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Vertiginous question

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Benj Hellie's vertiginous question asks why, of all the subjects of experience out there, this one—the one corresponding to the human being referred to as Benj Hellie—is the one whose experiences are live? (The reader is supposed to substitute their own case for Hellie's.)[1] In other words: Why am I me and not someone else?

A simple response is that this question reduces to "Why are Hellie's experiences live from Hellie's perspective," which is trivial to answer. However, Hellie argues, through a parable, that this response leaves something out. His parable describes two situations, one reflecting a broad global constellation view of the world and everyone's phenomenal features, and one describing an embedded view from the perspective of a single subject.[further explanation needed] The former seems to align better with the simple response above,[why?] but the latter seems to be a better description of consciousness.

The vertiginous question may have a number of philosophical implications. Christian List argues that the vertiginous question and the existence of first-personal facts is evidence against physicalism, and evidence against other third-personal metaphysical pictures, including standard versions of dualism.[2] List also argues that the vertiginous question implies a "quadrilemma" for theories of consciousness. He claims that at most three of the following metaphysical claims can be true: ‘first-person realism’, ‘non-solipsism’, ‘non-fragmentation’, and ‘one world’ – and that one of these four must be rejected.[3] Vincent Conitzer argues that the vertiginous question is related to A series and B series theories of time, and that A-theory being true implies that the "I" is metaphysically distinguished from other perspectives.[4]

Hellie's argument is closely related to Caspar Hare's theories of egocentric presentism and perspectival realism, of which several other philosophers have written reviews.[5] [6] Similar questions are also asked repeatedly by J. J. Valberg in justifying his horizonal view of the self.[7] Tim S. Roberts refers to the question of why a particular organism out of all the organisms that happen to exist happens to be you as the "Even Harder Problem of Consciousness".[8] Giovanni Merlo has argued that the subjectivist view of mental phenomena goes a considerable way towards solving various long-standing philosophical puzzles related to various aspects of consciousness, such as the unity of consciousness, the contents of self-awareness, and the problems with transmitting information related to the contents of subjective experience.[9]

Thomas Nagel has extensively discussed the question of personal identity in The View from Nowhere. It contrasts passive and active points of view in how humanity interacts with the world, relying either on a subjective perspective that reflects a point of view or an objective perspective that takes a more detached perspective.[10] Nagel describes the objective perspective as the "view from nowhere", one where the only valuable ideas are ones derived independently.[11]

Open individualism is a philosophy of personal identity that denies the existence of any inherent self, and argues that the sense of self is illusory.[12] The answer to the vertiginous question according to open individualism is that all experiences are "live”, but the illusion of separateness caused by the physical brain and memories causes it to feel like, from each person's psychological perspective, that their experiences are the only ones live. It is closely related to the concept of anattā in Buddhist philosophy.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Hellie, Benj (2013). "Against egalitarianism". Analysis. 73 (2): 304–320. doi:10.1093/analys/ans101.
  2. ^ List, Christian (2023). "The first-personal argument against physicalism". Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  3. ^ List, Christian (2023). "A quadrilemma for theories of consciousness". The Philosophical Quarterly. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  4. ^ Conitzer, Vincent (30 Aug 2020). "The Personalized A-Theory of Time and Perspective". arXiv:2008.13207v1 [physics.hist-ph].
  5. ^ McDaniel, Kris (January 2012). "On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects by Hare, Caspar - Review" (PDF). Ethics. 122 (2): 403–410. doi:10.1086/663578.
  6. ^ Markosian, Ned. "Are You Special? A Review of Caspar Hare's On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects" (PDF). The Philosophical Review. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-02-26. Retrieved 2015-03-13.
  7. ^ Valberg, J. J. (2007). Dream, Death, and the Self. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691128597.
  8. ^ Roberts, Tim S. (September 2007). "The Even Harder Problem of Consciousness by Roberts. Tim S." NeuroQuantology. 5 (2): 214–221. doi:10.14704/nq.2007.5.2.129.
  9. ^ Merlo, Giovanni (2016). "Subjectivism and the Mental". Dialectica. 70 (3): 311–342. doi:10.1111/1746-8361.12153.
  10. ^ McGinn, Colin (1997). Minds and Bodies: Philosophers and Their Ideas. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-511355-6.[page needed]
  11. ^ Thomas, Alan (2015). Thomas Nagel. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-49418-8.[page needed]
  12. ^ Kolak, Daniel (2007-11-03). I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-1-4020-3014-7.
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