Great puzzle

In terms of structure and function, are the two worlds identical?

The concept of a 'you' that is not embodied is the issue. 'You' cannot be Alice and Bob without real physical changes in the world.

'You' cannot be Alice and Bob without real physical changes in the world. — ChatteringMonkey

What physical change would change you from Alice to Bob? (I may have misunderstood your intended meaning)

I am neither.

I think a 'you' already implies a particular biological being so that you cannot just transport a non-physical kind of essence of a 'you' that stays the same to another body.

I think a 'you' already implies a particular biological being — ChatteringMonkey

Implies by virtue of the meaning of the word 'you', or by virtue of a theory of what it is to be a you?

The latter.

there is a huge difference, since Your perception of the world is not the same. — bizso09

Does that mean that the world is fundamentally self-contradictory? — bizso09

Difference is not self-contradiction. Contradiction means true and false at the same time. Experiences are meant to be different, and it is the nature of experience, not self-contradiction.

I think a 'you' already implies a particular biological being so that you cannot just transport a non-physical kind of essence of a 'you' that stays the same to another body. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes. There is no "This is what it's like for me to be Alice" and "This is what it's like for me to be Bob".

Could the scenario be simplified to this:

The difference between Bob and Alice is easy - one is Bob and one is Alice, they look and act differently, they have different histories. But what is the difference between being Bob, and being Alice?

Is that the same question or a different one?

EDIT: More fundamentally, there is a difference between Alice, and being Alice, isn't there?

I think the assumption that "you" has a referent separate from Bob or Alice is the problem.

EITHER there's some spirit soul thing, a ghost going around to these bodies inhabiting them, in which case there's no paradox because there is a real difference

OR there are not these spirits and souls, and then there's no "you" that isn't synonymous with Bob, or synonymous with Alice, and there's no paradox.

On first reading I interpreted your puzzle to mean that "You" is a fifth physical person, who has You's own experiences, and in addition has the ability to enter into and share the experiences of Alice, Bob, etc.

Would you agree that, on this interpretation (which I understand is probably not what you meant), there is no contradiction or problem, other than our lack of the ability to do what You does?

I had the same issue here, with no result.

Imaginary proof of the soul

Neat puzzle.

I think the apparent contradiction hinges on the fact that the puzzle quietly slides between two different levels of description: impersonal/third-person description and indexical/first person description.

These are not competing descriptions of the same kind. They answer different questions.

• The impersonal description answers: What exists?
  
• The indexical description answers: Which perspective is mine?

Once you keep those apart, the apparent contradiction dissolves.

The impersonal facts about the situation don't change, the only thing that changes is the perspective that is occupied. "You" are not an extra object over and above Alice, Bob, etc., but rather an indexical that shifts across perspectives.

No contradiction arises unless you mistakenly demand that indexical facts must be reducible to non-indexical ones.

Does that mean that the world is fundamentally self-contradictory? — bizso09

You seem to be saying the world is the same thing as our experience of the world. As Lao Tzu might say—the world that can be spoken is not the eternal world.

Here I try to derive the logical contradiction which arises from the puzzle.

1. In both scenarios we have a "You". I argue that this "You" is a necessary truth, because without it, we wouldn't even be able to ask the question. There must be a "You" to even ask the question and draw inferences. Therefore, it makes no sense to talk about Scenario 1 or Scenario 2, without including You in it. In our current world, therefore, there must be at least one You, because I'm typing this out as me.

2. In this world, there is only a single global "You". That is because there is only one first person perspective, others are only third person perspectives. Anyone else claiming to be "You" is wrong, because the true "You" has proof that the others are in fact "not You", though it cannot share this proof objectively with anyone else. For example, in Scenario 1, You are Alice, and not Bob, therefore you can prove this fact to yourself, even though you cannot share this proof with Bob objectively.

3. If we entertained the possibility that both Alice and Bob are a You, but in different worlds, this logic falls apart. That is because we would need to introduce an encapsulating world to contain these sub worlds, and in it, we would need to select which one contains the true You. In other words, if we allowed both Scenario 1 and 2 to hold simultaneously, we can always ask ourselves, whether we are in fact Alice or Bob right now, which would give us an unambiguous answer about which sub world is the correct one.

