Is your existence improbable? Or inevitable? Exploring universalism with Arnold Zuboff

At your own conception, there were 200 million sperm cells competing to get to the egg. If any of the others but the one that did got to the egg, on the usual view, you would never have existed. If there'd be no sprints in its mind, you'd be eternally blank. You would never have escaped the abyss. Never. So that's pretty bad already. But your conception couldn't have occurred unless your mother and father had been conceived. for those three conceptions to have gone right for you to exist on the usual view. It's one in eight septillion. So that's pretty bad. But of course, your grandparents had to have been conceived first where your parents could have been. One in two hundred million. Each of those multiplied. And then we haven't even got started yet. Whereas in universalism, it didn't matter what sperm cells hit what eggs. It was going to be you. That was the philosopher Arnold Zuboff talking about what he calls universalism, which is the view that we're essentially all the same person, the same first person I experience. As Arnold was explaining, in the quote normal view of things, people view it as astronomically improbable that we would exist, that our first person experience would exist at all. But in the view of universalism, it is entirely inevitable that you or I, our first-person experience, would exist, simply because there is only one I. And wherever there is first-person experience, that universal I will be present. Now, of course, if you're new to these ideas, this will probably sound a bit crazy to you. It definitely did to me at first. But you should know that there are some smart and, I think, clearly non-crazy people who believe this. And the more you dig into these ideas, as I did, you'll find that they make a lot of sense and that they help resolve some serious quandaries about consciousness that philosophers have been puzzling over for a long time. Arnold is the author of the recently published book, Finding Myself, Beyond the False Boundaries of Personal Identity. The foreword of that book is written by the respected philosopher Thomas Nagel, who you might know of from his often referenced paper, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? I'll read a little bit from Nagel's foreword. Zuboff proposes and defends with creative philosophical arguments a radically original conception of the mind, according to which the distinction between selves, between me and you, for example, is an illusion. There is only one subject of consciousness, it is the subject of all consciousness, and it is equivalent to the first-person immediacy shared by all conscious experience. The separate bundles of experience in the lives of distinct conscious organisms do not have separate subjects, but share a universal quality of subjective immediacy, which it is easy for each of us to mistake for a unique individual I in our own case. Nagel goes on to write, both the conclusion and the argument will certainly seem incredible, even outrageous to many readers. But the whole is presented with such care and skill that it should be regarded as an important contribution, even by those who are not persuaded. The relation of the mind to the world is so mysterious that it is not philosophically reasonable to dismiss any view, however radical, out of hand. End quote. So this idea that we are all manifestations of the same first-person experience is also known as open individualism, and it's a concept I explored a few months ago in my talk with Joe Kern, author of The Odds of Existing. Now, if you're like me when I first heard of these ideas, you'll have a lot of objections that spring to mind. Rest assured that your objections and skepticism is addressed and considered by the people thinking and writing about these ideas. This talk will, of course, be only an introduction to these ideas, and it's hard to talk off the cuff about these ideas as they're so contrary to our normal ways of thinking and speaking. At least I find it difficult to talk about and keep the ideas clear. Our normal language is tough to use to navigate these ideas, I find. In this talk with Arnold, we also talk about ideas of a multiverse. We talk about why the laws of our universe seem so precisely configured for complex life. We talk about gods, souls, and higher powers. We talk about societal implications of people believing in universalism. I talk about laying awake at night, thinking about the sheer strangeness of existence and tough existential questions, which I've done a good amount of, and maybe you've done a bit of that too. I hope this talk serves to get you interested in the topic, and maybe you'll read Arnold's book or other writings. Okay, here's the talk with Arnold Zuboff, author of Finding Myself Beyond the False Boundaries of Personal Identity. Hi, Arnold. Thanks for joining me. It's a great pleasure. Pleasure is all mine. So maybe we could start with when it comes to open individualism or universalism, as you call it, maybe you could talk about what your focus has been, as obviously there can be different areas to focus on within this philosophy. Yeah, there are a couple of ways I might like to introduce it. one way is to ask a question. Make a statement first. There are loads and loads of conscious things in the world. The question is, how do you know which one you are? and first let's consider whether you have a checklist of facts about yourself you know and you're searching among them making little checks, oh yeah, right parents no I don't think you do that you do something much simpler than that you just find that you're the one in quotes whose experience is first person in character right is immediate in your face yeah you're the one thinking I am here right now yeah yeah it's here mine now and it's the pains hurt in a way they don't if there's someone else's and that's immediate I use the word immediacy a lot to indicate all of this. This is the basis of two crucial things. Being present in the world, your presence in the world, is by way of this first-person kind of experience. Without that, there wouldn't be anything that was you. It wouldn't, you know, there'd be no reason to count anything as you if it didn't have that. So that's how you find yourself. Then, you know, the objective facts about the thing that you think you are constrained, you know, into being. They're like afterthoughts. The various contents and details about your life. Yeah, it's separate. Yeah, it's separate from like the first person. I am here perspective. Yeah, that's right. So, I mean, this immediacy I'm talking about is the general character of it. the details could be changed ever so many ways with this same general character applying. And it's experience having that that's at the heart of what I'm talking about. And another way I have of introducing my particular approach to this is to say that the usual view that all of us believe almost all of the time, the usual view needs to be reversed. Okay, so my view, which I call universalism, is a reversal of the usual view. The usual view says that I am a particular thing with a lot of objective facts attaching to that, some of them being essential to me, some of them are less essential. But I am that one thing. And if something's going to belong to me, be mine, it has to belong to that thing. For example, a hat. Right. The usual view says, then if an experience is mine, as opposed to someone else's, it's because it belongs to this thing