A casual analysis of Personal Identity

You exist at the moment of reading this. If you can be certain of anything then it is that. Can you be certain about anything else? Can you be certain that you aren't a character in a virtual reality, a brain in a vat or God dreaming you? No. But what is certainty? Why are you certain that you exist at this moment? It feels that way. You are experiencing something, and you become aware that you are experiencing something which is yet another experience. So the proof that you exist is self-contained in its own existence. You exist because you experience it. You do not exist because you doubt, you exist because you exist, existence meaning that something is being experienced by someone and you are identifying with that someone.

I'm going to revert to first person. I am. Just me. I'm trying not to focus on anything right now. But that is proving impossible. I'm forced to focus on something right now. And now. And now. Now I just took a five seconds break from writing and I still was forced to experience something. It is obvious to me that I exist. But what is my point right now? The point is that my existence is self-evident, self-referential, self-emerging from this very moment of experience. I exist and that is all I can be certain about right now. But that isn't the whole story. My certainty about my own existence right now emerges from my experience of things that I don't perceive as me. I am observing something. Or so it feels. I am the subject, the experiencer of whatever it is that I am experiencing. And what am I experiencing? Feelings, thoughts, sensations, memories.

It's insane. I feel like my experience is changing from every moment to the next. This moment doesn't feel like the one I remember experiencing just a fraction of a second ago. Now the experience has changed again. It doesn't surprise me though since that is exactly what I expect it to do. Right now I remember that my experience has been changing as far as I can remember. But how can I trust my memories? Where is the proof that I existed before this very moment and that what I remember happening really happened? How can I know that the universe wasn't created one second ago, implying that nothing that I remember happening before this second actually happened? I cannot know. All I can know is that I exist and that it feels like my existence has changed.

And now again it feels like it just changed. My present moment feels like part of a sequence. It feels like there have been countless or at least many other present moments that felt just like this one but I cannot know for sure since I am not experiencing those moments, I am only experiencing this moment. Take one hour ago for instance. I remember that I was laying in my bed one hour ago. But how can I know for sure? I can't. There is absolutely nothing I can know for sure, except that I exist, but even that is something I only know when I am aware of it. The certainty of my existence is yet another feeling which I only remember experiencing when I think about it.

But again, how can I know that I have existed before this very moment? I cannot. And neither can I know that I will exist after five seconds from now. Five seconds have passed. I still exist. Does this mean that I should expect to exist after the next five seconds? No, because now I can't be sure about my past again. You see? I at this moment cannot be certain about I five seconds ago or five seconds after this. So how does one solve this messed up state of affairs? What am I to do? Shall I just keep repeating this frustrating thought exercise for as long as my existence keeps lasting? No, I'm sick of that.

Instead I shall opt for inference. What do I mean by that? Well, it is obvious that except for the certainty that I exist right now, nothing else feels certain, including my past and future existence. This means that I need to start making assumptions about the nature of my existence if I am to get

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anywhere. But lets not forget, everything except the certainty of my own existence is an assumption. So why should I assume anything? Why don't I just keep focusing on the certainty that I exist right now and leave it at that? Good question. What does why mean by the way? What does a question mean? Where is all this weird stuff coming from? It is obvious that weird stuff is happening. This experience of mine, which proves my own existence, keeps changing, or so it feels.

I feel strongly compelled to assume that it keeps changing. But to assume that, I need to assume that I am experiencing more than this very moment. For that I need to assume that my memory of past events reflects something real. And if I assume that then I should also assume that my anticipation of future events is well founded. But why should I do that? Why should I bother with all these assumptions? But wait, do I even have a choice about that matter? Look, I am already doing that. I am already assuming stuff. But how can I know that my assumptions are true? I cannot. What is it to know something? If I can know that I exist then why can't I know that I have existed before and will exist again?

Ah, there is no proof. There is no direct proof that my existence transcends this very moment. Should I conclude that it doesn't? How can I? There is no proof either way. Just as much as there is no proof that I exist beyond this moment, there is no proof that I only exist now. So what should I assume then? What is this should? Should... I need to deconstruct things a bit more here. I know I exist. But the certainty about my existence comes from my experience of something, which feels like it just changed. What is this something? How is it related to my existence? What can I know about it? It is obvious that it exists too, even if it is nothing more than a mirage. If that were the case then all I would know is that I am experiencing an illusion.