4. Because of 1, which shows the existence of You, and 2., which shows that this You is single, and 3., which shows that this You is absolute global, anyone else claiming to be You leads to a contradiction. If we apply this to our world at large, since I OP is already claiming to be You, and I have proof of this, the Reader cannot claim a You. In case the Reader has also proof of them being a You, it leads to a necessary contradiction of facts.

Yes, you are correct. There is a difference between Alice and being Alice. The puzzle attempts to identify what this difference is. On the one hand it claims, that this difference is something, but on the other, that it is in fact nothing.

Because of 1, which shows the existence of You, and 2., which shows that this You is single, and 3., which shows that this You is absolute global, anyone else claiming to be You leads to a contradiction. If we apply this to our world at large, since I OP is already claiming to be You, and I have proof of this, the Reader cannot claim a You. In case the Reader has also proof of them being a You, it leads to a necessary contradiction of facts. — bizso09

Thank god we have proofs to tell us what our language means. On the other hand, the OP puzzle could be an example of what Wittgenstein called a confusion of grammar. As pointed out, a scenario like this only leads to apparent contradictions when we fail to recognize that the same works can have different senses of meaning in different contexts. Under everyday circumstances of use we have no trouble separating out these different senses. It is only when we try to force the words into the reductive abstractions of logical predicates that we conceal from ourselves the fact that the conceptual work they are doing has changed from one point in the account to another.

You is not meant to be a spirit or soul, but more like a reference point, or pointer, i.e. a window of first person perspective. It is not physical, but it is an additional fact included in the world.

Your perception of the world is not the same. In fact, Your entire experience is completely different. Since You are part of the world, that means there is a difference in the two scenarios, which concerns Your experience. — bizso09

Looks like your puzzle is based on a fallacy of ambiguity between the (false) assumption that your entire experience is completely different, and the (true) assumption that you can experience what others experience.

Most of our experiences are similar, especially when they are experiences of the same things in the same world.

No, it's not a fifth person. It is merely a reference point, or pointer, i.e. a window of first person perspective. It is not a physical being, soul or spirit, but merely just an additional fact of the world. The physical beings are the four people listed in the puzzle, along with their respective experiences.

The puzzle contains a total description of the world, which includes both indexical and non-indexical facts about it. In fact, I argue that the You is an objective fact of the world which is unique absolute and global, even though it appears to be indexical at first sight.

please look at the gemini link I posted in the original post, and tell me whether there is a confusion of meaning.

Why is it a false statement to say that there is a difference in state of the world between being Alice and being Bob, even though Alice's and Bob's experiences remain unchanged. The fact of which being I am is a fact in itself. If we argued this wasn't the case, you fail to account for You. We could even say that You could be all four subjects, or none of them, and it wouldn't make a difference.

On the one hand, there is a huge difference, since Your perception of the world is not the same. — bizso09

On the other hand, there is absolutely no difference between the two scenarios. — bizso09

You seem to be arguing for the second statement in the original post, while ignoring the first statement. This is the crux of the contradiction.

I still think the argument equivocates between the necessity of first-person reference for asking questions and the existence of a unique, world-level subject. “You” is token-indexical, not an absolute global fact, so no contradiction arises when multiple subjects each truthfully say “I am You.”

Appealing to a “total perspective” doesn’t help here because a total description of the world does not amount to a single perspective. To get that, one would have to posit an additional subject that experiences all perspectives first-personally, which changes the ontology. Either that subject has its own first-person standpoint (in which case it is just another “I”), or it doesn’t (in which case it cannot ground a unique global “You”).

“You” is token-indexical, not an absolute global fact, — Esse Quam Videri

In the world that you live in, "You" is indeed an absolute global fact. Wouldn't you agree that you can unequivocally tell who the "You" is? Ask yourself honestly, how many first person perspectives there are, apart from yours. In fact, other perspectives are not first person in your world. "You" refers to the one unique global first person perspective, that I assume you'd claim is called Esse. Your only escape for permitting other "You"s to exist is the introduction of multiple distinct worlds, each containing a separate "You" that are local in that world only. I say local, because these collection of worlds would need to be included in an encapsulating world, and within that world we can always ask which one of the sub worlds "You" are currently in when typing your response out right now, and you will always get a single unambiguous answer to this question, due to the fact that you aware of who "You" actually are.