that is me. The reversal of the usual view that interests me is to think instead that there's something about the experience that makes it mine. And what makes an experienced mind is this very character of immediacy, first person nature, subjective center of everything. That's what makes an experience mine. And then whatever might be having the experience, whatever thing might be having experience has to be me. If the experience is mine, carrying presence in the world and self-interest within it, then whatever the hell thing is having it is me. I speak in the book about, you know, what the dog is and what the tail is. Right. In the traditional view, you've got these ideas of entities, these cells or these entities, and these things have various attributes. And within one of those one of those attributes is having a first person perspective. But what you're saying, you're flipping it around and saying anything having to do with self or me is just about that first person experience. That's the primacy that that is the important thing and not the rest of the things. And and that experience is the same across all the entities. It's it's the same manifestation of of an experience. Yeah, that's what it is for an experience to be mine. And that's what rules here. In the usual view, the body of the dog is being a particular thing. And it's argued, you know, that it's a physical thing or a mental thing that's more important. But it's being a particular thing in the world. That's me. and then the tail being wagged by that dog is experienced being mine. In my view, the body of the dog is experienced being mine, which is determined solely by this character of immediacy. And then the tail that is being wagged by that is whatever thing happens to be me. When it comes to trying to explain this to a lay audience, because I think these concepts are so hard for people to quickly wrap their minds around them. But I think one, I'm curious what you think about this. When I've tried to explain it to people who are new to the idea, I've basically said in the traditional view, you know, it's very unlikely that we exist. We experience ourselves as being incredibly unlikely. Like, what are the chances I experiencing this now? What are the chances I am here? But in your view, in the universalism view, it's viewing yourself, your experience right now as inevitable. Because no matter what, no matter where that sense of self, that sense of I came into being, it would be having that experience. And it would be thinking like, wow, it's incredible that I'm here. But it's inevitable that you are here because you are a manifestation of the same I experience. Yes. I think it's that that flip between seeing something is very unlikely to seeing something as inevitable that that I think helps make the connection for a audience. I mean, that's what you're saying is great. But you've really left ahead. Yeah, I've left ahead. But I think why I did that was to try to like for people that may be completely lost to maybe help them see it from a – we can come back to that. But maybe – No, no, no. Let me do it. I mean – Yeah, sure, sure. I like to think in terms of like what's the elevator pitch to somebody completely new to these. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, the elevator's already arrived, and I'm still talking about your experience, uncontroversially your experience having immediacy, right? But what you've correctly indicated here is that if you find yourself in the world as the one in quotations, the one whose experience is immediate, first person, you can quickly come to realize that in fact, there isn't just one conscious thing in the world. whose experience is immediate and first person in character. In fact, anything worth calling experience would have exactly that character in it, that same general character that picks out which one you are, right? Now, what universalism does very quickly say is that this means that there are a lot of tails being wagged by that experience that's mine. All the things that have experience are just tails latching onto that. All of it is equally mine since that's the thing that makes experience mine and there's nothing else involved in it. All of it is equally mine. Now, what happens, this is key to understanding the old business. What happens quite naturally is this. The contents of experience are cut off from each other. Why? Because experience comes about in different brains, in these distinct conscious things. So in each, it seems as though the only experience that has the character making it mine is the experience involving that particular content. And because of that, it seems that being me, my experience being mine, and the experience of being me, is limited to, first of all, that content, and then to the thing whose content it is. But that's a mistake. I am there in all the experience because that involves something so simple, something universal to experience. But it inevitably seems to me in each case of me that this is the only one. Because the content is not integrated. I think that's where most people would lose you because they're like, well, how could it be that we are separate but the same? And I think your analogy about the book and the – like a story can be in multiple books and be the same story. I think that analogy – and maybe you have other analogies to help explain it, but I think that's where a lot of people would be like, well, how can we be separate? What does it even mean to be the same thing if we're separate? Well, you know what might be particularly useful as a first step in attacking that? Think of brain bisection. Yeah, and that's where you start. That's one of your first stories. And that's maybe how you got started on this whole journey back in the day. Not actually. Oh, no, you got started on the switching the brains out, not the brain bisection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But go ahead. Yeah, go ahead with the brain bisection. Okay, let me wheel in brain bisection here. There was an actual operation done on people suffering from epilepsy that involved cutting the bridge of nerves between the two hemispheres of the brain. It's called the corpus callosum. It was cut because it prevented seizures from moving from one hemisphere to the other. At the time it was cut, as I understand it, it was thought the thing only kept the brain from sagging. No great loss in cutting. But then it was realized later that most of the integration of the activities of the hemispheres was carried through the corpus callosum, communicated through it. So experiments were done with the split brain patients in which information was carefully isolated in the way it came in so that it would only go to one hemisphere or the other. And what was discovered, I think quite unsurprisingly, though shockingly, was that these people could have non contents in their experience In each hemisphere there be a content that was not available to the other All right So it would be like the situation I described among all these conscious things a failure of integration across them And for people listening, we might say, yeah, these experiments were really wild. The Gazonica research where basically they, you know, they blocked something in the middle. So one eye is looking at one thing, one eye is looking at another. And they found that one eye might see something and know it was there. One part of the brain would see something and know it was there and answer correctly, you know, like check a box or