The topic is your assertion that the existence of a persistent sense of self discredits the idea that it is a physical process, and the fact that you have yet to adequately explain why this is the case.
and you are talking about physical processes for consciousness as a means for talking around this subject - hence "what are you talking about?" :shrug:
Well, this was a productive and engaging discussion... Sad to see it being dragged into dumpster like this.
Unlike you, I'm happy to say the words "I don't know" when it comes to explaining some of the more mysterious phenomena that we encounter. But my ignorance concerning matters that are currently beyond explanation doesn't let you off the hook with regard to backing up your earlier claim.
Yes, this isn't supposed to be a purely scientifical question, but a philosophical one (which often deals with the why of stuff). This explains everything about how the body was conceived, but still doesn't answer why I am my body instead of any other body. I can't seem to buy that it simply happened to be you in that body. I realise that it could have been anyone - as there isn't anything special to me that it must be my body. I have a claim (instead of a question of why); I claim that, if I didn't exist before I was born, then anyone could have occupied this body instead of me. The reason I have for the claim is that I wasn't anyone special before I was born. I was nothing at all. Because of that, anyone in the same state as I was (non-existent) has exactly the same chance of occupying this particular body. In fact, everyone that doesn't yet exist was in the exact same state as I was before I existed. I hope you see what I mean, someone... The inescapable result is that I am occupying this body, though, and I'm wondering what process did occur to make this so. But you could help me in answering the claim I was making, along with the reasons for the claim (that if I didn't exist before I was born, then anyone that didn't exist along with me could have occupied that body - reason; since they were in the exact same state). I thought they were nice ramblings. No, that only answers the objective side of things, the subjective side is that anyone that didn't exist with me when I didn't exist could have been this body, but it was me. Yes, I just wonder why those unique physical circumstances represents me instead of anyone else, considering that I was nothing and didn't have any properties that could represent me. In fact, none of the billions of people that didn't exist before this body was born had any properties. So why me out of those billions? I might have existed before should those physical circumstances have happened earlier (most of the things that happen in the universe happen more than once - if not all of them - there are great redundancy in the universe). Why I would start to exist just because of a certain physical circumstance is beyond me, simply because there is nothing to differ me from anyone else when I don't exist. Why couldn't the same physical circumstance represent someone else instead? I realise that the self must be represented by someone, I just don't see how a set of physical circumstances could make me exist in this body instead of any other body. What is so unique about me that it can only be represented by this unique body? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!, I'm sure I'm not a pseudo-McCoy. I could be though, any number of existences could be within me at this moment and I wouldn't even know about it since they too are acting and experiencing this world just the same way as I am. I wonder how many people could be watching and acting the very same movements as I am. Lol, no I don't want to get out of my body, I'm quite happy to be this particular person. There are times that I want to escape though, when I've got myself in trouble...perhaps I would like to escape my body when I die, witnessing your own death must be the most horrible thing, like if you fall off a cliff and know the end is coming. I hope I die in my sleep or something. Yet, we only die once, I hope it's not going to be a slow process though. Enough of that, it could be an adventure too, the last frontier - going to face up to the unknown. The fragments are probably buried deep in their minds, someone told me that every part of life is "recorded", under hypnosis many things can be retrieved that we had forgotten. I respect your answer as well, I just wanted to add that it's probably a good thing having a system to overlook all that traffic so that they can call officials when there are problems in the traffic and so on. I can't remember it either, my guess is that what controls what we should remember didn't judge it important enough, or that what controls what we should remember wasn't fully developed yet. I agree, it's probably a very safe place to be. I believe that we fill the gaps of what is missing in that quilt so that the fragments are "re-buildt" from associations with those fragments. We seldom perceive ourselves as being fragmented in the way you describe, instead I think we build a lot of "fake memories" to compensate for the gaps, so that we feel like a whole person. Yes, that's just it, I can perceive the physical processes as much as I want but I wouldn't be able to find myself in there Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!, I could only find that those systems react to what I'm seeing, or those systems react to what I am feeling, but where is the feeling itself? Where is what I am seeing? If I perceive of a green apple I could find that the system responds to green and apple, but where is that color and where is that apple that I am perceiving? On what canvas does the brain paint the picture of what I see? I can sometimes feel like that, very seldom though. Clearly enough unsettling to start to question it, at times. But often I question things because I find it fascinating. I hope so, same to you. I want to contribute to the understanding that might eventually help me should I find myself in that position. Selfish, I know. But there are also many unselfish motives, I won't step in the way of the one in need that also would be helped in understanding these things. I also want to contribute to the realisation that the mentally retarded or mentally insane are as much lucid as us. In fact, we all are - we just focus on different things. Lucidity is to exist. But I guess that's only my opinion.
