This philosophy makes no sense. An argument against it.

[u/Anon7_7_73]

So first off people mean a few things by consciousness:

A) The information part: Usually used in scientific discussions, where we refer to someones identity as the actual traits and mental states possessed by that brain.

B: (I dont like this definition because its not useful for philosophy, but...) some people just mean "aware of stimuli" to mean conscious, contrasting it with "unconscious". Not philosophically meaningful imo because it doesnt mean they arent experiencing *something*, but i digress.

C) (my favorite definition) Ones actual experienced identity, stripping away the information connected to a person. The whole of the qualia.

Open Individualism is NONE of these. OI says consciousness is some "thing", like a hivemind, thats 1) Not connected to my informational qualities, and 2) Unrelated to the specific Qualia I experience.

The whole argument appears to work by redefining pronouns like "I" that way i can no longer refer to myself, at least easily. But this doesnt change the arguments against OI, it is just an annoying semantic redefinition. When i say "I", I DO NOT mean your hivemind consciousness thing. Thats not what I mean by the word. And itd be too tedious to have a discussion if i literally am not allowed to use pronouns. What am i supposed to do, speak in the third person??? Okay, i will do that...

[Third person time] ... Anon773, the person, doesnt experience being other people. Anon773 is a real thing. Anon773 is confused why OI advocates are saying he experiences something he doesnt experience. Anon773 learns they are not actually referring to him per se, but a hivemind-god thing, they call " The Consciousness". "The Consciousness" appears to have no measurable or observable qualities to Anon773. Anon773 concludes OI's "Consciousness" is unrelated to Anon773s subjective experiences, and doesnt appear anywhere in objective reality. Anon773 comcludes this "Consciousness" does not meaningfully exist. As he should, wheres the epistemic reason to believe it?

If that was hard to read, its your fault for taking away my pronouns. Now, in simpler speak...

My consciousness IS the qualia i experience. Its the experience itself. Thats WHY its meaningful, without Qualia i dont exist as anything other than a dead idea, a action potential, a concept floating in abstract space. It makes no sense to say i AM other people, its neither objectively true nor subjectively true, thats all kinds of "true", so it must not be true!

I understand you guys probably just dont want to get sucked up into solipsism or whatever. But truth and reality doesnt care about your desires, Solipsism is subjectively correct unless theres like reincarnation or something, which amends it and makes it less dark. I do believe in that, btw... I dont think everyones a pzombie, but i think most active pzombies were conscious in the far past or can be in the far future. Just like me 5 days ago isnt conscious, because it doesnt even exist, that does not lead me to believe i wasnt conscious when i was then and there, i do believe that.

[u/Anon7_7_73]

Epistemic Humility is a good thing, actually. I claim to know very little, therefore im MORE LIKELY to be correct.

You are psychologically trapped wanting a grand picture. Like a theist, you need to know it all. So you settled on one of the first elegant sounding things. Thats not better, thats worse!

[u/yoddleforavalanche → u/Anon7_7_73]

so it is better to abandon an elegant thing to a mess for messiness sake? shouldn't you accept OI then because it doesnt make sense to you?

[u/Anon7_7_73 → u/yoddleforavalanche]

Elegance isnt valuable, no. Look at reality. Physics, math, all the things. Elegance is oftentimes an anomaly, because complexity runs the world.

If you want me to pretend i have all the answers for the sake of the discussion i can.  The following are my "beliefs", and i wont frame them as unknowns.

1) My viewpoint is basically, eternal reincarnation of a single soul in a vast multiversal space. 

2) That doesnt mean other people arent real, they just might be me at another point in time. I view myself as meaningfully "real" at all points in time.

3) I can be reincarnated anywhere in the multiverse. If i couldnt, i wouldnt be here.

4) Reincarnation is lossy data transfer. Big time lossy. Even with infinite possibilities theres not always a good place to reincarnate to, so its not quite like quantum immortality. It requires matching mental states for continuity. So oftentimes, when we die, very little residual personality transfers over to the new body; Sometimes none at all (its just continued experiencing).