something based on what they were seeing. But the other side wouldn't know it was there and would confabulate reasons why they check that box. Right. So it was just really, really mind blowing kind of to most people, mind blowing about you could be experiencing something and know something, but you could be making up the other half wouldn't know and would even make up reasons for why that happened, which gets into our our ability to, you know, how the brain probably works. A lot of time is we're we're making up stories for why we do things, even if we might not even know why we did things. sometimes it kind of gets into that realm too but just to say it was really fascinating research it was and a lot of philosophers have uh have had to look at that and uh now what's what's extremely useful i think is a certain thought experiment based on this that i like to use Parfit first suggested something like this. Imagine I had a button I could press that was connected to a device adjacent to my corpus callosum. And if I press the button, anesthetic would be injected into the corpus callosum, shutting it down temporarily. So you could have that same effect. of mutually excluding experiential contents in each hemisphere. And so I tell a specific story like that where there's a great concert you want to listen to tonight, but there's some dreary audio studying you have to do. And if you plug the sound of the concert into the right ear, which communicates directly with the right hemisphere of the brain, and the audio dreary studying into the left ear, which directly communicates with the left hemisphere, press the button before these things start. They won't interfere with each other. There'll be two extremely different things going on. Two streams of consciousness. Yeah, yeah. Enjoying a wonderful concert and doing this dreary studying. All right. So, of course, I asked the question, you know, what kind of evening will you have? This question is one that has troubled a lot of philosophers. Let me tell you what I think is going on here. If instead we had anesthetized one of the hemispheres and done the same thing with the remaining hemisphere, there'd be no doubt in our minds I'd continue on into that experience in the non-anesthetized hemisphere. So I'd have the experience of the concert, or I'd have the experience of the studying, and it would be me. It's crazy to think that it would stop being me. Now, in this case, where we've anesthetized the corpus callosum, we've got both of them going on. how could either of them stop being me just because something's going on over on the other side? That seems crazy. And what emphasizes this further is when the anesthetic wears off and the hemispheres can communicate fine with each other again, I will remember oh yeah I was listening to this great concert oh dear yeah I was struggling through the audio stuff now I will remember each of those experiences as having been mine what will make the memories of them having been mine they'll be first person they'll be immediate in the memory of them they were both mine it can't be the case that remembering both of them and integrating the memories like that is retroactively making them both mine it's simply revealing that they were both mine but neither had the information at the time that the other was going on in the same way that you or I I don't have the information that's available. Exactly. So what it is, is there's an illusion created, a powerful illusion in either hemisphere while it's having its experience. That anything that was experiencing anything else at this time couldn't be me. I'm walled off metaphysically from it. Right. Right. Different self, different whatever. It's a very powerful illusion. What I call the principle you discover in thinking about this is the irrelevance of objective simultaneity. I talked before about if just one was anesthetized, you could do it a different way. In fact, this is something that's actually been done called the water test. you could anesthetize one hemisphere and give it, say, the concert the remaining one, the concert experience then reverse it so that next there would be the experience of the studying at different times at different objective times they would both be remembered in exactly the same way as when the corpus callosum was anesthetized, and they happened at the same time. The objective time of these events is irrelevant to what they represent to you subjectively. They are both yours and can't help but be yours. And my claim, you know, looking back at what I said earlier, is that the only thing making it mine for this subject is the immediacy of the experience. Yeah, I think the I mean, one of the powerful things about the universalism idea is that it helps make sense of these various quandaries that philosophers have struggled over. Like you mentioned, you had a really good passage in your book talking about how there's basically this desire or impulse to preserve some sort of idea of self amongst the various other philosophical views. You know, for example, the idea that a self is identity is defined as some cotton continuity of psychological content or experiences, you know, which is more in like the the perfect view. Like it doesn't matter where it is. It matters what it is, basically the content. And then there's the view that, no, it matters. Identity matters based on, you know, the body it's in or the brain it's in, this biological continuity. But in both cases, there is an impulse to preserve some sort of like separate identities of some sort. But open individualism or universalism is resolving that by saying, well, those are all unnecessary because they're all all of these different first person experiences are the same thing. So it resolves all the quandaries about like, am I this person if I, you know, get in a teleporter and make a copy of myself if I split my brain? You know, universalism is saying those those are resolved because they don't really matter. And you're based. You're all that yourself is all the same in them. Your first experience is all the same. That's right. If you're trying to trace what you are in all these specific ways, not knowing whether you want to follow the psychological pattern or you're more interested in the thing that's having the psychological states, the result is a mess. Let me say something about what I think the two positions are, the two very basic positions in the classic debate about personal identity. Right. This is the question in the traditional debate. What makes a future person remain me so that any pains it has are mine are going to be mine in the future so that I don't sympathize with them, but I am concerned about them in terms of self-interest. Yeah, that's the practical discussion is like, am I the same person? Am I the same identity I was when I was younger? Am I the same identity I am when I'm older? That's kind of like the practical impulse. Will those pains hurt for me instead of somebody else? Okay. And the two usual answers have been they're both attractive. It depends on the identity of a thing. There's a particular thing I am, and its continuing identity into the future determines whether the pain's had by the thing. Well, it makes the pain's had by the thing be mine. If it's continuing into the future. that's where I'm going to be located wherever that is and the thing could be an immaterial soul like for Descartes or it could be a body or more particularly the brain as for many philosophers since the 20th century but the opposing