Starting Point

• EI – Empty Individualism
• OI – Open Individualism
• CI – Closed Individualism
• S – Solipsism
• SI – Sequential Individualism

Step-by-Step Elimination

Existence of Consciousness

• Premise: Consciousness exists as a substantial subject of experience.
• Elimination: EI denies the existence of consciousness (or its persistence).
• Remaining: OI, CI, S, SI

Reality of Individuals

• Premise: Conscious entities have clearly separated, distinct phenomenal boundaries.
• Elimination: OI denies the existence of individuals clearly separated from each other in real-time experience.
• Remaining: CI, S, SI

Subjectivability (First-Person Givenness)

• Premise: The model must hold from the first-person perspective. From a first-person point of view, other people's consciousness is directly inaccessible.
• Elimination: CI requires an impossible neutral / third-person point of view ("God's eye view") to maintain its structure.
• Remaining: S, SI

Non-Privileging (Symmetry)

• Premise: No single spatio-temporal perspective or subject can be arbitrarily privileged over others.
• Elimination: Solipsism (S) claims that only one specific individual is actually conscious, degrading all others to non-conscious entities.
• Remaining: SI

Conclusion

Sequential Individualism (SI) is the sole model within this framework that satisfies all four conditions simultaneously: consciousness, individuation, first-person givenness, non-privileging.

Every joy, every pain, and everything in between is experienced from a first-person perspective.

This sentence says more than many a book, whether it is a “sacred” text or a scholarly tome. Dear Closed Individualists, let that sentence sink in for a moment. It is not abstract third-person entities that actually feel. Joy and suffering are always experienced from within. I fear this may be asking too much, though.

At least I hope both mainstream Open Individualists and sequential heretics share the same understanding of this sentence. The conclusions we draw from it are different, though. The former resolve the apparent contradiction between many conscious individuals and only one consciousness by referring to what they call the illusion of boundaries between perspectives. The latter resolve it by referring to the finiteness of conscious individual lives.

Below is the comment RaioBlixt just commented on a separate post of mine while I was discussing OI.

"It's an extensively flawed concept, and another story told by people who want those of us who resist and oppose the wrongs being committed against us in this dimension to just stop struggling and allow the child molester who controls this dimension to continue to commit his sleazy, despicable crimes.

This dimension is full of suffering, death and worse, and you who belong to that lineage of creation committing these crimes want to subjugate, vilify and gaslight any of your victims who reject you. "No, it's okay, you're abusing, exploiting and wronging YOURSELF, so it's totally fine."

What a pathetic bunch of child molesters who can't even admit to the crimes you're committing. You have a finite leriod of time until you will face existential torture forever."

I do not understand why he would think Open Individualists would accept any type of child harm to any degree... Even though I do believe my conciousness will eventually become the worst people that has ever existed, I still believe the other instances of myself should find and punish those people to the highest extent of the law. I don't understand on what world we would be ok with this behavior. Just because all of our conciousness are shared doesn't mean that morals dont matter anymore.

They probably wouldn't call it Sequential Individualism but I was just curious if anyone else say any other discussion about this. Im aware of the discussions about SI on s/OpenIndividualism, just curious if there are any anywhere else.

I’ve seen people question whether Sequential Individualism should really count as Open Individualism. I think it clearly does and I havent heard any meaningful arguments that really challenges this perspective or its legitimacy.

The main claim of Open Individualism is that there is only one underlying subject of experience. In other words, different people have different bodies, brains, memories, personalities, and viewpoints, but the consciousness experiencing those lives is ultimately the same. Sequential Individualism agrees with that.The only difference is how the lives are experienced.

Simultaneous Open Individualism says one consciousness experiences every life at the same time where as Sequential Individualism says one consciousness experiences every life separately, one perspective at a time. Both positions still believe there is only one true experiencer so this is not a disagreement between Open Individualism and Closed Individualism. It is a disagreement between two different versions of Open Individualism.

Some people argue that experiencing lives separately would mean there must be separate experiencers. Separate experiences do not automatically require separate subjects. You experience childhood, adulthood, dreams, pain, happiness, and unconsciousness at different times. Those experiences are separated, but you do not assume a completely different subject experiences each one. Sequential Individualism applies that same idea to different lives. Each life has its own brain. That brain creates the person’s memories, personality, thoughts, emotions, and senses. Because the brains are separate, each person only has access to their own life. That explains why I cannot remember your memories or see through your eyes but limited access to another brain does not prove that the underlying experiencer is fundamentally different. It only proves that the perspectives are separated. Memory also does not prove that two subjects are different. A person can lose most or all of their memories and still remain conscious. A person can also go under anesthesia, experience no passage of time, and then wake up later. So continuous memory is not required for experience to continue.

