You are not your body!
In the 3 months I have been using TPF and read about a hundred of posts, I came to the conclusion that people in here, in their greatest majority, believe that all mental activity is happening in the brain. This obviously means that there's nothing else in a human being or life than a body, since the brain is part of it and it is it which according to these people directs their lives and existence. I am a democratic person and respect the opinion of the majority. But I cannot help asking some questions:
The first, and very obvious question is, "If you are a body, then why do you say 'my body', 'I have a body', and so on?" You can't be a body and have a body at the same time, can you?
So, a second question follows as a consequence, "If you have a body, then what are YOU?"
At this point, a lot would answer (I know that, it happens often), "Ah, the 'I', the 'self' is an illusion. It's a product/projection of the mind (meaning 'brain', of course)". To them I respond, "Is that which is YOU at this moment, who does this and that, YOU who have grown up from a baby and did all these things in your life, YOU who was a good student, YOU who have won medals in athletics and prizes in contests, YOU who got married and had children, YOU who became a president of a company, YOU whom will still be in the memories of people who knew YOU, after you pass away, YOU ... Is all that an illusion? That is, YOU don't exist and have never existed?"
Do people who communicate with you feel that they communicate with a brain or with a person? Right this person, is YOU. YOU, as a human being, the same YOU since you were born, not your body, which is in constant change. You can trace YOURSELF in your mind since you were a child to this moment. It is always ONE thing. You may have felt millions of different emotions, various injuries and sickness since you were a child, but it is still, always YOU who have been subjected to all that.
So, what is this YOU? It is the spirit, soul, elan vital and other names people have given to the vital principle, the animating force and the identity itself of the human being.
Thinking that you are your body is like a car driver who gives so much importance to his car (he can't live without it, etc.) that he eventual believes he is that car! On a higher level, the driver knows he is separate from his car but he still believes that his body drives the car. Yes, like a robot in science-fiction movies! Which made me think of another question regarding the impossibility of the idea that the person is his body: In that case science could clone persons, not just their body, but every trait of their personality, their behavioral characteristics, their medical history, all their memories, in short the whole package! Well, good luck with it!
Now, one can examine the subject using theories belonging to the philosophy of mind, and more specifically "dualism": "the theory that the mental and the physical – or mind and body or mind and brain – are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). But this is not in my plan. My intention was only to prove that the belief of "We are our bodies" is nonsensical and unsubstantiated. And I'm really surprised that most people in here prefer to stick to such a belief than, not to believe but, just leaving another door open to the explanation of the mind-body connection. I can understand that this is not Science's task, since for it only material things exist, but for independent philosophical thinkers?
The first, and very obvious question is, "If you are a body, then why do you say 'my body', 'I have a body', and so on?" You can't be a body and have a body at the same time, can you?
So, a second question follows as a consequence, "If you have a body, then what are YOU?"
At this point, a lot would answer (I know that, it happens often), "Ah, the 'I', the 'self' is an illusion. It's a product/projection of the mind (meaning 'brain', of course)". To them I respond, "Is that which is YOU at this moment, who does this and that, YOU who have grown up from a baby and did all these things in your life, YOU who was a good student, YOU who have won medals in athletics and prizes in contests, YOU who got married and had children, YOU who became a president of a company, YOU whom will still be in the memories of people who knew YOU, after you pass away, YOU ... Is all that an illusion? That is, YOU don't exist and have never existed?"
Do people who communicate with you feel that they communicate with a brain or with a person? Right this person, is YOU. YOU, as a human being, the same YOU since you were born, not your body, which is in constant change. You can trace YOURSELF in your mind since you were a child to this moment. It is always ONE thing. You may have felt millions of different emotions, various injuries and sickness since you were a child, but it is still, always YOU who have been subjected to all that.
So, what is this YOU? It is the spirit, soul, elan vital and other names people have given to the vital principle, the animating force and the identity itself of the human being.