view is one that was started by Locke. And the view is this, that no, it's not the identity of the thing that's having the pain or whatever. It's whether the pain is part of a mental process continuing on. So that process in certain what are called puzzle cases might be continued into a distinct mental substance or more recently into a distinct brain, right? That the memories, anticipations that are in your mind would somehow magically or in some science fiction way continue on in a different thing. and according to that side of the debate that would be you the pains would be yours if that mental process was continuing on right which is kind of parvet's view at least in reasons and persons right yes except that he he complicates it uh um he's also what i call a naturalist he thinks we make a mistake in our ordinary way of thinking about this he wants to drop that our identity is all or nothing. And that's a crucial part of what he is saying, right? Locke is more purely a philosopher. I mean, he is in the tradition of Locke in that he emphasizes completely the mental side of it. And I'm not sure why. I don't think he ever argues for it. But he introduces this new sophistication of getting rid of anything from it that doesn't seem natural. So he ends up with a strange kind of hybrid position. He actually has something perhaps in common with Buddhism. Now, getting back to the traditional classic debate, The point I was making was that the whole focus of it is on this continuation into the future. Strangely, they never asked themselves what made a particular body or particular mental process mine to begin with. Yeah, let me read that. Let me read that paragraph of yours just for the audience here because I really like this paragraph. Yeah, you said, note also that in this old debate on personal identity, all that is questioned is which condition preserves me. The debate ignores completely the primary question, which is what made a mental substance or a brain or a psychological process be mine instead of somebody else's in the first place. Only universalism answers that question. That's right. And then I point out that it's particularly bad when you look at psychological continuity. You know, it's carrying on from some past state that at the beginning had no psychological continuity. Right. It goes through when you're a baby or a child, it goes through immense changes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So so how the hell you know, what are you even talking about continuing? doing. And my answer is, I think this is a good illustration of what you meant by cutting through all this mess. My answer is, yeah, any of those baby experiences or experiences in the womb had immediacy and were therefore mined. And that it's continued in the mental process, that's not important. I mean, each side of that debate made its most powerful point against the other side when it said, hey, you could still have it be mine without your thing. Right. In the case of psychological continuity as the supposed criterion of personal identity, they'd say, can't you imagine, you know, being shifted over into a different thing and continuing thinking of yourself as yourself the way Locke emphasized? Like both sides can attack each other and, like, universalism is over on the side saying, like, well, those are both strengthening my argument, right? Exactly, exactly. I mean, because it was a very powerful argument against psychological continuity. which is I could be the one having amnesia or, you know. Yeah, I don't find that. Yeah, I don't find that argument. I mean, yeah, both, like you say, they both have various weaknesses when you think about the, you know, these various. You know, where they're weak is where they're trying to restrict the other one. Where they're strong is where they say, as long as you've got the psychological process continuing, doesn't matter which thing it's in, as long as you got the thing there doesn't matter what's happening with the psychological process but you put those together and it's universalism i i feel like you you would say it's an occam's razor approach with all the you know maybe that's a good pivot to you're known for the probability arguments probably most of all the various awakenings in in rooms and such those ideas And maybe you could talk a bit about why you focus so much on that. I think some people have a hard time understanding why you see that as so conclusive. And some of the Reddit threads and discussions you've had, I've seen people not really understand how you think the first person experience is such a convincing. The probability argument in context with the first-person experience is such a conclusive or very conclusive point. So maybe you could talk a bit about that. Let's move to that. There's an analogy to the argument I'm going to use to establish universalism that I call the hotel inference. There's a hotel with countless rooms. I don't want to say infinite rooms I don't want to get into billions trillions no it's more you can count that let's say countless rooms we've got all the rooms we ever need now am I ruining it by saying that analogizes to the idea that we're one of countless being senses of self that could exist but anyway I might be getting ahead of that but that's the analogy yeah well Well, maybe it's not quite as direct as that, the analogy. Okay. But sorry, keep going with the setup. Yeah, sorry. Okay. So in each of these countless rooms, there is a single induced sleeper, someone who's made to be sleeping. One of two games is about to be played, what I call the easy game and what I call the hard game. For each of these sleepers, there's a coin that's going to be tossed a thousand times. Now, in the hard game, each sleeper has been assigned a list of heads, tails, heads, tails, a thousand long list of random heads and tails. That's that sleeper's list. It's kind of like a security code for that sleeper. And the coin in that room is going to be tossed a thousand times. That sleeper will only be awakened if every single random toss of the fair coin matches what's in that sleeper's list. If even one flip goes wrong, head sword should be dead. He sleep forever He never be awakened This is happening for each of these countless sleepers This is where countless becomes useful Because there are countless rooms, there will be some that are awakened. They're extremely rare. There may even be quite a few. But it's a hard game because it's extremely hard for any particular player to be awakened. In the easy game, they've got the coins there. There's no assigned list, no security code. But they do, in each room, toss a coin a thousand times. But it doesn't matter. All the sleepers will be awakened in the easy game. Now, here's the inference that interests me. Imagine you are a player in this. And your eyes open, you're awakened. And you understand these conditions. Can you have some kind of interesting thing to say about whether the hard or the easy game was played? and my answer is definitely yes if the hard game was played something incredibly improbable had to happen before you could have been awakened so you know it's immensely improbable that you awaken by way of the hard game whereas if the easy game was played easy, fine so you can know not only that it was immensely more probable that the easy game was played, but for all practical purposes, you could know that it was played. Now, there will be these occasional winners of the hard game. Really rare, right? Astronomically