I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics

679 Pages·2004·3.1 MB·English

by  Daniel Kolak

I AM YOU
SYNTHESE LIBRARY
STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY,
LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Editor-in-Chief:
VINCENT F. HENDRICKS, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
JOHN SYMONS, University of Texas at El Paso, U.S.A.
Honorary Editor:
JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University, U.S.A.
Editors:
DIRK VAN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
TEDDY SEIDENFELD, Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A.
PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California, U.S.A.
JAN WOLEN´SKI, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
VOLUME 325
I AM YOU
The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics
By
DANIEL KOLAK
William Paterson University of New Jersey, Wayne, NJ,
U.S.A.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 1-4020-2999-3 (HB)
ISBN 1-4020-3014-2 (e-book)
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Printed in the Netherlands.
“To my four fathers:
Horst Ungerer
Ray Martin
Jaakko Hintikka
and
Miro”
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preliminary Acknowledgments xiii
Chapter 1. PERSONAL BORDERS 1
§1.1 Individuation, Identification, and Identity: Take One 1
§1.2 Closed Individualism, Empty Individualism, and Open
Individualism: The Three Views of Personal Identity 6
§1.3 Philosophical Explanations 22
§1.4 The Apparent Excluders of the Open Individual View
Of Personal Identity 24
§1.5 Dissolving Our Boundaries 26
§1.6 Philosophy Without Proof 30
§1.7 Isn’t Open Individualism Already Known to be False? 35
§1.8 Consciousness and the Cosmic Towers: a Parable 36

Chapter 2. BORDER CONTROL 43
§2.1 Apparent Excluder (1): The Fact of Exclusive Conjoinment 43
§2.1.1 Consciousness Explained: The Dream Analog As a
Conceptual Boundary Dissolve of the Metaphysical
Significance of the FEC Border 47
§2.1.1.1 Consciousness Refined: The Dream Analog and I,
The Subject-In-Itself 51
§2.1.2 The Relata of the FEC Relation: Subject and Object,
Three Caveats 55
§2.1.3 World Boundaries and I, Take One; or, The One
and the Many, Take Three: Letting the Nullteilig Out
of Klein’s Bottle 59
§2.1.4 The Causal Barrier 60
§2.2 Apparent Excluder (2): Alter Subject Identification 61
§2.2.1 The Epistemological Barrier 62
§2.2.2 In Search of Zombies: Is FEC + ASI An Inter-Personal
Boundary? 63
§2.2.3 Dream Analog II: Can a Person Be the Subject of
More Than One (Disjoint) Set of Experiences
Simultaneously? 67
§2.2.3.1 Arguing With Myself Over Everything and
Nothing: Non-pathological Phrenic Amnesia,
Shuffled Memories, and Multiphrenia 72
§2.2.3.2 Askew Modalities: Weak (Closed World)
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS viii
Nonlocality, Strong (Many Worlds) Nonlocality,
and Ultra-Strong (Open World) Nonlocality 75
§2.2.3.3 Time and Consciousness: Some Objections to
Dream Analog II 81
§2.3 Is the Dream Analog Self-Defeating? 86
§2.4 The Problem of Other Persons: An Implication For the
Problem of Other Minds 88
§2.5 The Problem of Personal Non-Identity 91

Chapter 3. PHYSIOLOGICAL BORDERS 107
§3.1 Moving Beyond Subjective Experience 109
§3.2 Apparent Excluder (3): The Physiological Border 110
§3.2.1 Physiological vs. Psychological Individuation and
Identification: Does Matter Matter? 11 4
§3.2.2 The Physiological Substance Dissolve 122
§3.3 The Persistence of Closed Individualism 127
§3.4 Thought Experiments About Persons 129
§3.5 The Contemporaneous Physiological Dissolve 134

Chapter 4. NEUROLOGICAL BORDERS 143

§4.1 The Bodily Dissolve 143
§4.2 The Brain Dissolve 144
§4.3 The Tie-Breaker Condition and The Closed Individual View 155
§4.4 How Bizarre is Nozick’s Tie? 160
§4.5 Can Two Different Brains Be the Same Person? 163

Chapter 5. SPATIAL BORDERS 168
§5.1 Can One Person Be Two Different Human Beings? 168
§5.2 The Teletransporter 174
§5.3 Apparent Excluder (4): The Spatial Border 178