Thinking that you are your body is like a car driver who gives so much importance to his car (he can't live without it, etc.) that he eventual believes he is that car! On a higher level, the driver knows he is separate from his car but he still believes that his body drives the car. Yes, like a robot in science-fiction movies! Which made me think of another question regarding the impossibility of the idea that the person is his body: In that case science could clone persons, not just their body, but every trait of their personality, their behavioral characteristics, their medical history, all their memories, in short the whole package! Well, good luck with it!
Now, one can examine the subject using theories belonging to the philosophy of mind, and more specifically "dualism": "the theory that the mental and the physical – or mind and body or mind and brain – are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). But this is not in my plan. My intention was only to prove that the belief of "We are our bodies" is nonsensical and unsubstantiated. And I'm really surprised that most people in here prefer to stick to such a belief than, not to believe but, just leaving another door open to the explanation of the mind-body connection. I can understand that this is not Science's task, since for it only material things exist, but for independent philosophical thinkers?
Comments (308)
I think that your question is interesting and it involves the personal aspect of the mind and body problem . We are embodied beings, but personal identity is so much more. My own view is that the body is a starting point from which we begin, but the scope of imagination may be the starting point for so much more, which includes the sensory aspects of existence and experience, but the scope may go beyond into the outer regions beyond the limits of the physical aspects which arise in brain as the physical hardware of consciousness.
You are nothing but your body. The brain is not part of you. It merely constitutes your inner world. Matter is more strange than you think. Than your thoughts show you. Matter's nature can't be known, though it can be felt. You are what you eat.
So you don't accept that dualism? Are you neither your body or your mind, but something which is neither?
I haven't understand this and since you keep following the discussions from the threads you open. If you can save me some time and answer me this. Since I read many posts from your threads but not enough as to clarify this :
Do most people here on TPF agree that thoughts, ideas etc (mind in general) is non psychical? Or the majority believes it belongs to psychical world(material) ?I don't mean if they think that brain is mind or not?Or if thinking takes place in brain.
But to that specific question. About thoughts(mind) and psychical-material.
From the responses you got from all the 3 threads you opened about that issue what you got? I know I m being lazy here but I m curious about what most here believe. But even if you don't respond it's cool.
In fact according to your factuality.
And all that interaction you think it leaves that "output" you mentioned the same?? I mean your body continuously interact with the environment. All that interaction and the "feedback" that your body - brain gets, leaves the output still the same? Output = body again then?
If yes I think you should just say "I m my body" then. And end of story.Why you needed to add the environment interaction factor?
Just asking.
Someone who has a body. Like, everybody we know, including you.
Embodiment is not a trivial matter. Embodiment has very ancient roots, and there is continuity across time. Life on earth arose once; it didn't arise repeatedly after extinctions. Some creatures survived horrendous environmental conditions, and everything that is alive now (and embodied) are descendants of the survivors.
Complex animals with complex central nervous systems. Muscles, blood, skin, bones, brains, minds.
There is nothing "mere" about bodies. We are amazing systems.
This is an important starting point. A racing car driver can feel their car as an extension to their body. We can all feel the world around us in ways such as we know when something is within our personal space and when it is just beyond our reach.
So selfhood - as something embodied and biological - is a "selfish" point of view. It starts from the absolute necessity of being a self in the world. And that involves a constant running judgement about the boundary that divides the world from "us". We fluidly construct a sense of where the limits of agency end, and where the resistance of the world begins.
If we float in a sensory deprivation tank, the resistance of the world disappears, and so to does our sense of being embodied evaporate in disorienting fashion.
So selfhood seems dualistic as it involves this constant construction of the idea of a self in its world. There is a world out there with all its opportunities and challenges. And it is matched by a biological sense of agency and intentionality.
If my racing car does exactly what I expect in the way its tyres give at a fast corner, then they feel part of me because I've already predicted the precise sensation of that giving as something that was going to happen due to my intention to make that action. The skid is being imposed by "me" on the "world" - within my dualistically-framed neurobiological model of what is going on.
So no need for any spooky psychic essences. It is just the logic of being an organism that models its world. To have agency requires making a constant self-other discrimination in terms of "everything I intended and predicted" vs "everything that then resisted or caught me by surprise".