rare. Astronomically rare. If they're rational, they'll infer the easy game was played. And be wrong. about that conclusion right in the reasoning there's nothing else they could rationally think but they'd be wrong about which game was played but you don't have to worry that you're one of those because it'd be so improbable you'd be awake to be making the mistake people probably get the analogy but you know this maps over to the the normal the usual view that we are astronomically rare, right? Like you often hear people like, you know, um, I think Dawkins talked about this in one of his books, Joe Kern, when I had him on, he, he, he had that, uh, Dawkins, some of Dawkins views, the traditional view is like, it is astronomically rare that all of these things would have happened to lead to me being here. Right. Like, uh, my ancestors had to couple in just the right ways, a sperm and an egg needed to combine in just the right ways. That's the normal view that like somehow it's this magical astronomically ridiculous uh chances that i am here now but the easy game and your thought experiment is saying well the fact that i am here now is easily explained if i am always going to be the one here experiencing it now there are all kinds of things that had to happen for you to come into existence on the usual view And it's not even possible to draw the lines on where those things would be. Right. Like so. But the normal view is like all of these, everything from the start of the universe to the coupling of the egg and the sperm. Yeah. Maybe even some things after that had to come together in just the right way. Right. Yeah. I'm very glad you say that. That's a great background. But what I do is I focus on the conceptions involved. involved right so i can get a mathematical handle on it right even even just focusing on the conception is like mathematically astronomically ridiculous it's so great it's so great so and i have a lot of fun with it uh in the book right your own conception there were 200 well average etc 200 million sperm cells competing to get to the egg if any of the others but the one that did got to the egg, on the usual view, you would never have existed. There'd be no sprints in its mind. You'd be eternally blank. It'd be a potential brother or sister born instead. You would never have escaped the abyss. Never. So that's pretty bad already. But maybe one in 200 million. Maybe I got really lucky. But now consider your conception couldn't have occurred unless your mother and father had been conceived. And let's say one in 200 million for each of them. For those three conceptions to have gone right, for you to exist on the usual view, it's one in eight septillion. It's at 24 zeros or something. So that's pretty bad. But of course, your grandparents had to have been conceived first, for your parents could have been one and two million each of those multiplied. And then we haven't even got started yet. Whereas in the universalism, it didn't matter what sperm cells hit, what eggs. It was going to be you because of the immediacy of experience. that's all that's involved in it being you i think a lot of people would say that's what i would have said um a year or two or a few years ago i would i think the main argument people would make is like okay uh yeah from that angle the fact that i am here is very improbable but what if that's just the way the world works and every being that comes into being has a separate first person experience and that's just the way it works. And then once that happens, they will reach faulty conclusions about, you know, how unlikely it is. Yeah, what would you say to that? That's why the hotel inference is so handy here, because in the hotel inference, we've got winners. And those winners are wrong in inferring the easy game was played and everyone was awakened. That doesn't mean they shouldn't infer that. suppose the usual view is right. And I do exist in this miraculous, incredible... Like you have a soul or kind of idea, yeah. Well, souls can be dealt with the same way. Universalism sets itself against any view that says that I am just one particular thing of a sort. I should have mentioned soul. That's getting into a whole different thing. I just meant like different first person. I mean, even people who believe in that souls are kind of deposited in the body. They think that the sperm cell lottery goes on. I don't think all those souls exist as human beings. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you would say it's one thing. It's one thing to say, like, if the odds are astronomically long, someone's got to exist. somebody comes into existence. It's another thing to find yourself in that first person experience. I mean, that's what I think that's what gets to to me about this. It's like when I've thought about this, I mean, it is so astronomically ridiculous that I would be here experiencing this. And then you add in the fact, too, of like once you get into the idea of like, well, am I even the same sense of self from moment to moment? Right. There's the series kind of questions, which has sometimes bugged me late at night. I'm like, I used to think, lay awake thinking like, am I continually sprung into existence and immediately go out of existence every moment? So you, you, you have these ideas of like, well, that, that, that makes it even more ridiculous because you know, am I, am I, what, who is this movie that is randomly being created every, every second too? I mean, that's like an extra level of astronomically ridiculous odds that like i'm you know what are all these what are all these me's that are coming into existence right and you start thinking like well universalism resolves that because it's saying it's it's all the same manifestation of of me right yeah that's right exactly uh those conditions are even tougher uh in a kind of buddhism where there's only a momentary self uh and it's distinct from all the other momentary selves. Boy, is it tightly defined, you know, at least in the usual view, you got a bit of flexibility there in what you are. Because there is this, I mean, I think there's this underlying instinctual assumption that we do exist over time, right? But if you cut that away, then you just have all these sense of self springing into existence, whether it's other people's selves or it's our own self. So then it's like, where are all these senses of self coming from? Right. There's is there, you know, it kind of boggles the mind that there would just there would just be this abyss of selves. And then we're like, these various selves are just springing into existence. And universalism does help resolve that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, let me say one more thing about what universalism is like. It's kind of related to what we've been discussing. universalism is a really minimal claim right it's not some grand spiritual uh you know making claims about we're all the same uh spiritual being or anything like that yeah yeah yeah i mean people might be tempted to turn it into that because they're used to thinking integration you know defines who i am so maybe zuboff saying we're all it's all integrated you know some common mind or something? No, nothing like that. My whole point is that integration is irrelevant to whether an experience is mine or not. Here's the minimal character of it. I can allow the world to be exactly like what any one of many, many varieties of usual views would have. with different views of what consciousness is, different views