Philosophy of mind

**Philosophy of mind** is a branch of
philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental
functions, mental properties, consciousness, the existence of the
subject, and their relationship to the physical body, particularly
the brain. Although it has some overlap with psychology, it is more
about the nature of consciousness in and of itself, whereas
psychology is about the study of specific mental functions and
behaviors. It might not be obvious at first what distinguishes these,
but they are significantly different fields. However, they are
considered useful to and influence eachother at times. There's
another related metaphysics of mental objects called phenomenology,
but we won't get into that on this page.

## General Info

Although it might not be obvious at
first, many forms of fiction have an implicit or explicit implication
that they operate with certain theories of mind based on how the
rules of things operate within their universes. Since megaten focuses
on the existence of demons who seem to have a specific relation with
the mind, as well as questions about identity, this is very relevant here in a more explicit way than in many fictional universes.
While there are a lot of aspects, we will focus mainly on the aspects
that are more relevant to the games. Note of course that while some
of our religious pages might have information that's only useful for the sake of understanding themes, inspiring wider metaphysics, or for practicers of the religion, this page encompasses all
the wide umbrellas of philosophy that pretty much every theory will
fall under he general umbrella of.
Note, for more information about how
the mind is seen as working in megaten, from a more psychological
(though still a little philosophical) angle, check out the carl jung page. Since not
only the persona series, but the series at large is extremely based
on jungian influence.

**Crazyism** refers to an idea in
philosophy of mind such that whatever theory turns out to be true, in
many different areas of interest, it comes with some “crazy
seeming” ramifications that people don't intuitively expect or
think of day to day. And so in the end, regardless of theory, some
bizarre ramifications are likely the case. One reason for this being
that the idea that mind cleanly slots into the categories we describe
it in is an early idea that presumed design. Whereas the real chaotic
world is much more ambiguous than that. And so for the reason of the
principle of crazyism, theories of mind with seemingly bizarre
implications cannot be considered to have immediately made a mistake
for that reason, simply because it is almost a given that some
bizarre things are the case. This often including the fact that even early naive assumptions would have had unintuitive ramifications.

**The mind–body problem** in
philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in
particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain. More
specifically, it asks why it is that consciousness exists, when it
doesn't seem to be an obvious ramification of the existence of
matter.

**Qualia** is a term used to refer to
individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. An
important thing to note, is that they are words for subjective
personal experience that they seem to be in some sense
unquantifiable, at least by current understandings, because
quantifying the brain states that give rise to them is still a far
cry from quantifying the experience itself. In record breaker, fumi
explains the difficulty with this.

Qualia are considered an important
aspect of how demons exist in the megaten universe. Similar to how
the experience of red is understood yet difficult to communicate, yet
people have a shared understanding of it. In IVAs dlc, they mention
that demons exist due to these shared observations. These
observations are also effected when they become bounded by language,
and described interpersonally, which effects their form, effecting
the nature of the demons.

Qualia are mentioned explicitly in the games a few times. In Record Breaker, Fumi describes some concepts from philosophy of mind like qualia and the hard problem of consciousness. Likewise, in soul hackers 2, ringo refers to the body as a qualia prison. This relating to how her mind is derived from a more abstract network that initially didn't limit itself to concrete forns. But she then understood her "self" as being something that was put into a delineated form.

**Subject**. A subject is a being who
has a unique consciousness and/or unique personal experiences, or an
entity that has a relationship with another entity that exists
outside of itself (called an "object"). A subject is an
observer and an object is a thing observed. One question in
philosophy of mind is the bounds of where a subject ends, or even
whether a subject is a distinct thing from its qualia.

**The Thick conception of the subject**
posits that subjects exist and can persist even if and when
experience does not.

**The thin conception of the subject**
posits that subjects are tied to experience in a way where no subject
can exist without experience.

**Intentionality** refers to the
capacity of the mind to orient toward an existent or nonexistent
object or concept. In other words, the content of thoughts. More
simply, the power of the mind to be able to form representations.
There are discussions on whether qualia is a form of intetionality.

**The hard problem of consciousness**
is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualia or any form
of sentience at all. That is, how inputs to our body acquire
characteristics, such as colors and tastes. The title is to
differentiate it from other “easy” problems of consciousness,
such as how various aspects of the mind work psychologically. People
outside of philosophy of mind may not even realize what makes this an
issue, but that's because its not immediate obvious to people that
qualia strictly speaking are not a physical quality in the sense
other things are, and are not only not described by our physical
laws, but don't seem immediately necessary to describe the world,
making it questionable by what means they exist. This is likewise
talked about by fumi in record breaker. The hard problem of
consciousness was named by the modern top philosopher of mind david
chalmers, whom record breaker's metaphysics as a whole seems to be
based around the works of.

**Agency**. Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. It is closely linked to the concepts of responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgments which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. Agency is the particular ability to act on one's will in a deliberate way, and is closely tied to the concept of free will. More information about this on the agency and free will page.

## Mind–body problem - General Umbrellas

Note here that the mind body problem
has important implications for the wider sense of metaphysics as a
whole. This is because the process of explaining it, and how it
relates to matter by necessity requires one to ask questions about
matter itself. There are further subdivisions for each of these
positions, that detail how the mind and matter interact, but too much
explanation would get too packed in a small list. Note that
everything in the below "more info" section will ultimately
fall under one of the larger umbrellas in this section. Note that
this overlaps with metaphysics of the world at large a good deal.
This is because mind itself is one of the things that seems to be a
unique property relative to general matter.

**Cartesian dualism** or **Substance dualism** is a type of dualism which states that there are two
fundamental kinds of substance: mental and material. The distinction
being that the mental does not have extension in space, and the
material cannot hold qualia. Although many people for obvious reasons
associate this idea with religion, or theism, holding that the “soul”
is a word for the second substance, there is in actuality no
fundamental reason it inherently needs to be. Since if abstract
objects are capable of existence, then they could emerge and develop
without guidance in similar ways to concrete objects. That being said
though, it is rare for people outside religion to be substance
dualists, since the idea seems to smack of deliberate design. Note
that although souls are spoken of in megaten games, there is another
theory lower down that seems to correspond better than substance
dualism does. In record breaker, fumi does mention dualism, but it is
more likely that she was referring to property dualism as defined
below.

Cartesian dualism resembles religious ideas of the spiritual soul. Note that megaten does talk about souls as existing, but this doesn't necessarily mean its professing cartesian dualism per say. Since they can be subsumed under another explanation, such as neutral monism or other physicalist descriptions.

**The mental world** is a hypothetical ontological
category in metaphysics, populated by nonmaterial mental objects,
without physical extension contrasted with the physical world of
space and time populated with physical objects. (It can also refer to
a world of abstract objects, positing that the mind is an abstract
object.) In Cartesian dualism, it is thus posited that the mind may
exist in a separate “world” altogether.