Quoting Alkis Piskas
A neurobiological sense of being an intentional self in a resisting world is what roots us in an embodied and enactive way in physical reality. But as humans, we are also cultural and technological beings. We form intentional models of our world that go beyond genes and neurons to be now also self-other judgements encoded in words and numbers.
So we become very concerned with the idea of the social and technological boundaries between what constitutes the intentional/predictable part of our experience, and what constitutes the resisting/unpredictable part - the other to ourself.
Does our selfhood extend outwards socially so that we feel at one with our group. Or instead, are we being thrown back on ourselves even to the point we don't know who we are? Are we alienated even from our own agency, are we awkward and unpredictable even in regards to our own social setting?
So again, selfhood arises just as a logical necessity. Brains are there to model the world. Or to be more accurate, to model a "world" in which we are there as the "other" of the world. What gets modelled - in a continuously fluid and adaptive way - is a sense of being present as an intentional point of view existing in a zone of complete predictability, and that being juxtaposed to various degrees against a world that is by contrast, resisting and uncertain.
Sorry, I can't resist: is this the transcendental unity of apperception?
(@Mww?)
Drop it then. I can't make it any clearer.
Do you experience an identity crisis? If you look in the mirror, who do you see? Your body! That's you! Yor in the middle, in between, the inner world (inside the brain) and the physical world. You can't be separated from both. So, dance in between them and listen closely...
A serious answer would be no - not if the unity is understood in terms of a synthetic bundle of experiences.
The argument here is semiotic or dialectical. Self and other arise as complementary distinctions. So it is not about being able to add up a bunch of individuals and assign them to a collective category. It is about the deeper thing of always having to form any categorical judgement as a unity of opposites. It is about a reciprocal relationship, not an additive one.
The self emerges as the limit on the world. And the world, in turn, emerges as the limit of this self. So we end up with a semiotic story - von Uexküll's Umwelt.
Quoting apokrisis
Agreed, because of this:
Quoting apokrisis
According to a certain speculative metaphysics, the unity of apperception is represented by “I think”, the “I” of which in turn, is the representation of the transcendental ego, which in its turn, is the representation for the conception of consciousness, which....(sigh)....in its turn, is the unity of all our representations under a single self. Or, which is pretty near the same thing, the synthetic bundle of all our experiences.
To model a world in which we are there as the other of the world, merely reconciles the impossibility of the model containing that which models.
Though we generally use possessive determiners to refer to the body, none of it means we are not our body. Just point to yourself and see whether your finger lands on mind or body.
Why is it impossible?
I mean, there are obvious ways in which we do model ourselves, as I'm sure @apokrisis would be happy to explain.
Is it just the regress that worries you? (Can't model myself modeling myself...)
Ownership is an illusion. The bubble of ownership is easily popped by the simple act of dying.
Consciousness seems to arise in the brain. Brain waves may be monitored to assess different states of consciousness. Waking states, dream states, coma states and brain dead states. If you are not your brain, then why do you disappear when you go into a coma?
Consciousness is aware of thoughts, emotions, memories, input from the five sense organs and constructs a hologram of what it considers to be YOU at this moment. Who you were and who you might be, exists within this hologram as well, but nowhere else.
The million dollar question is where and how does this consciousness arise in the first place?
Model and modeler is a relation. If the model contains the modeler, the modeler becomes a part of the model rather than being in a relation to it. The categorical error of confusing quantity, the schema here being unity, for relation, the schema properly being causality. The modeler causes the model, therefore cannot be a quantity in it.
To model a real thing such as a world, is to intuit its constituency as phenomena. None of the constituency of my self, predicated as they are on purely speculative principles, can be intuited as phenomena, hence no model of the self is possible, at least by intuition alone. We are certainly entitled to think the logical necessity of a self, simply because without it exceptions to the principle of cause and effect are tacitly allowed, an abhorrent contradiction. But still, a logical necessity is not a model.
A "self" as you are describing ( We ), is an emergent phenomena. It firstly needs language, then a whole host of socially derived ideation, such as to arrive at a self awareness in terms of this ideation, to present a self concept via language ( Wittgenstein ) . In the end you find a "self" is information about the way information has organized itself.