of whether there is integration beyond the head. I'm not interested in that insofar as I'm talking about universalism. It's neutral regarding all of that. So what is it I am saying? One way of representing it would be this. Let's say we have a line, And on the left end of the line, you've got all kinds of incidental things to whether something is you. Like wearing a blue shirt. Most people would agree it would be a weird view to think that I exist with my self-interest, my presence in the world, only so long as I wear a blue shirt. If I change into a red shirt, I'm not here anymore. Now let's move to the right on this line towards more substantive seeming things, like having a body composed of certain atoms or put in the sperm cell lottery. We could emphasize the mental side of it or emphasize the physical identity of the body or the brain. And all those things are sort of in a middle area, and that's where most views of personal identity are. Actually, the Buddhist view is way over on the left here with incidental things, because the slightest change in experience is someone else. Now we've slid over to more generous views of what can be you. And what are we sliding over here? It's the line separating what's inessential from what's essential. Way over on the right side of the line is a very abstract general thing, the immediacy of experience. I'm not quibbling about what any of the stuff is on this line. I'm just saying that the line between what's essential and inessential should be slid all the way over to the right and come to rest under immediacy of experience. All the rest is like a blue shirt. It's all inessential to whether it's me. And that's why they all have probability problems and universalism does not. And as you say, Buddhism is way over on the left. When I was watching that talk of yours with Professor Brown, I can't remember his first name, but there's also this view that you're making some claim about what the self is or something. He seemed to be caught up on like, well, I don't – he was basically saying, well, I don't believe in the self in kind of a Buddhist or nihilistic way that everything is an illusion. But, you know, I think people can get caught up on the ideas, your ideas that they think you're making some claims about that there's some self or, you know, all you're saying is it's this first person experience. And I don't think anybody he he didn't seem to be denying that. But it does seem like some people can can have an obstacle to even admitting that there's like there is a first person experience. And it's like, even if you think it's an, the self, the ongoing continual self as an illusion or something, it's like, kind of like in a Descartes way, I don't think you can deny that. Like, yeah, where he, some, something is having an experience here, you know, like that's, and that's all, that's all you're saying. It is, you know, do you get a sense that like, he was kind of balking at like, he was like, well, I think it's an illusion. And, and you're saying, well, you don't disagree that there is an experience being had, right? There is something is happening here. Right. So but I think it's interesting because there can be this very nihilistic kind of like pushback, I feel like, to even admitting that there's like an experience being had. Right. Yeah. There are all kinds of views in philosophy. That's for sure. And it's easy to it's easy to I mean, with all these ideas, it's easy to talk past each other because the language we end up using can be so different and the concepts are so non-intuitive. So it's understandable that there's various difficulties in communicating about it. But I don't know. Maybe I've got across that. I think there's something special about universalism. I think it's unlike. I guess any other philosophical view I know. Because you resolve so many quandaries in your view, it resolves several major quandaries. And it doesn't. there's nothing brought in that really should be controversial uh there's immediacy that's there and uh i don't maybe eliminate materialism doesn't have it i don't know uh but it'd have to be a pretty strange view not to have that in there somewhere some listeners of this will have seen or listened to a previous episode where I talked to Joe Kern, who has a book called The Odds of Existing, or The Odds of You Existing. No, I can't remember. But his focus is on, there's a lot of overlap, but his focus is on, oh, there it is. He just sent it to me. Oh, me too. Yeah, he sent it to me. So his focus, his intuitive focus is to focus on when you get down to the, you know, as you call it, the sperm cell lottery, where, you know, when you actually examine, like, well, what would logically make sense, like switching out minute parts of the sperm or their egg, would that really result in a different eye? These kinds of questions. And when you really start to examine the logic of it, it's really hard to have a logical point where something stops, starts being a separate self or stops being the same self. So he's kind of examining this, the physical kind of arguments of this astronomically slim view of you slash I existing. And if I had to say what I think you and Joe Kern, the similarities I see is that you're both, you're both arguing, trying to logically examine these usual boundaries that we think of, of separating like oneself from another, you're both attacking these various logical boundaries. He's attacking like this idea that there's these different physical combinations that would lead to different selves or even like we have a different experience. Our life goes a different way when we're young, those kinds of things, those similar ideas where people might think, oh, different. These are different people. These are different selves. he's attacking those foundations you're attacking a different foundation of like switching out you know uh parts of the brain or whatever to me it's like a lot it's and you're also you're you're also much more focused on this first person perspective idea whereas like he's more talking about like these you know you could do it from a distance even of like are these different selves You know, but I think you're both attacking these foundations that most people would intuitively think lead to different selves. And you're both saying, like, well, when you really start to look at these things in different ways, there's not any clear definition of when a new self would have come into being and an old self would have been left behind. But there's a very important factor here, and I'm not sure how he scores on this. I'm not interested in simply saying there's just one person. What's important to me is that it's you. Right? Because there being just one person could be as bad as the Buddhism thing. It could make things worse than the usual view, because at least in the usual view, you've got a lot of chances for you to come into existence. But if there's only one person, you know, why is why are you that person? Yeah, you're very focused on the on the me, the I aspect, the first. Exactly. That's the whole thing that matters here. Not how many there are. But where you are. And your existence is really easy. in universalism because it's the you-ness I'm talking about. What makes it you? So I'm not interested so much in breaking down the boundaries between you and I just so that it's all the same person. I'm interested in who the person is. I want to move on to the anthropic principle and how universalism is related to that. And I'll say, personally, I