this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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Are you the same person every morning when you wake up, or a new one with the same memories?
There's literally no way to know.
There's no way to prove it to others, just like there's no way to prove your own sentience. But it's pretty easy to tell from experience. I am consciously experiencing this moment right now. When I fall asleep, the conscious being that I am right now is not going to just never wake up.
But if you can't prove your own sentience to yourself, maybe that's worth digging into.
But how do you know this? That's the root of the question.
How would you distinguish "I woke up as the same consciousness" from "I woke up as a new consciousness with an identical memory", from the first person perspective?
One answer could be that having the exact same memories means you are the exact same consciousness. But this means that your moment-to-moment feeling of "self" is not actually intrinsic to your consciousness, since the memories alone are sufficient.
Hey, it's me from the next day. Can confirm, my previous consciousness terminated the moment I fell asleep and I'm a totally different person now.
But seriously, I started wondering why so many people have trouble proving this to themselves and so many others don't. Maybe it's something similar to how about half of people don't have an inner monologue. I personally do and I'm curious to know if the people who aren't sure they're the same person every time they wake up are the same people who don't have an inner monologue.
You seem to be missing the point of the philosophical question.
Just because you feel like you are the same conscious doesn't mean you are, which is what needs proving. We need to demonstrate that we have some way to know we are a different entity without just saying "I know I am". Is it enough to have the same set of memories? Surely not, as the Star Trek thought experiment implies.
For the record I do have an inner monologue. I just also think that the notion of consciousness and what it means to "be" the conscious process isn't as simple and clear-cut as you think it is.
Like I originally said, if it were possible to prove to someone else you'd be able to put it into words. It's just like being aware of your own sentience without being able to demonstrate it to others. What I am experiencing now is not just a memory waiting to happen. I can tell the difference between memory and experience and I can chain experiences without resorting to memory. Maybe not everyone can do that. The inner monologue thing was just an idea but probably not related.
But I can't put to words what that chaining of active experience is like in a way that's ever going to convince you I'm a thinking being with an awareness of self that dates to before 0800 this morning. The real question for me isn't "how do I know I'm the same person?" but "why is it difficult for some people to know the same thing about themselves?"
ETA: Do you also have the same questions about whether you are a sentient being or do you accept "I know I am" as the answer because the only proof is through personal experience?
I don't accept "I know I am" as any form of proof toward any introspective qualities, whether that is sentience or consciousness or even free will. I also don't accept "I just know it" as proof of any deity or higher power, or that there is an objective morality embedded in the universe, etc.
I'll stop responding here, because I think we are just not going to make any progress with each other. Your posit that you can just tell the difference and know it, is fundamentally incompatible with my stance that there must be some method or technique to distinguish what the difference is. I simply do not know that I am the same person today that I was yesterday - I feel that I have good reason to believe that I am, but I also accept that this might simply be an illusion because of the circumstance of having woken up with memories that lead me to that conclusion. I have no way to know that the consciousness that "ended" with sleep last night is really the same one that woke up this morning, outside of the apparent continuity of memory. I find it an interesting and thought-provoking question, but you may also simply decide that you know the answer by feeling.
Then this goes back to my point of "if you can't prove your own sentience to yourself, maybe that's worth digging into." The very baseline of philosophy is "I think therefore I am." It's the one thing Descartes thought one can know with certainty. If you question even that about yourself, it might imply an abnormal psychology or that you're overthinking things to a point of pedantry that even a 17th century philosopher would say is "a bit much."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum#Critique
Yes, rebuttals by a bunch of philosophers who, like you, can't even accept their own existence or get hung up on the definition of "I" and "think". "I" doesn't need to be one's physical body as one perceives it. "I" could be a brain in a jar or a computer generating an entire simulated universe or a bored deity. But something that you are, or at least I am, is producing thought about itself and its input stimuli.
Anyone who can't even accept the fact that, by thinking, they must exist in some capacity in order to be capable of thinking, is being obstinate for obstinance's sake. That isn't a philosophical question. It's refusing the answer provided by your own experience in order to be the most pedantic person in the room. So, basically 20th-21st century philosophy.
Or maybe you really aren't sentient and I'm wasting my time with an NPC.
"Agree with me, or see a psychiatrist, or you're an actual NPC" is an exceedingly shitty debate tactic.
Enjoy.
Your entire argument is as clever as a toddler repeatedly asking "why?" to everything, not because they're genuinely curious, but because they realized it gets a rise out of the adults in the room.
So, yes, if you really can't grasp that by thinking you must exist in some form, then I can only conclude that you A) really don't exist, B) are suffering from some psychotic malady, or C) are just a troll arguing in bad faith to annoy the grown-ups.