In defense of the “Why am I me?” question
(This is a reddit post from 2021.)
On how the “Why am I me?” question is meaningful‒and how to truly dissolve it (OI!).
The question “why am I me?”, in different formulations, has been asked on this and related forums many, many https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/search?q=why%20am%20i%20me&restrict_sr=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/search?q=why%20am%20i%20me&restrict_sr=1 times over the years‒so many, actually, that an faq has been written to address it https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4oke2q/why_am_i_me_rather_than_someone_else_why_am_i/ . Apparently, many people seem to share this same basic inchoate intuition‒that I could have been someone else, and so that there is a mystery to why I am this person in particular. But many, if not the majority, of the replies to the question are dismissive, attempting to demonstrate that the problem posed is illusory: “it’s like asking why this apple is this apple‒you couldn’t be anyone else!” or “unless you believe in incorporeal souls, there is no mystery here”.
In this post, I will attempt to demonstrate how the question, or more precisely the intuition it’s attempting to express, is meaningful‒and that it points to something interesting about what we are (or what we can take ourselves to be), namely awareness. I will also try to explain why, unless you believe that you actually are everyone (“reincarnate into everybody”), you implicitly believe in (a plurality of) incorporeal souls (in a specific sense of the term, i.e. a plurality of awarenesses). Note that I don’t mean this dismissively: I think believing in a plurality of souls is a legitimate position, which certainly hasn’t been “disproven”, and the reason why it’s currently unpopular among philosophers mostly (imho) seems to have to do with the current philosophical trends and belief fashions, not because we have discovered impenetrable arguments against their existence or because we have become less biased and more courageous to face uncomfortable facts about ourselves.
tl;dr:
That the question “why am I me?” is meaningful reveals that I could have been someone else, and so what I essentially am is not this particular person/human being.
That I am someone simply means that experiences of some person exist as given in immediate presence, i.e. in the same manner this experience now exists. (Only a pain that hurts is my pain.)
What “I” is in the relevant sense is that which experiences a human being, i.e. the realizer of experiences, the revealer of phenomenal content, i.e. awareness‒which just is this mineness and immediacy and presence of phenomenal qualities, i.e. their being.
Either all experiences are equally mine‒equally live and immediately given as this experience‒or only some of them are.
If only some of them are, then there is a distinction between experiences in how they are realized‒and so there is a plurality of awarenesses.
If there is a plurality of awarenesses, then “why am I me?” is a legitimate question.
If there is no plurality of awarenesses, then there is only a single awareness which realizes all experiences (i.e. OI is true), and the question is dissolved.
If there is no plurality of awarenesses, there is only one “I”, who is everyone. I am you (and everyone else).
Either there is a plurality of souls, or all experiences are mine.
***
The intuition
We begin with the question “why am I me?”‒with the intuition that this question is meaningful. “Why am I me, and not e.g. Queen Victoria?”
In posing this question, I intuit that I could have been someone else‒but here I am, being this particular person. It is conceivable that I were someone else, Queen Victoria instead of Edralis. So I cannot be identical to Edralis! Edralis, the human being, could not conceivably be Queen Victoria, a different human being; but I could (I can). Being (only) Edralis precludes being (only) Queen Victoria. But being me precludes and necessitates neither; being me is undefined for being Edralis or Queen Victoria.
A reality with me in it could be with or without Edralis, as long as there is someone who is also me. Edralis or no Edralis, that there is someone, anyone, who is me is enough for there being me in reality.
The meaningfulness of the question reveals that, in some important sense, I am not a particular human being, but rather that which happens to be a particular human being. The particular human being that I am is not what I am essentially, but rather my contingent mode.
This I that is (identical to) me, that could have been some other person, i.e. that could have revealed some other life, centered around some other person, that could instead of these experiences reveal other ones, is in itself “empty”, not essentially attached to any particular person/life/experiences, since it could realize any of them.
What exactly is this “I”?
But what does this mean‒that “I” could have been someone else? What does it mean that this “I” is someone, and could be someone else, and doesn’t have to be anyone specifically? What is this I‒what is the nature of me?
I suggest it means this: That I am someone means that experiences of some person are live and immediately given (in the same way this experience is)‒that I am Edralis means that my world is Edralis-centered. That I could be someone else means that instead of the experiences of this particular human being (viz. Edralis) that are actually immediately given (her pain hurting; the world appearing from her perspective, centered around her body-mind), some other experiences, some other content could have been like this (viz. mine, or for me, or realized by me). The world could have been given to me from some other perspective; some other perspective could have been mine.
Whether an experience belongs to a particular person depends on the content of that experience (the world being revealed from a particular point of view, centered around a particular body-mind). But whether it’s mine depends on how it’s given: whether it’s immediately present to me, intimately revealed, i.e. whether it exists in the same way this experience now exists, in incorrigible qualitative immediacy.
To illustrate better what I mean by this “presence”, “givenness”, “intimate revealing”, “incorrigible qualitative immediacy”: take pain‒individual experiences of pain. All pains exist subjectively, all experiences of pain hurt‒but it seems not all of them hurt in this immediate way, here, for me, in the way the pains of this person (that I actually am) hurt. Why are only these existing pains painful?
