Open Individualism, Parfit, and Buddhist No-Self
Regarding personal identity, I mostly agree with Parfit that identity itself may not matter as much as we usually think. What matters is psychological continuity, such as memory, character, and other mental connections. From a reductionist physicalist view, there is no additional “further fact” about personal identity beyond these relations.
Open Individualism seems to accept many of Parfit’s arguments, but I am not sure how it can go beyond Parfit without adding the kind of metaphysical assumption he rejects. If there is no deep further fact about personal identity, how can we argue for a constant identity, even if it is universalized so that everyone is ultimately the same subject?
In this sense, Open Individualism sounds almost like a real-self view expanded to include everyone. But that seems close to the kind of view that Buddhist no-self doctrine tries to overcome. As I understand it, Buddhism does not replace the individual self with one larger universal self. It questions whether there is such a self at all.
I am also not sure Open Individualism gives a stronger ethical message than Parfit or Buddhism. Parfit’s view already weakens egoistic concern, and Buddhism can support compassion without appealing to a metaphysical self. So I wonder whether Open Individualism adds something genuinely new, or whether it either reintroduces a self or collapses back into something like Parfit’s view.