Is this a good answer to the question "why am I me and not someone else?", and the possibility of infinite creation

[AshvinP]

I don't think it's a good answer. Your subjective perspective of your space of experience is not imagined, it's a fact of experience. If we assume that Lucy has her own space of experience with experiences different from yours (and we need to assume it if we don't want to be solipsists), then that is another fact that her space of experience and subjective perspective is different from yours. No amount of philosophising can prove these facts wrong. Imagining that there is another unified perspective in which both Joe's and Lucy's perspectives are experienced in a unified way does not solve the problem of why in your perspective you are still experiencing only Joe's experience and not Lucy's. This problem is unresolvable and intractable in both materialism and idealism. It belongs to deep mysteries together with the question of "why there is something rather than nothing". And unfortunately the only metaphysics where it is fully resolved is solipsism (where there is no "someone else" so the problem does not even exist in the first place).

To the Cleric's answer: this problem has nothing to do with "identity" or imagined "separate experiencer" (which are indeed both illusions). I find that most people don't really understand what the problem is actually about.

Let me copy my next answer at reddit, which also explains why solipsism brings up more problems than it solves.

'This is only true if you assume that your [MAL's] attention is finite, and therefore you can only posit yourself in the point of view of one of them. And this is not logical, because if you couldn't maintain your attention at every level simultaneously (i.e. imagining yourself to be both Joe and Lucy, and also being aware of the level above), then as soon as you entered, for example, the POV of Joe, it would all crumble, since you'd forget to maintain the things "outside" Joe.

What I posit is that the attention of infinite consciousness is also infinite, so it is simultaneously looking out through the POV of every illusiory ego-me. Basically, it imagines not remembering what it really is, if you get my meaning. You are an idea that is imagined to feel like it is not just an idea.

"regardless of how many levels of illusions we posit; the answer is still that it is axiomatic/indexical"

That's true. A number of things cannot be explained beyond noting them as facts. You can also not make a logical case for why there is existence instead of non-existence. You just experience something and it's a given that existence IS.'

So the fact that external reality is (or at least, acts as if it is) logical presumes that there is something that holds it together, whether it be laws of nature or an aware mind that maintains it.

Hedge,

I just want to say here, we should not allow our understanding of experience be dictated by which labels we like or dislike, as Eugene says we should do to "avoid solipsism". This is apparently how he goes about about thinking of reality - adding on assumptions wherever it is felt something he dislikes needs to be avoided (which to be fair is very common) - and it's easy to see the profound lack of logical reasoning in such an approach to the world content. Such assumptions steer our thinking only towards the conclusions we desired from the outset, rather than what naturally unfolds from logical consideration of the phenomena at issue. When those desired conclusions are reached, the logical reasoning stops because, unsurprisingly, the person feels their curiosity satisfied.

As was discussed by myself and Cleric in my essay on solipsism, it is actually the abstract fragmented 'hard boundary' and 'impenetrable veil' view which leads to what people fear the most about solipsism. It leads to people mistaking the current boundaries of their own cognition and meaningful experience for the boundaries of the Cosmos at large, thereby atomizing, objectifying, and commodifying all that is beyond their own localized boundary. Cleric has already addressed the reasons why there is no warrant for such a reification of our own localized boundaries, and why the givens of experience positively show the opposite is more harmonious of our experience once we reason through them carefully (which is not to say individuality doesn't exist, but simply that there is always some integration of meaningful perspectives occurring and there is always room for much more integration).

The core problem here is hyper-abstraction of these concepts from immanent experience - some people, actually most people, find it extremely difficult to conceive of what is being written here as anything other than inert intellectual abstractions which float around and have almost zero practical significance for our lives. We should really try to recover a living experience of the ecology of ideas we always exist in with our thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions. Then the fallacy of the "alter" and "dissociative boundary" and "veil", as those concepts are frequently employed here, will naturally be revealed to our Thinking.

[Eugene I.]

That's what my original post was all about. Both perspective "A" and "B" are imagined perspectives. From perspective "A", it is impossible to experience perspective "B". In order to reach the fundamental subjectivity that is experiencing both, you have to leave behind "A". "A" will never experience "B". "I", however, is experiencing both "A" and "B".

Correct, if we assume that there is such thing as the "fundamental subjectivity" (which is only a hypothesis by the way, we have no factual evidence to support it, but it still can be assumed), then yes, both experiences can be experienced in a unified way. But that does not negate the fact that there are still the subjective perspectives of "A" and "B", and these are not "imagined", they are simple facts of direct conscious experience. Calling them "imagined" (or "illusions") means that you are trying to deny the validity of the facts of the direct conscious experience. That is exactly what hard core materialists like Dennett do: they deny the facts of the direct conscious experience by proclaiming of the existence of some "objective reality" in which the subjective experiences are only "imagined" or "illusions". So, the "here-ness" problem still exists even if the unified fundamental subjectivity exists.

