What Difference Would it Make if You Had Not Existed?
This is intended as a fun question but, also, as a question for reflective contemplation. It is inevitably bound up with thinking about one's own personal significance in the world and the general scheme. It is possible to undervalue or overvalue one's unique significance.
My own thought experiment is of thinking about how life would have been if I had not existed. It involves eliminating oneself from every aspect and incident in which one has ever partaken in. I wonder about how different life would have been without me for my family, friends and in all respects..How would life have been different for others without my existence in causal chains?
I could go on further in this outpost, but I will leave it up to you to think about and reflect upon. Do you ever wonder about the issue of your own personal significance and is it useful to question?.
My own thought experiment is of thinking about how life would have been if I had not existed. It involves eliminating oneself from every aspect and incident in which one has ever partaken in. I wonder about how different life would have been without me for my family, friends and in all respects..How would life have been different for others without my existence in causal chains?
I could go on further in this outpost, but I will leave it up to you to think about and reflect upon. Do you ever wonder about the issue of your own personal significance and is it useful to question?.
Comments (105)
Nevertheless, it's interesting. You never know how far our tiny ripples that are our desires and actions in the sea of reality might end up reaching and what they may knock up against. Just enough to cause an action one could never fathom. Snowball effect, yes?
It is a dark question in many ways. Our way of memory weaves regret with what if X happened. Nightmares pit fatalism against desire.
When you speak of eliminating your role in a scene, those circumstances do not exist outside of your participation. The equation grows to an impossible size. The presumed objectivity is a deeper dream.
Think Kafka. but without all the hopeful messages.
What if the best outcome is to be a pebble that makes the least ripple on the surface of the pond?
There are two ways of coming at this question. Either the heroic mode that puts us at the centre of everything or the zen mode which prizes equanimity.
And if both those extremes seem unappealing, that leaves us with some kind of state that is inbetween.
An inbetween is an easy place to be. We made as much or as little difference as we did. It is what it is in causal terms.
It may be dark.rumination to wonder about what could have been different, with regret. I probably started out conceiving of my own existence during childhood when my mother told me how she had almost had a fatal accident before I was ever conceived. She said to me, 'Just imagine, your would never have existed...' it led be to wonder about a world without me ever coming into being, which is different from a world after one's own death. That is because after death there are already traces of oneself left in the world.
You say that your role doesn't exist outside of one's participation and, in a sense one's nonexistent self is a limbo phantom self. However, if one had not existed that doesn't mean that others would not have existed, so life would have been different for them.
The ripples of desires and actions are complex. I have come across suggestions like it can be useful to determine the significance of a life event if it will matter in 10 years time. This can be a useful frame but it is sometimes the small events which spiral into large ones..
With events like wars there is an interplay of individuals and leaders in chains of events. It could be argued that if one figure had not taken on a role another person would have done. The interplay of individual actors and their actions cannot always be separated out clearly.
Seeing oneself at the centre of everything, or as having a peripheral role can be a shifting aspect of perspective. There can be extremes of inflation or deflation of one's importance. It is possible to see oneself as having too much of a determining effect or too little.
Each person has some influence but it is variable. One of the most obvious determing actions one has is the role in bringing children into the world. But there are so many other contributions one may make . This is interconnected to moral responsibility and one's sense of agency, as well as the awareness of outcomes of one's influences for others', as evident in their feedback and description of one's personal significance of influence for them.
I am not saying that. I don't have access to those kinds of facts. The awareness of different outcomes does not let me know what they might be in other cases. I did not go there.
On one hand, I do know and remember stuff and am well aware that different choices would have meant a different life. I don't get to live that other life while living the one chosen.
On the other hand, those choices do not give me insight into what might happen to other people absent my participation. The subtraction of my involvement runs into the problem of adding it.
I have gently pondered this question since I was a child. Answer: it would have been different, but not significantly so. If I hadnt been here, someone else would likely have fulfilled most of the roles Ive held: perhaps better than me, perhaps worse, but who knows? One of my pet hates is the mawkish Its a Wonderful Life school of personal significance, which fits neatly with our cultures romantic obsession with individualism and the putative power of the lone actor to shape and improve the world for those around them. In truth, most of us are woven into larger patterns that would carry on without us, differently perhaps, but no worse. Most of us are not irreplaceable, and most of us make little real difference to the world which, for me, is a sobering idea and perhaps even a liberating one.
I guess that I am just imagining oneself as negative space, which is only fantasised projection in the sense of removing oneself from pathways of causal chains. Each person is separate but also interconnected with others in determining influences. It is not mere actions but discourse, including the spoken, and non-verbal.effects, as interpreted in variable ways.
I am glad that someone else has thought about this question. While it is speculative reflection, it is not completely abstract.
