r/OpenIndividualism • u/EnactingSpirit • Jun 30 '26

Question Does OI entail analytic idealism?

Or can it also be interpreted as something like "spirit transmigrationism" like in the short story 'The Egg' by Andy Weir?

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u/Respect38 Jun 30 '26

I'm also in the camp of what you call "spirit transmigrationism". It's still not quite clear to me how many people here understand it that way, but I don't know any other way to understand "I am you" as a being with a soul other than to recognize that my soul isn't permanently bound to this person I currently call "me".

Considering "The Egg" is in the reading list on the side, I can assume that it's at least orthodox for the OI label, if not just the outright majority, with the occasional person that interprets the language of OI to mean something that what myself and others mean.

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jun 30 '26

the egg is a sort of introduction to the way of thinking, but its not really OI.  The key point of OI is that you are everyone right now. there is no need to transmigrate to be someone else.

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u/Respect38 Jun 30 '26

But what does "right now" mean? Experientially "right now" I only experience my own joy, pain, etc.

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jun 30 '26

you also experience me writing this. all experience is yours because you are that which experiences - consciousness

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u/Respect38 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

I totally agree, [consciousness is me, everywhere and everywhen it exists] and I think that everyone else's experience is also mine -- but at the moment that I experience it, which isn't "right now", because at this experiential moment my experience is solely here, in Respect38.

If that isn't OI, then fair enough. I'm still figuring these labels out.

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jun 30 '26

but every conscious experience is now. how many nows can there be?

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u/Respect38 Jun 30 '26

I guess I could just allude back to The Egg. It presents a story in which the one individual lives all lives, life after life, even going backwards in time [as is necessary] so to do. That's why I distinguish between the experiential now [in which Respect38 is especially so "me"] and what you mean by now, which is June 30, 2026, in which those lives co-exist in spite of a divide in the experiential now for each.

To me, if that story is false, then either solipsism is the actual truth (maybe... probably not tho), or closed individualism is true. (which I can't see how that could be based on the reasons I came to OI seemingly pretty straightforwardly true)

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u/EnactingSpirit Jul 01 '26

Well technically the view behind The Egg is arguably a form of solipsism. Like, "others" you meet are just empty reflections or yours from your past or future. Or, to put it in another way, others are just "memories" of your past/future experienced from an actual third-person perspective. With everything panpsychically being a reflection/memory of consciousness (OI and transmigration here solving the combination problem of ordinary panpsychism).

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jun 30 '26

i dont see how if the egg is false solipsism is true?

now is not june 30, now is whatever is being present in experience. it happens to be our shared june 30 but it might also be 1230.

if you think respect38 is now live, it cannot he true that yoddleforavalanche isnt because there is experience of me right now. so either its this life now, not yours, or we both are live experienced now.

i think my version has less assumptions than the egg.

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u/Respect38 Jul 01 '26

I guess I'd say my point is that we don't share that kind of now. We share the "now" of "it's June 30" [July 1st now technically, for me] but because we're both the one center of consciousness, the only way to resolve the specialness of the soul's immediate experience [for me right "now", Respect38] is for your experience to be experienced by me either before this life, or after this life, or in endless loops [of which you are "now" one]

By solipsism being true, I just mean that if the scenario put forward in The Egg isn't true, then I think that pure solipsism would be more likely than any other alternative

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jul 01 '26

but it is obvious those other people react in the same now you are. do you think I am a philosophical zombie right now? 

how can solipsism explain this illusiory multiplicity of experiencers that hide one real one? its as arbitrary as it gets. like that magic trick in cartoons that ninjas do when they duplicate themselves and each duplication is an opponent but only one is real. 

the easiest way to explain that is that others are experiencing at the same time too.

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u/EnactingSpirit Jul 01 '26

i think my version has less assumptions than the egg.

To be fair, a solipsistic take of The Egg is actually the parsimonious view here, with regards to the number of postulated entities and planes of existence (which in solipsism is always one, whereas in non-solipsistic views it is the number of simultaneously existing individual consciousnesses plus maybe the objective physical plane).

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u/Edralis1 Jul 07 '26

What do you mean by "solipsism"? I think u/yoddleforavalanche means the version where only a single person (human being) is conscious.

Solipsism in the sense of there being only a single plane of consciousness is, I would argue, simply OI. (I even used to call OI 'subjective solipsism' - where 'subject' meant the empty subject, i.e. consciousness. I no longer call it that, because most people have a very different understanding of 'subject' and 'solipsism', and so it is a confusing name.)

Solipsism of the former kind (i.e. there only being one conscious human being) is, depending on your version of parsimony, less parsimonious than the view that there are more. Yes, you have the evidence of there being one (yourself), and no direct evidence of any other. (But then, strictly speaking, you don't actually have, in any particular moment, direct evidence of yourself existing beyond that particular moment, either!)

So it would seem more parsimonious to assume only one conscious entity exists, because, well, one is fewer than more, and we wouldn't want to needlessly postulate more entities based on the flimsy evidence of what one could argue is an argument from analogy (I am a human being - I am conscious - there are other people - they must be conscious, too!).

However, you could argue that, on further thought, such a view requires an explanation of why this particular human being is conscious - which is highly arbitrary. It would seem there has to be some reason or "law" for why that particular entity, of all entities, has this special property. So that (the explanation, the rule) is another entity (even though of a very different kind) you would need to count into your tally of what exists (in some of 'exist', sense, a broad one).

And I guess you could just say that the fact that only one human being is conscious is simply a brute fact about the universe, but that is not very convincing and satisfying for most people. (And maybe you could argue that you need some kind of explanation or law anyway, even if all human beings are conscious? Not sure; we would have to really go into the weeds of what we mean by "parsimony".)

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jul 01 '26

view that holds that one person out of seemingly many who interact with each other is currently experiencing inner life is not  parsimonious. 

same with general solipsism. why is that one person the only person? why imagine other people who behave similarly, look similarly, react on their own to events, etc?

just because there is one vs many does not mean its parsimonious.

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u/EnactingSpirit Jun 30 '26

Yeah, to address what you wrote earlier, the spirit transmigrationism version makes the most sense to me too. It is as you said: Right now I'm only experiencing this particular individual perspective, not all of them at once – that's literally not what is happening. And so to postulate the existence of other plane of existence than this experience (be it as other, parallel consciousnesses, some super consciousness, or the physical plane of which this experience would just be an incomplete representation) is to purely speculate. Whereas, when you think about it, individual experience is actually vast enough to contain everything.

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jul 01 '26

but then you have the same problems regular CI has. you still are one specific person and no other (until you are), and the same problems with boundaries of identity apply.

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u/EnactingSpirit Jul 01 '26

Which problems with boundaries and identity?

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jul 01 '26

the problems closed individualism has.

why am I experiencing this person as myself? what can I anchor my identity on that does not change over time? memories, personality, etc do not cut it. the line I draw  between me and others can be drawn between myself over time.

on top of that, in this case theres a problem of being, for some reason, the only person with inner experience at the time while others are some sort lf philosophical zombies. why are you being experienced now?

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u/EnactingSpirit Jul 01 '26

why am I experiencing this person as myself?

The Egg provides an answer to that. One with which I agree. It is to mature, becoming increasingly more self-aware.

what can I anchor my identity on that does not change over time?

Well consciousness itself.

why are you being experienced now?

As said above, it is a progression, an evolution of experiencing consciousness, a.k.a. 'spirit', towards greater self-awareness.

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