The contradiction comes the fact that when you claim "You" to be Esse, I claim "You" to be OP, and provided that we are both correct, this leads to a contradiction. Since I have proof that I am OP, and not Esse, and also proof that I am "You", which is derived from my very existence itself, I have proof that you claiming that "You" is Esse is false. In this setting, Esse is a philosophical zombie plus, who has their own experiences, thoughts, feelings, but nonetheless do not possess a "You", because if they did, it would lead to contradiction of global absolute facts. My solution to this paradox is that the world is more complex than what the framework of logic can accommodate.

p.s. maybe the term "You" is overloaded here, so better call it Window or coordinate.

p.p.s. if you want, you can flip the above argument, and call me the philosophical zombie plus instead, in case you assert that "You" is Esse. The point I'm trying to show is that this indexical is a global absolute fact.

You keep sliding from token uniqueness (“only one perspective is this one”) to global uniqueness (“only one perspective exists”). From the fact that I can unequivocally tell who I am, it does not follow that there is exactly one first-person perspective in reality.

When I say “I am Esse” and you say “I am OP,” we are not asserting competing world-level facts. These are token-indexical truths with different centers. No meta-world or selector is required, and no contradiction arises unless you assume—without argument—that “first-person” must be a single global slot.

What forces solipsism or dialetheism in your reasoning is not logic, but the insistence on that unsupported premise.

↪Joshs please look at the gemini link I posted in the original post, and tell me whether there is a confusion of meaning. — bizso09

I looked at the gemini link, copied the discussion to Chatgpt, and asked it to critique the discussion from the vantage of the later Wittgenstein.

It responded that there is an underlying philosophical mistake in your reasoning, and that the discussion exemplifies exactly the kind of philosophical confusion Wittgenstein sought to dissolve. It treats indexicality (“I am Alice”) as if it points to an object in the world.It treats subjectivity as a metaphysical entity with location and causal power, and it tries to solve problems of consciousness using logical constructions instead of examining the grammar of mental language.

From a later Wittgensteinian view, the “contradiction” you feel is grammatical, not metaphysical. There is no need for selectors, lights, or Windows, just a clarification that “I am Alice” is not a proposition about a metaphysical entity, but a rule-governed expression within human practices. The AI’s discussion builds an elaborate metaphysical edifice to solve a problem that, according to the later Wittgenstein, never existed once we examine the grammar of “I,” “world,” and “experience.

There are two points. First you need to accept that You is singular. Second, that You is absolute.

"I am Esse" is not the same statement as "You" is Esse. The first one merely states a tautology, which is self evident. In fact, the it is Esse saying that "I am Esse", is is logically equivalent to saying that "Esse is Esse". Of course such a statement can coexist without contradiction with a statement such as "OP is OP.

However, when you say "You" is Esse, this statement concerns an absolute fact. It states that reality is being observed through a "Window" of first person perspective, that is all encompassing. In fact, the world as we know, necessarily must include such a "You", because in your experience, the world exists in relation to "You", not just existing out there by itself. This point of reference of existence is what I call "You", and it is a fact by itself.

Indeed, because of the fact, that you can unequivocally tell who you are, it follows that this "You" perspective is unique and global, because when you talk about "Other" first person perspectives, you are in fact making a false logical deductive reasoning error, because in your world those "Other" perspectives are not truly first person, because if they were, then by definition, they would be You. A third person perspective is materially different from a first person perspective in your world. Since you can unequivocally tell who you are, which means you are not "Other"s, it strictly follows, that those perspectives you are talking about are not You, and hence You is both global and unique.

Interesting. I think this nicely illustrates why we should not uncritically accept the output of LLMs when discussing philosophical topics (or anything else for that matter).

Thanks for linking your post. Indeed, you touch upon a very similar issue I describe here, and I don't have a solution either. However, in my post, I try to take it further, and attempt to prove the existence of a logical contradiction, just by starting from the axiom that "I exist". This allows us to learn a "useful" feature of the world we live in, that it is self contradictory.

I think this nicely illustrates why we should not uncritically accept the output of LLMs — Esse Quam Videri

As SolarWind posted his thesis 5 years ago, I had been thinking about this issue also way before that. Here I used LLMs as a tool to help formalize the thesis.