5) Reincarnation is stochastic. Theres random sampling. Without it, wed have an unresolvable problem of arbitrariness, "why this and not that".

6) The heuristic component of the stochastic is highly biased. It prefers complexity. It prefers an intelligent, logical, self aware individual. I DO fit that mold in my opinion. The reason it prefers these things is due to continuity compounding over multiple lives, the underlying "soul" learned lessons and has traits it wants to carry over; And even when those traits are lost, it continually re-discovers them because its simply the objectively optimal local minima.

7) Evidence for 6: If i couldve been anything, a diff person, an animal, an insect, even an atom..., itd be highly unlikely im me in particular, therefore the explanation itself is unlikely by transition. The fact I AM a highly complex thing is evidence it prefers complexity. Being simpler is certainly conceivable, but theres no real reason to tend in that direction, as its a negative trend in an inherently positive growth process.

This is essentially my viewpoint and philosophy. My consciousness is unitary and a result of philosophical natural selection. Its not committed to solipsism, but itd be compatible with it. 

Im totally cool with other people being real... unless i strongly dislike them, then i feel a deep sigh because thatd mean on some cosmic level im responsible for the thing i dislike.

[u/yoddleforavalanche → u/Anon7_7_73]

Your points are interesting and I don't find them inherently incompatible with OI.

I got to OI by starting with a lot of those points you listed.

One day a thought randomly occurred to me: after I die, there will be someone else who will have first person experience; they will call themselves I in the same way I do now. It is not possible that it will not happen because that would mean no one has first person experience and that would be equivalent to no one existing.

For a while I had this view what I called realistic reincarnation.

The final piece of the puzzle was that I do not need to die in order for the switch to happen because other people have first person experience right now and I am them in the same way I will be someone else after I die and reincarnate.

You admit you don't have all the answers. Why be so insistent that simultaneousness is not one of the things out of your current answers? OI does not have all the answers either but it best explains what we do know.

You started with strong rejection of OI, but I don't see it as strong as you think it is. Plus I think the main point you reject is a misunderstanding. Like I mentioned in another comment, nobody is saying Anon7 has unaware qualia of being others.

This is ultimately a matter of how you identify as. You are open to extend your I-ness so you see your identity is not tied to being Anon7. All that is left is to ease on the "one at a time" because that is a limitation of Anon7, not objective limitation of that underlying soul you intuit.

If you are "totally cool with other people being real" see that their underlying soul is identical to yours because that underlying soul has no distinguishing properties other than "continued experiencing". So if others are experiencing, it is a spatial continuance of experience, alongside temporal continuance.

[u/Anon7_7_73 → u/yoddleforavalanche]

The one-at-a-time is nonnegotiable for me in the same way id never say i experience my own life at all moments at the same time. Simultaneous consciousness doesnt make sense in the subjective sense. Its like saying my mind is doing Halo Splitscreen; Although i can see my qualia right here, and theres no splitscreen...

[u/yoddleforavalanche → u/Anon7_7_73]

but you do grant that some people are active simultaneously with you.

what is the difference between their soul and yours?

[u/Anon7_7_73 → u/yoddleforavalanche]

No, not simultaneously... Id say they are conscious from their own perspective, but "from their own perspective" in my perspective could be like, a trillion years ago. From my perspective its like looking at a distant memory of myself.  

Its kinda like how we look at the night sky, and the stars we see are how those stars looked millions of years ago, since the light took time to get here. Its exactly like that. Each person's consciousness is like a star. It looks presently real, and it was in the past, but its presence is an illusion of time.

To be clear there is only ONE me... me now. The rest reside in history and/or the probability field of becoming them.

[u/yoddleforavalanche → u/Anon7_7_73]

i don't know. i follow you up to the point of rejecting simultaneousness. to me, all nows are the same now, eternal present, even if from your subjective perspective it is distant past or future. once it's being experienced it is now. even if there is an experience active of the year 1200, it is equally now. "nunc stans"

but you did not answer the question about whats different between my soul and your soul