §3.2.2 The Physiological Substance Dissolve 122 §3.3 The Persistence of Closed Individualism 127 §3.4 Thought Experiments About Persons 129 §3.5 The Contemporaneous Physiological Dissolve 134 Chapter 4. NEUROLOGICAL BORDERS 143 §4.1 The Bodily Dissolve 143 §4.2 The Brain Dissolve 144 §4.3 The Tie-Breaker Condition and The Closed Individual View 155 §4.4 How Bizarre is Nozick’s Tie? 160 §4.5 Can Two Different Brains Be the Same Person? 163 Chapter 5. SPATIAL BORDERS 168 §5.1 Can One Person Be Two Different Human Beings? 168 §5.2 The Teletransporter 174 §5.3 Apparent Excluder (4): The Spatial Border 178 §5.4 Fission With Identity: Are You An Open Individual? 181 Chapter 6. PSYCHOLOGICAL BORDERS 196 §6.1 Apparent Excluder (5): The Psychological Boundary 197 §6.2 Personas, Personalities, and the Subject, Take Zero: Borges Nor I 199 §6.3 Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quartic Identification: The Fourfold ε/δ Manifold 215 §6.4 The Subject, Take One: Freedom From the Self 219 §6.5 The Subject, Take Two: Self and Other 222 ix TABLE OF CONTENTS §6.6 The Subject, Take Three: Cogito, Ergo Quis Est? 229 §6.6.1 Self-Consciousness Explained: The Intuition of Personal Identity (I Am I) 230 §6.6.2 Self-Consciousness Liberated: Averroës Strikes Again for the First Time 237 §6.6.3 The Self and I: Identity for Identity’s Sake 240 §6.7 Dissolving Our Selves: The Analysis and Synthesis of Multiple Personality Disorder 245 §6.7.1 Personas, Personalities, and Selves: From a Metaphysical and Metapsychological Point of View 252 §6.7.2 FEC, Emotions, and Metaphysical Reversal 255 §6.7.3 Altering Ourselves Philosophically 257 §6.8 The Memory Dissolve 261 §6.9 The Physiological Border Retreat 265 §6.10 The Omni Dissolve: Daniel Kolak Through Krishnamurti Becomes Ann-Margret 268 §6.11 Apparent Excluder (6): The Unity of Consciousness Dissolve 276 Chapter 7: CAUSAL BORDERS 299 §7.1 Apparent Excluder (7): The Causal Border 299 §7.2 One Small Step For Personkind 302 §7.3 The Causal Dissolve 305 Chapter 8: METAPHYSICAL BORDERS 317 §8.1 The Metaphysical Substance Border 317 §8.2 The Soul Dissolve 319 §8.3 Metaphysical Subjectivism 322 §8.4 The Transcendent Illusion, the Transcendental Illusion, and the Third Copernican Revolution: A Brief History of Personal Metaphysics 336 Chapter 9: IDENTITY BORDERS 349 §9.1 The Identity Dissolve, or, Is Cessation of Identity Death? 353 §9.2 Is Reductionism True? 360 §9.3 What Parfit’s Combined Spectrum Argument Really Shows 366 §9.4 Identity, Survival and What Really Matters 370 Chapter 10: PHENOMENOLOGICAL BORDERS 375 TABLE OF CONTENTS x §10.1 The Lucid Dream Analog, the Intuition of Understanding, and the Paradox of the Dreaming Thinker 377 §10.2 From a Phenomenological Point of View 391 §10.3 The Phenomenal Self, the Phenomenal World and the Noumenal Subject: The Unspeakable Mode Of Being or, Silent No More 396 §10.4 Sinn Beyond Borders 412 §10.5 Quantum Phenomenology, Quantum Consciousness, and Phantom Identity 423 §10.6 The Phenomenology of Survival and Identity: Empathy vs. Identity 435 §10.7 Seeing Through Ourselves: Conceptually Extending the Borders of Experience 439 §10.8 The Phenomenological Boundary 445 §10.9 The Ghost in Hume’s Labyrinth and the Continuous Phenomenological Dissolve 448 §10.10 Drawing Ourselves Phenomenologically: The Man Who Mistook Himself For the World 452 §10.11 Drawing Ourselves (Temporally) In Phenomenal Time: Being In the Specious Present 465 §10.12 Drawing Ourselves (Spatially) Within the Phenomenal World: The Localization of Nonlocality 469 §10.13 The Phenomenological Black Hole At The Center Of the Third Copernican Revolution Revis(it)ed: Drawing Ourselves Into the Center of the World 475 §10.14 Drawing Ourselves Into the One Multiperspectival Reality, Or Restoring the Suppressed Z-Coordinate to Gödel’s Universe: The Ultra (Open World) Nonlocality Interpretation of Personal Identity 481 §10.15. Why Was Hume Not a Korsakoff? 487 §10.16 Incarnation vs. Reincarnation 489 §10.17 Dismembering Ourselves Through Our Remembering: Personal Identity, Multiple Incarnation and the Formal Phenomenological Analysis of Always, Never and Now 493 Chapter 11: TRANSCENDENTAL BORDERS 515 §11.1 Climbing Kant’s Ladder: From the Phenomenal Self to the Transcendental Subject 515 xi TABLE OF CONTENTS §11.2 J.L. Mackie, Zeno Vendler, and I: The Wittgensteinian Vessel of Life, All Aboard! 520 §11.3 The New and Improved Transcendental Deduction: Phenomenology’s Transcendental Subject and Brouwer’s Creating Subject As The Open Individualist Noumenal Subject 523 §11.4 The Brains of Daniel Dennett and the Myth of Double Transduction: Transcendental Consciousness Exposed 525 §11.5 What Is It Like To Be the Transcendental Subject? 531 §11.6 Nagel’s Metaphysical Megalomania and the Subject Of the Universe: Playing the Wittgensteinian Game For Higher Stakes 533 §11.7 Full Contact Philosophy: The Noumenal Touch 538 §11.7.1 Dream Analog III 538 Chapter 12: MORAL BORDERS 552 §12.1 Morality and the Separateness of Persons: From Sidgwick to Parfit and Rawls 552 §12.2 Open Individualism, Empty Individualism, and Utilitarianism: Learning to Live With Ourselves 561 §12.3 And Justice For No One: Rawls vs. Utilitarianism 566 §12.4 The Game of Life and the Mathematics of Morality 571 §12.4.1 From the I Am You to the IMF: Open Metaphysical Capitalism 573 §12.5 The Aboriginal Position and the Veil of Knowledge: From Misery to Happiness—Toward a New Moral Calculus 574 §12.6 The Original Position and the Veil of Ignorance 576 §12.7 The Primordial Position and the Veil of Wisdom 578 §12.8 Noumenal Ethics and Freedom 581 §12.9 The Third Copernican Revolution and the Breakdown Of Metaphysical and Metapsychological Philopathology 586 §12.10 Improper Dysfunctionality: Why We Harm Ourselves 598 §12.11 The Conclusion of This Chapter 601 APPENDIX A: LOGICAL BORDERS 606 APPENDIX B: SEMIOTIC BORDERS 610 References 622 Index (names and subjects) 633 PRELIMINARY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The central thesis of I Am You—that we are all the same person—is apt to strike many readers as obviously false or even absurd.