Information is not something immaterial. It requires something material to entangle itself into. Brains and neuroplasticity do this somehow. :smile: as do these arrangements of letters you read right now.
It makes no sense to speak of an immaterial mind, just as it makes no sense to speak of immaterial information. It is possible to imagine an entirely informational world ( absent of matter ), and I think this is what an immaterial mind is, but I think it is important to understand this imagination too is the result of a physical neural process, though it may just be organized patterns of connected energy.
If you are asking what is the underlying thing that causes all this to happen, as in what is the source of self organization in the universe? Then there is a hole in understanding - you can posit what you like to fill that blank. Possibly forces? They are immaterial - in that we do not see or hear them, only feel them, similar to emotions.
The interesting thing is, regardless of what you posit to fill that blank, it will only change how you relate to it. What you punt on will change and limit the possibilities of reality for you, it will not change the facts of the matter. In Yogic logic, it is possible to overcome this predicament, to some extent, by calling it consciousness. So in Yogic logic, there is only consciousness and information, embedded in matter, so reality is something various and open ended, which seems to be consistent with observation.
But a human, as a psychological being, is formed by at least four levels of semiosis - genes, neurons, words and numbers. So the modelling is both hierarchical and increasingly abstract in terms of its worlds and its selves.
The self and its world as a unified modelling relation don't exist at some single scale. They exist - in modern humans - at levels that are meta- to each other. We can't make the questions of selfhood simpler than they in fact are.
So an animal lives in its world genetically. It has a body that is the kind of self that works in a basic metabolic way. The genome is a self which is "conscious" of the biochemistry that is its world of energy and entropy gradients over eons of adaptive history.
Then an animal with a sufficiently evolved nervous system becomes a model of its environment. It is now the kind of self that lives in a world of prey and predators, a world with a near and a far, a world with its obstacles and affordances - a world that is generally outside its "self".
Pile on top of that the linguistic and mathematical semiotics of humans.
The neurobiological self, with its matchingly neurobiological "world", or Umwelt, becomes a cultural self in a cultural world.
We learn that we are the "I's" and "me's" at the centre of our social narratives. We live in a world made of "you", "us" and "them". Our linguistic model speaks of a collective world that thus contains our selves, along with many other selves, who are also part of the continuity of identity and agency that constitutes our selfhood, or contrariwise, form the social "other" that would resist our wishes and norms.
And then as logic, maths, philosophising, and the other rationalising/abstracting habits of modern humans evolved these past 2000 years, we get the world of physics and computation, matched by the kind of abstracted and universalised notions of selfhood that such a form of semiosis demands as its "other".
We get the Newtonian, Darwinian and Turing selves that are quite at home in world where everything has become a quantity rather than a feeling.
So of course, the linguistic self can be seen as being in conflict with the abstract self. We have romanticism vs rationalism. This is just evidence that all the levels of semiosis, and their accompanying worlds, and their accompanying selves, might not be so perfectly integrated. The history of being human might not yet have made sense of our selfhoods. It could be an unfinished, and even unfinishable, project.
Does it even make sense to imagine an uploaded cyber mind future, or an AI next step?
Well, that kind of question can't even be addressed until one understands selfhood correctly as the logic of a dichotomistic modelling relation - the outcome of the necessity of an epistemic cut or schnitt between the "subjective" modeller and the "objectively" modelled.
Okay, in my simplistic way, this is what I'm thinking. Suppose I'm sitting at the kitchen table with my son, and I say, "Draw us." He draws a couple stick figures sitting at a table, one bigger one smaller, and the smaller one bent over drawing. That's a model of us, and he's included, right? He could even draw a tiny version of the in-progress drawing, but there's no way to have it stay up to date, and he can't keep drawing smaller and smaller versions, because that goes on forever. But that's just granularity, isn't it? At some point he can just stop, and the model itself -- the drawing -- is just symbolized, in the same way he and I are just symbolized.
But to do that is to model himself (along with me) as part of the world, not himself as modeler -- rather the way Frege points out that talking about a concept is talking about it as an object, rather than as a concept. Maybe, except he has symbolized himself making the model, represented here just as a symbol.