My existence would still feel certain. But why does it feel that way? Why does anything at all feel like anything? Why do I exist?! And why do I think I exist? Yeah, now I'm doubting my own existence but to do that I must exist. So it is obvious. I do exist. But who or what am I? Am I existence itself or am I just the observer of it? Are there things that are not me? Again, all I am left with are assumptions. But before I start getting into those, I want to explore certainty a bit more. I said that I doubt, therefore I exist. How can I know this? What is knowledge? How does it follow that my existence implies my existence?

Hmm. Seems like I've met the wall of reason. It follows because... it feels obvious. Or because it is obvious? Again, how can I know that something is obvious? I can only know it by experiencing it as being obvious. Take the proof of my own existence. I didn't feel sure about it until it appeared obvious to me. Once it did that, it appeared obvious that I existed despite of having doubted it. So this feeling of obviousness about something takes precedence over any feelings of doubt that I may experience about the same thing at other moments. But how can I know that to be true? Take 1+1=2 for example. It feels obvious that it is true. But does it? You see? Now I am doubting it again. So what can I do? I can test it. 1+1=... 2. There we go again, it feels obvious.

But now the test is gone. Am I to doubt it again? That would force me to keep rechecking everything I wanted to feel certain about for eternity. This isn't good enough. I don't feel like being stuck thinking about the obviousness of my existence and that 1+1=2 for eternity. Instead, I'll just accept those things to be true. How can I do that though? By attributing the value of truth to them in my memory. This way, every time I consider my own existence or 1+1=2 I can skip proving it to myself and instead I can just trust that I already know it to be true. But isn't this risky? What if my memory were to fail? What is my memory anyway? And how good is it?

My memory feels like a shadow of my past experiences. It has a feeling of certainty attached to it.

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For example, the memory that 1+1=2 feels very certain. Extremely certain. It feels so certain that I cannot be bothered to check its validity right now. But what about my memory of my phone number? How certain do I feel about that? Quite certain but not perfectly so. It could be wrong after all, maybe something happened in my mind and the memory got changed. But I don't worry about that possibility. I don't feel like worrying about it. I am forced to evaluate this and every present moment. Actually, I'm not even forced, I just happen to evaluate it. If I assume that I exist in past and future moments then my existence contains a pattern of subjective experience. This subjective experience is all I know at any given moment. I am literally stuck in my subjective experience, believing whatever it contains.

The question now is whether there is anything to be learned about this ever changing subjective experience or whether I should just dismiss it. Let's see. Isn't it from the subjective experience that I discovered that I exist? Doesn't the certainty of my existence rely on me having a subjective experience, if of nothing else than of the certainty of my existence? It certainly does. Or so it feels. Feelings, feelings, how can I trust my feelings? The only way I can trust them is on their subjective feeling of validity and certainty. Do I still feel certain about 1+1=2? Not as much as I remember feeling some minutes ago. But if I remember that I felt certain earlier, shouldn't that make me more certain now? That depends. Can I remember ever feeling certain about 1+1=2 only to discover that it was wrong? No.

As far as I remember, 1+1=2 has always been the case. But how can I trust those memories? Here we go yet again. I need to break free from this loop. I need to start making assumptions. I need to start differentiating among my feelings of certainty. I need to change my subjective experience. Need, need. Where does this need come from? OK, I better introduce the concept of logic. Those feelings of absolute certainty I get when considering certain ideas, those I will call logic. It is logical that I exist. And it is logical that 1+1=2. But what difference does it makes to call it logic? Does using the word 'logic' make it magically more certain to be true? No. But I am forced to declare some feelings to be true if I am to get anywhere beyond this endless, self-referential proof of my own existence.

But why? Why am I trying to change my subjective experience? Am I even choosing this or is it just happening? Am I not just being pulled into the mirage and forgetting that none of it is certain? How can I know for sure? Again, I cannot. All I can know for sure is that I exist and that a subjective experience exists. All I really, ultimately know is that I am the observer and that I am observing something. I don't really know what I am observing and I don't know how my observation is related to me. Am I observing myself or am I observing something outside of me? That depends on how I define 'me' (and 'I'). According to my current definition, I am the observer of this experience. But if I am the observer, then what would happen to me if I stopped observing anything? Would I still exist? No.