myself have long believed that there must be many universes of some sort that all have different physical properties. However that whether that like the quantum many worlds theory whether that infinite worlds in space whatever it may be because the idea that you know the basic idea that for me to exist obviously the universe has to be finally calibrated for me to exist And what are the chances that we live in the one single universe that would lead to that in the same way that it's astronomically improbable that I would be here, you know, fundamentally, like we talked about from that astronomical chance perspective. It's also similarly or even more improbable that we would live in the one universe with all these physical properties arranged. And a quick point about this, like the fact that we even have gravity, right? Like if gravity was too, pulled too much or if it never pulled at all, you would never, the universe would never lead to any sort of combinations of things, right? So just to say that, and there's all these, there's all the, you go into this in your book about the nuclear force, strong forces at atomic level. There's all these things that are calibrated. Another example is just the fact that there is an abundance of different types of materials, right? Like you can imagine a universe where there was just one type of material, in which case, like probably nothing would ever be even created at all. Right. So just to say there's all these things that are perfectly calibrated to have life exist, which to me, you know, leaving aside like creator God type scenarios, if we're talking pure logic to me, that that that is a no brainer, that there must be many worlds with many different physical properties. however those are being created. So that's kind of, to me, maybe why universalism, open individualism was kind of intuitively attractive, because I've already embraced this idea of reaching for something to help explain these astronomically slim circumstances. But I'm curious how you tie the universalism to the anthropic kind of principle there. Yeah, that's great. So I claim I know that without universalism tied together with something like a multiverse, you cannot explain the anthropic principle in the sort of way you're talking about. Right. It's essential to explaining the laws of physics. Now, when I was an undergraduate back in the 60s, I read an article on the anthropic principle by a guy named Tennant, who had a religious explanation of it. Remember, 1968, it suddenly occurred to me that if matter was actually very protean character, existing according to different laws and let's call them again, countless forms, countless distinct universes. Different hotel, different endless, countless hotel rooms with different properties. It's very closely related to the hotel. If that were the case, then it could, without God coming through, it could be probable that there'd be one or more universes that just happen to be at the right levels of forces, the right sizes of particles and so on, so that life could come about. and eventually consciousness could come about. And then here's the thing. There are now physicists, many physicists, who think this way. And then what they say is this, and try to notice the problem with it. They say, and of course, we would have to be in one where all those laws were fine-tuned for the existence of life and consciousness. We couldn't be in any universe where that wasn't the case. And then some of them leave it there. And I, when I first thought of this, left it there. But my excuse is I was already thinking about personal identity. in this very fluid way. It was 1961 when I came up with this thought experiment of exchanging quarters of brains, and I'd be in both things. It was loose enough for me that I could be in this anthropic universe that happened to come up. But anyone who believes in anything like the usual view is not helped at all by there being all these universes occurring where it finally becomes probable there's at least one anthropic one. They're not helped at all. Because you're saying they're not helped because it just becomes so much more astronomically improbable. No, because nothing would make it your universe. you being in the anthropic one would be the same kind of look as if there were only one kind of physical world it doesn't help at all I tell this story in the book where when I came to University College London 1974 you know I'm an American raised in Connecticut and I came here to London University College London, teach philosophy in 1974. And they had the new people, there were three people joining that year. And they each gave talks to the faculty. And there was a guest there from the States, a logician named Robert Stalnaker, who was quite young like me back then. And I gave a talk where I argued that there must be many universes of different sorts and so on to make it finally probable that there was one that had these laws that we could live in. And he talked to me for a long time after, and he was absolutely right in attacking what I was saying. And he used a wonderful analogy to make his point. Suppose I was playing an extremely difficult game of Russian roulette, you know, where five of the six chambers have bullets in them, and you have to do it a hundred times, spin it around, and then, you know, your survival is pretty unlikely there. But you found you survived. And then you said to yourself, there must have been lots of games of Russian roulette like that being played. Because if there were enough, there'd be winners. So that explains my winning. It doesn't. what would explain it is if I would automatically be whisked to the place where all the bullets, all the chambers were empty. You know. That you exist in all the places. Either, yeah. In all the scenarios. Or, no, let's put it this way. That I exist where it's successful. Or I have this analogy I use in the book. There's an enormous roulette wheel with zillions of spaces along it. And this one ball is going to roll around and land somewhere. And there's only one space where a particular sleeper would be awakened. So I'm sleeping, I'm induced sleeping like the hotel case. I wake up and it's explained to me that only this ball falling into that space would have them awake me. Wake me. Otherwise, I'd sleep forever. Just unfounded. You know, wow. Whoever heard of such luck. Okay. Then let's change this to there being lots of roulette wheels. On each of them, there's the one space which represents anthropic physical laws that the ball could land in. But let's say there's a distinct sleeper attached to each wheel. right because in the usual view of personal identity even if there was someone just like me even in this universe but you know somewhere else it'd be a mere duplicate wouldn't be me and certainly in another universe it wouldn't be me that's an interesting yeah I think I've been having trouble understanding how you're tying those two ideas together. But yeah, when you start talking about, yeah, say there was an exact duplicate of yourself in many worlds, you know, why would one be you and one not, right? Like that's where you're getting at. Or rather what I'm saying is I've already established that they would all be equally me. Yeah. I guess I'm having trouble tying in the anthropic things. I automatically find myself wherever there's consciousness. So it's the lubricant that you need along with the many universes to make this work. So that I'm there. Right? I'm not stuck with one Russian