Why is this my body?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Cyperium, Jun 25, 2012.

  1. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Because this body has the hole you put food in. It really is as simple as that.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2012
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  3. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    Try not thinking of yourself as something that was waiting to inhabit some random body. Instead, think of yourself as something that first emerged as a result of unique physical circumstances.

    For billions of years you didn't exist. Similarly, there will be several billion people who exist in a hundred years or so that there is no trace of now. They don't exist yet. There is no they (yet). When new people do emerge, just like you they are who they are because of unique physical circumstances.

    Ground the self in a particular slice of physicality, and this conundrum of yours goes away.
     
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  5. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Cyperium,

    Sheherazade covered the era when you were just a twinkle in your father's eye. Someone had to be you. Fortunately it's you, not someone else, or we'd all be talking to a pseudo-Cyperium, thinking that we had the real McCoy. Of course, you could be pseudo-McCoy and not really know it either, in which case we're all being taken for a ride, particularly if this is endemic, or just part and parcel to living in a brain stem.

    There seems to be a hint of misgiving in the question "why am I in this body?" It begs the follow-up: "how do I get out of here?"

    Besides the bodies that are inhabited by too many ("this town's not big enough for the both if us") selves, you also have a passel of people who can't account for some or all of themselves. So where are they? Or: where all those missing fragments? Let's hope they're not stuffed away in the cobwebs of the minds of those of us who have said at least once "I feel so together..." or (worse) "I know who I am!" and "There but for misfortune go you or I."

    Odd, isn't it? -- that the sense of self seems to dwell in the brain stem, of all places. This is right near all the traffic up and down the spinal column. That would be like deliberately taking up residence overlooking a downtown freeway. But why? Probably that's just about all reptiles had going for them, and they needed at least some rudimentary sense of reptilian-self. After all, a snake's got to be in the heat of the moment, or it doesn't stand a chance. And really, the twinkle in their papas' infrared detectors dates back to their ancestral notochords and the most primitive ganglia. In fact, you cut your embryonic eye teeth as a notochord, and from thence the stem-stem cells that allocated a blivet on the embyonic disk already had you marked for being you, and became you, even while you slept (or whatever you call that thumbsucking belly kicking state you were in before you really became you). So far I can't say I've met anyone who actually recalls being there the day they were rudely discharged, so who knows where we are when we miss the most significant moments of our lives. At least it was the quintessentially existential paradox of becoming, yet somehow still being.

    The good thing (unless you're severely ill, or in pain) about being locked up in the brain stem is that it's about as safe a place as any, being so deeply embedded, not only virtually bt aslo phycially (other than the relative fragility of the cervical spine). Whether or not you can take solace from being in a safe haven of sorts, it does present for some the problematics of surgically removing any extra personalities if indeed they turn out some day to have distinct physical addresses.

    What's kind of ironic is that so many of the trappings of what it means to be you are scattered around in the cortex, just chomping at the bit to be "self-actualized". Yet they are somehow more virtual in aspect than the core being, since they are just built on snippets from your life, whether it was a bad experience, like getting rapped on the knuckles with a teacher's ruler, or some other kind of awakening, like going on your first date, or maybe even the first time you saw the spitting image of you pop out of the oven, totally selfish, not too far from being completely self actualized, that is, in the self-initialized sense. In a way the patchwork quilt that seems to be you is hardly you at all. In fact it's literally peripheral to the real you.

    We could talk about the microcosm of the brain stem. Meld that into some deep tranceful meditation and you could try to really find yourself. Maybe 30 minutes of staring at microphotographs of the tangle of neurons and glial cells that form the pons might be productive. You could try this while acclimating to an ultraviolet ambient, then switch abruptly to red for a while, just to see if the reptilian receptors might be ever so slightly coaxed into stimulation.

    Of course, the other side of this discussion is that you feel you've found yourself, and it's just unsettling that you're locked in there with no real hope of escape. (Apologies if you tend to be claustrophobic).

    There doesn't seem to be much other room for navigating your neural network, or particularly for making the connection between synapse and self, other than the observation that when synaptic activity ceases, so do you. But may you live long and prosper.

    Besides all of those caveats, you're obviously lucid, just to be able to formulate these questions. That's certainly more than some people get out of life. All in all, you may be doing better than expected, particularly if you continue to know at least this much about yourself as you age. With all the dementia, Alzheimer's, and a physician's desk reference full of possible assaults on the "real" you--or at least on your neural-glial incarnation of the virtual synaptic interface (whatever that is)--you're probably in as good a position as you will ever be to ask these pertinent questions now, before they become the kinds of questions you wish weren't hounding you.
     
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  7. Balerion Banned Banned

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    You just blew my mind.

    Er, my neural-glial incarnation of the virtual synaptic interface, anyway.
     
  8. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    So he is this particular body because he is this particular body.
    :shrug:
     
  9. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    Master Exploder!

    Seriously, nothing like a humorous aside to balance out some heavy philosophizing.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2012
  10. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    I guess the easiest way to discredit this claim is to point out how a sense of selfhood remains the same throughout the process of infancy to old age (unless you think your memories of childhood actually belong to someone else )
    :shrug:
     
  11. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    I guess the easiest way to discredit this claim is to point out that I still have scars I acquired as a toddler.
     
  12. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Yes.
     
  13. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    Consciousness is a process that is intrinsically linked to the passage of time. For as long as that process continues, there will be continuity. How does this continuity demonstrate that it's not a physical process?
     
  14. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    perhaps that would make sense if you are still wearing diapers too
    :shrug:
     
  15. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    and that's the point - selfhood has a continuity that neither grows or diminishes (in terms of self as context) while the body is quite the contrary ... this is the main part of the problem of explaining consciousness purely in terms of physical processes
     
  16. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Do you deny that your body has a continuity that extends back to your infancy? I was circumsized as an infant, the body I inhabit is still circumsized...
     
  17. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    hmmmm ... Brainy!!!!
     
  18. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, I know - it can be frustrating having to explain the obvious.
     
  19. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    The objection you raised was specific. That the continuity of the sense of self discredits the idea that it is a physical process. But you still haven't really explained how this is the case. Just because a persistent physical process is occurring within a larger physical system that deteriorates doesn't mean that that persistent physical process isn't actually physical. Some physical processes are more robust than others.
     
  20. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    For efficiency of space, I have only brought forward your first paragraph. (That, and your cute summary of my efforts at communication, lol....

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    I am in awe of your proficiency with language and metaphor. :worship:

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  21. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    do you deny that the scar tissue you have by now doesn't have one original cell in it from your toddler years?
    or why even that, if you can speculate about the body you might have had minus scar tissue you've already proved my point ...
    :shrug:
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2012
  22. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    yeah - logical fallacies tend to be quite obvious .....
    :shrug:
     
  23. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    Physical processes for consciousness?
    what are you talking about?
     

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