Cosmological Recurrence

Cosmological recurrence begins with a simple assumption: the universe is cyclic, or otherwise generates infinitely many cosmological realizations.

Because a particular conscious worldline occurs, the physical conditions necessary for its existence are physically possible. If the number of physically possible states is finite while cosmological realizations are infinite, exact recurrence follows. Configurations that occur once must eventually occur again.

Under such conditions, entire universes may arise that reproduce a conscious worldline exactly. Every particle arrangement, neural process, memory, perception, thought, emotion, and experience is identical. The entire spacetime structure of the life is reproduced without deviation.

Any deviation, however small, would generate a different worldline and therefore a different person. Only exact recurrence qualifies.

Recurrence is often imagined incorrectly as occurring within a larger temporal sequence. On that picture, one life ends, vast stretches of time pass, and an identical life appears later. The present theory rejects this framework.

If the entire universe recurs, then spacetime itself recurs. The recurrence is not something that happens within time. It is a recurrence of the structure that contains time.

There is therefore no external temporal dimension in which one occurrence waits for another. The complete spacetime structure is reproduced. Recurrence should not be understood as the production of a later copy within a larger history. It is the re-instantiation of the same worldline whenever the cosmos reproduces that structure exactly.

Recurrence is often described as the creation of a copy. This description is misleading because it presupposes a distinction between the person and the worldline.

A copy is ordinarily understood as something that resembles an original while remaining numerically distinct from it. But under the present theory, the person is not something over and above the worldline. The person is the worldline.

Consequently, if a conscious worldline is reproduced without deviation, the recurrence cannot be distinguished from the original person by appeal to any feature contained within the conscious life itself. To describe the recurrence as merely a copy therefore requires the introduction of some additional bearer of identity beyond the worldline. The theory rejects this assumption.

The correct description is simply that the worldline exists wherever it is instantiated. And because the conscious life is identical to the worldline, the conscious life exists wherever the worldline exists.

Objectively, entire cosmological histories may separate recurrences. Subjectively, no interval is experienced.

Experience exists only where the conscious worldline exists. The absence of consciousness is not itself an experience. It is simply the absence of experience.

Consequently, recurrence requires no continuously existing subject connecting occurrences. The existence of the worldline alone is sufficient. There is no darkness between lives, no waiting, and no passage through nonexistence.

From an external perspective, one may describe a worldline as occurring in the first cycle, the millionth cycle, or the trillionth cycle. One may also describe two identical worldlines as located in different regions of a larger cosmos. These labels are useful for external bookkeeping, but they are not contained within the worldline itself.

Every memory, perception, thought, emotion, and experience remains identical. If identity is exhausted by the complete worldline, then no additional fact remains that could distinguish one exact recurrence from another.

Occurrence number and cosmological location are therefore not properties of the person. They are merely external descriptions imposed from outside the structure itself. Identity belongs to the worldline alone.

A further objection concedes that occurrence number and cosmological location do not constitute differences within the conscious worldline itself. The critic nevertheless maintains that two completely identical worldlines may correspond to two distinct persons simply because there are two instances rather than one.

Suppose two conscious worldlines are completely identical. Every experience, memory, perception, thought, emotion, causal relation, temporal relation, and structural feature of the conscious life is identical. Nothing contained within either worldline differs from the other.

The critic then asserts that the worldlines correspond to different persons because they are numerically distinct instances. But this assertion does not identify any feature of either worldline. It introduces no difference in experience, memory, perception, thought, emotion, causal organization, or temporal structure. It merely applies different labels to structures that are otherwise identical.

To claim that two completely identical worldlines nevertheless correspond to different persons therefore requires a further fact beyond the worldline itself. Absent an account of what that further fact consists in, the claim remains unsupported.

A conscious worldline contains its earliest conscious experiences and its final conscious experiences. If the worldline recurs exactly, then the complete sequence of experiences that constitutes that life exists again.

This does not mean that a subject survives death and awakens at birth. The theory posits no enduring observer separate from the worldline. Rather, the ordered birth-to-death structure itself is what the subject is.

Death is not followed by an experienced darkness, waiting period, or passage through nonexistence. Nonexistence contains no experience. The absence of consciousness is not something that is lived through. It is simply the absence of experience.

Thus, from the standpoint of consciousness, there is never anything except the experiences contained within the worldline itself. The worldline exists where it exists. Experience exists where the worldline exists.