The only way its not off the hook is if you can explain consciousness as a physical process. As things stand, selfhood doesn't undergo the radical changes that the body does ... hence one can talk about one's body 20 years ago and what not (and not merely as an etymological construct) :shrug:
Yes, I realise this, the only difference would be that I would have a completely different life! Of course I'm not questioning that this is my body, I'm just questioning why out of all other possible bodies that I could have been instead. To say that I couldn't be any other body, is to say that there is something to be me that is apart from the body - how else could this body distinguish me from anyone else when anyone else had exactly the same properties as me before I was born (which is no properties at all)? If the body is me, in particular, then there must be something equally particular to me without the body.
It doesn't? Are you still the same person you were as a child? Have you not "grown" as you've become an adult? Oh wait, never mind... I've read your posts, you may be a bad example.
The problem with this assertion is that it doesn't explain how one still has the same "you" despite having a range of bodies from infancy to old age.
Might pay to read some of those posts ... unless you think you had a different self as context when you were a child (dunno ... maybe you were possessed by aliens or something) :shrug:
Yes, but they weren't always. When my body didn't exist so didn't I exist either. For me to occupy this body - in particular - must mean that there is something equally particular to me without the body, or anyone could have been that body (and call it "my" body). What is obvious can be blinding.
I didn't claim that I could explain consciousness. I can't. I'm not even saying that I am entirely certain that it can be explained in physical terms. What I did do was challenge you on an assertion by pointing out that your reasoning wasn't sufficient to demonstrate the truth of it. And it still isn't, for the reasons I've previously stated. To reiterate, there doesn't seem to be a reason why a persistent physical process can't be sustained within a larger system that changes over time. Therefore the assertion that it is the persistent nature of "selfhood" that necessarily renders it as something that must be unphysical doesn't carry a lot of weight. At best, it is merely speculation.
In this paragraph you say you don't know yet in the next your argument rests on the assumption that consciousness is a physical process. Make up your mind :shrug: then I guess you now not only have to explain how a consciousness can be a physical process but how a persistent physical process can be sustained by a larger system that changes literally from the ground up every 10 or so years. ...You certainly aren't making this any easier for yourself ....
which brings us back tot he point of us all having a singular "you" yet a body that literally changes at every moment. :shrug:
No. In my subsequent paragraph I wasn't making that assumption at all. I merely pointed out that "there doesn't seem to be a reason why a persistent physical process can't be sustained within a larger system that changes over time". I wasn't asserting that the self is definitely a physical process, only that the quality of persistence, by itself, doesn't seem to render it a necessarily unphysical one. What you're essentially doing now is disingenuously avoiding the core issue (which is the veracity of a claim that you made) by trying to paint all of my responses as definitive statements (which they are not), so you can then challenge them instead. I know it, you know it, everyone reading this knows it.
so you are or are not suggesting that consciousness is the persistent physical process? :shrug: What you're essentially doing now is disingenuously avoiding the core issue (which is the veracity of a claim that you made) by trying to paint all of my responses as definitive statements (which they are not), so you can then challenge them instead. I know it, you know it, everyone reading this knows it.[/QUOTE] huh? find that core issue where I said that the self is essentially non-physical.
Look, it's really simple. If you can't explain why a persistent physical process can't be sustained within a larger physical system, then you haven't done any significant damage to the argument that the self is simply a property of such a persistent physical process. Certainly not by focusing on the quality of continuity, anyway.