It is true that no one's being and role is irreplaceable. When I left the job I had worked in for a number of years I wondered who would take on various roles I had played out there. What I came to realise was that so much was shifting with various comings and goings. Roles are so fluid and it is almost as if we are like puppets taking on different parts in a larger fabric which is weaved of so many variables in dynamic interplay.
I am only suggesting we do that all the time. It is an element of what we do. It is easier to imagine that our species did not exist than imagine what you propose.
I've thought of this, too. I gave up, mostly because I was overwhelmed by the complexity. It starts with your birth. If you're not there, then, for example, the day of the hospital personal that were on duty that day might have been different. How? Who knows. And it goes on: you enter a packed subway train and take up space, people organising around you. Maybe that got people to talk who would otherwise not have been next to each other? In summary, most of the consequences of me being around likely have nothing at all to do with what I value about myself (either positively or negatively). Stories tend to go the route of things would have been better or worse, but really things would likely have been just wildly different. (For example, going back to my birth: If I hadn't been conceived, then my mother wouldn't have been pregnant during the nine prior months. Someone else might have been conceived during that time, and that in turn would likely throw off the entire rhythm of the world such that it would have been very unlikely that my little sister would have been born, simply because sex at a different time would entail different ovum/sperm combinations....).
My hunch is this: if you hadn't been born, you'd be entirely irrelevent, since the world in which your relevant comes into being with you. Ultimately, the comparison between world-with-you and world-without-you is far to complex and includes a lot of stuff we find incidental rather than significant to us. The question just stopped mattering to me the moment I realised a ceteris-paribus hypothesis is untenable.
Not sure you get what I mean, but that really was a switch for me. I'm here and that is it. Any world without me is either unimaginable or implausible, due to the limits of cognition.
I am inclined to see time as cyclical, so both past and present are about about dynamic patterns. In that respect, it is potentiality and actuality, as to what, including individuals person, in the specifics of manifestation. There is almost infinite possibilities, such as all the possibilities of reproductive potential of DNA, and this is the primordial chaos underlying what possible persons may come into existence.
Yes, conceptualizing a world without oneself is a cognitive problem. It is possible to imagine a world after one's death, but that in itself is fantasy because there are so many potential variables. It is hard enough to predict what will happen in one's own life, let alone outside of it.
Such a thought experiment is a question but excessive rumination on it could be futile. The main way in which I see it useful is for thinking about one's specific influence while one is alive, like one's unique personal signature. It becomes linked to the way of evaluating one's role in life. For example, I often worry that I take more than I give in life. I do seek to give out rather than than take but am aware of my own limitations. So, I see the imagination of a world without me as a way of thinking and reviewing the issues of what do I contribute to the larger scheme.
Having not existed might make some difference to others that did/do exist. I accomplished some minor achievements which, if I had not existed, would not have been done. Somebody else could have, might have, or not. If NOT, then the world would lack those minor achievements, and that might matter to a few hundred people in a probably small way.
It would certainly have mattered to my parents, who would have had one less child to raise. They had to work very hard to feed, clothe, and house 7 children. It would probably have made a difference to my siblings. I was the youngest. Without me, the sister who preceded me would have been the youngest child, and might have received some advantages from that.
My boy friends and lovers would not have had the pleasure of knowing, loving, being proud of or disappointed in me, and they would not have received my love for them. Of course, there are plenty good fish in the sea, and any of them might have made better matches.
I think I have gained knowledge, understanding, maybe 'wisdom' over just about 79 years. Does the knowledge I accumulated count as a "good", an "asset" to the society at large? Don't know. The time may yet come when I will be able to explain some historical facts, for instance, to one or more people who don't have much knowledge about history. Or perhaps I will just be a knowledgeable corpse one day. That's OK. I studied because I liked study.
We know for a fact that through various technologies of birth control, millions of babies have not been conceived and delivered. Missing babies is a significant thing. Ask Japan, which has a growing deficit of children to replace the generation who might have borne them. You can also ask China, Germany, Italy, Korea, and a number of other places about the coming demographic problem of too few children.
Let's not blame birth control, however. A lot of people apparently wish never to change a stinky diaper.
non cogito ergo non sum
Of course, from the standpoint of one's own ego consciousness, if one does not exist it would not matter. But if Wayfarer had not existed it might make some difference in the larger picture, including 'The Philosophy Forum'.
I like your full consideration of your own personal significance. Each person exists for oneself and others. There is the question of one's own inner knowledge, development and wisdom. Does it count at all if it is not shared or is still significant.
When I thought about the thread question I didn't think about the way it relates to medical ethics and the question of 'unborn child'. That has often hinged on the question as to at what stage does a person come into being. The problem is that has often being a way of guilt tripping people, especially women in difficult situations, suggesting that they should not have abortions. The argument against birth control is also bound up with an emphasis on the moral good of procreation. Where it gets critical though is where people are advised not to have children who may have disabilities and other complex issues. There can be judgmental biases of whose life has 'quality' and value.