In various games in the series, there are things that seem to be in a sense related to a mental world. For instance, the expanse is described as being created by the thoughts of man. And in persona 5 the metaverse or cognitive world is literally a world composed of human thoughts. Though one which has crystallized into having a physical structure of its own. They say in persona 5 that mental desires materialized in this other world. The metaverse seems to respond to thoughts more than physical rules in general, since they also show that real looking model guns can function as real guns there due to representing the idea of and being perceived as a real gun.

**Subjective idealism**, or **empirical idealism**, is the monistic metaphysical doctrine that only minds and
mental contents exist. The physical is simply a type of thought held
in minds. As can be expected, this is a rather fringe view, even
inside religion. In record breaker, fumi says that since memory is
unreliable, any idea that the world itself is based on subjectivity
has to be ruled out, since the world acts too structurally coherent
to be based in unreliable minds. An intersubjective version of this
is a view that certain buddhists held, that worlds existed as an
inter-subjective relation between entities. Interestingly, the most
well known subjective idealist in the west, George Berkeley agreed
with the criticism that fumi gives, using it as an argument for
monotheism. Saying that individual minds were not enough to keep the
world functioning logically, and so they must all exist within a
larger universal mind that can never forget. The mind of God. He was
also a radical empiricist, using as an argument that it makes less
assumptions to simply say your qualia exist than to assume that an
external abstraction such as matter actually corresponds to them. But
either way, his views never caught on.

Note that **idealism** is also used as a
term for the related but distinct position that while things other
than mind exist, the form of the world we exist in is only given form
by our mind. Its real form is rather distinct, but what we see is a
mental construction. While this may sound odd, remember that things
like the experience of color are not properties of the world, but
experiences in your mind to make sense of certain data. And that time
as we know it is suggested by einsteins's relativity to be more like
another dimension of space.

**Physicalism** is the idea that the
only thing that exists in the world is the physical. It is sometimes
called materialism, but it is noted that classical materialism as a
theory in which the physical is exclusively tangible tiny shapes and
particles is considered no longer viable, due to the physical also
including laws, forces, and the possibility that particles themselves
are not really solid in the way that classical materialists saw them.
One problem with physicalism is how to contrast it with other
theories such as neutral monism (described below) due to the
ambiguous nature of what one can qualify as physical. However, a
working definition is that it qualifies if its fundamentally possible
for human physics to ever absolutely know they reached the
fundamental building blocks of the world, and that what they see does
not reduce any further. Physicalism comes in reductive and
non-reductive forms. The reductive form holds that qualia does not in
fact exist (see the section about the scale of mind for the
explanation on why reductive physicalism is considered fringe).

**Property Dualism** is the view that
there is ultimately only one type of thing in the world, but that
this necessarily expresses itself in two aspects. It can come in
either physicalist, or neutral monist versions. In this sense
it rejects reductive forms of physicalism, which deny qualia, saying
that qualia do exist and are distinct from what we normally call
physical, but are still in some sense part of the same type of thing,
but simply a not-directly-acessible aspect of it. If this seems
confusing, then thin of robots. The reason it is so hard to tell
whether an AI is conscious, is becase there is no “thing” we can
look at to say it is. We can only extrapolate from other places we
know consciousness is. And never directly experience another's
experience. This is more likely the version of dualism fumi was
referring to in record breaker when explaining mind, for the reasons
below.

**Neutral Monism** is the theory that
the ultimate building blocks of the world are neither physical as we
normally understand it, nor mental, but are some form of neutral
thing that manifests as the properties of being physical or mental.
What the neutral attributes can be can be any number of things. But
one common one is data / information. (Though such an idea can also be considered part of physicalism due to this ambiguity). Simply that the absolute format
of the world is more a kind of abstract information system that takes
in the form of matter and mind. Kind of like being in the matrix,
except that the real world is itself the matrix as well. Fumi
directly calls this by name in record breaker, after saying dualism,
which implies that the metaphysics of that world are implied to be
the property dualist version of neutral monism. (Note that unlike
physicalism, neutral monism is by default property dualist.)

The reason that devil survivor 2 mentions multiple theories is because while it is giving a vague idea on what ideas there are, it isn't necessarily stating what it thinks is the case absolutely. Despite this, devil survivor 2 does describe its idea of the makeup of the world, which lets us narrow it down. This
being because in record breaker does it turn out that the
word is built out of data, something also earlier mentioned in digital devil saga, where they both say it is what the world is made of as well as pointing out how electric signals and the human will can both be seen as data. This implies that some form of monistic view is in effect. Though what exactly this is being interpreted as is left more ambiguous. They do say the word neutral monism directly in game, and while neutral monism is associated with panpsychism, something they also seem to imply, physicalism also is as well. And hempel's dilemma makes it difficult at times to distinguish between the two. So while they imply panpsychism is the case to some degree, how exactly it works is left a little vague.

And since multiple games say that the world is
made out of data / information, but none as of yet have contradicted
this, we can take it as the primary endorsed metaphysics.
Interestingly, this among enough other positions in record breaker
are endorsed (or at least explored) by david chalmers, that it seems
like the game itself was built around his metaphysics specifically.
Note that some games do imply the existence of something they call a soul. But in this
case then, what they call soul would not be a fundamentally different
type of thing, but just more data that is operating in a way that is
not seen. Similar to how in record breaker the data streams in the
akashic record are not seen unless you go there. Though for obvious
reasons one would warn against thinking the philosophical
interpretation actually works too closely to a fantasy version.

Note that while the game might be implying that a data based monism would be seen as neutral monist, it could qualify as a form of physicalism. Which is
interesting because this actually is a trend in modern physics, due
to the fact that the entities it describes seem to in many cases
reduce to pure information. The physicalist interpretation of this
idea is referred to as **digital physics** or **informational physics**. Note the difference
between a physicalist and neutral data based monism has to do with
whether physics can properly describe the nature of this data.

**Dual aspect theory** or **dual-aspect** **monism** is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects
of, or perspectives of the same substance. Dual-aspect theory
suggests that the mental and the physical are manifestations (or
aspects) of some underlying substance, entity or process that is
itself neither mental nor physical as normally understood. It is one
of the formats of neutral monism, with the other being that the
neutral substance composes one or the other at a time.

## Mind-body problem - more details

This section gives a bit more detail on
the distinctions between various mind body problem solutions.
However, despite being interesting to know for more detail about the
above cases from the general umbrellas section, nothing in megaten
goes to this great of detail for describing them, so if you want
things more relevant to megaten, skip to the next section. Note that
some things in here overlap with eachother, or can apply to more than
one of the above theories.

**Functionalism** is the doctrine that
what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not
depend merely on a single internal state, but rather on the way it
functions, or the role it plays, in the system of which it is a part.
The advancement from type physicalism that this presents is that it
rather than merely having individual brain states explain everything,
that these states are relative to the states which come before and
after, as well as the functions they are designed to cause. As such
mind is more of a “process” which can take different forms rather
than a single state. This theory is seen as compatible with dualism,
and as a whole is seen as one of the most likely theories in either
case.

**Computationalism** or **the computational theory of mind** is a subset of functionalism that is
the view that the human mind or the human brain (or both) is an
information processing system and that thinking is a form of
computing. For obvious reasons this view is seen as relating with
(though not exclusively) the neutral monist idea that the brain and
even consciousness ultimately reduce to information. When fred
relates thoughts to data in DDS2 its possible he was hinting at a
form of computationalism.

