who is "me"?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by purple_hairstreak, Apr 4, 2003.

  1. purple_hairstreak My true colours clash Registered Senior Member

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    hey all...got a q for u...it just struck me... we say "my hand" "my heart" , "my leg", "my brain" and "my soul"...so all these belong to me. so, who is this "me"....which part of me is "me" if everything physical belongs to "me" including the soul???? am i being clear enough?
     
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  3. everneo Re-searcher Registered Senior Member

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    It is a very difficult process once u reach a certain stage when u go on rejecting 'hand is not me', 'leg is not me', etc. all the best. when u find the truth pl tell me..!
     
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  5. Charles Fleming Registered Senior Member

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    Good question! One which sounds simple enough but I'd like to hear anyone reply and pin down a definition. I'd say it's what we think or know about ourself, which I would also say can come from other people a lot. People tell us what and who we are and this is almost unavoidable i.e. everyone has been a child! But even when we are older a lot depends on chance i.e. the experiences that define the person will have quite a lot to do with chance. Times and places, meeting people etc. all contribute. Someone who was near the twin towers on 9/11 will undoubtedly have taken away a new 'them' with them. Someone who saw it on the television will have too, but I doubt it will have been a change on a similar level. Cognitive reasoning will also effect an individuals 'me'. The person who saw the 9/11 crash on television could maybe understand how that could have been them, to a given degree.

    Even as an elder we have been labelled and it is if we try to break this labelling that we are forced to accept a new 'me'. We are forced to stick with the old or stick with the new. I prefer to pick my own labels.

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    . If people want answers then they should find their own answers, not ask other people for them!

    A lot goes into the 'me' in people. To consider 'the truth' i.e., to consider everything from a universal context, then no-one can possibly fully understand, or even know, what their-self actually is (imo).
     
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  7. slimshady2357 Registered Member

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    If you can, check out 'The Ghost in the Machine' by Gilbert Ryle.

    It talks about this a little in an easy to understand way and could get you thinking along some different and interesting lines.

    Of course, if you're well familiar with philosophy, it's a light read. But I think it can spark some new ideas at least

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    He uses an example of someone being shown around a university. At the end the man says something like "OK, you've shown me the library, the physics building, the gymnasium, the math building, etc.... but where is the university."

    He parallels that with someone asking "Ok, there is my legs, my arms, my heart, my brain, etc.... but where is the me or the *I*?"

    I'm not sure I agree with all he says, but it's an interesting starting point I think

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    Adam
     
  8. Canute Registered Senior Member

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    Ryle will try and persuade you that there is no 'me', which to most people seems ludicrous. However some agree with him. It is more a metaphysical view than a scientific one, since there isn't a shred of objective evidence for this view, nor has any been found by Ryle's successors. As someone once said - absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
     
  9. slimshady2357 Registered Member

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    It is definitely a metaphysical theory, as is the one that there is some kind of 'me' beyond the physical.

    I would say that more than just 'some' people agree with him, however I am not one of them

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    There can be NO evidence for metaphysical theories, none beyond rhetoric anyway

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    Adam
     
  10. Canute Registered Senior Member

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    Slimshady - "There can be NO evidence for metaphysical theories, none beyond rhetoric anyway."
    I couldn't agree with that. However I suppose it does depend on how you define 'metaphysical theory'.
     
  11. slimshady2357 Registered Member

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    I think it might come down to how we define evidence, but I could be wrong.

    I would say that a metaphysical theory is one that involves entities which are non-physical. Thus, entities that cannot be observed on any level.

    How would you define it?

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    And I'm well used to people not agreeing with me

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    Adam
     
  12. purple_hairstreak My true colours clash Registered Senior Member

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    hey guys, thanks! this is very interesting and i am new to philosophy...can you suggest some good books? keep the messages pouring in!
     
  13. Canute Registered Senior Member

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    Roughly speaking I would say that metaphysics is what should come before physics. It is the attempt to explain BOTh the physical and the mental aspects of existence.

    Entities that are non-physical can be observed. We do it every day. Theyare called qualia in philosophy, thoughts and experiences in day to day speak.

    Because entities cannot be observed by science it does not follow that nothing can be said or known about them, although I suppose that science would prefer it if it did mean that.

    'Nothing comes from nothing' is a good example.
     
  14. Charles Fleming Registered Senior Member

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    I'm not sure if I fully believe in metaphysics. This relates to the idea that the soul is something that will live on when we die and therefore somehow is 'us' or 'me' doesn't it? I will take it to mean this. I think physicality, i.e. the brain as an objective being, constitutes or at least contains what 'we' are. Having said this, however, our imagination must also play a part. Because imagination can create anything then this must give an individual some context to 'them'; and while it is normal to be able to distinguish between what is real and what is not, much of what we are told and taught as children is taken without a want to disbelieve it. I'm sure that every child want's to believe in Fairy-tale endings, The tooth-fairy and father Christmas and there are other areas of childhood tales which still form the basis of our values, but it would be a lot of effort to go back an unravel them. Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Scrooge and there are many more. A lot of these stories and even nursery rhymes (Incy-wincy spider scaring a girl, 'Sugar and Spice and all things nice, that's what girls are made of, frogs and snails and '???' qails, that's what boys are made of', Jack and Jill, The Princess who kissed a frog and it turned into a prince) could be what have contributed to gender roles today, although alternatively it could be that the role-models where inserted after gender had been established naturally.