Oh, wait, you're probably all fucked anyway.
Which means I've gone to all this trouble for nothing.
Well damn you all then!
What Difference Would it Make if You Had Not Existed?
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Not much of a difference in the grand scheme. We were thrown into existence by a kind non-voluntary lottery and if this is true, we could've been anyone. This should give us pause for moral (re)consideration about our behavior to other people (see the golden rule). I've made some terrible decisions in my life that have left an indelible mark on myself and others for selfish reasons. Yet I find hard to hold myself responsible for those decisions because I didn't have the sense and emotional stability to choose the better path at the time. I was a lonely, afraid and stupid kid, pursuing a strong desire to belong and got into self-destructive behavior along with a lot of other stupid directionless kids. And boy did many of us get burned! Think of a moth headed for a flame, or a hungry dog eating poisoned kibble.
But these same kind of dynamics (bad/unconscious choices) are happening everywhere all the time to other people. If we run through the lottery again in a game of eternal recurrence, what are the chances it'll be any better the next time around? Hopefully a large part of the population of humans can say that they prefer to live, that joy outweighs the negative, and that they would say yes to another round of being thrown into the world, even if it means we're going to experience some abject form of hell, like Holocaust, war, genocide, addiction, mental illness, et cetera.
The lottery is going to happen again and yet we can assume it only ever happens once. Buckle up... for the long sleep that must end.
Properly so, and I hope it isn't picked up on by anyone in this thread. The existential import of a decision whether to bear children or not is altogether different than considering that one's self had not existed.
I was certainly stupid, afraid, and lonely, and that spells trouble ahead, but people frequently survive the process of becoming less stupid. Lonely--that is harder. Afraid? Depends on the circumstances. I have to confess that stupidity lasted way beyond childhood in my case. It was the kind of stupidity that college can't cure. Some of it never did go away.
I definitely will not buy a ticket to the lottery of being born again and living another life. "It's a once around life!" according to Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous. My life wasn't all that bad this time, on balance, but the probabilities for bad, very bad, and very very bad are pretty high.
Mr. Gower wouldve lost his drugstore.
My brother wouldve drowned when he fell through the ice.
The old savings and loan wouldve gone out of business.
Mary wouldve been an old maid.
No. No.
Or, whoever this Mr. Gower is may've not wasted his time talking with you, earned an extra few sales and with the profit decided to buy a winning lottery ticket and would have had 10 drugstores by now.
And as well, perhaps, as an only child your brother would've been less socially inclined and never approached the ice to begin with.
See, you never know when it comes to hypotheticals. Such is the law of the land as far as philosophy is concerned.
Quoting flannel jesus
Funny. Were it not for minds like yours, I'd have felt the same. :smile:
There is always time to change your mind. I am working on it. :wink:
That seems not to be quite right to me. It seems reasonable to say "I do prefer not to have existed.", but to claim that in case one had not existed one would have preferred it, is a step too far. That my existence is unhappy, does not entail that my non-existence is happy.
But as @T Clark points out, one's own happiness and preference is unimportant; it's other people's happiness that makes a wonderful life.
I think you're reading too much into it lol. "I'd prefer" is just a colloquial phrase.
Quoting unenlightened
Nobody would be missing much in my absence, and my life isn't wonderful.
I wouldn't be doing that if I hadn't existed - so think yourself lucky. :wink:
I want to take a different approach from my previous expression of skepticism regarding measures of personal significance.
I like 's weighing the benefits against the disappointments possibly caused by presence or absence. Some of those elements are sharply drawn by regret or pleasure. A huge amount is made ambiguous by the paths not taken. Some of that must have been wise to some extent. Some of that must surely have been a loss of benefit for each or all involved. I think it is why Aristotle said luck could not be a cause; But also why he was wrong about that.
It seems like the speculation and fiction that most vividly describe the isolation of an individual build an enormous world in which to become isolated within.
Maybe Dostoyevsky is the exemplar for this sort of thing because so many of his "nihilists" are so damn gregarious.
It's a wonderful life..
I was wondering how long it would take. Hence my somewhat cuntish comment near the start of all this...
Quoting Tom Storm
The culture of individualism gave rise to an inflated sense of the worth of the self, even grandiosity. It came with an emphasis on personal expectations, demands an individual rights. This was accompanied by a philosophy of being able to master and create personal identity through autonomy.
However, in the twentieth first century the culture of individualism is receding into awareness, especially through the media, of mass culture. In many ways, this gives rise to a sense of personal insignificance for many, especially those lacking in power. Certain individuals are treated as mere numbers, and the vulnerable are often regarded as a 'nuisance' and burden unlike in traditional society, in which there was a spirit of community.