And in the same way a pain is revealed as painful, a sound is revealed as of a certain texture and loudness, a patch of red is revealed in its redness, the taste of pineapple in its pineapply sour-sweetness‒different qualities immediately revealed, existing on the same ground. Why, of all the experiences in the world, are only these experiences, of this particular person, immediately revealed, i.e. existent on the ground that is me?
But this “mineness” of (e.g.) pains and other experiences, the “me” that is asked about, is not the person, the human being who undergoes the experiences, but the consciousness or awareness that realizes them, i.e. that which reveals them as painful. And here “consciousness” is the very being of pain‒how it exists. Pains (and other experiences) exist subjectively: their existing is their being manifested “in consciousness” or “in awareness”, it consists in being immediately given, revealed in subjectivity. The presence of my experiences for/in me exhausts their being. And the “me” here is not standing apart from the experienced qualities, somehow watching them from afar, but the ground that reveals them, i.e. their being, their presence itself. The qualities revealed on the ground and the ground are not the same, but there is no distance between them (the qualities are the modes of the substance).
“I” (in this sense) am awareness, the empty subject of experience that could be anyone, to/for/in whom any experiential content can be revealed. And more mystically, using epithets that would be appropriate for an epic fantasy novel: I am The Ground of Experience, The Revealer of the World, The Empty Manifester of Phenomenal Content. I am No One!
Because if I can be anyone, then I am essentially no one. I am identical to that which is a human being‒I am not identical to that human being, but rather I am their realizer, i.e. the realizer of their experiences.
It seems to me, this is the “I” that people intuit when they ask the question “why am I me?”. Usually, when we use this word, “I”, or “me”, when we refer to “myself”, we are referring to a particular human being, i.e. we identify ourselves with a particular human being. But the fact that we can conceive of existing without this particular human being existing means that in an important sense, this particular human being that I am is not what I am (identical to). Rather, this human being that I am is only my mode, my contingent property.
I am the experiencer of their life‒the awareness that realizes their experiences.
Restating and explicating the “why am I me?” question
My experiences could have been different, could have belonged to some other person, be (of) a world centered around someone else. In this sense, I could have been someone else‒and the problem of why I am (bound to) only this (person, world, experiences) in particular is a legitimate question.
So the person who asks “why am I me?” is not asking “why am I identical to myself? why is “I” “I”?”‒they’re not pondering why x is x. Rather, so it seems to me, they’re asking: “why is this and only this particular person’s life revealed in this immediate manner?”, “why are only these experiences, of all existing experiences, so intimately revealed?”.
Experiences centered around a different body-mind could have been immediately present and given to me, in the same way this experience now is immediately present and given to me‒which is the same way the past experiences of this person that I currently find myself to be existed and the future experiences of this person will exist (i.e. as live and immediately given). The entirety of this person’s life, all the experiences of this person are (or were, or will be) mine‒and, so I assume, no others. Why?
We can take the intuition seriously and dissolve the problem
If it is indeed the case that only some experiences are mine, i.e. that not all experiences are intimately revealed in the same way this experience now is revealed, then there is a plurality of awarenesses, of realizers of content, of empty subjects, i.e. of souls‒and the question “why am I me?” is indeed a problem. There has to be some kind of pairing mechanism that decides which awareness (i.e. that which manifests phenomenal contents) manifests which phenomenal contents, which souls are incarnated into which person‒or else this is somehow decided completely at random, a fundamental fiat.
However, there is a way of dissolving the question. If there is only one awareness, i.e. one manner in which all phenomenal contents are realized, then there is no mystery in why I am this particular person (why “I” am “me”). I am the only I there is, the only realizer of content‒I am the awareness. And so I am all people, all conscious beings. All existing perspectives of the world are mine. All experiences are immediately given like the experiences of this person that I currently find myself being, like this experience now. There is only one revealer of the world, to whom the world is revealed from all perspectives, one manifester of phenomenal content, one realizer of experience, one empty subject, one awareness, one consciousness, one soul. And I am that.
This is Open Individualism (OI). If OI is true, the question is dissolved. If all experiences exist in the same way, for the same subject, in the same awareness, if they are all immediately given, present, live in the same way‒i.e. in the same way this particular experience is given, present, live, i.e. mine‒then there is no mystery in why I find myself being this particular person, or in this particular experience. Wherever there is an experience, there am I, too. I am the universal experiencer‒meaning, all experiences are live and immediately given like this experience now, not only all the experiences (past, present, future) of the person that I currently am. All experiences exist in virtue of being experienced by me. I actually am (or was) Queen Victoria.
If there are no souls, you are everyone
OI being true‒i.e. unless there is a multiplicity of souls that incarnate into different people (by an unknown mechanism)‒means there is no distinction between experiences in how they are realized. Every experience that exists exists in the same way this experience (of the person that you are, reading this sentence) exists. This means that you‒in the sense of awareness‒are in all experiences, you undergo all lives, all perspectives are assumed by you, i.e. you are all people. Everything that happens from a first person perspective happens to you, because you are the first person perspective.
In other words‒if there are no souls, then there is only one soul: you (=I).