My existence is dependent on me having an experience of something. But doesn't this mean that I am my experience or at least that my experience is a fundamental part of me? If I am nothing without my experience then how can my experience be separate from me? I am my present experience. But I am also the experiencer of my experience. But my experience right now is of me being the experience of my own experience. So what am I!? I am whatever I experience being. But what if my experience of what I am changes? Does that mean that I am constantly changing? Or does it mean that I transcend change? And what is change? It is yet another experience. So I am the experiencer and the experience.

But wait a second. How can I know that? What if these things are outside of me, both the

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experiencer and the experience? What if I am none of that? What if I am nothing at all? But then I don't exist. Where is the proof that I exist? I have proven that something exists but have I proven that I exist? Do you exist? Anyway. This has gotten boring. I am writing this to prove to you that you are me, not that neither you nor I exist. So how can I prove that you and I are the same existence if I'm having trouble finding out what I am in the first place? This is how: through inference. As I should have already demonstrated by now, the only thing I know for certain is that I exist in this exact moment. My past and future existence is unprovable. Yet, despite of that, it feels like I go on existing.

Right now, I don't feel like I just popped into existence, I feel like I've been existing since the beginning of my subjective experience. But when did my subjective experience start? If I am to assume that I exist in more places than the present one, and that my subjective experience consists of more than the present experience, then how am I to determine what it contains and what it doesn't contain? I am venturing into dangerous territory now. I am leaving the safe haven of absolute certainty and exploring the realm of inference. So, what can I infer about myself then? I feel strongly compelled to infer that I exist in more moments than this one. Why is that? Because if I didn't then it would mean that my existence is nothing more than an incoherent glimpse in a void of nothingness.

And it certainly doesn't feel that way. It would mean that I am as good as dead. But why am I alive then? Why do I feel alive now, and now, and now? Why do I have memories of past experiences? Where do they come from? And why do my memories make so much sense? Why does my whole present experience appear so strongly as fitting into a greater pattern of experience, of the entirety of which I am the experiencer? I don't know why, but it is certainly the case that it does feel that way. Furthermore, if it isn't true that I exist in more moments than this one then I am incapable of finding any value in this existence. Such an assumption goes completely against my skin. As I already said earlier, there is no proof either way. In the same way that there is no proof that I experience more than this present experience, there is no proof that I don't.

However, there are strong indicators that I do experience more than this experience. If I am to trust my memory and my entire feeling of intuition then I feel strongly compelled to accept that I actually do happen to experience more than this present experience. However, if I do that, I quickly run into a problem. Now the question is which experiences do I happen to experience apart from this one? Have I really experienced, in the same way I am experiencing this moment, any of the experiences I remember having experienced? Are my memories accurate in other words? I feel compelled to infer that they are. But why? Where is the certainty?

There is no certainty. But I don't care. Because I love trusting my intuition. I am a being of faith. I have faith that my experience includes more than this present moment if for no other reason than because it makes sense that it does so. It is a nicer view, it makes me feel better. It gives me pleasure. I believe that I have written this whole document. I believe that it was me who started it and ended up here for the time being. I believe that it was me who got drunk yesterday and experienced double-vision for two minutes. But again, what should I base this belief on? And how does this prove that I am you? As I have already shown, there is no proof that I am you because there isn't even any proof that I am the same being who wrote the first sentence in this document. It is all an inference.

But again, why should I infer that I am you? It seems like we are finally starting to get into the interesting part. How am I to discriminate what defines my subjective experience? But why should I discriminate? Why don't I just assume that I am everything that exists and be done with it? Why

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don't I declare myself to be God right now and for all eternity and just roll my eyes every time some instantiation of me argues for the contrary? There is a reason why and that is because you do not agree with me. And the reason why you do not agree with me is because you are currently holding an incoherent inference.

But it will be much better if I start from your perspective. After all, I remember having your perspective earlier in my pattern of experience. In other words, I have still got access to the perception of reality that you are presently experiencing. So let's see. Assuming that you are a being of reason, who doesn't blindly follow a belief that doesn't make sense to you, assuming that you rebel against any authority and are willing to question absolutely everything, including the act of questioning, assuming that you are willing to replace any view you currently hold with something that feels more true, in the sense that I already explained, assuming all that, then this document is for you.

So let me go back to how I thought when I was a kid. When I was six, my mother put me in a Christian after-school class. We mostly drew pictures of Jesus and saints. When my father found out about it (my parents divorced before I was born) he exclaimed 'What sort of foolishness has your mother put you into?! They are going to brainwash you! Don't tell me you believe in God'. Having no proper idea about what the idea of God even meant I replied yes, since last time I had heard a grown up speaking about God, they had said she existed. My father, being a materialist atheist replied 'Son, there is no God. Those people are stupid and they believe foolish things. Do not let them brainwash you. You have to use your reason to figure things out.'