I actually think that the "here-ness" problem is even more serious and intractable for materialism than the "hard problem of consciousness". However, is equally a serious problem for idealism, which tells us that even in the existing idealist paradigms we are still missing something very fundamental.

[Hedge90]

I just want to say here, we should not allow our understanding of experience be dictated by which labels we like or dislike, as Eugene says we should do to "avoid solipsism". This is apparently how he goes about about thinking of reality - adding on assumptions wherever it is felt something he dislikes needs to be avoided (which to be fair is very common) - and it's easy to see the profound lack of logical reasoning in such an approach to the world content. Such assumptions steer our thinking only towards the conclusions we desired from the outset, rather than what naturally unfolds from logical consideration of the phenomena at issue. When those desired conclusions are reached, the logical reasoning stops because, unsurprisingly, the person feels their curiosity satisfied.

As was discussed by myself and Cleric in my essay on solipsism, it is actually the abstract fragmented 'hard boundary' and 'impenetrable veil' view which leads to what people fear the most about solipsism. It leads to people mistaking the current boundaries of their own cognition and meaningful experience for the boundaries of the Cosmos at large, thereby atomizing, objectifying, and commodifying all that is beyond their own localized boundary. Cleric has already addressed the reasons why there is no warrant for such a reification of our own localized boundaries, and why the givens of experience positively show the opposite is more harmonious of our experience once we reason through them carefully.

The core problem here is hyper-abstraction of these concepts from immanent experience - some people, actually most people, find it extremely difficult to conceive of what is being written here as anything other than inert intellectual abstractions which float around and have almost zero practical significance for our lives. We should really try to recover a living experience of the ecology of ideas we always exist in with our thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions. Then the fallacy of the "alter" and "dissociative boundary" and "veil", as those concepts are frequently employed here, will naturally be revealed to our Thinking.

You always point out that we should think about these things not abstractly but as lived experience, but I fail to see how this leads forward from the point we currently are. You see, abstract thinking happens because our lived experience cannot explain certain things about reality, yet nevertheless require explanation. And I think this actually has very important practical implications. It basically determines how one manipulates reality around him. If metaphysically, all there is is what I'm currently experiencing, then there's no reason for me to treat others with empathy.
But if by lived experience, you mean that I can, for example, feel love towards other people, and it is this love that counts, not whether I abstractly know whether they have their own subjective experience, then I may be getting your point, but then it would seem to be a misled thing. We start to love others because we have a connection with them, and this connection stems from the fact that they seem to be like us, seem to understand us, empathise with us. If this all turned out to be illusory, then what would there be to love about them?

[Hedge90]

That's what my original post was all about. Both perspective "A" and "B" are imagined perspectives. From perspective "A", it is impossible to experience perspective "B". In order to reach the fundamental subjectivity that is experiencing both, you have to leave behind "A". "A" will never experience "B". "I", however, is experiencing both "A" and "B".

Correct, if we assume that there is such thing as the "fundamental subjectivity" (which is only a hypothesis by the way, we have no factual evidence to support it, but it still can be assumed), then yes, both experiences can be experienced in a unified way. But that does not negate the fact that there are still the subjective perspectives of "A" and "B", and these are not "imagined", they are simple facts of direct conscious experience. Calling them "imagined" (or "illusions") means that you are trying to deny the validity of the facts of the direct conscious experience. That is exactly what hard core materialists like Dennett do: they deny the facts of the direct conscious experience by proclaiming of the existence of some "objective reality" in which the subjective experiences are only "imagined" or "illusions". So, the "here-ness" problem still exists even if the unified fundamental subjectivity exists.

I actually think that the "here-ness" problem is even more serious and intractable for materialism than the "hard problem of consciousness". However, is equally a serious problem for idealism, which tells us that even in the existing idealist paradigms we are still missing something very fundamental.

Can I ask if you've ever had a strong psychedelic experience involving ego loss Eugene?

[Eugene I.]

Can I ask if you've ever had a strong psychedelic experience involving ego loss Eugene?

