From G. F. R. Ellis’s, Cosmology and Verifiability:
The problem with determining [the structure of the universe] is centered on the fact that there is only one universe to be observed, and that we effectively can only observe it from one space-time point. Because it is a unique object, we cannot infer its probable nature by comparing it with similiar objects; and we are unable to choose the time or position from which we view it. Our predicament is analogous to that of a premaritime man living on a small island in an ocean, who observes around him a host of other small islands apparently scattered at random on a seemingly limitless sea. Unable to move from his island, his theory of the world in which he lives can only be based on this partial view.
I wonder: how is this analogous to the manner in which we come to understand who we think we are—to the manner in which we come to view the world around us as “I”?
In a sense “I” am also isolated on an “island”. No one has ever lived my life as I have; and thus no one can really understand the world the way I do. There are just too many variables coalescing, conflicting, colliding—a virtual infinity of existential permutations.
But unlike the islanders in Ellis’s metaphor, I can get up and go…I can explore other islands [people] by observing what goes on and by asking questions; and by accummulating and collating my perceptions [my experiences] into conceptual contraptions that can be defended as more or less reasonable.
Still, just as there is [as far as we know] only one universe we are trying to understand from “inside” it, we can’t detach our “self” from our existential roots in order to garner the necessary objectivity to delineate where “I” and “all that is other than I” begin and end. How are the two parts actually intertwined? What can we know about this relationship objectively? Especially in acknowledging how the relationships are constantly shifting about and becoming entangled in all manner of contingency, chance and change—in all manner of fabrication and refabrication.
To me this is obvious. It’s just commonsense. But the implications of it are deeply disturbing to others and they insist that, on the contrary, who they think they are is who they should think they are. It is who they are.
This is an incredibly naive, in my view.
As though everything “out there” revolved around our own point of view. Instead of how it almost certainly really is: the other way around.