I think these are certainly popular tropes. Whether they are accurate or not, I don't know. I think this is a subject that could be teased out into many different strands. Perhaps the Christian narrative of 'you are special, precious and beloved by God' might be foundational to a culture of individualism.
Grandiosity may well spring from low self worth, with the need for pretence of one's importance. It can often swing into the sense of 'failure' and a sense of despair. This can occur in bipolar affective disorder, which used to be known as manic depression.
It does seem that the equation of a person with money is what reduces a person to being a mere number. The nature of competition in capitalism has the social and psychological effects of dehumanization. The school of new economics, such as that of EF Schumacher were based on the value of work as the highest expression of service personal meaning and value. As it is, materialistic competition is getting tougher in the fight for resources and 'Small is Beautiful' is a lost value.
The Christian value upon each person as special and beloved by God was problematic insofar as it led to exploitation of other beings, mainly animals. However, the Judaeo-Christian tradition did value the human person, in principle if not always in practice.
Spiritual perspectives are inclined towards emphasis on individual worth and, in the West, Christianity was a starting point for individualism. This was also true of existentialism and secular humanism. The cultural relativism and postmodernism of the twentieth century were a likely shift in valuing of individual worth as ethical values were questioned at the core. This was at an academic level, but it is likely that it has had some impact, especially with the plurality of ideas in the information age.
The information age is also a way of showing how small each person is in the scheme, with the exception of influential celebrities. The media have often looked to external signs of 'success' and not paid much attention to the inner life and the value of each unique person.
As an Australian of a certain era, the cult of individualism hasnt really held much significance, except in sporting excellence. We love our cricket and football superstars. (well, I don't because I don't follow sport, but you get my point) Beyond that, we dont generally construct the world as an orgiastic feast of individualism in the way Americans so often seem to. Perhaps thats also why success hasnt been such a huge preoccupation here. I think most Australians would see a simple shack by the beach, with weekends free for family and friends, as a robust measure of success.
I have come across British people who have been to Australia and loved it for that reason. In many ways, individuals' experience of how significant they feel may vary according to where they are living.
In London, I feel so little sense of any community and it is getting worse and worse. There is so much brutality and violence, and indifference to violence often too. There is so much fear and hostility. It is because I have known and seen better that I worry about it. I do have an underlying sense of personal value, and human values, which makes me object to the dehumanization which I see around me.
I feel like this conversation bounces all over the place. You can be individualistic and egalitarian simultaneously. You can also be hyper competitive and consumerist by adopting a collectivist position, as you see, for example, in immigrant communities in the US where pooling of recorces is common. You can also be individualistic and not be competitive, but instead just prefer self sufficiency.
You can also be religious and be capitalistic or very much not (not just Eastern religions, but also priests monks, and the like).
The point being that these laments about the value of humanity and our ethical reatment of one another doesn't track so nicely to general societal attitudes, religious orientations, or competitive spirits as it does just to old fashion adherence to morality.
What are some examples? I imagine the London of 1890 woudl be tougher and nastier than today's?
I live in a big city (5 million people) and there's stress and violence here too. But much of it is also a beat up by right wing media to justify law and order clamp downs and pander to aging and fearful consumers of tabloid journalism who lap up this stuff.
I sometimes question the idea of dehumanization. What could be more human than judging, shunning, or abandoning others? What is more persistent, more universal, than our tribal instincts, our constant need to carve the world into us and them?
Quoting Hanover
I dont have any firm commitments on any particular side here. I am glad to be alive now in this era and see nothing intrinsically moribund about the times we are in. I do, however, notice traits and themes that are unattractive, but every era has its issues.
Quoting Hanover
I see no reason to disagree with you.
Quoting Hanover
Maybe. But isnt this a bit of an ouroboros? Isnt an old-fashioned adherence to morality itself a product of contingent factors, like traditional values and broader social contexts?
If I did not exist, then this reply to your OP would not exist ... as the universe would have been (become) a different universe. Change any part of the whole, no matter how minute or ephemeral, changes the whole, no? :chin:
Exactly, that was my initial starting point. Every detail counts significantly in the whole. Even on this forum, every member plays an important part and discussions would be so different if certain people had not joined in. Every person has an active role in shaping life for oneself and others. Existence is active presence.
The discussion bounces because there are so many possible choices in values. It is also hard to know how useful it is to lament the loss of human values and 'morality'. It doesn't necessarily change anything. As far as I see, the most important aspect is for each individual to recognize their own significance as a way of waking up to some creative freedom.
I guess that my reference to brutality and violence is because it has come so much more real for me. I have been attacked 3 times in the last year and someone I know was stabbed. That person survived after hospital care for injuries. I was not seriously injured but had to go to A and E on one occasion. So, from my perspective, violence is not just hyped up by the media but is an issue to contend with.
