There are lots of hypotheticals that feel like they should be possible or imaginable, but which turn out to not be when you really think carefully about them. My favorite example to use in the classroom: imagine that while you're asleep tonight, the distance between every single thing in the universe doubles. When you wake up in the morning, everything is twice as far apart, but you're also twice the size! In addition, the tick marks on your rulers and all other measurement devices are twice as far apart, so all your measurements agree with measurements you took the day before. Therefore, the change is indiscernible.
This is a story that (to most people) feels consistent and imaginable at first, but that a little inspection will show is not (if the distance between things changed but fundamental forces behave the same way, we're going to have a bad time). Our intuitive judgement about what we can and cannot consistently imagine is extremely unreliable, and should not be trusted to do any philosophical heavy lifting. I think the people who are saying "I can easily imagine being me, but born in a different place, time, body, and material circumstance" are making a similar kind of error.
I get what you’re saying but also disagree on the conclusion, if I’m reading right. Feels like a form of solipsism which is just … navel-gazey.
Imagining oneself in another’s position is simple empathy, an evolved trait foundational to human civilization. The point is not to be able to perfectly imagine that other life, or to understand it in full detail. The point is to recognize common humanity between yourself and that other person.
In empathizing, I make a basic assumption about another person’s experience, in its intelligibility to myself, despite not having experienced it directly myself. It is like how in physics, we can’t prove beyond all doubt that the laws of the physics are the same in other galaxies (although there is of course strong evidence, e.g. spectral lines). I am reasonably certain of a baseline humanity shared by all humans, and on that basis I feel valid in empathizing.
There are lots of hypotheticals that feel like they should be possible or imaginable, but which turn out to not be when you really think carefully about them. My favorite example to use in the classroom: imagine that while you're asleep tonight, the distance between every single thing in the universe doubles. When you wake up in the morning, everything is twice as far apart, but you're also twice the size! In addition, the tick marks on your rulers and all other measurement devices are twice as far apart, so all your measurements agree with measurements you took the day before. Therefore, the change is indiscernible.
This is a story that (to most people) feels consistent and imaginable at first, but that a little inspection will show is not (if the distance between things changed but fundamental forces behave the same way, we're going to have a bad time). Our intuitive judgement about what we can and cannot consistently imagine is extremely unreliable, and should not be trusted to do any philosophical heavy lifting. I think the people who are saying "I can easily imagine being me, but born in a different place, time, body, and material circumstance" are making a similar kind of error.
You cannot rely on hypothetical for anything scientific, that's not what they're meant for.
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I get what you’re saying but also disagree on the conclusion, if I’m reading right. Feels like a form of solipsism which is just … navel-gazey.
Imagining oneself in another’s position is simple empathy, an evolved trait foundational to human civilization. The point is not to be able to perfectly imagine that other life, or to understand it in full detail. The point is to recognize common humanity between yourself and that other person.
In empathizing, I make a basic assumption about another person’s experience, in its intelligibility to myself, despite not having experienced it directly myself. It is like how in physics, we can’t prove beyond all doubt that the laws of the physics are the same in other galaxies (although there is of course strong evidence, e.g. spectral lines). I am reasonably certain of a baseline humanity shared by all humans, and on that basis I feel valid in empathizing.