Since I loved and respected my father and trusted his understanding, I took what he said very seriously. I immediately changed my mind and declared myself an atheist. I didn't feel any need to question this, I was too busy playing with toys to care about religion and existential issues. In other words, I grew up as an atheist. My father was and still is very critical of religion, he could be considered a 'militant atheist'. And so was I, always feeling morally superior to everyone who argued for the existence of God. But I am not here to talk about God. I am here to talk about me and you. The point of this account of my childhood is to show you how my thinking originated.

So what happened? How did I end up convinced that I am the supreme ruler and experiencer of the Universe and everything beyond? Back then I held the common atheistic belief that we humans are come to be from nothing and once we die we go back to being nothing. I tried to imagine sometimes how it would be to be dead but obviously I had to give up any such attempts. I didn't think about death very often and almost never about my own death. I did sometimes think about my parents' inevitable death and that made me very sad since I believed that once they died they would be gone forever.

Anyhow, one day I saw Star Trek and got strongly fascinated by their depiction of a teleporter. The idea of a teleporter is what got me started on this obsession about the nature of personal identity. I had absolutely no idea back then where this would end up taking me. I think it is best if I just go through the development of my own understanding step by step. As said, I started off as a materialistic, atheistic naturalist who didn't believe in the super natural. Still, I loved science-fiction and I loved running thought experiments in my mind about all the implications different technologies would have and how it could be accomplished in real life.

So what is the idea of teleportation? It is basically the idea of transporting a material object from one point in space to another in a much faster way than by moving the object across the whole space in between the two points. Of course, if one starts thinking in super-natural terms then there

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are no limits to the crazy scenarios one can come up with for accomplishing such a feat. But that is not my interest here. At the time (I was 12) I understood that the whole world is made up of matter, which is a certain form of energy. I also knew that nothing, as far as we knew, could travel faster than light. So how would we teleport something? Very simple. If a physical object is made of matter then that means that the matter it is made up of is organized into a certain structure. So all we need to do is to scan the object, and find out exactly how the atoms in it are arranged.

I didn't know anything about Quantum Physics or Relativity Theory at the time but that isn't relevant at this point. So, the way I imagined it was that as we scanned the object, we would take all the atoms apart and encode the information about its structure digitally, and send it off to wherever we wanted to send it, in the form of a stream of light. Once it reached its destination, we would read the information in the light stream and use a device to reconstruct the same item, in the same exact shape from the matter that was available there. If we did this with an inanimate object then it shouldn't be a problem.

But what about a sentient being? Take a human being for instance. We scan the human's structure, we take apart all its atoms, we send the information to Mars and reconstruct the same human there. If it is true that a human being is nothing more than the structure of the atoms it is made of then the duplicate that wakes up on mars should have the exact same features as the original, including memories, personality, appearance, and everything else. From the subjective perspective of the duplicate, it would feel like no time had passed since she got scanned and she would suddenly find herself on mars.

But wait a minute! What about the original guy? What guarantee is there that just because we take one lump of matter in the form of a human, take it apart and take a different lump of matter and put it into the same configuration, that the new lump of matter would become the same person? Welcome to the realm of duplicate paradoxes. And there's more, much more. What if we only scanned the original human and didn't kill him and then made a duplicate of him? The original human would still be there, existing inside his own body but now there would be a duplicate of him existing as well. How could the original human possibly be the duplicate if he still were himself? But if the original isn't the duplicate if they both exist at the same time then through what process would he become the duplicate if he was killed right before? It doesn't make any sense.

Let's look at it from the first person perspective. As I already said, I am inferring that I have existed before this moment and that I will go on existing after this moment as long as certain conditions are met. Which conditions though? What can I safely infer about my own existence at this moment? If I am a materialist then I do not believe in souls. So my consciousness is directly emergent from my brain. My subjective experience is directly correlated to the physical structure of my brain. But what is my brain and my whole body made off? Matter. Which matter though? Am I made of the same matter I was made of when my parents conceived me? Obviously not.