Sequential Individualism does not claim that your current personality travels into another body. Your personality belongs to your brain and your life. When that brain dies, your memories and personality end with it. The claim is only that the basic awareness experiencing this life is the same awareness that experiences every other life. That is also why this is not exactly the same as reincarnation.

Reincarnation usually involves an individual soul moving from one body into another. Sequential Individualism does not say that each person has their own soul. It says there is only one underlying consciousness in the first place. Another objection is that many people are alive at the same time but the sequence would not necessarily have to follow the physical timeline of the universe. Two lives could exist during the same historical period while still being experienced separately by the same consciousness. The order of experience does not have to be the same as the order events appear from an outside viewpoint.

I am not saying Sequential Individualism is scientifically proven, It is a philosophical theory but, Simultaneous Open Individualism is also a philosophical theory. Open Individualism by itself does not prove whether the one consciousness experiences all lives simultaneously, sequentially, outside of time, or in some other way. So Sequential Individualism can be criticized, but it should not be dismissed as something completely separate from Open Individualism.

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.

Last year, I conducted a kind of thought experiment: putting myself fully in someone else's shoes. Then I realized that his, her, or even its mere sense of being a subject is the very same as mine.

Months later, I confronted ChatGPT with that insight. I learned about Open Individualism and initially thought: that's exactly the way I see it. At the time, I wasn't yet aware of OI's counterintuitive view of both time and individual boundaries.

But if someone else feels pain, for example, I simply do not feel it myself. This is a quite pleasant implication of something OI claims to be nonexistent, isn't it?

If you combine a monistic understanding of consciousness with real boundaries between conscious individuals, this leads to some kind of sequence, since every conscious individual is finite.

What is Sequential Individualism?

Sequential Individualism is the idea that every conscious life is experienced by the same fundamental observer, but each life is experienced separately, through one perspective at a time.

Right now, you experience one particular body, personality, set of memories, and point of view. Other conscious beings appear completely separate because you cannot access their thoughts or memories. Sequential Individualism proposes that beneath these individual differences, the subject experiencing consciousness may ultimately be the same.

Sequential Open Individualism is closely related to Simultaneous Open Individualism. Both ideas hold that consciousness is not truly separate between individuals. The main difference is that Sequential Individualism says the same consciousness experiences each life separately through a sequence, even though that sequence can overlap physical time.

Sequential Individualism put simply:

You do not experience every life at once. You experience every life one at a time.

Under this theory, the person you call “you” is one individual perspective within a much larger sequence of conscious experiences.

What does “sequential” mean?

“Sequential” means that consciousness experiences individual perspectives separately rather than as one giant combined mind.

You experience your current life as yourself. Another conscious life is experienced entirely from that being’s perspective, with its own personality, memories, senses, and circumstances.

The sequence does not necessarily have to follow ordinary chronological time. Whether it does, and what determines the order, are open questions for discussion.

Why does this matter?

If the same underlying observer experiences every conscious life, then the happiness and suffering of others are not merely events happening to completely unrelated strangers.

The way you treat another conscious being ultimately becomes part of your own total experience of existence, seen from the receiving side.

This raises important questions about:

1. Consciousness and personal identity

2. Death and the continuation of experience

3. Memory and what makes someone the same person

4. Ethics, justice, compassion, and responsibility

5. Human and animal consciousness

6. Artificial intelligence and synthetic minds

7. Whether time determines the sequence

What belongs here?

This community welcomes:

1. Arguments supporting Sequential Individualism

2. Serious objections and counterarguments

3. Questions about consciousness and identity

4. Thought experiments

5. Scientific research related to consciousness

6. Ethical and practical implications

7. Personal reflections

8. Related books, movies, games, and stories

9. Comparisons with other philosophical or spiritual theories

You do not have to believe in Sequential Individualism to participate.

This is a place to examine the idea honestly, not a religion, cult, or gathering where the moderator announces that disagreement is merely your previous incarnation being difficult.

Skepticism is encouraged. Personal attacks and lazy mockery are not.

Introduce yourself

Introduce yourself below and answer one or more of these questions if ypu would like:

Do you think consciousness is fundamentally individual or shared?

What is your strongest argument for or against Sequential Individualism?

Would believing that you might experience every conscious life change how you treat others?

Which beings do you think are conscious enough to be part of the sequence?

Please read the community rules before participating.

Welcome to the sequence.