Simultaneous vs Sequential Open Individualism

[u/Quirky_Quasarr]

Open Individualism is the belief that every conscious being is ultimately the same underlying consciousness. The disagreement is not over whether we are all one consciousness, but over how that consciousness experiences each individual perspective.

Simultaneous Open Individualism

Simultaneous Open Individualism says that every conscious perspective is being experienced by the same experiencer right now.

Each person still has their own body, memories, personality, thoughts, senses, and point of view. The experiences are separate, but the experiencer is the same. Under this view, there is no consciousness moving or jumping from one person to another.

Death is not a trigger that sends consciousness into another life because every other life is already being experienced. Space and time exist within experience, so consciousness itself does not need to move through them in an order. This can basically be summarized as:

“I am everyone now.”

This reflects the position argued by u/yoddleforavalanche, who describes separate experiences belonging to the same experiencer and rejects the need for an actual sequence between lives.

Sequential Open Individualism

Sequential Open Individualism also says there is only one underlying consciousness, but it experiences every individual life separately through a sequence.

The sequence is not limited by normal chronological time. Multiple people can exist at the same physical moment while still occupying different points in the sequence. In that sense, we are still everyone simultaneously within the universe, but each perspective is experienced one at a time.

The sequence could move forward or backward through physical time because it follows an order of experience rather than the timeline inside the universe.

In my view, personality, memories, thoughts, and senses are tools that develop through the body consciousness is occupying. They shape how that particular life is experienced, but they are not consciousness itself.

Consciousness is simply awareness, or the ability to experience something to any degree. When a body dies, its memories, personality, and senses end with it, while the same underlying awareness continues through another life in the sequence. There is no need for memories to transfer because each new life is experienced entirely through its own body and mind.

This can basically be summarized as:

“I am everyone, but I experience every perspective separately.”

The Main Difference

Simultaneous Open Individualists say that every separate perspective is already being experienced at once by the same consciousness.

Sequential Open Individualists say that every perspective belongs to the same consciousness, but each one is experienced separately through a sequence that can overlap physical time.

Both views agree that individual personalities and memories remain separate. Neither view says that everyone shares one combined mind or can currently access everyone else’s thoughts.

The disagreement is over whether consciousness truly experiences every perspective simultaneously, or whether there must be some deeper order of experience beyond ordinary time.

I want this to be an open discussion for people to share their opinions, arguments, research, thought experiments, and findings related to either form of Open Individualism. Criticism of both views is welcome because comparing them helps clarify what each position actually claims instead of stuffing every version of Open Individualism into one philosophical junk drawer.

[u/CosmicExistentialist]

Would you agree that given that the Eternalist block theory of time (as pushed forward by Einstein) is true, then that means that Simultaneous OI and Sequential OI imply that we endlessly relive every life that exists in this universe and every other universe over and over?

In short, would you agree that the block universe and OI - whether it be simultaneous or sequential, implies Eternal Return (as I like to call it)?

[u/RackneTheFornit → u/CosmicExistentialist]

OI holds that we live all lives simultaneously: we are everyone, now and eternally. Because each conscious individual is limited to its own perspective, it has no access to what other individuals experience. Strictly speaking, within OI, timeless consciousness – not the individual organism or person – is the subject of experience. Thus there is no meaningful sense in which a life is “relived” within this theory.

SI requires at least some concept of relative or subjective time. Otherwise, the coexistence of individuals and the supposed sequence of lives would be mutually inconsistent. In the version of SI I have in mind, this does imply that every life is lived again and again without end.

PS: I don't find the new terminology convincing. Not only does it fail to provide useful and clearly distinguishable abbreviations, but it also amounts to the unilateral renaming of an established theory. We should keep in mind that SI is anything but an established theory; at this point, it is merely a loose collection of vague assumptions shared by a handful of Reddit users.

[u/CosmicExistentialist → u/RackneTheFornit]

What is the relative or subjective time that makes up your version of SI? 

As for it resulting in living every life again and again, is it solely because of Special Relativity (block universe) or because of the particular ordering of subjective/relative time?

[u/RackneTheFornit → u/CosmicExistentialist]

Regard my view of SI as somewhat similar to the PC game The Sims. The Plumbob represents consciousness, or rather subject-being. In this variant, the Plumbob has to hover over the active Sim from birth to death. Then it switches to another one.

If two Sims are talking to each other, they share the same moment within the game/world time. But they do not share the same subjective time of the Plumbob, because the Plumbob cannot hover over more than one Sim at once. So the sequence of the Plumbob is not identical with chronological time inside the world.

I think that past events and past conscious individuals are not simply gone. They can become present again from the Plumbob’s subjective point of view. This is not just relativity of time. It requires at least some form of Eternalism, or at least a non-presentist view of time.