At the time, what would grow into me was nothing more than two cells, each carrying half of the DNA of each of my respective parents. Now I am made up of around 100 trillion cells. Obviously, even assuming that the matter that constituted the original two cells is still inside my body, it would only make up an insignificant fraction of the matter that constitutes me. Furthermore, it is a fact that every single one of our cells is constantly replacing its atoms with new ones, which we absorb through food. Of course, it may be that some of my cells, perhaps some of my neurons, still contain the same matter that I was composed of 7 years ago. Or perhaps even 20 years ago.

But let's analyze this further. I am 25 years old and I weigh 85 kg. When I was 5 years I was made

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up of only a fraction of the amount of atoms that make me up now. But we all assume that our 5 year old self was experienced by us. At least I do. As far as I can see, if I am to infer anything beyond my present existence, then I should assume that it was me who experienced being my 5 year old self, and also my 1 year old self, and my newborn self and even the self I was while in my mother's womb. I have no recollection of what sort of subjective experience I had while I was an embryo and a fetus and it was probably nothing too exciting but if we assume that my subjective experience is correlated to the neurons firing in my brain then as long as I had a brain with neurons that were firing in it, shouldn't I assume that I had at least some sort of experience, no matter how shallow?

As far as I can remember, I didn't become fully aware of my own consciousness (self-conscious) until I was 8 years old. Of course, I had been subjectively conscious for much longer than that, I have memories of my life going all the way back to when I was 1 year old or so. But it wasn't until I was 8 or so that I became aware of my own subjective experience and felt puzzled by it. This was also much later than when I remember developing an intuitive theory of mind, attributing consciousness to others around me. My earliest memories that deal with interaction with other people contain a theory of mind in which I consider other people separate minds from mine.

So here I am, 25 years old, wondering when my existence started. But let's assume for now that all I know is that it was me who experienced the first and all consecutive subjective states in the brain I'm currently located in, from the conception of the life form I currently experience being. One thing is certain, I am not made up of the same matter as I used to be because I have actually emerged from a state in which no matter was mine. The egg and sperm cells that turned into my first cell were produced by my parents' bodies, made up of matter that they had eaten. As this cell started dividing in my mother's womb, it absorbed nutrients from my mother's blood stream, which she had acquired through food. I am literally made up of food. So which matter defines me?

As far as I know, there is no single atom in my body that I can identify as having belonged to me from the very beginning. Even if most of my brain's neurons are the same that I had when I initially grew a brain, most if not all of the atoms they are made up of have been exchanged countless of times. The only logical conclusion here is that I am not defined by any single portion of my matter. But what am I defined by then? What about the structure of my matter? Certainly, it is obvious that my subjective experience is directly correlated to my body's and most importantly my brain's physical state. But even this structure keeps changing. My structure is certainly not the same it was at my moment of conception, assuming that the merger of the spermatozoid and the egg was my moment of conception. Back then I was a single cell. My DNA is a mix of random halves of my father's and my mother's DNA. It is literally 50% of my father's DNA and 50% of my mother's DNA. I'm a 50% clone of both of them.

However, as we know, 99.9% of all human DNA is the same, which means that we are all 99.9% clones of each other. This means that only 0.1% of the DNA that I got from each of my parents had the potential to be different from each other. And it could well be that only a portion of the 0.1% actually was different, depending on how genetically similar my parents are to each other. They are both of the same race and they come from the same geographic location, so it is quite likely that even more than 99.9% of their DNA is identical between them. So what does all this mean? It means that my DNA isn't all that unique. Sure, there is some uniqueness about it, but how many of my genes are completely unique to me?

As we know, we all experience genetic mutations every time a cell divides or any time a virus attacks our cells, or every time a particle reacts with our DNA in a disruptive fashion, which means

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that our DNA is never 100% stable. Even though my current DNA is extremely similar to the DNA contained in my original cell, there is still some variation, at least in some of my cells. So if I compared all my cells with each other, I would discover that they are not completely identical genetically after all. So what does this mean? It means that my personal identity is not defined by my DNA since my DNA has never been stable.

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine that someone created a virus or a nanoswarm that entered my body and replaced the DNA in every single of my cells with your DNA. At the end of this process, my DNA would be (nearly) identical to yours. I have no idea what effect this would have on me in the long term but if we assume that this process got carried out in the course of 24 hours, I think it is safe to assume that I would still feel pretty much like me at the end of those 24 hours. Why should I think that this would instantly change my consciousness if we assume that all that would happen is that my cells' DNA would get replaced with yours and all other cellular structures would be left intact, including my neuronal connections?