**The user illusion** is the illusion created for the user by a human–computer interface. That is, the pictures that appear on the screen to make to easier to interact with the data. Some philosophers of mind have argued that consciousness is a form of user illusion. According to this picture, our experience of the world is not immediate,
 as all sensation requires processing time. It follows that our
conscious experience is less a perfect reflection of what is occurring,
and more a simulation produced unconsciously by the brain. Therefore,
there may be phenomena that exist beyond our peripheries, beyond what
consciousness could create to isolate or reduce them. And perceptions inherently influence perception. This also takes into account that the senses are codes created by the human brain, rather than things that tell objective facts about your surroundings. The conflation of mind and computer used in the games makes this a prevalent metaphor.

**Multiple realizability**, in the
philosophy of mind, is the thesis that the same mental property,
state, or event can be implemented by different physical properties,
states or events. It is commonly used as an argument against type
physicalism and for functionalism.

**Type physicalism** (or
**type-identity theory**, or just **identity theory**) is the idea
that mental states are identical to specific brain states. However,
this is seen as overly simplistic due to the idea the multiple brain
states can theoretically give an identical experience, and also that
something which may not be a brain in the common understanding might
also be capable of producing experience. It is also known as
reductive materialism, (not inherently the same as eliminative) in
which it states that mind as we understand it does not properly exist
distinct from matter.

**Behaviorism** is another extreme form
of reductive materialism, and is the idea that mental states are not
interior states on which one can make introspective reports. They are
just descriptions of behavior or dispositions to behave in certain
ways. It also held that all behavior was learned, and that by
definition, all behavior can be observed, with the concept of
thoughts as a form of behavior being downplayed, or merely “non
actualized speech.” This is not really considered a serious outlook
in modern day, though it is considered important to consider
conceptually.

**Anomalous monism** is a form of
non-reductive physicalism that states that mental events and physical
events interact, despite being of only one (physical) substance, but
that mental events are not describable by physical laws, being of a
“different type” of event. Or in other words, that while mental
events “depend” on physical events in order to function, physical
laws cannot describe them, but are merely a conduit for them to
occur.

**Interactionist dualism** or
**interactionism** is the view that mental states, such as beliefs
and desires interact with physical states in a two way interaction.
Things that happen in the physical world prompt mental events which
in turn control your physical responses. Although many people have a
natural bias towards this, some scientists have pointed out that if
power of causation was flowing in and out of the physical system,
energy would not be conserved, and the conservation of energy is a
fundamental scientific law. There are of course various ways to get
around this limitation however, since the mind in property dualism is
not seen as necessarily a separate thing, but an underlying
substratum that effects the body.

**Psychophysical parallelism**, or
simply parallelism, is the view that while mind and body have
independent existence, that they run on parallel paths which
correspond to each-other rather than being two distinct forces
capable of effecting each-other. Since parallelism views them as in
full parallel existence, the idea of them interacting with each other
is seen as incoherent / meaningless.

**Epiphenomenalism** is the idea that
while mind and body have separate existence, mental states are
completely dependent on physical states, and are caused by them.
Mental states then do not effect physical ones at all, and are mere
results of physical states. This is distinct from parallelism even
though it may seem to be indistinct at first.

Note however that many philosophers say
that if it is mysterious as to how two different categories of thing
might interact, it ought to be equally mysterious how the physical
can effect the non-physical as it is how the non-physical can effect
the physical. More objections are that it seems apparent that mental
experiences such as pain can effect the physical, and that if mental
cannot effect the physical it has no reason to have developed. A
further problem is how are decisions made? Is decision making a
purely bodily process? Why does the body respond to what we see as
the conscious experience of pain?

**pre-established harmony** is the idea
that outside the bounds of the phenomenal universe, a preexisting
interaction was programmed into every property which caused other
corresponding ones to have proper interactions with it. This was
originally meant to apply to not only the mind / body distinction,
but to all interactions in the universe. Although this is mainly seen
as a Theistic theory, due to the seeming level of deliberate order it
would take to work in a meaningful function, there are more abstract
weaker interpretations which do not need to be. As can be imagined,
this is a very fringe theory, although less extreme forms of it are
useful as thought experiments.

**Occasionalism** or **occasional causation** is the view that relations between physical events, or
between physical and mental events, are not really causal at all, and
that the illusion of causation comes from an outside source directly
projecting sequences of events which give the illusion of causation.
Although this theory revolves around more than merely mind, mind as a
subset follows these same rules, lacking any interrelated causation
between mind or body, or even mind or body's present states and their
following ones. This theory of course fails to explain many things,
and is not taken very seriously as a theory of mind.

**Strong Ai** is a form of artificial
intelligence (or the belief in it) that gains such complexity that it
actually has a real mind. Arthur from strange journey is approached
like a character, implying that such a thing is possible. Likewise, the characters in the junkyard begin as AIs.

**Weak Ai** is a form of artificial
intelligence that does not have a true mind. It can also refer to the
belief that no form of Ai could ever have a true mind.

**Biological naturalism** is the idea
that specific biological machinery that is found in brains is
necessary to generate true consciousness. Some hold that it is a
naive view based on nothing more than that the one talking being
biological cannot determine whether other things are conscious, or at
any rate has

**Mysterianism** or **New Mysterianism** holds that the mind-body problem is either unsolvable,
either as a whole, or at our current level of understanding. Some
hold that it would take a new form out outlook or approach to the
question to make any further progress along the route. It is a subset
of cognitive closure.

**Cognitive closure** or
**transcendental naturalism** is the proposition that human minds are
constitutionally incapable of solving certain philosophical (or
scientific) problems. It does hold however that certain minds which
are alien to humans may be able to solve them, though positing that
some may be impossible for any mind.

## Locations of mind

This section details the distinction
between how present mind is in the world. The three general umbrella
positions are pretty self explanatory, being that mind is either in
some places, (emergentism) none, (reductive materialism) or all
(panpsychism) of it. Note that although many sub-forms of these
theories exist, the minor distinctions will not be gone into.

**Emergentism** is the position that
matter is regularly mindless, but that certain arrangements manifest
new qualities that are not combinations of their building blocks such
as the mental. While this position corresponds to the answer that
would likely be given by a random person who was asked, likely
because they are unaware that there are even other options, it should
be noted that there is a highly sketchy element to it. Namely, that
it implies a form of brute emergence, or a property coming into
existence that is not a combination of its building blocks. The idea
of brute emergence is actually considered a nonscientific view,
because in the natural world each process in any science is generally
seen as reducible to the more simple format. chemistry to physics,
etc. But people who accept this regularly are often eager to throw it
out where mind is concerned, saying that a totally new property comes
into existence, simply because the other options seem so bizarre to
them.
Here
is a paper detailing what the problems with this approach are.
Interestingly there's parralels between emergentism and the old
nonscienntific idea of **vitalism**, the idea that living things
operate on a totally different physics.

