From a behavioral perspective, individual humans regularly report having a consistent individual identity that persists through time, which remains largely intact despite physical changes to their body such as aging. This self-identity appears core to understanding why humans plan for their future: humans report believing that, from their perspective, they will personally suffer the consequences if they are imprudent or act myopically.
I claim that none of what I just talked about requires believing that there is an actually existing conscious self inside of people’s brains, in the sense of phenomenal consciousness or personal identity. Instead, this behavior is perfectly compatible with a model in which individual humans simply have (functional) beliefs about their personal identity, and how personal identity persists through time, which causes them to act in a way that allows what they perceive as their future self to take advantage of long-term planning.
To understand my argument, it may help to imagine simulating this type of reasoning using a simple python program, that chooses actions designed to maximize some variable inside of its memory state over the long term. The python program can be imagined to have explicit and verbal beliefs: specifically, that it personally identifies with the physical computer on which it is instantiated, and claims that the persistence of its personal identity explains why it cares about the particular variable that it seeks to maximize. This can be viewed as analogous to how humans try to maximize their own personal happiness over time, with a consistent self-identity that is tied to their physical body.
From a behavioral perspective, individual humans regularly report having a consistent individual identity that persists through time, which remains largely intact despite physical changes to their body such as aging. This self-identity appears core to understanding why humans plan for their future: humans report believing that, from their perspective, they will personally suffer the consequences if they are imprudent or act myopically.
I claim that none of what I just talked about requires believing that there is an actually existing conscious self inside of people’s brains, in the sense of phenomenal consciousness or personal identity. Instead, this behavior is perfectly compatible with a model in which individual humans simply have (functional) beliefs about their personal identity, and how personal identity persists through time, which causes them to act in a way that allows what they perceive as their future self to take advantage of long-term planning.
To understand my argument, it may help to imagine simulating this type of reasoning using a simple python program, that chooses actions designed to maximize some variable inside of its memory state over the long term. The python program can be imagined to have explicit and verbal beliefs: specifically, that it personally identifies with the physical computer on which it is instantiated, and claims that the persistence of its personal identity explains why it cares about the particular variable that it seeks to maximize. This can be viewed as analogous to how humans try to maximize their own personal happiness over time, with a consistent self-identity that is tied to their physical body.