So what are we left with? If I am not my matter, and I am not any particular structure, including any particular DNA, then what gives rise to my particular personal identity? What determines my mind, as opposed to your mind? Why is it me who is inside my body and not you, if that really is the case? What are we left with to define our personal identity? As far as I know, all my present atoms are new, and have been replaced several times over the course of my short life. My DNA, although being unique, is mostly the same as everyone else's and it isn't even identical across my own cells, my physical structure has kept changing since I was conceived. I am most definitely not the cell I used to be and neither am I the baby that emerged from my mother's womb 25 years ago. And bear in mind that I haven't even taken into account the existence of genetically identical twins.

Should I assume that that wasn't me? That is wasn't me who experienced all the subjective experiences that this physical pattern which we refer to as a human body and brain has experienced? Again, where do I draw the line? If I decided that there's good reason to infer that I am the same subject who started writing this document yesterday, then why shouldn't I also infer that I am the same subject who experienced being conceived, born, being a child, growing up, and basically experienced every single moment that led up to this very present moment? If it wasn't me who experienced being me as a child then who was it? Someone else? Why someone else? And where has that someone else gone? And where did I come from in that case?

No, the only plausible inference is that if I assume that this body really was conceived by my parents and that it really underwent all those subjective and physical states that I remember it undergoing, then the subject of all those states was the exact same subject who is experiencing being me at this very moment.

But again, how does this demonstrate that you and me are the same person? Let's see. What makes you and me different from each other? Unless you are a clone or identical twin of mine then you and me look different, your physical structure is different from mine. Your DNA is different. Your present subjective experience is not the same as mine. Your memories are not the same. You don't remember being my past self and I don't remember being your past self. You are not located in the same space-time as I am.

But doesn't all this pretty much apply to my past self as well? Do I look different from my past self? Definitely, and shockingly so. Sure, there are some similarities. Most people who haven't seen me since my childhood tend to notice some resemblance when they see me as a grown-up. But then again, if an alien came from outer space who had never seen a human being, he would probably not

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see much difference between any of us.

I initially experienced that phenomenon when I moved to a different continent. I found it very hard to distinguish among the natives to begin with, until my mind had recalibrated itself so that I would notice their differences and not just their similarities. What about physical structure? As I've already demonstrated, my present physical structure is very different from my past physical structure. Actually, if we don't focus on genetic similarity then my present physical structure is more similar to your present physical structure than it is to mine when I was a single zygote, a fetus, a toddler or even a child, assuming that you are an adult human being as they exist in 2010.

If physical structure doesn't separate us then what else does? Memories. And not only memories. There is empirical evidence all round us that indicates that you and me are separate patterns of subjective continuity. This empirical evidence is however only accessible through your memories at the present moment. You could in theory be a duplicate like Arnold in The 6 th Day, who just believes he is what you think you are, namely a non-duplicate. The same could be the case with me. But why don't you worry about that possibility? Because you have grown to trust your memories. There is nothing that indicates that you are a duplicate of someone else and that it wasn't you who experienced the past you remember. There is nothing that indicates that there is some original you out there somewhere and that your body and your mind is just a replica.

This is where we need to start considering more extreme thought experiments. My goal is to demonstrate to you that even if it is true that you and me are experiencing separate patterns of subjective continuity, it doesn't prove that our identities are truly separate. Be aware that at the moment there is nothing else that separates you from me that doesn't separate your present you from your past self, except this feeling of continuity. You and me are just as materially different from each other as we are from our past selves. Same goes for our physical and mental structures. Save for the feeling of continuity.

I could however argue that if I now went out and started looking for empirical evidence, I would quickly find out that everything in the physical world suggests that I have 'evolved' from my past self and that you have evolved from your past self. Every other being who knows me would corroborate my assumption that it is me who was me in the past. But for that to be considered evidence, I would have to believe their claims and the memories that they base them on. But there is more evidence than other people's opinion. There are pictures. There is DNA, finger prints, video recordings, documents, etc, etc. If I got hold of all the physical evidence I could find, everything would (or so I assume) indicate that I am really the body that went through all the past instantiations that I remember going through.

So how shall I prove to you that this subjective feeling of continuity, which is so strongly supported by all physical evidence (unless we do happen to be duplicates without being aware of it at the moment) is not sufficient to define the limits of our subjective experience? I'm going to try to do this step by step, by asking several questions and analyzing the implications of how we choose to answer them.