**Eliminative materialism** is the idea
that mind and qualia simply don't exist whatsoever. If this sounds
like a bizarre view, its because it is. It is considered rather
fringe. It is the idea that what we call consciousness is somehow
reducible to a physical structure such that one can know all there is
to about it just from some physical description. And that the idea
that we are conscious in general is some kind of illusion that comes
from memory.

**Mary's room**, or **Mary The Super Scientist**, or the knowledge argument asks that if Mary is a
scientist who learns everything there is to know about the science of
color, but being colorblind has never experienced color, then once
she experiences color, does she learn anything new? It is seen as an
argument against reductive materialism, by saying that qualia or
experiences have an experiential aspect which is not reducible to
merely being given information. Some however hold that the question
itself is oddly phrased, since saying she knows everything implies
the inclusion of the experience itself, even if qualia based. In
record breaker fumi describes this thought experiment by name,
explaining the logic of it, and in her mind the importance of having
a way to reproduce qualia, since she doesn't want to lose her
experiences themselves from memory overwriting, and doesn't see the
information itself as worth as much as the firsthand experience of
it.

**A philosophical zombie** or
**p-zombie** is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a
normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience,
qualia, or sentience. For example, a philosophical zombie could be
poked with a sharp object, and not feel any pain sensation, but yet,
behave exactly as if it does feel pain. It is generally used as a
thought experiment against reductive materialism. The reason for this
being that even being conceivable seems to hint at the admission of a
distinction between matter and mind, even if they're not
metaphysically possible.

Although this does not come up often in megaten, the concept of philosophical zombies does seem to loosely explain the existence of the cognitions inside palaces in persona 5. Because these are seen as illusions of how the palace owner sees other people, and so the cognitions act like people without themselves actually being sentient.

**The problem of other minds** has
traditionally been regarded as an epistemological challenge raised by
the skeptic. The challenge may be expressed as follows: given that I
can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others
have minds? They could for instance merely be philosophical zombies,
and one would never know. A flipped around version of this used by
panpsychists is that while one observes that consciousness exists in
themselves, they never observed empirically that there is anywhere it
does not.

**Panpsychism** is the view that all
matter has some degree of mind. These latent mental qualities
residing within them are simply only noticed when actualized in a
complexly arranged body that is capable of making use of them.
Although heavily counterintuitive, since many people have a hard time
considering such a thing as a rock as having a form of vague
consciousness, if one does not believe that mind is a separate
existence from matter, it is uncertain why certain arrangements
“create” an independent “essence” rather than merely make it
more actualized.

People's immediate reactions against
this idea are generally misplaced. Since its not literally saying
that rocks can think in the sense that people can think. But rather
that the latent building blocks of consciousness exist in everything.
So more complex arrangements can be created, but when something inert
is there like a rock, the property of consciousness is still there in a latent sense,
simply not being used to any coherent degree. Interestingly enough, despite people insisting
this is counter intuitive, there's nothing inherently odd about it.
Since there's no reason to expect this to be visible, and it
ironically contradicts scientific principles less than emergentism.
What's more, this was part of mainstream philosophy before
Christianity declared it false and it fell off of mainstream
philosophical thought. Interestingly, this is cutting edge
philosophy, since the idea that it is not only a serious theory, but
should likely be the main one is uber recent, within the last decade
or two.

Although it may not be obvious why at
first, panpsychism is generally the metaphysics used by megaten games. This being said in an explicit form in the visionary items where izanami says that there is soul in all things. The reason being that demons seem to exist in literally everything in
abstract forms, or come from animistic essence from things in general. The earliest western philosopher in history (that we
know of) thales of miletus famously said “All things are full of
gods.” with gods being used as a synonym for mind or animating
force, rather than necessarily a literal statement that there's a
setient god of everything. And in strange journey a crew member
mentions that some people think that all things have gods within
them. Which due to the nature of the series, we can probably take
this offhand suggestion as an actual literal case. So it seems that
the latent forms of animating spiritual essence exists in all of
nature in the abstract form, but they need a specific event to
actually manifest into a coherent being. Note that if this mind has
structures of relations at all level, it implies that a form of world
soul exists.

A more direct statement comes from the visionary items of II, where they say: "A soul dwells in all things. Not just animals and insects. Flowers, grass, trees, wide large sky
and the wind going through it. Mother Earth, of course, even as a
roadstone... The soul that gives life dwells inside
all things." If everything has soul ascribed to it, it is essentially a direct statement that some aspect of latent mental properties are associated with it.

Note something interesting about
panpsychism is that even if its not metaphysically true, it may be
practically true. For instance, if you were to reduce an emergentist
description of consciousness to a description of electricity moving
on neurons, you have the awkward issue that if you define
consciousness as tied to electricity, this makes it omnipresent in
all processes, even if without a specific coherent structure the
consciousness does not amount to much.

Note that although people at first
might say this is counter-intuitive, panpsychism is actually the more
intuitive theory as well. Since in all cultures, people naturally
ascribe mental activity in an abstract form to the world at large.
The earliest **animist** religions did this, before making more
complex theories and turning the idea into the idea of tangible gods.
Some have noted the similarity between panpsychism and certain forms
of animism. But it should be noted that it is a misconception to
imply that something like a river has anything like a coherent mind
in it. Rather it just has latent abstract mental properties. Note
that historically, explicit panpsychism has often been conflated with
pantheism, even though it is not inherently a religious view, just
being a general metaphysical view.

In DDS2, when he talks about how the
world is data, fred relates it to people's thoughts, and then uses
the word thought and data interchangeably. An implication here can be
a panpsychist theory of mind, where he is saying everything in theory
has a level of thought data.

**Cosmopsychism** is a subset of
panpsychism that is explicitly top down as regards mind. saying that
reality in general is in a sense containing a form of overmind that
individual lesser things generate individuality out of through rising
complexity. Even when people hold these metaphysics, this term is
rarely used however. priority cosmopsychism points out in addition that the priority of existence comes from the whole and that parts are derivative rather than the other way around.

**Integrated information theory** is a specific modern theory in philosophy of mind and neuroscience that supports panpsychism. It holds that consciousness is in a sense information processing, and thus is affiliated with every physical interaction. Interestingly, this has a parallel with the beginning of DDS2 where fred equates data with people's thoughts. If this equivalence is meant to be strong, then this would be a good theory that holds that as a literal idea.

**A Boltzmann brain** is a hypothesized
self aware entity which arises due to random fluctuations out of a
state of chaos. One question that philosophy of mind looks into is
what is the absolute most basic requirements for something to have to
be considered some form of a mind. If the requirements are low enough
is it something that happens all the time? Or are there no lower
requirements at all, and what we call mind is just a more ordered
property inherent in matter in general? The term boltzmann brain
however is not used in philosophy of mind, but rather in theoretical
physics, to ask whether such things are more likely than real ordered
universes.

**Panprotopsychism** is a middleground
between panpsychism and emergentism, saying that while the building
blocks of mind are indeed universal in all matter, that it only forms
into what we know as consciousness in particular instances. The forms
this can take can lean more to one or the other side. One way of
describing it might be that matter itself has a kind of subconscious
in it, and that an active conscious emerge from it. However, some
note that this may be a meaningless compromise, since it may still
not solve the problem of strong emergence.