§5.4 Fission With Identity: Are You An Open Individual? 181

Chapter 6. PSYCHOLOGICAL BORDERS 196
§6.1 Apparent Excluder (5): The Psychological Boundary 197
§6.2 Personas, Personalities, and the Subject, Take Zero:
Borges Nor I 199
§6.3 Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quartic Identification:
The Fourfold ε/δ Manifold 215
§6.4 The Subject, Take One: Freedom From the Self 219
§6.5 The Subject, Take Two: Self and Other 222
ix TABLE OF CONTENTS

§6.6 The Subject, Take Three: Cogito, Ergo Quis Est? 229
§6.6.1 Self-Consciousness Explained: The Intuition
of Personal Identity (I Am I) 230
§6.6.2 Self-Consciousness Liberated:
Averroës Strikes Again for the First Time 237
§6.6.3 The Self and I: Identity for Identity’s Sake 240
§6.7 Dissolving Our Selves: The Analysis and Synthesis of
Multiple Personality Disorder 245
§6.7.1 Personas, Personalities, and Selves: From a
Metaphysical and Metapsychological Point of View 252
§6.7.2 FEC, Emotions, and Metaphysical Reversal 255
§6.7.3 Altering Ourselves Philosophically 257
§6.8 The Memory Dissolve 261
§6.9 The Physiological Border Retreat 265
§6.10 The Omni Dissolve: Daniel Kolak Through Krishnamurti
Becomes Ann-Margret 268
§6.11 Apparent Excluder (6): The Unity of Consciousness Dissolve 276

Chapter 7: CAUSAL BORDERS 299
§7.1 Apparent Excluder (7): The Causal Border 299
§7.2 One Small Step For Personkind 302
§7.3 The Causal Dissolve 305

Chapter 8: METAPHYSICAL BORDERS 317
§8.1 The Metaphysical Substance Border 317
§8.2 The Soul Dissolve 319
§8.3 Metaphysical Subjectivism 322
§8.4 The Transcendent Illusion, the Transcendental Illusion, and
the Third Copernican Revolution: A Brief History of
Personal Metaphysics 336

Chapter 9: IDENTITY BORDERS 349
§9.1 The Identity Dissolve, or, Is Cessation of Identity Death? 353
§9.2 Is Reductionism True? 360
§9.3 What Parfit’s Combined Spectrum Argument Really Shows 366
§9.4 Identity, Survival and What Really Matters 370

Chapter 10: PHENOMENOLOGICAL BORDERS 375
TABLE OF CONTENTS x
§10.1 The Lucid Dream Analog, the Intuition of
Understanding, and the Paradox of the Dreaming
Thinker 377
§10.2 From a Phenomenological Point of View 391
§10.3 The Phenomenal Self, the Phenomenal World and the
Noumenal Subject: The Unspeakable Mode Of Being or,
Silent No More 396
§10.4 Sinn Beyond Borders 412
§10.5 Quantum Phenomenology, Quantum Consciousness,
and Phantom Identity 423
§10.6 The Phenomenology of Survival and Identity:
Empathy vs. Identity 435
§10.7 Seeing Through Ourselves: Conceptually Extending
the Borders of Experience 439
§10.8 The Phenomenological Boundary 445
§10.9 The Ghost in Hume’s Labyrinth and the Continuous
Phenomenological Dissolve 448
§10.10 Drawing Ourselves Phenomenologically: The Man Who
Mistook Himself For the World 452
§10.11 Drawing Ourselves (Temporally) In Phenomenal Time:
Being In the Specious Present 465
§10.12 Drawing Ourselves (Spatially) Within the Phenomenal
World: The Localization of Nonlocality 469
§10.13 The Phenomenological Black Hole At The Center Of
the Third Copernican Revolution Revis(it)ed: Drawing
Ourselves Into the Center of the World 475
§10.14 Drawing Ourselves Into the One Multiperspectival
Reality, Or Restoring the Suppressed Z-Coordinate to
Gödel’s Universe: The Ultra (Open World) Nonlocality
Interpretation of Personal Identity 481
§10.15. Why Was Hume Not a Korsakoff? 487
§10.16 Incarnation vs. Reincarnation 489
§10.17 Dismembering Ourselves Through Our Remembering:
Personal Identity, Multiple Incarnation and the Formal
Phenomenological Analysis of Always, Never and Now 493

Chapter 11: TRANSCENDENTAL BORDERS 515
§11.1 Climbing Kant’s Ladder: From the Phenomenal Self
to the Transcendental Subject 515