Thought Experiment 1: When I go to sleep and wake up, is it still me?

That should be straight forward. The only reasonable inference is that it is me. If it isn't me then who is it? A new mind? If it is a new mind then where does my mind go? Does it die? And under what possible, far-fetched mechanism would my body be swapping minds every time I go to sleep? If I really am who I already think I am, namely the experiencer of my past and future subjective

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experiences then it obviously has to be me who wakes up after I go to sleep. In other words, my personal identity survives sleep.

TE 2: If I faint and get consciousness back, is it still me?

Same as TE 1. If it isn't me then who on earth would it be? I have fainted on several occasions in my life. If I don't survive my faints then that means that my current self isn't the one who experienced my life before the faint.

TE 3: If I experience clinical death but they manage to bring my body back to life, is it still me?

Again, if it isn't me they bring back to life then who is it and where would I have gone? Nothing we know about reality indicates that clinical deaths lead to mind swaps or mind replacements. It seems like many people who experience clinical death come back with strange memories of tunnels with white light, God's infinite loving presence and what not, but be that as it may, they rarely start claiming that they are someone else than who they used to be before they temporarily died.

TE 4: If they cut my head off and sew it back on, would it still be me?

Let's assume that that is all that would happen. No brain damage, no surgical complications. They would simply cut my head off and sew it back on, exactly as it was, artery by artery, nerve by nerve, fiber by fiber. After that they would resuscitate me. As far as I can see, this should still be me.

TE 5: If they froze me down and melted me back to life, would it still be me?

This is assuming that no irreparable frost damage would occur to my physical structure during the procedure. If our personal identities don't survive being frozen then the cryogenic patients have a problem.

TE 6: If they took my brain out and put it into a different body, would my brain with the different body still be me?

Ah, now it is getting interesting. Brain science strongly (and I mean very strongly) suggests that it is our brain that is correlated to our experience of consciousness. There is some talk about tissue memory in other body parts, which some claim has an effect on one's personality (heart transplant patients claiming that their personalities changed after the transplant and took on traits of the donor) but none of that has been scientifically proven. Even if that were true, it is a scientific fact by now that it is our brain structure that correlates to virtually everything in our subjective experience, including memories, personality traits, cognition, emotion, etc, etc.

TE 7: If they took my atoms apart and put them together again, would it still be me?

Now we are entering some 'weird' territory for most. First of all, how would this happen? Let's assume that we had some awesome device (like a teleporter) that sent some light beam at me which would scan my atomic structure at the same time as it would separate all atoms from each other, turning me into a cloud of atomic dust. After that, it would rearrange the atomic dust into the exact same configuration that my atoms were in before the procedure. Would it not be me who woke up? Again, who would it be? Someone new? Where would I have gone then? The post 'atomic disintegration' me would have my exact memories, personality, physical structure, everything. As

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far as I can infer, it should still be me.

TE 8: If they took my atoms apart and replaced them with new atoms and put me together again, would it still be me?

Ah! Now it's getting awesomely interesting. I imagine that your intuitive gut reaction tells you that that would not be me because I would be made of different matter. But wait a minute. Haven't I already shown that we change all our atoms many times during our lives? I guess someone could argue that it wouldn't be me because the disruption to my 'pattern of continuity' would be too brutal. But shouldn't that also apply to TE 7? If we are able to switch all our atoms and change our physical structure gradually (it happens much faster than you think) and still retain our personal identity, then why can't we replace all of them at once as long as we retain the exact same physical structure? I don't see how we can't and I infer that it would still be me, independently of the atoms they chose to rebuild me with.

TE 9: If they scanned me and created a perfect structural duplicate of me, would that be me?

Finally. Now we've gotten to the point where the standard, common sense intuition completely breaks down. Technically speaking, the only difference between TE 8 and TE 9 is that in TE 9 we keep the original me. Now, under what possible mechanism would the existence of my original self impede me from experiencing being the duplicate if I would be the duplicate in TE 8? Would I now not be the duplicate just because there are two of me? 'YES!' I'm sure your mind is likely to be screaming right now. But if that is the case then there must be some metaphysical law in the fabric of reality that is constantly keeping track of whether there are duplicates of a person and assigning our consciousnesses to the different bodies accordingly. But what is a duplicate anyway? It is just a human body that has the same structure as the original. But as I've already demonstrated, not even the original keeps the same structure for more than one Planck unit of time. Now your head is probably hurting, unless you've already changed your inference, in which case your 'soul' may be hurting.