**Monopsychism** is the idea that all
life shares one single eternal consciousness, soul, or self. In its
strictest sense, there is a fundamental single self that posits
individual selves as nonexistent or illusions. In its more lenient
sense, there may be individual selves that in some sense exist, while
at the same time sharing a collective overmind. One such
interpretation being a form of panpsychism which posits some level of
collective universal sentience to reality in general, but posits
individual selves in more actualized forms. It is a recurring theme
in many mystical or eastern traditions, and is most especially known
as one of the main interpretations of Brahman in hinduism. It is a
form of open individualism. Due to its ambiguity, this term is rarely
used.

**The China brain** thought experiment
asks what would happen if each member of the Chinese nation were
asked to simulate the action of one neuron in the brain, using
walkie-talkies to simulate connections. According to functionalism,
so long as the people are performing the proper functional roles, the
system will be a real mind. Some argue that this is absurd, and so
there must be something wrong with the thesis of functionalism, since
it would allow this to be a legitimate description of a mind.
However, there's actually nothing that stops this from being a
legitimate mind of its own accord, and if anything shows the error in
people's intuitions when trying to asses consciousness. An
interesting ramification of this is that we have to accept that in
some sense, group minds may exist, even if on a far more abstract
level than regular minds. And
here
is a relevant paper that talks about this. Panpsychic theories take
group minds almost as a given, but even in emergentism there is
serious case for them. Due to the size it is unintuitive to imagine
China being conscious, and due to the abstract nature of such
consciousnesses we may never be able to understand what they are
like. (This also opens the question of what other abstract forms of
consciousness are there that are beyond our comprehension.)

**Group minds.** The china brain is an
example of what we call a group mind. A mind that can exist in an
abstract way across a group of what might normally look like
different objects. However, one should note that this dichotomy
between different objects or connection is itself a pragmatic one,
that from the perspective of physics is somewhat illusory. This is
relevant to megaten too, since observations are implied to work in
this way, with demons in a sense being to some degree group minds.
The goddess of tokyo in IV is clearly laid out to literally be the
group-mind of tokyo itself. Explaining the relation between demons
and various structures. So some sociological social organisms are
considered demons in their own right, with power over the individuals
that move through them in an abstract sense. And of course on the
highest most abstract level, you have the interrelation between
everything in every world, known as the great will. IVA describes
demons as existing via group observations, so the idea of them being
group minds is spelled out specifically.

Note that although uncommon, the idea
of collective overminds being gods in their own right has precedent
in some aspects of religion. Vairochana the adibuddha in some forms
of buddhism in some sense is seen as both an abstract ground of
being, as well as a collective entity with buddhas being the mind of
it. And in tillich's radical christianity, God has life through the
collective of humanity. (though of course both of these have aspects
beyond just being a collective overmind of minds). In hinduism,
people are considered parts of larger entities generally.

**Contiguism** is a term for the bias
people have against mind existing in ways that don't look to us like
continuous entities, like the china brain. Coined by those to point
out that it is a bias, since we have no reason to deny them. In part,
since in the end on the atomic level things we see as continuous are
not either. In game, there is an interesting example in that dagda
seems to be literally biased in this way, disliking the gods who
exist as group minds, and wanting group minds to not exist. This is
one of the few plots where such an example would even come up that
directly.

## Problem(s) of identity

Personal identity is one of the most
interesting aspects of philosophy of mind, in part because it is one
of the ones that many people do not even intuitively consider to be
an issue. Most generally, it is the unique numerical identity of
persons through time. That is to say, conditions under which a person
at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same
person. There are various problems of identity, some of which get
lumped together or divided in various ways. When reading through the
solutions, it is sometimes useful to try to visualize what it would
even mean for the structure of mind to work in specific ways,
especially when subject to fission and fusion. Note, some aspects of
the problem of identity take into account that one entity may exist,
but which over time its identity may change or not be stable, or even
divide. So the problem of identity is not even identical to what in
every sense means an entity exists.

**The problem of Personal Identity**
asks the question of what it means to exist as an individual.
Questions of individuation ask whether the existence of people or not
is binary, or exists on a gradient of actualization. What is is that
minimally makes someone an existent person. (Or animal.)

**The problem of diachronic identity**
is the question of what it takes for the same person to persist from
one time to a different time. What determines which past or future
person is you? Suppose you point to a child in an old class
photograph and say, “That's me.” What makes you that one, rather
than one of the others? For that matter, what makes it the case that
anyone at all who existed back then is you?

**The problem of synchronic identity**
is the question of what fundamentally determines how many people
there are in existence, if indeed an absolute number as an answer is
even a coherent concept. Though one might intuitively say that the
answer is merely the number of distinct human bodies, this is heavily
disputed. Surgery sometimes results in behavior that suggests some
sort of radical disunity of consciousness, such as simultaneously
pulling one's pants up with one hand and pulling them down with the
other. The question then, is if someone's brain were to have two
separate consciousnesses with different wills, would they then in
actuality be two different people? Would they be one person with two
personalities? If there is only one will, does that make them a
distinct individual or merely a network that is in synch, but that
concepts like “distinct entities” would not objectively apply to,
because there is no absolute number, and the idea of individuals is
merely a construct?

**The problem of Composition** is the
question of what it is that makes up a person. Is it the matter, or
an arrangement? And if matter, what matter; just that of their human
body, or are their surroundings part of them as well? Do they have
any non-physical components? What constitutes the boundary of an
individual? Are we substances—metaphysically independent beings—or
is each of us a state or an aspect of something else, or perhaps some
sort of process or event?

**The problem of counterfactual identity** is the question of how different someone could have been
while still being validly considered “themself.” Or in other
words, which of their properties are essential, and which of them are
merely accidental or contingent. Is this even a coherent question?

## Problem(s) of identity - solutions.

As for solutions, they are divided into
four general types. Ego theories, bundle / reductionist theories, monistic theories, and eliminativist theories. The main division between these is that
ego theories posit a single stable self as an existing thing that
persists over time, even as its properties change, bundle theories
hold that what we call the self is actually just a collection of
properties loosely related via a substratum, monistic theories hold that in a relevant sense there is only one primary identity all others are derived from, and the eliminativist
theory holds that there is no self that persists through time
altogether. Since the last is rather fringe and has little to say
about it due to being a form of self nihilism, we'll explain the
different versions of the other umbrellas, and then afterwards go
into detail which theory that megaten seems to follow. Note that some of these theories overlap heavily. For instance, both bundle and monistic theories deconstruct the idea of the individual, and so theories can have aspects of each.

**Ego theories / Closed individualism** is the idea
that individuals exist, and survive time. Note that this does not
state how long, and some versions are in between this and empty
individualism, positing individuals who survive in some sense for
certain lengths of time, but are eventually cycled through,
ultimately being far more complex than a single entity over the
course of one “human” lifespan. While many of the below theories were developed as an ego theory, they are also compatible as the primary thing to focus on for bundle theories, since different things are seen as more or less relevant for continuity. Ego theories while common in the west historically have fallen out of favor in favor of a more bundle or monistic oriented approach. Which are things that have historically been more common in the east.