It is likely that my experience is based on living in an area with more gang culture than I was used to in the past. But, I do wonder from interaction with people from gangs if part of the problem is such people's lack of sense of any real.personal identity and significance, which is projected onto those being attacked.
I've lived in some seedy, dicey neighborhoods and did get threatened at knifepoint on a couple of occasion, and barely missed worse. Other than moving, can you make a change in when and where you go? Are you more at risk later at night, and can that be avoided? Can you take any self-defense moves -- mace, a whistle (I don't know what the efficacy of whistles actually is), a gun? Oh sorry, you live in the UK. Might you attend a self-defense course?
Yes, that could do it. What part of London are you in?
Can you find a safer area?
Sorry to hear about your experiences. I imagine that would be horrible and would remain with you.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Well I guess gang folk tend to be in a tribal subculture which rewards aggression and violence. No doubt theres also trauma and deprivation involved. Certainly thats the case for gang members Ive worked with, not that its many. But I have worked with many violent offenders.
Take care out there, JC.
Supposing that most of us are not irreplaceable there is a sense that even if the me that I feel myself to be right now does not exist that I could, for all intents and purposes, exist -- my individual ipseity would be bound to another that I do not experience, but the place I hold in the world would still be fulfilled.
***
But then when I think a little more locally I think that we aren't exactly replaceable one for another: it's the particular relationship between myself and my loved ones and such that's important. What is not important there is one's effects on The World Scene, as if the world were some kind of testing grounds to demonstrate and pursue our own perfection.
Rather it's smaller, gentler, quieter than the world events at large: But also meaningful to me.
The first answer that come to mind @Jack Cummins was "Supposing I could somehow see this world that doesn't have me in it I doubt I'd care because here I am in my world being myself. My existence matters to me, but that's only after having been brought about, whatever that consists in."
In a way my existence mattering to me, at the other extreme, is a social act: There's a certain point where you are expected to brush your own teeth, for instance. That amount of individual care is expected by our loved ones: they want the best for us as vice versa in the ideal sense at least.
But insofar that I cease to engage in the world with an eye towards others then we run into the story of self-improvement, comparison towards others, achievement: In a way a new kind of sociality, but one which is a dance of individuals pitted in competition with observable metrics such that we can eliminate the useless amongst us. (And crow when our enemies are defeated)
Funny, you say this, I've speculated similarly. But it's getting a little into a strange form of determinism. :wink:
I'd suggest that the identity between worlds couldn't possibly happen, as the scenario sets up, so there's no conflict to me choosing differently -- what else would another world be? Unless, of course, I'm just not there -- perhaps we could make a distinction here between "other worlds" and "alien worlds"; simply not existing seems to have an alien flavor to it -- as something I could never experience.
I was doing so well without having heard of "ipseity". Now? The future is uncertain. A new word can cause the world to veer off in unexpected directions!
What thoughts do you have on the unexpected directions?
But what if this particular form of determinism isnt at the individual level, but at the level of reality itself? In other words, if I am not born, reality generates an alternative person who has the same impacts on the world around them, while each decision made by them is still made through free choice. Or something like that. I'm not normally one for speculative bullshit, but there it is.
I think then we're running into a kind of antinomy -- which, if we follow Kant, would make it indeterminable via knowledge but we can reimagine the world we experience in either way.
To go dialectical: The kind of determinism you espouse at the level of reality can (but not must) accommodate a libertarian free-will. If we are free, then any bounded ipseity -- no matter what they choose -- will also be free.
Depends on if you take a determined series of events as necessary or freedom as necessary: two kinds of causality that result in antinomy when thought upon.
I am one for speculative bullshit, but I like to clean it up a bit. It's fun.
There's a sense in which each side can assume the first truth and explain the other. That's the confusion of an antinomy.
Do you think my poor sketch has any plausibility?
If Kant thought it worthy addressing philosophically then I have a hard time arguing determinism isn't even plausible in the manner you described.
I wonder if someone who doesn't exist at all can question his own existence or non-existence?
What difference would it make if I had not existed? To me, nothing; to others, a lot.
I'd miss out on everything quite literally. But the universe does not care one way or another.
Thank you for your concern and friends tell me that I need to find somewhere else to live. It is not easy to find accommodation though and I have moved many times, including during lockdown. I am in Harrow at the moment, and apart from the gang culture I prefer it to South London as I was living in Tooting previously.
I think that the problem is that there is so much drug culture and the people in the house are caught up in this. I used to be drawn to subcultures, especially in Camden Town but there are some very rough people and they can become so aggressive. They are not like Aldous Huxley or Allen Ginsberg, using psychedelics for writing. They often committing crime to pay for their addictions and desperation when withdrawing from substances. There also so much drug induced psychosis or dual disgnosis.