I did. But I'm saying it again: the problem we are discussing has nothing to do with "ego". I can ask you two questions:
- In your experience of the ego-loss did you actually experience the qualia that I experienced? I'm sure you did not. This means that the "here-ness" of your ego-less experience was still not including the "here-ness" of my experience. Therefor the ego-loss had nothing to do with the dissolution of the "here-ness" and it's factual disconnect form "there-ness". The development of ego is a consequence of the fact of the existence of multiple non-overlapping "here-experiences". If we dissolve the sense of ego (which is entirely possible to do) this does not make the "here-ness" fact of experience go away.
- Even if you would have a cosmic-unity all-encompassing perspective experience, it still does not negate the fact that the "here-ness" fact of experience still exist. As I said above, the existence of the unified perspective does not and cannot negate these fundamental facts and does not make them "illusory".

Suppose you are able to imagine two imaginary subjects in your mind that have different experiences and perspectives. However, you still can only have the unified experience of these two subjects. You cannot "loose" your unified perspective and the perspective of "B" in order to only have the experience of "A" here-and-now, and at the same time still have the unifies experience. We can never experience two "here" experiences at the same "now", we have no evidence that this is possible, we always experience one "here" because even if we would experience two "here"s at the same "now", they would immediately merge in one "here". But the fact of our direct experience tells us that there is still a fact of the A-only experience "here-and-now", and this fact cannot be explained by the existence of the unified A+B experience. The question of "why the A is here-now but not B" still exists with no answer.

[AshvinP]

I just want to say here, we should not allow our understanding of experience be dictated by which labels we like or dislike, as Eugene says we should do to "avoid solipsism". This is apparently how he goes about about thinking of reality - adding on assumptions wherever it is felt something he dislikes needs to be avoided (which to be fair is very common) - and it's easy to see the profound lack of logical reasoning in such an approach to the world content. Such assumptions steer our thinking only towards the conclusions we desired from the outset, rather than what naturally unfolds from logical consideration of the phenomena at issue. When those desired conclusions are reached, the logical reasoning stops because, unsurprisingly, the person feels their curiosity satisfied.

As was discussed by myself and Cleric in my essay on solipsism, it is actually the abstract fragmented 'hard boundary' and 'impenetrable veil' view which leads to what people fear the most about solipsism. It leads to people mistaking the current boundaries of their own cognition and meaningful experience for the boundaries of the Cosmos at large, thereby atomizing, objectifying, and commodifying all that is beyond their own localized boundary. Cleric has already addressed the reasons why there is no warrant for such a reification of our own localized boundaries, and why the givens of experience positively show the opposite is more harmonious of our experience once we reason through them carefully.

The core problem here is hyper-abstraction of these concepts from immanent experience - some people, actually most people, find it extremely difficult to conceive of what is being written here as anything other than inert intellectual abstractions which float around and have almost zero practical significance for our lives. We should really try to recover a living experience of the ecology of ideas we always exist in with our thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions. Then the fallacy of the "alter" and "dissociative boundary" and "veil", as those concepts are frequently employed here, will naturally be revealed to our Thinking.

You always point out that we should think about these things not abstractly but as lived experience, but I fail to see how this leads forward from the point we currently are. You see, abstract thinking happens because our lived experience cannot explain certain things about reality, yet nevertheless require explanation. And I think this actually has very important practical implications. It basically determines how one manipulates reality around him. If metaphysically, all there is is what I'm currently experiencing, then there's no reason for me to treat others with empathy.
But if by lived experience, you mean that I can, for example, feel love towards other people, and it is this love that counts, not whether I abstractly know whether they have their own subjective experience, then I may be getting your point, but then it would seem to be a misled thing. We start to love others because we have a connection with them, and this connection stems from the fact that they seem to be like us, seem to understand us, empathise with us. If this all turned out to be illusory, then what would there be to love about them?

By lived experience, I mean we should relate the concepts to how we are perceiving and thinking when we encounter natural processes, including and especially our own thinking, through the course of the day. Yes we must start from abstract thinking, but we have written extensively here how one can enliven the concepts by penetrating to their deeper layers of meaning, which relate them more holistically to our experience of life in general. To the laws, principles, and archetypes which structure and unite the particulars of experience. Cleric has also provided many simple exercises for deepening our Thinking with an open heart and mind.

Notice your question here is really about whether it is possible to overcome "subjective" identifications. The problem with purely abstract thinking is that the concrete, practical possibility of even beginning to do this is ruled out. Various barriers like "veils" and "subject combination problem" are invoked as excuses to avoid even the attempt to expand one's sphere of Thinking experience. That is the real issue we need decide for ourselves, and I am saying that, if we try to avoid automatic intellectual associations and assumptions when contemplating our meaningful experience, the reality of genuinely shared Ideation will be discerned. It won't even be a matter of endless intellectual debate, waiting for some "paradigm" to explain it to us, but rather a fact of direct observation and knowledge.

[Hedge90]

Can I ask if you've ever had a strong psychedelic experience involving ego loss Eugene?