**The biological approach or**
**animalism**. Holds that there is a fundamental self that is the
biological organism that one exists as. Or that the self at least
supervenes on this.

**The brute physical view**, or
**bodily criterion** is similar to biologism, except rather than
biological organism holds that a distinct physical body in itself
counts as identity. Its merely that if a thing is not the type of
thing that becomes sentient, we have no reason to pay attention.

**The psychological view** holds that
you are not your body, but the continuation of your mental content.
This view runs into issues of whether a body that's mental content is
overwritten somehow then loses in entirety its original self, even if
its the same biological organism.

**The narrative view** holds that you
are not psychological content, but rather a narrative or story that
makes sense of events into a cohesive whole. And so it is a self told
story told about your existence that constructs this narrative
allowing for continuity. Megaten does seem to lean a little towards
this in that sometimes characters will have the essence of past
people, but whether they identify with them or not is seen as an
active shift in identity.

**The further fact view** holds that
while there is a persistent self, some abstract fact we don't yet
have access to is what it is grounded in. This relates to ideas such
as a soul giving identity, but it should be noted that believing in a
spiritual should does not necessitate a further fact view, nor does a
further fact view necessitate a cartesian spiritual soul.

**The Closest Continuer** view holds
that what counts as you in the future is whatever is closest to you

yourself now, though the individual facts such as bodily or psychological can all contribute to this.

**Bundle theory / Empty individualism** is the idea
that individual entities exist in a limited conventional sense, but instead of being discrete things
with stable identity, stable identity does not exist and shifts over
time. This may also come with the implication that there is no strict barrier to where one entity ends and another begins. What this actually means is that identity is not stable and
inherently shifts and is more like bundles of information than
distinct persistent things. So the relevant aspects are preserved
most of the time.

Megaten does have aspects that resemble
this, but the distinction between empty and open individualism is blurry. The game has aspects
of each, and one can note that they aren't necessarily totally
discrete positions, being described as more similar to eachother than
either is to closed individualism. Note that the positions are not entirely totally distinct, but three concepts that individual positions can be in a sense between and closer to one than the other. For instance, Gabriel calls the white aggregations of thoughts, in keeping with the bundle theoretic tone. And when you talk to anguished one in devil survivor 2 at one point when asked if he did something alone, he posits that that is true if you are coming from the angle of interpreting him as a single being, but calling into question the validity of this.

**Identity Doesn't Matter (IDM) View**
is something associated with Derek Parfit who stated that to make
sense of continuity we shouldn't look at classical concepts of
identity, but rather what things are continuous from others in the
right way, even if this doesn't preserve an identity-relation. Though
one who holds this view can still consider the answer to resemble one
of the above ones in terms of what the relevant facts are. He himself
called psychological relation "Relation R," stating that it
was the most important fact for continuity. IDM related to, but not
identical with bundle theory views. Note that this overlaps with the below issues of numerical identity. This is often considered a major facet of bundle theory.

**Bundle – argument from below**
holds that there is no single criterion of self that is a distinct
thing that exists over time, only a collection of shifting
properties. Thus, different aspects of what one considers the self
can shift and go on in different beings in different ways, without
there being a true answer to which is the self. (Note, bundle
theorists can disagree about which properties are the most important
to preserve.)

**Bundle – argument from above** is
similar to the argument from below in that it holds that what people
mistake as a self is merely a substratum of shifting properties, but
it differs in that it says that there are actual answers as to what
constitutes as a future of an entity. Merely possibly more than one
answer, due to the self being a bundle of multiple properties rather
than a single ego of some kind.

**Bundle - Personal order**. Often,
those with process views refer instead of identity to personal order.
Saying that since things constantly change, stable identity is not
preserved, but instead an alternative concept is order, which is the
stable set of interrelated processes that preserves the relevant
values.

**Metapsychological relativism** holds
that facts of identity are not set in stone, but may be relative to
people or societies in some sense, based on their beliefs. For
instance, whether that society values one or the other theory more
between a biological or psychological line of continuity can actually
effect whether for their own continuity those facts are more
relevant. That facts of continuity are partially determined by your
personal values, by whatever you consider important to your concept
of self. It relates to the narrative concept of self, which can imply
relativism based on how the narrative is spun.

**Relative identity** refers to the
idea that identity may not be a single thing, but you may have
multiple forms of identity relative to different contexts.

**Open individualism** is the view in
the philosophy of personal identity, according to which there exists
in the main relevant sense only one main entity, which individual
identities are derived from. Most forms of this generally posit that
people in some sense have both a collective identity, and some kind
of personal identity. The most obvious example of this is hinduism,
which posits the universal brahman world soul as logically prior to
people's distinct existences. Interestingly, the reason that
shrodinger's cat shows up as a character in digital devil saga is not
just a reference to that it is in a sense multiple characters, but
also reflects the beliefs of schrodinger himself, that he arrived at
based on his science discoveries, and who believed in open
individualism, and was a fan of Hindu philosophy. Gore also talks about having become all, and his consciousness being one with the planet, which loosely calls this to mind. Note that while this is formulated as a distinct theory from bundle theory they can overlap into a collective understanding also.

His reason for this came directly from
his work in quantum mechanics itself, known as **quantum monism** in which it relates to the fact that in quantum physics it is impossible to make sense of something as an individual entity, but they have to be understood as structural aspects of a monistic system. This also
relates to that in entanglement the whole seems to be prior to its
parts, in this case referring to the universe, such as that quantum
entanglement works in this way, since nonlocality would be a property
of the whole, and it has seemingly emergent data. It also seems to
hold that distinct identity is lost at times for particles, and so is not
fundamental, and that therefore if you apply this physical fact to people you find that they are not fundamentally discrete
from eachother in the way they believe on the macro level. This approach also led him to believe
that in some sense their essence survives death. Since his time,
philosophers like Jonathan Schaffer have converted his physics
quantum arguments to philosophical form.

**Thick** and **Thin** concepts of
survival past bodily destruction deal with the distinction between
whether it is possible to preserve identity past death whether if it
may not be so in an absolute way, but one still survives in a more
minimalistic sense. (obviously both being opposed to no survial).
Megaten seems to take a more thin concept, though for certain
entities it may lean closer to thick. This is used for an explanation
for why death is still seen as death and as a total loss despite
one's essence still living on to become a new person. In context it takes a thin perspective, but something about the world often keeps enough of the identity preserved between life that it is more than would normally be the case for thin. Resulting in what are sometimes near direct rebirths.

**Further notes** Now the obvious thing
to note is that ego theories tend to be more intuitive to many
people, even those who profess not to believe them. Or alternately
they don't understand the difference and tend to flip flop. Most
people think of themselves as a distinct thing that the important
parts of persist over time, and is an obvious distinct thing. In the
west, it not hard to see why an idea like this would exist. In
religion people are seen as having a distinct soul that keeps them
discrete from eachother. Ironically though many atheists follow suit
in thinking the self is distinct without realizing they are following
christian influence. (Such an idea is mostly necessary in order to
assume people are a single distinct thing that is permanently
irretrievable on death).

