Fair enough.

I'm saying they would both have to drink the milkshake in order to remain their plural *I* instead of *I* and *I*.

I don't agree with that, but to give you another case, suppose again that there are two qualitatively identical simulations running on two separate computers, certainly a scientist can walk into the laboratory and tell that there exist two separate computer simulations without modifying either simulation; so in what sense are they plural?

The self-interested behavior interdependence.

The latter explanation does not explain anything to me.

I will be totally frank. When the subject of self-awareness first entered into a conversation for me was probably 40 years ago. I was immediately and intuitively aware of what the other person was talking about. In dozens of conversations since then the subject has come up in one way or another and I cannot recall a single instance when someone in a face to face discussion claimed not to understand what was being discussed and denied having such an experience. Until the discussion on this forum that prompted this poll.

There are two differences between all of those discussions and this format. First, the anonymity of the internet which separates people from the personal responsibility for their stated opinions. Second, those discussions to the best of my memory were mostly with graduate students in physics, chemistry or engineering. These could be with anyone.

I am surprised that 3 people chose "no". Given what I experience, there is no way that I could in good faith answer the poll with "No, I have no such experience and do not know what you are talking about". It is simply and completely incompatible with my experience and honesty. I do not know what else to say.

I can understand arguing and disagreeing about the significance of the experience, the origin of the experience, etc. That I have done many times. But the discussion always was conducted under the assumption that both parties knew what was being discussed.

Well, it explains the disagreement...

I'm not trying to make a complicated point here. If someone answers no to your poll (as I did), are they claiming to have had a different experience from you, or do they understand the same experience differently from you? If you think the latter is impossible, then yeah, I'm just wrong (but I would be very surprised to find it impossible given the actual variety of views on the self). But if it is possible, then I don't think the poll question isolates out a difference in experience from a difference in interpretation of experience.

When I've talked with philosophers (one of my friends in grad school wrote her dissertation on the self) or religious people about the self, it has almost always been with the idea that we very possibly have different conceptions both of what the self is and of what an experience of the self would entail. After all, this is one of the more controversial questions in contemporary philosophy and has been at least since John Locke. Furthermore, the illusory nature of the self is one of the more notable claims of Buddhist thought. So while we try to figure out each other's view, and so know in that sense what is being discussed, there is no assumption that we agree about the nature of the self. So I guess my experience has been different from yours.

Sorry, where's the interdependence?

If I may, I'll try to answer the question differently (I think my original answer was superficial at best).

Regarding the hypothetical the reason the simulations are, in a sense, plural is because both Sim1 and Sim2 have valid claims to the ownership of *I*. Now, it's possible that the original definition of self given earlier (self is a retrospective construction of the imagination) lacked scope. Given the somewhat paradoxical nature of the hypothetical we may have to amend self to represent a "retrospective construction of the imagination within a given set of spacetime parameters".

topical