Open individualism

Philosophical view that a single subject embodies all individuals

Open individualism is a view within the philosophy of self, according to which there exists only one numerically identical subject, who is everyone at all times; in the past, present and future.[1] It is a theoretical solution to the question of personal identity, being contrasted with "Empty individualism", which is the view that ones personal identity corresponds to a fixed pattern that instantaneously disappears with the passage of time, and "Closed individualism", the common view that personal identities are particular to subjects and yet survive over time.[1]

## History

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The term was coined by Croatian-American philosopher Daniel Kolak,[2] 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.[citation needed] Others who have expressed similar views (in various forms) include the philosophers Averroes,[3] Arthur Schopenhauer,[4] and Arnold Zuboff,[5] mystic Meher Baba,[6] stand-up comedian Bill Hicks,[7] writer Alan Watts,[8] as well as physicists Erwin Schrödinger,[9] Freeman Dyson,[10] and Fred Hoyle.[11]

## In fiction

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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.[12]

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.[13] 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".[11]

"The Egg", a short story by Andy Weir, is about a character who finds out that they are every person who has ever existed.[14]

## In reality

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According to open individualism, physicalism implies experience never dies, because there is no one to die.[1] There is always a substructure embedded in the sum of all experiential computations which assimilates the past from the inside of its causal structure.[1] Our human intuitions are of hindrance here, because we don’t think in this clear, physical way by biological instinct. We stubbornly hold on to linear identities of fundamental characters who are not themselves, we imagine, composed of sub-characters.[1]

From this perspective reincarnation in the common sense isn’t true, but rather that you are already reincarnated as everything because no one is traveling.[1] This computation that knows: “I am here” is the same subject as that computation over there in the future that knows: “I am here” and there is no computation which knows: ”I am not here”.[1]

The answer to the vertiginous question 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.[1]

## In ethics

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Since open individualism fundamentally challenges our present view on the self, the outcome of the philosophy also suggests a radical change in how society views revenge, punishment, and in general any justification of suffering that is founded in our own alienation from the subject experiencing the suffering.[1] From a utilitarian perspective it could be argued that killing wrongdoers is justified if it lowers the amount of suffering that the wrongdoer will have to experience in total. However sadistic punishment just for the sake of revenge doesn’t make sense, according to open individualism, since it just causes more suffering for you to experience.[1]

## See also

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* Reasons and Persons
* The View from Nowhere
* Advaita Vedanta
* Anattā
* Eternalism
* God becomes the Universe
* Hermeticism
* Indefinite monism
* Metempsychosis
* Mindmelding
* Monopsychism
* Nondualism
* Nonidentity problem
* Objective idealism
* One electron universe
* Organicism
* Panpsychism
* Personal horizon
* Solipsism
* Teletransportation paradox
* Vertiginous question

## References

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1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Kolak, Daniel (2007-11-03). I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics (PDF). Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-1-4020-3014-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2024-09-06.
2. ^ Thomson, Garrett (2008-06-01). "Counting subjects". Synthese. 162 (3): 373–384\. doi:10.1007/s11229-007-9249-7. ISSN 1573-0964. S2CID 43009328.
3. ^ 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
4. ^ Barua, Arati, ed. (2017). Schopenhauer on Self, World and Morality: Vedantic and Non-Vedantic Perspectives. Springer Singapore. ISBN 978-9811059537.
5. ^ Zuboff, Arnold (1990). "One Self: The Logic of Experience" (PDF). Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. 33 (1): 39–68\. doi:10.1080/00201749008602210. "In all conscious life there is only one person—I—whose existence depends merely on the presence of a quality that is inherent in all experience—its quality of being mine, the simple immediacy of it for whatever is having experience."
6. ^ 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.
7. ^ "Mushroom scene from, American - The Bill Hicks Story". YouTube. May 18, 2014. "Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we're the imagination of ourselves... Here's Tom with the weather."
8. ^ Watts, Alan (1966). The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (PDF) (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0394417257. "For every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree. To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole body. The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation."
9. ^ Schrödinger, Erwin (1992). What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 89\. ISBN 978-1-107-60466-7. "The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown"
10. ^ Dyson, Freeman J. (1979). Disturbing the Universe (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-011108-3. "I called it Cosmic Unity. Cosmic Unity said: There is only one of us. We are all the same person. I am you and I am Winston Churchill and Hitler and Gandhi and everybody."
11. ^ a b Hoyle, Fred (1966). October the First Is Too Late (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-002845-9.
12. ^ Tolstoy, Leo (1906). Twenty-three Tales. Translated by Maude, Aylmer and Louise. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 256–263.
13. ^ 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.
14. ^ 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.

## Further reading

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### Articles

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* 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

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* 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. `{{cite book}}`: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
* Vinding, Magnus (2017). You Are Them. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1546511502.
* Kern, Joe (2021). The Odds of Existing: Or, Why Death Is Not the End.

## External links

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* Quotations related to Open individualism at Wikiquote