I did. But I'm saying it again: the problem we are discussing has nothing to do with "ego". I can ask you two questions:
- In your experience of the ego-loss did you actually experience the qualia that I experienced? I'm sure you did not. This means that the "here-ness" of your ego-less experience was still not including the "here-ness" of my experience. Therefor the ego-loss had nothing to do with the dissolution of the "here-ness" and it's factual disconnect form "there-ness". The development of ego is a consequence of the fact of the existence of multiple non-overlapping "here-experiences". If we dissolve the sense of ego (which is entirely possible to do) this does not make the "here-ness" fact of experience go away.

Yes, you are right, I didn't ask this as if it were some kind of proof to my point. I just wanted to know whether you had similar reference experiences to me. I only wanted to point out that when you go through ego loss via a psychedelic (or potentially through other means), the very quality of your experiencing changes to such an extent like it's not even the same reality. Since my trip I've found that the imaginative activity one can fully immerse themselves in during a trip in fact goes on in your mind ALL THE TIME. That stream of thoughts that blooms out into intricate visions and dreamscapes during a trip is running in you all the time, but waking life is so much more pressing that you basically don't pay any attention to it. Does that mean that those experiences are not being experienced due to your lack of attention? No, in fact we know that they are experienced, you just don't KNOW they are experienced - but they have their effect on you as your subconcsious.
Now, if your own subconscious is hidden from you so well, even though it's VERY close to your personal consciousness, how much more hidden should other people's experience be?
You are right about the here-ness though, I don't know a good answer to that. My only argument is that many people speak about these same thoughts / experiences, and how would this be possible without a "here-ness" from their POV? I can imagine a universe where everything is causally ordered and therefore it doesn't matter which being I subjectively look out of, everything will take place the same. But if other beings can also report on their similar experiences, including ego loss and transcendence, how do they do that? Robots could be operational, but how could they report on experiences requiring consciousness? I think Berkeley was right in that regard: the minimum that is required is that I and God exist. I to experience the world, and God to move around all the other beings. Only I, without anything to constitute the consistency of the outside world, no transdencent I, nothing just my momentary experience, just doesn't make sense.

[Hedge90]

By lived experience, I mean we should relate the concepts to how we are perceiving and thinking when we encounter natural processes, including and especially our own thinking, through the course of the day. Yes we must start from abstract thinking, but we have written extensively here how one can enliven the concepts by penetrating to their deeper layers of meaning, which relate them more holistically to our experience of life in general. To the laws, principles, and archetypes which structure and unite the particulars of experience. Cleric has also provided many simple exercises for deepening our Thinking with an open heart and mind.

Notice your question here is really about whether it is possible to overcome "subjective" identifications. The problem with purely abstract thinking is that the concrete, practical possibility of even beginning to do this is ruled out. Various barriers like "veils" and "subject combination problem" are invoked as excuses to avoid even the attempt to expand one's sphere of Thinking experience. That is the real issue we need decide for ourselves, and I am saying that, if we try to avoid automatic intellectual associations and assumptions when contemplating our meaningful experience, the reality of genuinely shared Ideation will be discerned. It won't even be a matter of endless intellectual debate, waiting for some "paradigm" to explain it to us, but rather a fact of direct observation and knowledge.

I have to ask back, how can the reality of genuinely shared Ideation will be discerned? Our intellectual / abstract explanations are not something we decided to pull up to create boundaries, they are explanations of our lived reality. I.e. my lived reality is that I never saw through my sister's eye or experienced her thoughts. So I intellectually posit that there's some kind of boundary between us.
Also, is this something you have directly observed and know? Because you emphasise the importance of lived experience, so it would be important to know whether this IS your lived experience, or is this something that, ultimately, you, too, conceptuate abstractly?
And sorry if I sound argumentative, it's not my intention, I'm just poking at the cracks because I don't want to base my thinking on something that is not substantiated.

[AshvinP]

By lived experience, I mean we should relate the concepts to how we are perceiving and thinking when we encounter natural processes, including and especially our own thinking, through the course of the day. Yes we must start from abstract thinking, but we have written extensively here how one can enliven the concepts by penetrating to their deeper layers of meaning, which relate them more holistically to our experience of life in general. To the laws, principles, and archetypes which structure and unite the particulars of experience. Cleric has also provided many simple exercises for deepening our Thinking with an open heart and mind.