But I also want to say that recognizing yourself as part of the world is not such a bad thing to do. To see yourself as both concept and object, not just one. And to see your model too as part of the world, not just an odd pair of glasses you look out at the world through.
Thank you for your response.
However, I can't undestand this "poetic" passage. But certainly there are no arguments in it.
Quoting tim wood
Of course that would be ideal. Should we arrange for a live meeting to show you in action what I tried to express in words? :smile:
Well, next time, besides only eloquent stuff and criticism, which offer only for displeasure, bring in also some arguments against or in favour of my position so that there can be some discussion. :smile:
Genes are not involved in semiosis. The only contain information about amino acids to be put together in a certain order. The formed proteins have their own semiosis. Genes are merely part of a giant curled up structure (the 2 meter long acids in the nuclei, even 23 of them!). In every cell of our body (let's talk redux) the is a portion of this molecule used. To form specific proteins. You can say, and I'm talking Lamarckian now, that we and all organisms on Earth (though there are exceptions) are the masters of the altruistic obedient genes (contrary to the selfish ones of Dawkins).
Thank you, Jack, for your eresponse.
Fortunately, I agree with your position, which is very nicely expressed. (I say "fortunately", because my eye has been scared by the overwhelming physicalism (if not materialism) that characterizes this place! :smile:)
Thank you for your response.
Of course, we can't expect physical evidence for something that is not physical. Otherwise, if we had such en evidence, the issue would have been resolved a long time agao ans we wouldn't have to discuss it! :smile:
So, what can replace physical evidence? Logic (reasoning) and experience. And from them realization, cognition, (own, personal) reality. These would be more than enough, I think. And knowing that one is not a body makes a huge difference with believing that one is.
Quoting Tom Storm
Does this mean you don't believe that YOU exist and that YOU are reading this message? Are these not solid thoughts? Is believing that YOU are an illusion a more solid thought for you?
Thank you for your response.
I respect your position, of course. But I would prefer that you responded to my position and bring pro or con arguments about it against my own arguments. Actually, I feel that you have totally ignored my position. You don't discuss a position by ignoring its arguments and presenting your own position.
This topic is about a specific position: "You are not a body". It does not ask "Are you a body?"
You are not your body. You are more than that. Your body is connected to your brain. The brain is formed out of food eaten. This means matter is more tha, eeehh, matter. Matter has something in it to give light or fire to the brains inside of us. It makes us see thoughts and feel feelings. The body is more than empty matter. I agree with this completely. There is no I that is thinking.
Is the theory yours? I'm not sure why you state we are not our body. We are, but not in the pure matter sense. That's just an abstraction, just as saying that we are our brains.
A dualist would struggle to explain how this non material mind made him storm out.
A reductive materialist would struggle to explain what "anger" is, since it's not something that has mass.
But if you consider anger as a specific configuration of physical stuff, "He stormed out because he was angry" makes sense. In this scheme, the mind is to a body what a program is to a computer. Minds are what bodies do, just like how programs are what computers run.
That seems to me to be the majority position here, but since it doesn't accept a dualism, it often gets mistranslated. Someone says "Your mind doesn't exist as a separate entity" and people take that to mean "Your mind is your body".
:up:
Though the mind is not us. It just shows us things. We are not in control of it. We don't do the thinking and feeling.
Thank you for your response.
Of course I accept it! Why else should I have brought it up? I only said that "this [discussing it] is not in my plan." Besides that, my whole description was about showing that the body is something separate from YOU. Even the statement of this topic itself indicates that.
(I didn't want to involve the term "mind" in all this, for not complicating things. Of course, the mind is non-physical and thus separate from the body.)
Quoting Ciceronianus
I have said what I am, using the second person (Re: "What is this YOU?")
I have a body and I have a mind.
Why do you wanna show that? You think there is more to matter than meets the eye?
We also say, "he's lost his mind!" and "her keen mind cracked the case.". By your reasoning, we're not our minds either. We're neither our bodies nor our minds! What are we then?
