Self-definition
Tuesday, January 14
From Emily Quereshi-Hurst in Aeon:
So, if the Everettian multiverse is reality, we exist as continually branching selves like splitting amoeba, our ideas of morality are turned upside down, and there are compelling arguments for why there is no God overseeing it all.
We are also left with something of an identity crisis: it’s not even clear if we ‘survive’ from moment to moment, if branching is a kind of a death. How do I make sense of that personally? One solution I am currently exploring is the idea that who we are is determined by a narrative thread of our own weaving. On this view, who I am is no more nor less than my own internal self-conception, shaped by memory, desire, emotion, experience and embodiment. On this view, it does not matter whether there are copies of me or not, and I should not care which philosophical principles these copies might violate. All that matters is that who I am is decided by me – it is subjective, not objective.
Part of me finds Quereshi-Hurst’s view comforting, but another part thinks it’s no comfort at all: subjectivity isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.
If I’m the arbiter of who I am, then I can be anything—or nothing. What anchors me to reality if everything is up for revision?