Why am I me?
Today I got drunk at a pizzaria with my family and I went to the bathroom and had a sort of existential epiphany. I don't know why I'm me. Why this consciousness that is observing itself going to the bathroom is my current self. This is the same self that is writing this discussion. Who am I and what is my experience? Why am I this? I know all of you are conscious but you're not me. So why am I me?
Comments (55)
Quoting Ori
It was not one.
Sorry if I unmasked your false epiphany and showed you it was just the effects of alcohol acting on your mind.
You don't know how I got interested in the topic when I first read the title. But it is difficult to start an argument and take it seriously when your first words are a description of your misuse of high amounts of alcohol.
This is not philosophy, but the delusion of someone under the influence of drugs...
I hope you cleaned it up.
Quoting Ori
Are you asking why you exist? I mean, if you exist then you're bound to be you. So I can only assume that you are asking why you exist.
Well, by the light of reason we can know that all things that exist have either been caused to exist, or they exist uncaused.
So now you know that you have either been caused to exist or you have not been caused to exist. If the former, then your question has an answer. If the latter, then it does not and is ill formed.
As you will recognise if you reflect, you are not divisible. There can be no such thing as 'half' of you. You are whole and indivisible.
Well, if you are indivisible then you have reason to believe that you have not been created, for you have no ingredients that are not you. The ingredients of you, is you alone. Thus there is nothing from which you could have been created.
You can know this by another route as well. Again, if you listen to your reason it will tell you that you have free will. And it will tell you as well that you would not have free will if you were the creation of alien forces, for then you would not be responsible for anything you did or thought.
Thus, your reason tells you, if you care to listen to it, that you are not the creation of alien forces.
So, you have not been caused to exist and thus your question "why am I me?" is confused as it presupposes that you have bene caused to exist.
Enjoy your pizza!
Subjectiveness at its best!
When you less expect, you'll be creating a religion...
Next time, do not post "pseudophilosophy" and then maybe we can discuss. Good day/night.
Now you are suddenly asking me about God and religion, but I am not sure why.
Dan Zahavi is among a group of philosophers who believe that there is a subjectively personal aspect of experiencing. Referencing Nagel’s argument that there is something it is like to be a conscious entity, Zahavi insists that consciousness of anything always includes a dimension of ‘for-meness’. In attempting to account for the subjective dimension of awareness,
Zahavi argues that the for-meness of consciousness in its most primordial form manifests as a self-affecting pre-reflective minimal self-awareness. All conscious experiences are essentially characterized by having a
subjective ‘feel’ to them, that is, a certain quality of ‘what it is like. He contrasts this subjective self-experience
with the apprehension of objects.
What would it mean to believe that you are someone else:
‘I am someone other than myself’.
What are you really asking about, the arbitrariness of identity? Why is there arbitrariness?
:lol:
And what about all the ways your thinking is bound to your culture? If you and a friend travel to a complete different culture you begin to seem all most like one person compares to how different you both are compared to me the way people think in that other culture.
One thought that I have around your question is the whole way in which the child begins to differentiate self from others in childhood. Research suggests that this is a core aspect of development prior to identity formation.
I also wonder how different the sense of 'me' is to the sense of 'I'. The main difference seems to be that 'me' is about reference to oneself as a being whereas the 'I' is more about observer consciousness.
Your question is perhaps another angle on the classic one, who am I?
It is philosophy and it's not a delusion.
Quoting Bartricks
No he isn't. He's asking why he is this one rather than some other one.
Quoting Jack Cummins
He's not asking that one either I don't think.
[quote="Deleuze and Guattari, APT" ]The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd.[/quote]
Everybody's got to be someone, and I guess you just got the short straw. It's sheer bad luck.
And what if you did. You'd be bored of it already. Enjoy the mystery. There's really only two mainstream possibilities anyway, you either earned it (be it a reward or punishment) or it's just a random series of events of no real purpose. Can't go wrong with enjoying the mystery.
It's a question that proposes itself to the mind in all seriousness, but as others have hinted, it actually has no meaning, because there is no conceivable answer that would satisfy. Why is one lump of clay a brick, and another lump a vase? there is no reason, because clay can take any shape.
It's not even a mystery.
That's a different question and much more easily answerable. There can be an explanation in terms of prior causes, a historical story.
EDIT: Whereas if we tell Ori's historical story, he can just say "But why am I this historical story and not another one?"