    It makes me curious how much of this relates back to the Chinese and their Yin-Yang symbol, which symbolizes a belief in a bipolar universe.
     
  15. Canute Registered Senior Member

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    You can't not believe in metaphysics. It would be like not believing in mathematics. There is no standard view about eternal existence in metaphysics, it is just one of the questions which metaphysics tries to address.

    The 'bipolar' universe is the one we live in, AKA the world of appearances. There is nothing non-dual known to science or perceived by any of us, and there never will be. (Although theoretically we can experience something non-dual). In philosophy the inevitability of Yin and Yang is known as the inevitability of 'epistimelogical dualism'.

    Metaphysics is not the idle adoption of beliefs in fairy tales. Done properly it is more rigorous and produces more certain conclusions than physics. Roughly speaking this is because it is founded on deduction rather than induction.
     
  16. utahraptor Registered Member

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    The word Metaphysical comes from the greek. "meta" meaning beyond, and "phusis" meaning something like nature. Literally beyond nature and the physical. There are not going to be any measurable or testable statistics. So a metaphysical theory is not going to be empirical, but it will be your own search and (hopefully) discovery of your definition of being.
     
  17. Canute Registered Senior Member

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    Do you not allow deductive proofs then? After all we can't make any theories at all without going well beyond 'measurable and testable statistics'.
     
  18. slimshady2357 Registered Member

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    Adam
     
  19. slimshady2357 Registered Member

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    Sure, deductive proofs are allowed, but the truth of the conclusions is bounded by the truth of the premises. In metaphysics there is no way to determine the truth of the premises.

    Adam
     
  20. slimshady2357 Registered Member

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    Adam
     
  21. Canute Registered Senior Member

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    All our perceptions and conceptions are dual. This is because they all take the form of co-ordinate measurements on some dimension or other (this hot, this high, this round etc) and each of those dimensions has two opposite poles. It is because of this that non-duality is the basis for Buddhism, since experience itself is the only thing that can be non-dual. It why Plato et al considered phenomenal reality to be simply a world of appearances and not the real thing. It is also why existence is generally considered to be monist at the most fundamental level, since something that is ontologically dual just begs the question of what common substance they are made out of. Monism is also the only thing that ends the endless regress of reductionist views of existence.

    QUOTE "I am well familiar with qualia, however to just assert that they are non-physical is of course begging the question. And besides, I think you think I mean 'material' when what I had in mind was 'physical'. There is a significant difference between Materialism and Physicalism."
    You can argue that qualia are physically caused, but I don't think you can argue that they are physical. Even Dennet doesn't go that far.
    Could you explain the difference between 'material' and 'physical' for me. I thought they were the same thing.



    I agree dualism is still debated, but it is usually in a specific context, for instance mind and brain, rather than as an overall conception. If you generalise it you soon see that all our knowledge (as opposed to direct experience) is dual. Time itself is a dual concept since there is before an after.

    An example of a metaphysical proposition is physical determinism. (cf Dupree - http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000341/00/FREEDOM.htm) All of our knowledge has metaphysical assumptions underlying it. In a trivial way this is true because we cannot actually prove that the physical world is not a delusion, we just assume it, or at least most of us do.
     
    Last edited: Apr 8, 2003
  22. Canute Registered Senior Member

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    Descartes would not have agreed but maybe you're right. However the same is true of all systems of reasoning, mathematics and science included. That's the problem with premises.
     
  23. slimshady2357 Registered Member

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    I don't mind being in disagreement with Descartes on some things

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    I agree with that totally

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    I think what I was trying to get at is why you would believe that a metaphysical conclusion would be more certain that a physical one.

    Ultimately the physical conclusion does also rest on unprovable metaphysical premises. Ones about cause and effect, objective reality, etc...

    But the physical conclusions are from a subset of reasoning within that 'unprovable' framework. Within that reference frame, they are testable.

    Metaphysical conclusions which are also based on metaphysical premises, cannot be tested.

    Why would you have a higher degree of confidence in their truth?

    So I'm still wondering what you had in mind when you said:

    I think, suddenly, it has struck me what you might be thinking

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    Are you saying that metaphysical conclusions are reached through logical deduction alone? As though (to be rather extreme) you could use logical notation to show how the premises will always lead to the conclusion?

    I'm wondering if the ideas contained in metaphysics could even be so precisely defined as to exclude entirely a need for rhetoric and persuasion.

    I would think not. But is that what you are suggesting? Not that the initial premises could be known to be true, but that the conclusion could be known to be certain and the proofs have the level of rigour of logic/mathematics?

    I think you would need to be saying something like that for you to be more certain of a metaphysical conclusion than a physical one.

    Adam
     

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