Benj Hellie's vertiginous question asks why, of all the subjects of experience out there, ''this'' one—the one corresponding to the human being referred to as Benj Hellie—is the one whose experiences are ''lived''? (The reader is supposed to substitute their own case for Hellie's.) In other words: Why am I me and not someone else? A simple response is that this question reduces to "Why are Hellie's experiences lived from Hellie's perspective," which is trivial to answer. However, Hellie argues, through a

parable A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whe ...

, that this response leaves something out. His parable describes two situations, one reflecting a broad global ''constellation'' view of the world and everyone's phenomenal features, and one describing an ''embedded'' view from the perspective of a single subject. The former seems to align better with the simple response above, but the latter seems to be a better description of

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...

Overview

Philosophers have used various different terminology to describe the phenomenon of individuals existing as themselves and not as someone else. Tim S. Roberts refers to the question of why a particular organism out of all the organisms that happen to exist happens to be you as the "Even Harder Problem of Consciousness". Herbert Spiegelberg has referred to it as the "I-am-me experience", and it has been called the "Ich-Erlebnis" by German psychologists. The vertiginous question may have a number of philosophical implications.

Christian List Christian List (born 1973) is a German philosopher and political scientist who serves as professor of philosophy and decision theory at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and co-director of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosop ...

argues that the vertiginous question and the existence of first-personal facts is evidence against

physicalism In philosophy, physicalism is the view that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenience, supervenes on the physical. It is opposed to idealism, according to which the world arises ...

, and evidence against other third-personal

metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of h ...

pictures, including standard versions of dualism. List also argues that the vertiginous question implies a "quadrilemma" for theories of consciousness. He claims that at most three of the following metaphysical claims can be true: 'first-person realism', 'non- solipsism', 'non-fragmentation', and 'one world' – and thus one of these four must be rejected. List has proposed a model he calls the "many-worlds theory of consciousness" in order to reconcile the subjective nature of consciousness without lapsing into solipsism. Some philosophers have argued that there exists a connection between the nature of the self and the nature of

time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

. Vincent Conitzer argues that the vertiginous question is related to

A series and B series In metaphysics, the A series and the B series are two different descriptions of the temporal ordering relation among events. The two series differ principally in their use of tense to describe the temporal relation between events and the resulti ...

theories of time, and that arguments in favor of the A-theory of time are more effective as arguments for the combined position of both A-theory being true and the "I" being metaphysically privileged from other perspectives. Caspar Hare has made similar arguments with the theories of

egocentric presentism Egocentric presentism is a form of solipsism introduced by Caspar Hare in which other persons can be conscious, but their experiences are simply not . Similarly, in related work, Hare argues for a theory of perspectival realism in which other pe ...

and perspectival realism, of which several other philosophers have written reviews. Thomas Nagel has extensively discussed the question of personal identity in '' The View from Nowhere''. It contrasts passive and active points of view in how humanity interacts with the world, relying either on a subjective perspective that reflects a point of view or an objective perspective that takes a more detached perspective. Nagel describes the objective perspective as the "view from nowhere", one where the only valuable ideas are ones derived independently. Other philosophers have discussed various other related ideas. Similar questions are also asked by J. J. Valberg in justifying his horizonal view of the self. Japanese philosopher Hitoshi Nagai has used the concept of first person perspectives as a way of defining the self, defining the self as the "one who directly experiences the consciousness of oneself". It has also been argued that the self is an "idiomodific" concept. Other related but opposing concepts include the anatta concept in Buddhist philosophy and

open individualism 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. It is a theoretical solution to the question of ...

which assert that the self does not exist.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Hellie, Benj. Against egalitarianism. Preprint of article in Analysis (2013).

Benj Hellie's page at the University of Toronto.
Conceptions of self Concepts in metaphysics Concepts in the philosophy of mind Consciousness Identity (philosophy) Metaphysics of mind Mind–body problem Ontology Open problems Phenomenology Philosophical problems Subjective experience Theory of mind

Overview

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References

External links