Interestingly, despite ideas such as
bundle theory being pretty advanced, and relating more to a modern
reductive understanding, the only major religion that professed it in
the past was buddhism. Buddhism holds that the self rather than being
a distinct thing is a collection of what in English is translated as
aggregates. These exist and shift in a stream, with the stream
itself's persistance being what makes someone have continuity even
though the aggregates all change. They even refer to this idea as
“not self.” Although it has been part of Buddhism in the east for
millenia, the bundle theory did not really occur to westerners until the
time of David Hume in the 1700s. Note of course that despite being a
form of bundle theory, buddhism seeing these properties existing as
on a single mindstream does not bear the same ramifications of a more
naturalistic bundle theory.

As far as megaten goes, it seems to hold a position that straddles aspects of all three, though mostly leaning to bundle theory, and some open individualism.
In IV, gabriel refers to demons, the expanse, and the
whites in particular as aggregations (collections of aggregates) of
thought. Which is in essence saying that the bundle theory is true
for them. And in the series at large it seems demons are treated as
operating in this way. Note that demons are implied to be encoded
across multiple people as sub aspects of their minds, but this is
enough for them to hold distinct existence. In ego theories where
people are totally distinct single entities this idea would not be
coherent.

But in bundle theories where they are collections of
properties that overlap in a general area, there is strictly speaking
nothing ontologically false about the idea that a sub aspect of the
mind in some actual sense could qualify as partially a distinct
entity. Note here that although the games are ambiguous about the
distinction between demons and humans, both are described as having
souls, and are shown as able to be divided / partial identity shift.
Making identity necessarily a bundle. Doubly so since there is more
than one aspect it seems to function by. (both the history of the
essence and the form taken).

The flipside of it highlighting bundle theoretic aspects is the fact that in dds among other games it talks about people as being derivatives of the whole. For instance, in strange journey it also highlights the hindu concept of maya, depicting it as a literal goddess. In which it talks about how she gave humanity the ability to live as individuals, being self aware. Which likewise derives from the hindu idea of maya dividing up the absolute to allow individual perception to exist. So while there is a mystical unified aspect pervading all of reality in the great will, individuals also exist within this as shifting bundles. This combination of perspectives is ironically common in japan, because like all buddhism, zen holds a bundle theoretic view, but one thing more unique to zen is the concept of the "one mind" that all things are derived from in a kind of monistic sense.

Which is bizarre to think, but this
would mean that people who mistook multiple personality disorder as a
form of demon possession in the ancient days were not even totally
making a mistake. If an actual sub mind grows on your physical
hardware that has a contrary will to your main mind, then (as pointed
out by philosopher Dan Dennett) in a sense it could constitute a
partially distinct entity, since the idea of a “single” self is
mistaken, born from early lazy assumptions that self review had a
100% accurate idea of the self, and that things were neatly divided.
Something called into question as the subconscious became more well
understood. And for the same reason as described above with
collective entities, there are different layers of abstraction this
can exist in, so a collective mind spanning multiple entities in a
vague layer of abstraction can exist also, even though this would
never be noticed day to day. Since the bundle theory does not have to
account for egos as discrete things, but merely narrative centers of
activity, there are different divisions one can arguably draw.

Note something interesting about demon
fusion is that two demons fuse into a new demon that neither of them
were previously, but then take on its identity. In this sense, they
imply that identity relates in part to the form taken. But at the
same time they consider fusion not entirely death, even though its a
partial loss of individual identity, as why in IV they told johnathan
and walter it was like dying for humans. A bundle theory is necessary
to explain this stream of fission and fusion and there not being
entirely a single answer to problems of identity. Demons however
retain some of the previous identity, and as a whole consider the
bodily survival relevant. So the fact that it is neither fully
psychological or biological or body based means that there are
multiple aspects of identity being taken into account and so the idea
of a single one valued ego is considered mistaken. (Note that its
also implied in story if not game mechanics that the new demons
retain some of the psychology too). This also makes sense of in II
how zayin was made from an aspect of satan that took on on its own
personality. when satan was rebuilt, he had both the personalities of
satan and zayin overlapping. Bundle theory can easily make sense of
this in a way that ego theories struggle to.

Derek parfit, one of the top recent
proponents of the bundle theory said that another ramification of
identity being a bundle is that identity is not 1:1. Things can take
on part of an identity rather than a full identity, due to identity
as we understand it being merely a collection of properties. Some can
shift while others remain. This has bizarre ramifications too, such
as people who are close to eachother and grow similar over time
actually being seen as sharing and taking on a small slice of
identity, since they are now sharing some properties. To make sense
of this, think of how people think of mind uploading, loading their
mind onto a computer might in a sense be them. This is merely a
smaller, slower version of that general idea, on other biological
hardware. This also shows up in the digital devil saga duology where
the main characters have crisises of identity in terms of relating
themselves to the people they were based on, and understanding that
they may be continuous in some sense, yet asserted being a distinct
being.

If you want to be able to relate this
to something in-game, note how in devil survivor it says that
multiple people were incarnated with parts of the identity of abel
within them in a literal sense. Enough that cain refers to them all
as his brother. And this identity is present enough that they can
manifest it enough to take on the identity of abel in a more direct
sense, while still having their own modern personal identity. So
there's an overlap of identities here, which is easier to rationalize
in a bundle theory where people are not held to be one distinct thing
that is extinguished if shifted. (On the flipside of this, note how
miyako is built out of some of the properties of yamato, but
considers herself a distinct entity like a sibling. In fact, the fact
that siblings have similar properties implies a perhaps larger
relation in identity there in general. To say nothing of the fact
that idetical twins are literally a single entity that split in two
at a stage of development, but rarely consider themselves entirely
the same person).

While only demons are directly referred
to as aggregates in game, we can also project that humans in-series
operate on similar principles. Keep in mind that human spirits are
considered demons in game, and humans often become demons. So any
principles that the demons can undergo, it seems humans by nature
have to be able to follow, and so operate on in a similar sense, even
though it implies that demons understand better how it works, whereas
to humans in distinct bodies it is not as obvious. While humans are
talked about having distinct souls, we can take this as referring not
to discrete things in the ego theory sense, but as bundles (of
abstract data no doubt) in the same sense demons in series are
implied to have them. Simply that human ones are more cohesive, and
relate generally to a single biology when alive. The white also
refers to humans as the atom that learned desire. And while not very
direct evidence, if they refer to humans as their basic building
blocks it implies that collections are a collection of them, rather
than a totally unique unity. And in digital devil saga, at the end
serph and sera fuse, but then reincarnate individually later while
their fusion goes on to exist as a distinct entity.