"There are many bodies, one consciousness" - Anonymous
Grace comes from adversity though. Unless it kills you.
You know those town centre maps that have a label stuck on, "you are here."? These days sat-nav on phones probably does the same job. But when you weren't looking at the static map, you weren't there, so it was always true when you saw it.
"I'm there", says the linguistic animal; "I'm like that". A confusion of map and territory - of word and thing.
It is only philosophy when you're fully conscious, otherwise, is mysticism or anything other than philosophy...
Do you also wonder why number two is number two instead of, say, number three?
Because nobody else wanted to be you.
I suspect not, as that is an entirely different issue.
Philosophy is only philosophy if reflected in a conscience that is counscious and fully aware of its existence. Any kind of mental stimulation induced by toxic and hallucinogenic products is not of a philosophical character as they were not conceived of the "self" own initiative.
I will never understand the thinking of the masses of defending the consumption of something that is toxic to their own existence. Perhaps it is an ego-suppressed suicide attempt? Or maybe you just don't get the point because you don't want to.
In any case, continue with your debate of "pseudophilosophy". My participation in this "discussion" is over.
I'm not defending the consumption of anything. I'm saying its irrelevant to the merit of an idea.
There is a philosophical stance called relationism, which considers time and space like relations, or in plainer terms, "sortings" of objects. In this theory, there is no preferential sense of being in the present moment, because the past is not lost and the future is not unformed, but the reason we think there is an "absolute" present is because each version of our brain in each moment in time is relationally distinct with the other slices from its chronology and believes itself as independently existing. In this same sense, space is relative, and your mind is confined to your grey matter and my mind is confined to mine, but why each of us believes to experience a life of opposition to the other is not because we are ordained fundamentally distinct consciousnesses, but because of the way in which our embodiments are separated with relation to each other. For reference, octopuses have multiple brains in their limbs, each thinking separately, yet they act as a single sentience when it comes to the action of the octopus. Think of us like an octopus who has a split personality disorder. I am not saying that we are not independent personalities and we that shouldn't clash with each other and defend our different points of view when it is necessary, but that this is just nature's game to experiment with the mix of the soup, so to speak.
P.S. Url was leading to the wrong article
Many who do philosophy have the aim of enriching ourselves, including what you might call spirit or soul, rather than accepting the belief we are already fully enriched without considering the negation of ourselves and our existence.
It might have something to do with the fact that language creates a perceived identity within, while the truth is not only are we "in" the mind, but we are "in" the cosmos.
When asked why did you do it, why did you say it or why did you go there, the meaningful answers are based on one's psychological motivation, feelings or dispositions. Because I just wanted, because I didn't understand, because I was to meet her in the cafe etc.
For the examples of "why" questions for the causality of matters could be, "Why does it go faster, when the accelerator is pressed down?" Because more fuel is entering the engine chamber, resulting in faster and more gas explosion. Why does it make sound when the button is pressed? Because it is connected to the speaker, and when the current and voltage flows to it, the cones inside the speaker vibrates etc.
Anything pertaining to metaphysical or ontological questions such as why were you born, why are you you, why am I I, this type of WHY questions cannot yield meaningful answers.
What is the casual story that resulted in you being corvus and not Cheshire?
I was born as "Corvus", and Cheshire was born as "Cheshire". It is not a very meaningful answer, because it is a causal explanation of the origin of individuals in physical existence.
As I said, if I were asked to explain any further than that, as soon as I try to come up with my answers, it will spiral into either religious mysticism, metaphysics or shamanistic stories, which might be meaningful to me, but not to you.
Sure, but that's not what Cheshire would say. Cheshire would say "I was born as Cheshire, and Corvus was born as Corvus." What accounts for these different perspectives? They are different. In the first, the 'I' is Corvus, but in the second the 'I' is Cheshire. Yet there is but one reality. So are these statements in conflict? Is there a trick of language? What's going on?
I'm happy to follow where the logic goes. If that's mysticism or Wooga Wooga-ism, so be it. What does your spirituality say?
I think it is not one reality. Reality is on its own in a closed box of the owner's mind only free in its own imagination and thoughts like the monads of Leibniz, and there are billions and billions of different realities. When the owner of the mind dies, the reality of the owner dies too, evaporates into nothing.
"I" is for the sayer who means the sayer itself, no one else.
:up: