Chalmers's Objections to Identity Cosmopsychism
In "Idealism and the Mind–Body Problem", David Chalmers examines, in the context of cosmic idealism, the view he calls identity cosmopsychism, according to which human experiencers (macrosubjects, in Chalmers's terminology) are identical to a single cosmic experiencer. He raises two immediate objections: human experiencers are distinct from one another, so they cannot all be identical to the same experiencer; and the cosmic experiencer presumably has experiences that individual humans do not have.
The first objection rests on the claim that macrosubjects are "distinct from each other", and hence cannot all be identical to the cosmic subject (consc.net).
The first objection already presupposes, at its starting point, the existence of distinct experiencers. It is precisely this presupposition that I wish to examine.
Experiencing as One's Own
When I am in pain, the pain is given from the outset as my pain. Experiencing something as one's own is part of the experience itself. Likewise, it belongs to experience that I live myself as a determinate person: "I am this particular person." A further step is required to move from this to the claim that such a personal identity picks out an ontologically independent experiencer, separate from other experiencers.
Moreover, even the existence of several personal identities, each lived as one's own, is not given to us as a directly available fact. My own experiencing is what is given to me. I see other people and hear their reports about how they remember things and what they think of themselves. All of this reaches me as part of my own experience. That someone says "this is my pain" does not mean that I directly experience their experiencing it as their own.
Two Distinct Claims
Two claims can thus be distinguished:
1. There exist several distinct personal identities, each lived as one's own.
2. Ontologically distinct experiencers correspond to these identities.
The first claim cannot be decided. The second, even if the first is accepted, requires further justification. The two cannot be treated as a single self-evident starting point.
The Argument
My argument is as follows. Whatever argument or evidence reaches us concerning the existence of another experiencer itself appears as part of our own experience. However persuasive it is, what we directly experience is that we have become acquainted with this argument or evidence. Whether there is someone behind it who lives something as their own, we cannot know from this. Any further evidence will likewise become part of our own experience. Therefore, arguments of this kind cannot decide whether anyone exists besides us who lives something as their own. Taking this into account, all we can state with certainty is that one experiencer certainly exists, namely the one who is reading this text right now.
The Description Offered by TT
The One T, or TT for short, describes this situation differently. In the theory, T is the whole of ontological reality and the only experiencer; personal identification appears within its experience. According to the axioms of TT, experience has one subject, T, and one object, H0. The differences between personal identities appear on the side of the object, in the selective mapping of the perspective; the subject is always the same, T.
The A–B Example
For the sake of the A–B example, suppose that we are dealing with two distinct personal identities, each lived as one's own. According to TT, as A, T experiences "I am A, and this is my pain"; as B, T experiences "I am B, and this is my pain". As A, T takes itself to be entirely A; as B, entirely B. In both cases the experiencing as one's own is complete. In TT, it is T that experiences as both.
On this description, the difference between personal identities is a difference in lived content. To infer from it that there are ontologically distinct experiencers, one would have to show what makes this further step necessary.
Chalmers's Own Discussion of the Response
Chalmers himself discusses the response available to the identity cosmopsychist. He notes that the two consequences of the view, namely that all of us are identical to one another and that all of us are having all experiences, seem obviously false, so it is the identity cosmopsychist's task to explain them away as an appearance. As a natural strategy, he mentions cognitive fragmentation of the cosmic subject: the subject divides into different components, modes, or guises, none of which has access to the others. In his assessment, the view raises many questions and is massively revisionary, yet it seems coherent and worth taking seriously. The first objection therefore does not settle the question in his own discussion either (consc.net).
The Point of the Objection
My objection concerns precisely this first step. When we ask whether the personal identities lived as human beings correspond to distinct experiencers, the existence of distinct experiencers is itself the object of inquiry. If we take it as given at the starting point, we have made one of the possible answers to the question into a presupposition.