Notice your question here is really about whether it is possible to overcome "subjective" identifications. The problem with purely abstract thinking is that the concrete, practical possibility of even beginning to do this is ruled out. Various barriers like "veils" and "subject combination problem" are invoked as excuses to avoid even the attempt to expand one's sphere of Thinking experience. That is the real issue we need decide for ourselves, and I am saying that, if we try to avoid automatic intellectual associations and assumptions when contemplating our meaningful experience, the reality of genuinely shared Ideation will be discerned. It won't even be a matter of endless intellectual debate, waiting for some "paradigm" to explain it to us, but rather a fact of direct observation and knowledge.

I have to ask back, how can the reality of genuinely shared Ideation will be discerned? Our intellectual / abstract explanations are not something we decided to pull up to create boundaries, they are explanations of our lived reality. I.e. my lived reality is that I never saw through my sister's eye or experienced her thoughts. So I intellectually posit that there's some kind of boundary between us.
Also, is this something you have directly observed and know? Because you emphasise the importance of lived experience, so it would be important to know whether this IS your lived experience, or is this something that, ultimately, you, too, conceptuate abstractly?
And sorry if I sound argumentative, it's not my intention, I'm just poking at the cracks because I don't want to base my thinking on something that is not substantiated.

The issue is that the meaning discerned by thinking is considered less real than immediate perceptions, due to the abstract intellectual barrier erected between subject and object, mind and matter. Let's say you have perceived similar phenomena as your sister, communicated with her, empathised with her, etc. How do you suppose that is possible?

[Cleric K]

While I'd like to follow your line of thought, it's a bit confusing to me. Are you saying that by understanding another person in full, we's get to share the same consciousness? That doesn't seem possible at the level where we are situated at. I can't look through your eyes.
I'll read what you linked though, maybe it sheds some light on what I'm not getting.

No, intellectual understanding of another person is not having the same full spectrum of consciousness as them. This holds true even for our own memory. When we remember a previous state of being we don't experience the absolutely same previous state. If that was the case, we would begin living again from that previous point in time without any way of knowing that we 'returned' there from a future state. Instead, we experience the previous states as embedded echo in our current. It is similar with states of other beings too.

These things become impossible only when we imagine that we can actually perceive the 'real' states of being (or A and B in your terminology) from a third-person perspective, as contained objects within our consciousness. This is what we do out of habit - we try to understand first person experiences as objectified ideas in our own consciousness. This is what I called the objectification along the Y axis in the essays. This is the same difficulty as the here-ness problem of Eugene.

All this proceeds from the fact that we want to have a metaphysical opinion without looking what the given is. We use our thinking to think about A and B without first investigating what thinking itself is.

All we know is eternal metamorphosis of our state of being. Even calling this 'state of being in phase space' already opens the door for misunderstanding through the introduction of the non-existent perspective from nowhere. That's why I rarely use that language. Once we find the essential nature of the World Process in our Thinking, we can use that language imaginatively, and it is actually very good way to speak of these things, but we can't do that safely unless the hysteresis process is overcome.

It is a fact that we always experience only a limited spectrum of phenomena. Yet we know that through our activity we can make certain phenomena enter consciousness, while others leave. Even if we conceive it purely fantastically - what makes more sense? That any conceivable state of being can be reached as gradual metamorphosis? Or by imagining some metaphysical boundaries which we don't even know how to conceive? There's no principle difficulty to understand the state of another human being. We immerse in the first-person perspective - thoughts and ideas, feelings, sensations. And yes, this is only imagined in our own consciousness. The question is that there's no principle barrier to seek living full-spectrum understanding of the first-person perspective of another being. We can do that by morphing ours. I repeat that I'm not even claiming this in the context of clairvoyance. We can do that even in purely materialistic context. It's not about becoming deluded that we see someone else's consciousness. It's only about morphing the ideas that we live in, the feelings, the sympathies and antipathies, sensations. It doesn't matter that they are not the exact same. The question is to morph as much as possible in order to understand how the other's perspective functions as a coherent whole.

Some readers may be surprised to find out that there's actually very strong repelling force to try this, even if we know that it is only in our own imagination. If these things are investigated in depth the surprising result would be reached that it is actually through our own forces of antipathy that we want to keep other beings as objectified pictures in our consciousness. It's surprising that even if we try to imagine the first person experience of another, we still try to innerly ensure that this imagination is very strictly kept at a distance. If we introspect very carefully we would find that we don't really allow ourselves to fully enter the thoughts, feelings and ego perspective of the other person but we do something quite sneaky - we actually step back and imagine what would be if we were to imagine the other person from a first person perspective. It would be found that the only way we can allow ourselves to imagine intimately the first-person perspective of another, is through Love. The dissociative boundary will turn out to be nothing but certain amount of forces of antipathy that we keep for ourselves and which don't allow us to fully immerse in the perspective of another, even if only imagined.