roulette game. I can take advantage of any of them where I win. I am actually there. You are always there, yeah. Yeah, otherwise, the other universes don't help in explaining the anthropic principle. So in other words, what I'm saying is to have a thorough understanding of physics, you need universalism packaged together with a multiverse that gives you that your universe will be anthropic without universalism it doesn't work, it's just as bad as there being only one physical world someone would be in an anthropic universe so it is like the hotel it's just an extension of the argument for universalism a small note here i'll be honest and say that i don't fully understand arnold's arguments here it seems like he's just adding to the statistical improbability argument i feel i'm missing why he thinks it is a separate form of argument but i've struggled with grasping a few ideas and points in this area that i later did understand so i wanted to keep this in here and just note my own confusion i'd say if you want to try to understand arnold's points of course you should read his new book finding myself okay back to the top uh i wanted to pivot to um how certain would you say you are that universalism is the true state of things if you somehow knew for certain that it wasn't true what do you think the most likely explanation would be. It's the only game in town, as I sometimes say in the book. It is. So you would say you're basically like near 100% certain. Yeah, I'm 100% certain. I'm 100% certain. I mean, it's the hotel inference. Another question I like to ask people in general is, you know, some people watching this if they made it this far would be saying well it's simple you know god gives us a soul we have you know we each have our own souls the religious view right uh so i and to me i'll say that i find i find existence in the universe so mind-blowing and strange and unlikely in the first place that it's hard for me to it would be hard for me to be that surprised about any of the many ideas there are that it would that explain us being here so which is to say i guess i'm not strongly atheistic like i wouldn't be shocked to find out there were even though even though it would mainly like push the questions back further i you know i i wouldn't be shocked to find out there was some sort of higher power or creator but i'd like to ask you uh Do you leave open – how strongly atheistic are you? Do you leave open some smidgen of where there could be some sort of higher power? Universalism is entirely neutral with regard to that. It's got that covered. There's a section in my book where I look at what I call the somebody up there likes me version of the usual view. where you had a special favor from God. I'm not in the least in my book on universalism attacking the possibility of there being God. But that he would select you for existence is just as improbable as you being selected purely by the sperm cell lottery, which presumably he fixes. When he wants someone. Yeah, yeah. He wants you. And furthermore, not even a twin of you. Right? Yeah. I mean. He wants your very special sense of self to exist. That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Because it's just like all the others. so of course he singles out you um right you're the the same questions apply and you would i think you would also say yeah theoretically in universalism could coexist with any religion because i could imagine a christian i could imagine a christian take on this where it's like see we're all the same we're all manifestations of of of god or whatever you know there can be you can imagine it combining with with other things because it doesn't directly you know, well, you would be God. If God, if God's mind includes consciousness with the media, you would be God. And God, if God was wise enough, God and knowledgeable enough, he'd know he was all these beings he was fooling around with. So actually that has an interesting effect on the problem of evil. Because, you know, problem of evil, how would he allow all this suffering? Instead, it just becomes the puzzle. Why does he want to subject himself to all this suffering? I think I think you and I are kind of on the same page and thinking that universalism would if more people embrace it, would it be a good thing in terms of people seeing themselves and other people and seeing other people in themselves or vice versa? Just recognizing that we're all dealing with the same experience, the same manifestation of experience. I think it would lead to people being more empathetic and less, you know, morally righteous. Yeah, yeah. Not even empathetic. It would just be self-interest not to cause yourself pain. Or even, you know, I would say even theoretically like embracing like, oh, this could be possible even leads to more empathy, I think, in a lighter form, you know, and even if it didn't go all the way. Also, does away with the fear of death is annihilation. Yeah. So in some sense, in some sense, it's comforting, too, because it it's it's saying that, yeah, death is in some sense, death is an illusion because I we will always be here experiencing things wherever there is a consciousness. So there can be various nice things about it, although I think some people would say – I think it's possible with any philosophy to take – to implement it in such a way that it becomes a dangerous implementation. Sure, but why would you want to do that? You'd just be hurting yourself. yeah exactly although i think some people might say like oh i you know imagine some dystopian version of this where some the people in power say that death doesn't matter so you know uh it doesn't matter if people die that much etc etc but that that to me is kind of a way from how i think most people would interpret this uh but yeah i'm curious for your for your thoughts on how you see There's a positive force. Also, it throws a monkey wrench into retribution. Right. You can still want to punish people for practical reasons, but it gets rid of this idea that someone must be punished because they've – they must suffer because they've done a bad thing. Yeah, the victim and the perpetrator are the same person, so you're causing more pain to the victim. Can you imagine a future society where universalism is kind of like a secular religion and it leads to better things happening? I can imagine it and I really hope for it. I mean, I keep emphasizing the simplicity of it. You know, it's it really is not a complicated thing at all. It simplifies everything. Everything. It's so easy to bear in mind. It's got a great thing to go against, which is this illusion that there are distinct selves, distinct eyes. But it's so powerful in itself as a thought that I think it actually could moderate a lot of bad stuff that comes about on account of the illusion. That was a talk with the philosopher Arnold Zuboff, author of the book Finding Myself Beyond the False Boundaries of Personal Identity. You can find that book on Amazon and other online booksellers. I'm Zach Elwood and this is the People Who Read People podcast. You can learn more about it at behavior-podcast.com. If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy listening to my talk a few months ago on the same subject with Joe Curran. Or you might enjoy going through my back catalog to find some existential and philosophy-themed episodes. I have one episode that's an essay that I wrote on the strangeness of life, which I think is a bit related to this. Okay, thanks for listening. Music by Small Skies.