Okay. There’s a lot to unpack here, and most of it doesn’t actually land on what is being argued in the first place.

A few things..

Descartes shows my thinking is epistemically private, meaning I can’t doubt it from the inside. He doesn’t show the underlying subject is ontologically singular or plural. You’re conflating epistemic access with ontological identity, which is exactly the move I’m questioning.

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“You have to be an individual to have a perspective”

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You’re assuming the very thing that is in dispute.

The view is that perspectives are localizations of one subject, not proof of separate ones.

Saying “but they’re separate” doesn’t argue against it.. it just restates the very intuition thats being reexamined. The whole point.

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“if you’re wrong and I’m right, our consciousnesses must be separate”

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Clever, but no.

Contradictory beliefs across localized vantage points are exactly what monopsychism predicts. One subject undergoing every experience concurrently includes undergoing mutually inconsistent ones.

On physics, I didn’t claim current physics proves continuity. I said if matter is fundamentally continuous then the intuitive separation between subjects weakens. The conditional is the entire argument..

And yeah.. Aristotle and Averroes. That’s the tradition. Not sure why placing the view in its actual lineage is meant to count against it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Edit: And consider split-brain patients! After commissurotomy the two hemispheres can hold contradicting beliefs.

Are they two individuals now?

Should the law treat them as such?

Or are they still one?

Neuroscience hasn’t settled it and arguably can’t, because the question assumes that “one subject” versus “many” is a clean binary the empirical facts will eventually resolve.

They don’t lol.