Most cities have bad areas, and they shift over time, so what might have been a nice neighborhood is now gangland. In Minneapolis, the area where a lot of shootings, drug dealing, drug doing, street crime, thieving, etc. etc. is creeping closer to my neighborhood which has seen low rates of crime for a long time. "Uptown" used to be a slick shopping and sort of bohemian housing area, next to the high end housing surrounding the string of large lakes. The up-scale housing zones are doing fine, but Uptown has hit the skids, partly a victim of urban renewal projects which can be extremely disruptive. The bookstores and coffee shops are gone, along with the vintage movie theater, several nice restaurants, and so on.
Unfortunately, neighborhoods that are bohemian, charming, cheap, and colorful have a higher chance of sinking into a slum because it is cheaper and probably socially more tolerant than areas which have much more to lose financially.
I don't know where I would move if (when) my present neighborhood becomes unsafe. Given my age (79), I'd have to look for affordable senior housing.
I suppose there are ways to survey possibly renting in other parts of London without having to traipse through 100 miles of hallways, subway rides, and streets looking at different places? Websites? Free rental agencies? City agencies?
Moving is tough. It's hard work, it's stressful, it's risky (always a gamble on the next landlord, next neighborhood, etc.) and it can be expensive. On the other hand, living in a neighborhood becoming a high crime area is not great either.
I've heard it said that I think, therefore I am not.
When the world seems to be full of butterfly effects, starting from our conception (or our parents meeting, or our grandparents meeting), it looks like we have a huge effect. Especially if we have children, who then have children.
But then again, if our parents wouldn't have met, they've likely had met others and have had a family and children with others.
And here comes the fact that this basically is a question of the selected point of view and what we consider a "similar" and a "different" reality from exactly this one.
Yes. The butterfly effects are significant. If the sperm that made me had been just a little slower, then another sperm would have met the egg, so there would have been another person. The butterfly effects also play a significant role in the life of a person, especially when it comes to decisions, since our lives fork at the point of decision. A little like or dislike makes us decide otherwise, so it changes the life of the person and the lives of others as well. A person who comes up with an excellent idea may change the history of humankind.
Modal contexts (what if's...) are stipulated. So the world could have be any way you might wish it to be. Your parents might never have met, or had a different child, or had no children at all... there is no one way things might have been; indeed there are innumerable (literally - without number) of ways the world might have been.
Which puts a lid on the speculation hereabouts. The world, without you, might have been different in any way you choose to consider.
Pratchett, Terry. Lords And Ladies: (Discworld Novel 14) (Discworld series) (pp. 162-163).
I do see what you mean. It's all imaginary scenarios. It can be a futile way of going round in circles of 'what ifs and maybes'.
The only thing that I would say though, is that many people who I come across see philosophy in general in that way too. I am not just speaking about Ayer's point about metaphysics, but the many difficult questions, such as entire debates on the hard problem of consciousness, qualia, language and meaning. Many philosophy discussions could read like the Pratchett dialogue. It could be argued that the history of philosophy is about the various possible 'what ifs and maybes of life and the nature of 'reality'.
That's, on some accounts, what doing philosophy properly consists in. Not just any old thing.
So far as one's mental hygiene goes, it is worth noting that the various "what if" scenarios one might consider are made up. As such, you can always make them up differently. So for each possible world in which, say, folk are better of without you, there is an alternate possible world in which they are much worse off.
Take Granny's advice.
I do agree that picking out the coherent from the incoherent is an important marker. If anything, I regard my own thread as a rather strange one. I don't think that the content of the outpost is actually incoherent but it could be seen more as an issue for personal contemplation as opposed to actual philosophy analysis.
As for the 'made up' aspect, that is where fiction is so different from non fiction/philosophy. So, it is ironic that Pratchett includes a dialogue about fantasised possibilities. Fiction often draws people because it is about imaginary worlds.
I was actually surprised that this thread has got as much interaction as it has. It may be because it was provocative to some extent. There is also the question as to what is sense and nonsense in philosophy. I am not sure that in human thinking in the two first century that sense always has the upper hand. I am not just talking about in philosophy but in thought in general, especially with so much that is written online.
Once it may have been that academia was too obscure and missed common sense, but it may have gone in the opposite direction of incoherent nonsense being enjoyed.
PHaving grown up in Bedford, situated in between Cambridge and Oxford, I used to see libraries and bookshops filled with some of the authors who you have written about. When I first began thinking about philosophy questions, these did not make much sense to me (and they do so more now, as a result of some of your threads) However, some of the writings of the authors can seem so obscure, almost to the point of incoherence. I knew people who enrolled for philosophy courses, including someone, who started studying at Cambridge, and just couldn't get on with it at all.
So, as far as I see it, there is a a whole spectrum between academic obscurity and incoherent non sense. It may be a fine line, with what appeals to different people and what can be regarded as meaningful, worthwhile philosophy discussion.
