Open individualism
Open individualism is the view in the philosophy of self, according to which there exists only one numerically identical subject, who is everyone at all times.[clarification needed] It is a theoretical solution to the question of personal identity, being contrasted with "Empty individualism", the view that personal identities correspond to a fixed pattern that instantaneously disappears with the passage of time, and with "Closed individualism", the common view that personal identities are particular to subjects and yet survive over time.
History[]
The term was coined by philosopher Daniel Kolak,[1] though this view has been described at least since the time of the Upanishads, in the late Bronze Age; the phrase "Tat tvam asi" meaning "You are that" is an example. Others who have expressed similar views (in various forms) include the philosophers Averroes,[2] Arthur Schopenhauer,[3] and Arnold Zuboff,[4] mystic Meher Baba,[5] stand-up comedian Bill Hicks,[6] writer Alan Watts,[7] as well as renowned physicists Erwin Schrödinger,[8] Freeman Dyson,[9] and Fred Hoyle.[10]
In fiction[]
Leo Tolstoy in the short story "Esarhaddon, King of Assyria", tells how an old man appears before Esarhaddon and takes the king through a process where he experiences, from a first-person perspective, the lives of humans and non-human animals he has tormented. This reveals to him that he is everyone and that by harming others, he is actually harming himself.[11]
In the science fiction novel October the First Is Too Late, Fred Hoyle puts forward the "pigeon hole theory" which asserts that "each moment of time can be thought of as a pre-existing pigeon hole" and the pigeon hole currently being examined by your consciousness is the present and that the spotlight of consciousness does not have to move in a linear fashion; it could potentially move around in any order.[12] Hoyle considers the possibility that there might be one set of pigeon holes for each person, but only one spotlight, which would mean that the "consciousness could be the same".[10]
"The Egg", a short story by Andy Weir, is about a character who finds out that they are every person who has ever existed.[13] The story was adapted into an animation by the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt, for its ten-year anniversary.[14]
See also[]
- God becomes the Universe
- Hermeticism
- Indefinite monism
- Mindmelding
- Monopsychism
- Nondualism
- Objective idealism
- Organicism
- Panpsychism
- Vertiginous question
References[]
- ^ Kolak, Daniel (2005). I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics. Springer. ISBN 978-1402029998.
- ^ Ivry, Alfred (2012), "Arabic and Islamic Psychology and Philosophy of Mind", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2019-09-07
- ^ Barua, Arati, ed. (2017). Schopenhauer on Self, World and Morality: Vedantic and Non-Vedantic Perspectives. Springer Singapore. ISBN 978-9811059537.
- ^ Zuboff, Arnold (1990). "One Self: The Logic of Experience" (PDF). Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. 33 (1): 39–68. doi:10.1080/00201749008602210.
- ^ Baba, Meher (2015). The Everything and the Nothing (PDF) (2nd ed.). Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Foundation. ISBN 978-1880619131. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-04-30.
- ^ "Mushroom scene from, American - The Bill Hicks Story". YouTube. May 18, 2014.
- ^ Watts, Alan (1966). The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (PDF) (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0394417257.
- ^ Schrödinger, Erwin (1992). What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521427081.
- ^ Dyson, Freeman J. (1979). Disturbing the Universe (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0060111083.
- ^ a b Hoyle, Fred (1966). October the First Is Too Late (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0060028459.
- ^ Tolstoy, Leo (1906). Twenty-three Tales. Translated by Maude, Aylmer and Louise. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 256–263.
- ^ Webb, Stephen (2017). All the Wonder that Would Be: Exploring Past Notions of the Future. Cham: Springer International Publishing. p. 162. ISBN 978-3-319-51759-9. OCLC 985702597.
- ^ Prisco, Giulio (2015-07-18). "A short story about Open Individualist resurrection by Andy Weir, author of The Martian". Turing Church. Archived from the original on 2020-11-08. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
- ^ "The Egg". YouTube. Kurzgesagt. Archived from the original on 2021-12-15. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
Further reading[]
Articles[]
- Fasching, Wolfgang (2009-05-26). "The mineness of experience". Continental Philosophy Review. 42 (2): 131–148. doi:10.1007/s11007-009-9107-z.
- Gómez-Emilsson, Andrés (2016-02-24). "Ontological Qualia: The Future of Personal Identity". Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
- MacLeod, Roderick (2011-04-29). "Individual Consciousness: An Argument for the Numerical Identity of All Conscious Existence".
- Vettori, Iacopo (2016-09-23). "Reduction to Open Individualism: How to converge to Open Individualism reasoning in a reductionist way". Academia.edu.
- Zuboff, Arnold. "An Introduction to Universalism".
Books[]
- Kolak, Daniel (1999). In Search of Myself: Life, Death, and Personal Identity. Wadsworth. ISBN 9780534239282.
- Schrödinger, Erwin (1951). My View of the World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521062244.
- Vinding, Magnus (2017). You Are Them. ISBN 1546511504.
- Kern, Joe (2021). The Odds of Existing: Or, Why Death Is Not the End.
External links[]
- Quotations related to Open individualism at Wikiquote
- Identity (philosophy)
- Metaphysical theories
- Metaphysics of mind
- Conceptions of self
- Theory of mind
- Metaphysics stubs