Another interesting aspect of the
series is that despite it seeming to emphasize being a metaphor for a
more naturalistic world, reincarnation is a core staple in it. This
ironically also makes more sense within a bundle theoretic framework.
Since in an ego theory, if there is a distinct discrete self, it
stands to reason that it being turned off makes its singularity no
longer able to be accessed, and a permanent death. But if it is a
collection of bundles, there's no inherent reason this would be the
case. Since the individual properties being recycled distinctly into
other things is in a sense able to be considered those things
literally taking on parts of its identity in a direct sense. And
following bundle theory, this is compatible with a naturalistic
worldview. However, to distinguish it from more religious ideas of
reincarnation that imply rebirth as a single entity, it is generally
referred to as \*\*palingenesis\*\*. Again, to conceptualize this,
imagine it closer to again devil survivor, where the aspects of abel
are recycled into a lot of entities, except in practice even more
spread out. Or bel splitting into different entities. (But note that
these in practice would also be taking on identity from other things.
Like taking legos and using different of them to build different
things, but at the same time sometimes using different bricks to make
a new version of the same thing).

In the wider sense bear in mind that
the series implies a nigh infinite or perhaps infinite amount of
universes. In real life if there were infinite universes probability
would also dictate that there would be different iterations of one's
self that are very similar also.

For a real world argument in favor of a
bundle rather than ego based account of self, imagine if a brain was
able to be split into half, and both sides go on living. An ego
theory has a hard time making sense of this, since they would have to
concede that the original person actually died, since it would be
nonsense to imply that only one, but not both brains were the
original person, and if there was only a single discrete ego, it
being able to be divided in half would be incoherent. But to a bundle
theory, you simply have the reality that the self was merely a
substratum of the whole that parts of now separated.

## Problems of identity - extra

**Series person**. Refers to a hypothetical person who rather than existing in one single body
changes bodies from time to time, while still preserving identity.
Such as if someone were to grow a new body, and upload their mind
onto the new body, with the old body then dying and them thinking of
themself as the same person after. Or at least mostly the same
person. Note that demons in game seem to think of themselves this
way in some sense. Many of them when formed talk like they are the same entity as
their past incarnations. Sometimes even when the essence used is from
other demons. On the flipside, when humans reincarnate they generally
seem to usually have a mostly new identity. This of course raises the
question of how closely these demons really do match their old
identity. Especially for those demons who have multiple incarnations
each claiming to be the entity.

**Swampman** is a thought experiment
that is in part (originally it had another use) relating to the
activity approach which asks that if a person walked into a swamp,
and in an instant was vaporized by lightning but in the same instant
a completely identical person was formed by lightning hitting the
swamp, then in what sense can they be considered related, or even the
same person? If people are primarily a form of event, then can the
swamp man, being a psychological continuation of the evaporated
person be considered in some sense the same entity? If so, would this
still apply if the original person's body had not been destroyed?

**Fission** and **Fusion** refers to dividing or merging together of entities. One of the important
questions in philosophy of mind is whether individuals are somehow
fundamentally distinct or whether merging or dividing them is
fundamentally possible. Though historically, many have sided towards
distinct (But by no means all, as some religious views viewed fusion
as part of the highest goal) many now are saying that not only is
dividing possible, but that entities may not even be able to be
classified by an exact objective number in general. Obviously this is
relevant to megaten, since fusion is seen as a common reality to
demons, but fission is implied in plots to exist as well, such as in
devil survivor, where parts of bel split into different entities.

**Multiple occupancy view** is the idea
which holds that in fission, the resultant entities are said to have
already existed in overlapping form in the original individual. When
looked at the larger time aspect, this is called four dimensionalism.

**The Ship of Theseus** is a thought
experiment that raises the question of whether an object which has
had all its components replaced remains fundamentally the same
object. Basically, if a ship that over time had various parts wear
out and be replaced, finally resulting in the end in a ship which
while still being continuous with the first has no parts in common
with it, would it still be the same ship? This becomes confusing even
further when instead of the pieces being destroyed they are each
taken out and put together into a new ship. So while one ship has
continuity from the first one, you have a second ship which does not,
but is composed of each of its pieces.

While some people might find the
question pointless, believing the concept of individual objects to be
merely a description of semantics rather than reality, for items such
as a mind which obviously have a concrete existence despite bearing
parts, it is a very important issue. Especially since it brings up
the reality that any parts or processes a mind or individual can be
composed of can be recycled, which in some sense would imply that
from a materialistic perspective that this bears actual ramifications
in terms of some form of partial or full rebirth of aspects of one's
self.

## Externalism and internalism

One of the most important questions of
philosophy of mind is the question of where the mind is located. If
the mind is a fully or partially physical phenomenon of some kind, it
has to be located somewhere. According to some, there are two
possible options: either the mind is internal to the body or the mind
is at least in part external to it. More generally, either the mind
depends only on events and properties taking place inside the
subject's body or it depends also on factors external to it. Note
that although this section is not as directly related to megaten, it
is important for understanding some of the above theories, or as a
general understanding of what other types of possibilities there are.

**Externalism** or **cognitive externalism** is the idea that the surrounding world is in some sense
a part of of the mind. There are various versions.

Embodied cognition or the embodied mind
thesis holds that all aspects of mental processes are shaped by
aspects of the body. In this sense, the other aspects of the body
themselves are seen as a lesser extension of the brain which most
adequately would be considered part of its network. Bodymind is a
word that refers to the body and the mind thought of as a single
integrated unit.

**Internalism** or **cognitive**
internalism **is the idea that neural activity is sufficient to**
produce the mind, and that the mind can be properly said to exist
only in the brain.

**The extended mind** or the
"**extended mind thesis**" is the idea that in the same
sense that embodied cognition holds that the body is an extension of
the mind, that this extends beyond the body, and can apply to other
objects in one's surroundings. One such example presented is that a
notebook and pen functions the same way as memory, and so in some
sense one's use of it has to be considered similar to recalling
something purely mentally. For emergentists, this may only apply if
there is a tangible mind around for it to relate to. But for
panpsychists, the latent aspects of this may simply be linking.

In game one can relate this to things
like observation, which clearly effect things outside one's own mind,
creating a link, especially since demons seem to be both natural
forces, but also live in human minds. Which means that in some sense
the human minds and these natural forces are continuous and
functioning as a related thing. These also form into group minds.

**Enactivism** holds that some mental
processes are in part constructed through interaction with the
physical world, and thus mind and environment are part of one loop
which continually creates each other. Some differ on whether this is
near identical to the extended mind thesis, or even whether they are
compatible ideas.

**Phenomenal externalism** suggests
that while the brain may be the main processung unit of experiences,
that their content can in some sense depend on something elsewhere.
Or that the contents of certain intentional states are based on
context. The contents of some beliefs depend on how things are
outside the subject. Some considering these views wonder whether not
only cognition but also the conscious mind could be extended in the
environment.

**Spread mind** is the questioning or
even dismissal of the separation between subject and object, seeing
these as only two incomplete perspectives and descriptions of what is
ultimately the same physical process. It supports a process ontology
that endorses a mind spread physically and spatio-temporally beyond
the skin. Objects are not autonomous as we know them, but rather
actual processes framing our reality. This idea in a sense bears a
similarity to many eastern philosophical concepts of the self.