TE 10: If they scanned me and created a perfect duplicate of me and killed the original, would I become the duplicate?

How is TE 10 different from TE 8 except in that in this case, the original would be destroyed after the creation of the duplicate? But if we say that I can be both at the same time then that means that I can exist at several places at the same time, and that makes no sense, right? Or does it? Notice that we already exist at several times. And we also exist at several places. And we survive complete exchanges of matter and the constant change in our structure. So why on earth can't we exist at different places at the same time if we can exist at different places in different times and different times at the same place? Even Einstein's theory probably supports this. And Quantum Theory certainly does.

TE 11: If they took my atoms apart and created two of me, would I be one of them? Which one?

The one holding the suitcase with a million dollars. This is just more variation. Again, the only coherent answer is that I would be both.

Here's another bunch of thought experiments that approach the issue from a different angle:

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TE 12: If I got amnesia would it still be me?

Obviously, if I got amnesia it would mean that I would lose access to a part of my past self. Let's say I forgot everything related to my personal life from I was born up until yesterday. It's needless to say that such a thing would have a huge impact on my sense of self. I'd literally be a new person, one without a past. But why shouldn't it be me who would experience being that new person? Am I my memories? Which ones? My memories keep changing. Memory-wise, I am not who I used to be even one second ago, I'm just similar. However, if I compare myself to my 1 year old self then I'm a completely different self. I don't remember pretty much anything about my first year of life and my 1 year old self didn't 'remember' anything about his future self either.

TE 13: If they selectively removed all my memories about the last two days, would it still be me?

Do I even need to comment on this? If I'm still me after TE 12 then I'm most definitely me after TE 13.

TE 14: If they split my brain in half, would it still be me? Which half would be me?

This is a procedure that has been done many times to alleviate severe cases of epilepsy by severing the corpus callosum. This procedure almost completely impedes communication between the two brain hemispheres. All empirical evidence suggests that each hemisphere of the brain develops an independent sense of consciousness. It has been proven that after a corpus callosotomy each hemisphere operates independently from the other one and can hold differing beliefs, knowledge, opinions, and different subjective experiences in general. So which hemisphere would be me? The left one? The right one? None? Both? The only coherent conclusion is both.

TE 15: If they took one half of my brain and put it into a new body together with a freshly grown, empty counterpart, would it be me? What if they did the same with the other half? Which half would be me?

Where would I wake up? In both places as far as I can see.

TE 16: If they split my brain in two and split your brain in two and put my right hemisphere with your left hemisphere, who would that be, you or me or both? What about my left side together with your right side? Who would be you and who would be me?

You can answer this one.

So, what does all this mean? I don't know what it means to you at this point. Maybe you are having a mental breakdown or maybe you are laughing at how silly and weird the whole thing is. Or maybe you are realizing the only obvious conclusion that is coherent, at least as far as I can see. You and me and everyone else are just as much each other, in the most literal sense of the word, as you are what you consider your future and past self. You are immortal. You are God.

What are the ethical, social, political, economic, philosophical, religious, spiritual, <insert anything else that applies> implications of this? That is for every single one of us to find out.

Welcome to the Apocalypse. I hope you get through it unscathed.Namaste.

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Further information

Books and papers:

I Am You: the Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics, by Daniel Kolak.A serious, complex, rigorous philosophical account of us all being the same person. Kolak's term for us all having the same personal identity is Open Individualism.

Room for a view on the metaphysical subject of personal identity,By Daniel KolakA paper summarizing Open Individualism.

The third hypothesis - The enigma of the io,by Iacopo VettoriAnother account of OI.

Can Matter Be Explained in Terms of ConsciousnessA paper that explains very well how our physical observations at the quantum scale support this view. This video illustrates the double slit experiment mentioned in the paper.

Ashtavakra GitaAncient Advaita Vedanta scripture.

YOU - some possible mechanics of our soul, by Mike Wilber

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts

IAWWAI - Everyone is God & the Prophecies are Now, by Wai Tsang

Lectures:

The nature of consciousness, by Alan Watts

A Revolutionary Look at Jesus, by Kim Michaels

On how technology will transform us, by Ray Kurzweil

Wikipedia articles:

Technological Singularity

Accelerating change

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