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Let's assume we have multiple people with subjective first person perspective experiences. What determines which first person experience I am going to experience? This is not a trivial question, I am not asking why a banana is a banana.

One answer to this question is that MY first person perspective is the ONLY first person perspective that I could experience. However, this means that my perspective is somehow special, compared to the others, because it has the property of "mine".

On the other hand, if my first person perspective is not special in any way, then I cannot reliably tell that when I say "mine", which first person perspective I'm referring to, because none of them has a property called "mine". For example, person "A" has perspective "a", person "B" has perspective "b". However, then that means I don't exist, because no perspective has the property of "mine".

Now, each of us knows that only one first person perspective among all perspectives has the property of "mine", but for each of us, this "mine" property corresponds to a different perspective. However, this would imply that ALL first person perspectives have the property of "mine", and that is in direct contradiction to what I'm experiencing, since I only have one of the perspectives, not the others.

So the question is, how is the "mine" property assigned to one of the first person perspectives?

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  • 1
    Does this answer your question? How can there be multiple "points of view" in the world?
    – Conifold
    May 16, 2020 at 23:50
  • 1
    See also Why am I this particular human being?
    – present
    May 17, 2020 at 0:40
  • 2
    Why voting for closing the question? It might be a false problem, but it is not a bad question. And the OP shows that he/she has made some research about the point that is raised.
    – user37859
    May 18, 2020 at 11:39
  • There are no multiple subjects, there is only one subject, that is present at everyone, and thus subject to the perception of individuation. If you believe in the universality of processes, then your subjectivity isn't owned by you, rather, it is a given which observes the property of ownership. You feel ownership of your perspective, but the "you" that feels, is itself a perception within the perception of other things. When you were a baby, you lacked the faculties to generate such a distinction so there was no ownership of a "I". With time, you developed an "I" thought which is perceived.
    – Weezy
    May 19, 2020 at 13:39

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(1)

Now, each of us knows that only one first person perspective among all perspectives has the property of "mine", but for each of us, this "mine" property corresponds to a different perspective. However, this would imply that ALL first person perspectives have the property of "mine", and that is in direct contradiction to what I'm experiencing, since I only have one of the perspectives, not the others.

Possible hegelian style sophism. A, B , C , D, etc are different and distinct from one another. But, they all share in " difference" , and being different is what they have in common. So finally A, B , C , D, etc are identical.

(2)

  • As I understand your reflection , your " givens" seem to be :

(1) There are many perspectives

(2) One of them is mine

(3) There must be something that makes this perspective " mine".

  • But maybe does this amount to " reifying" one's "perspective".

I mean , if my " perspective" is simply another name for the "mine-ness" of my experiences, then there is only one thing, and there is no point in asking how this particular perspective can " gain" the additional property of being "mine".

(3) So the real problem is to account for this " mine-ness" quality of experience.

  • Maybe the individuation principle of experiences is each one's body. My pain is not your pain, because my pain is felt at another point of space than yours, namely in my body, not in yours.

  • Maybe is individuation a law of thought, of mental processes.

  • According to Locke ( Essay, II, 27) , thought, involving essentially reflection, constitutes and produces, in a retrospective way , at every time, the identity of a personal subject , and this is what acccounts to the fact that " I am to myself what I call myself".

  • According to Sartre ( Being And Nothingness) , even though consciousness is always " intentional " ( consciousness of something) it could not tend to an object without, at the same time, being conscious of tending to it. Therefore, it is a law of consciousness that it is always " consciousness of cousciousness"; what we call the " Self" is nothing else than this reflexivity ( self-relation) of consciousness, that is the self-appearing-to-itself of consciousness ( though not as an object that is known).

Note : Sartre explicitly rejects the reflection account of reflexivity ( i.e. of the relation of consciousness to itself)

Reference : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-consciousness-phenomenological/#PreRefSelCon

  • According to Husserl ( Cartesian Meditations, V), the " mine-ness" of my experiences is not an original property , but a derived one. It is only through the experience of the Other that I discover that my consciousness is only one possible perspective on the world : I discover that my " here" is not an absolute one, that is, that my " here" is also a " there" from another point of view.

(3) Another strategy would be to account for psychic individuaality in terms of pragmatics. It is the very fact of uttering the pronoun " I" that makes you yourself. Remember Descartes ( Meditations, II) : " This proposition I am is necessarily true, every time I utter it"

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  • if the pain is felt at another point in space, then that space needs to have the quality of "mine" otherwise how do I know which point in space we're talking about?
    – siamii
    May 31, 2020 at 7:08
  • That could be the property of thought, but how do I know which thought we're talking about? It again has to have a property of "mine" to be able to identify it, because there are other thoughts that are not "mine"
    – siamii
    May 31, 2020 at 7:08
  • Sartre's argument works, if there's one consciousness. If there are other consciousness, one of them again needs to have the "mine" property, otherwise not enough information to determine which one we're talking about.
    – siamii
    May 31, 2020 at 7:10
  • how can "here" be "there" at the same time? It sounds like Husserl is conflating two things.
    – siamii
    May 31, 2020 at 7:11
  • I still have to be there to utter the word of "I". It doesn't diminish the fact that I am one particular person, not the other, even if I was mute.
    – siamii
    May 31, 2020 at 7:14

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