There are no 'if's' but for planning scenarios; your 'if' is a fantasy world; actuality always trumps 'if', that is, you do exist.
If there were no 'if's would philosophy exist at all? I don't subscribe to an idea of 'self' independently of processes and we exist in a web of many actors. Each person is also acted upon and the reflective self as an existent may be the potential for action.
The aspect of this which I see as curious is each person's unique contribution to life and understanding. If some of those who are considered to be important thinkers, such as Plato, Kant, Marx, Einstein, Freud and Wittgenstein had not existed human thought and aspects of history may have been different. If Banno had not existed the discussion of twentieth century analytical philosophy tradition would not have unfolded on this forum in the way it has. Each person has some significant role in history and the development of ideas.
After writing the post above I am also aware that all the people I refer to are men. This shows the way in which the power structure is also significant in the unfolding of human thought. Gender and race are important factors in the roles people play in unique contributions and the development of individuality. The history of philosophy and history in general reflects the way in which each person's uniqueness is understood.
It does come down to how the unique and individual drops are seen, reduced or magnified, like grains of sand. A human being may be seen as insignificant or 'special' from variable perspective. I was once accused by a tutor of seeing myself as 'special'.
When this was queried and discussed, I tied to explain that I see everyone as special. Hierarchies of the 'special' may problematic, if it comes down to identifying some or others. It is like the problematic conundrum of Aldous Huxley's 'Animal Farm', in which 'Eveyone is special, but some more than others'. It shows how so much of this comes down to the social construction of values and significance.
The 'drops in the ocean' of understanding may be elevated or deflated, according to different systems of values and underlying philosophy of what matters. Here, the tension between those who endeavour towards universal or relative approaches to understanding meaning and significance diversify so much in underlying stances. The drops may be drips from failing taps or the build up of torrents of waves about to cascade the experience of the 'regular' aspects of experience.
But there are those who live and die in anonymity and some live even less than a day, and I'd still be as committed to their significance. This just means we needn't search for what they've done to make themselves worthy, but that their worth is inherent, part of their being. That each person is infinitely valuable requires that you offer them room to live out their lives, not placing yourself in front of them and so it demands respect of others.
You can either accept what I'm saying just as part of your worldview or faith, or you can ask yourself the pragmatic question as to what would be gained to evaluate each of us as but an interesting conclusion to billions of years of evolution, no more or less significant than any other random assortment of stuff.
You make an important point because the anonymous experiences of dying, or life, may be equal, if not more than those held up as exemplified examples. Human worth is so complicated and it may be that there are no real contingencies in this.
It is questionable what 'out there' aspects of judgements exist. These may have been part of many religious and spiritual perspectives. How this relates to billions of years of evolution is another question entirely. Philosophy ideas, including spiritual paradigms, may seek to put this together systematically but so much remains open. In particular, the nature of randomness, or any underlying 'design', or purpose, involves differences in putting it all together in the larger picture. Each person may seek the larger picture, as a grasp for understanding, but there are so many open questions, especially regarding randomness vs design.
But notice the other perspective here: people will likely have offspring. The majority will reproduce. The families aren't going to be as big as earlier.
Hence we don't have to assume an Einsteinian block universe where everything is basically predetermined to happen and stumble into philosophical question about free will.
It's all an issue about just what we define as similar? What if we would have born to our parents as childs of the opposing sex. Surely our experiences and our friends would be different. But what if the only thing would be that our hair would be a different color? Would that mean we would be totally different?
So the issue is here is what do we proclaim to be different and what similar to our existing reality.
I can't find a reference, but recall seeing this some time back.
Something along those lines was also at play in Asimov's Foundation series.
It strikes me as wishful thinking or a useful narrative device rather than a genuine possibility.
Which of course raises the issue of why they are important, and whether they ought be.
If I had not existed, then I couldn't have a chance to think about the possibility that if I had not existed.
(From a personal perspective, someone would have come along a little later and advocated turning rock climbing into an athletic, gymnastic sport. No question.)
Going back in history there are very few female philosophers and it was only in the twentieth century that the voices of women became present. Also, there are issues of dominance by white people too. Even on this forum there are far less women. Whether this is marginalisation as such is hard to know. I once remarked to a female friend about the lack of females on a philosophy forum. She remarked that it may be because women have other things to do and may not have time to spend on philosophy sites.
As for whether it should matter in philosophy as to what gender one is or one's race is an interesting question because it depends if those factors come into play in philosophical understanding. There is the perspective of feminism which does look at the way ideas are constructed, such as the patriarchal aspects of religion. Also, sociology could be seen as a branch of philosophy looking at the way reflect social structures and inequalities and their impact. The advance of sociology, especially in the 1970s may have given rise to more females, black people and marginalised voices.
Each person can see the tragedy of having not existed. This is contrasted with the way in which each one is participating in mythical quests of a universal nature. What I am saying is that evaluating personal significance can be overvalued or undervalued.
There is the question as to whether each of us matters for oneself or others. There is relative significance of both the private universe and varying contingencies of the interpersonal, or public aspects of 'self'. All of this is important in querying what it means to exist, or the polar opposite of having never existed at all.
It's because men and women are different beyond simple anatomical differences.
Well, it wouldn't affect you because there'd be no you to affect, so there's that.
While I know you're being sarcastic, I will say that your not being here would profoundly matter.
The question of the difference between the 'minds' of women and men raises important issues of what it means to exist in a male or female body. Of course, there are many threads on the forum about gender, but, here in this thread, what may be important is embodiment as gendered beings. This is where the nature of personal identity comes in.
At the current time, so much is being dismissed about the elements of personal identity and embodied experiences. This is reflected in the backlash against transgender, in which those who oppose transgender authenticity are reducing gender to anatomy and genitalia entirely. The argument that transgender people are not their 'real' gender shows how gender, as an aspect of unique experience, is being reduced to being in the body, with dismissal of differences in 'minds' and mental states of being and becoming. I wonder to what extent the philosophy of Sartre on embodied 'being' comes into the debate.
Well I totally wasn't fishing for compliments, but I expect you are, so - the feeling is entirely mutual. Nothing wrong with our mirrors, eh? Like a little echo chamber of love and admiration, we are.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I'm not treating your topic with the respect it and you deserve; my apologies. But there is a sense in which your question is too profound to be approached directly. One retreats into theory, depersonalisation, or humour, because, according to one tradition, it is calling for The Last Judgement. It is said that at death, one's whole life passes before one, and one makes for oneself the judgement of one's worth. At that moment there is nothing to win or lose, and all the bias falls away and one makes the naked judgement from the position of full knowledge and impartiality. I'm afraid the almost universal report card from my school days still applies: "Could do better if he tried."
I am glad that you make a connection with my question and life reviews. That is because I was led to this point while ill in hospital a few months ago. I started to experience near-death imagery while my oxygen levels were extremely low. Since that time, while I am not sure that I actually came close to death, I have been reviewing my life and thinking about the impact my existence has made, for better or worse. I worry that I take more than I give, although that is not my intention.
When I was a teenager I tried to do 'good' but felt that I ended up as a dysfunctional 'do gooder'. I try to find the right balance but it is extremely hard, especially when one is out of work and not really part ot a community. So much of the current culture is of socially isolated 'nobodies' who are just struggling to survive in the world.
No, really I wasn't. I was just maintaining my view of the infinite worth of all people, even those who might deny it. Just because the assessment might be of yourself doesn't mean you can question the inherent value of any human.
God's little children have value even if they think they don't and even if driven to such beliefs by humility.
What's interesting is trying to imagine ourselves out of existence or from the perspective of our non-existence when the concept of our existence is inevitably enfolded in our subjectivity and all that comes from that. We imagine ourselves out of existence and then project that lack into our actual existence to come up with an alternative reality that would fulfill the requirements of that lack.
In a way, we're adding something rather than taking something away---perhaps a narrative that is essentially personal, the closer we come to which, the further we must withdraw. I think un's answer hints at the impossibility of unironically or unselfconsciously disembedding our essential embeddedness and viewing it from a distance, of breaking orbit to authentically ground ourselves in a "realistic" answer that somehow does justice to who we really think we are. This is partly trivially because, by definition, it requires a distance from ourselves to take a perspective, but also because that minimal distance is like a tense spring which if compressed too much is somehow threatening.
But, yes, I think this is a different threat than being caught in a narcissistic mirror where one hysterically disavows through external projection the impossibility of completeness, and more like knowing all too well one must remain incomplete and that one's self-perspective necessarily contains a kind of self-shielding from completeness that maintains the integrity of self.
There is an 'almost giddiness in approaching the question' of my thread. I do see it as connected to Sartre's idea of 'nothingness' and his ideas of existence in body and for others.
When I was reading your thread on the mirror and reflection of narcissism, it led me think about my own mirror experience from when I experimented with LSD a long time ago. Whilst under the 'trip' in a warehouse rave I went to a mirror, expecting to see myself in diabolical form. However, when I looked into the mirror what I saw was all surroundings, including a radiator' but I was not present. It felt like the confrontation with loss of my body, or nothingness. It led me to panic that I would be left in a vacuum of nothingness forever. I had a sense of 'self' but felt detached from the physical world. To what extent did I no longer exist, I wondered. It was a relief when I discovered that I could still communicate with other people, as this seemed to validate my own existence in the world.
Of course, non-existence after having once existed is different from complete non-existence of never existing, but probably only from the standpoint of others who still exist.