There's something there to which both a particular mind and body belong to, that thing we refer to with the word "I". What is it? Could it simply be a mental construct, simply a collection of thoughts, experiences, memories, etc. lumped together under one heading, I. If yes, the self is just a concept like God or infinity, lacking the ontological status of a body or a mind, both things that do exist (I am thinking and my back sometimes itches).
Thank you for your response, dimosthenes9.
I didn't say that they "agree that thoughts, ideas etc (mind in general) is non psychical." Actually, the opposite. The believe that they are physical. Although I expressed that in a different way: I said that they "believe that all mental activity is happening in the brain." And, of course, brain is physical. OK?
Quoting dimosthenis9
1) The poll I launched ("Does thinking take place in the human brain?") showed that 82% believe that thinking takes place in the brain.
As we have already had some good exchanges in the past, allow me to comment that I find this outrageous for philosophically thinking people. I can accept materialism as something followed by a lot of such people, but here we are talking about the overwhelming majority! But this would not be so upsetting as the lack of critical thinking that whould characterize such people, only it doesn't!
I will tell you only this. This fact alone, makes me think that I do not belong here! However, I can ignore this because I am here to express my views and exchange views with other thinkers. This pleases me a lot.
2) From my other topic "If the brain can't think, what does?" the great majority of the responses I recieved were characterized by lack of thinking and reasoning: they were just reactions that didn't mean actually anything. Fortunately, I had about 5 responses that either contained just a philosophical; questioning on the subect or a view of a non-physical nature. And I had one that it was an analysis why thinking takes place in the brain. It was welcome as well. See, I totally respect different and even opposite to mine views. What I don't respect is evident lack of thinking/reasoning and, even worse, impertinence and vulgar language.
I counted 90 TPF active members in the last week (don't ask me how, I am a programmer! :smile:). 22 only of them answered the poll. (It's not even a representative sample!) I wonder why? Don't they have a viewpoint on the subject? Have they found the subject too unimportant to respond? They are not certain about what to vote? I hope the last case prevails, because it shows at least that they cannot say for certain that thinking takes place in the brain! This is good for me! :smile:
Thank you for your response.
Quite interesting view! (On some other occasion, I would like to know more about it!)
Thank you for your response.
OK. Then who or what is that "someone"?
Quoting Bitter Crank
But all this is "body" (except "mind", but this is not the issue). Where is that "someone" involved in all this?
Thank you for your response.
Wow! This is quite long and I have to "study" it before I reply to it. So, let me come back soon, after I reply to other members who have also responded to the topic. Thanks.
Thank you for your response.
Do you mean, point to my body! :smile:
But my whole point and its description showing that YOU are not your body and that "yourself" is something else! Have you read anything of all that? Or you just reacted to the title of the topic? (Very bad if you did that ...)
Thank you for your response.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. It is out of the point. When one says "my body" it is crystal clear to everyone what does that mean.
Quoting Present awareness
Disappear? Even doctors know that poeple in coma can hear and perceive other things.
Quoting Present awareness
Nice description. :up:
Quoting Present awareness
Good point. I will let you know when I a hear something about that. I personally don't try to find this out, because I wonder who is going to pay me this million dollars?! :grin:
Thank you for your response.
I didn't use the word "self" in my description except only to give an example of people who believe that what they call the "I", the "self" is an illusion. This may happen if one considers the word "self" as a concept, as you do.
However, I am talking about "youself" and "himself" , which are totally different things. What I am talking about is YOU. Just YOU. The person I am replying to at the moment I am writing these lines. YOU is the person himself, his identity, the human being, a living unit. It is very concrete, as far as the language is concerned as well as a reality. There's no "emergent phenomena" involved!
If this is not clear for someone, I am sorry, I can't do anything more.
And if [s]we[/s] he were not living? What sort of interaction could you have with his YOU?
typo!
That seems so weird to me and I wanted to check that it is the case. How they believe they are physical? Material? Can they "touch" them or what? I could never understand how someone sees thoughts as something material. Especially thoughts. But anyway.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Don't worry about it. You aren't the only one who believes thoughts and mind aren't material. I support the same too. And of course we just exchange views here.That majority thinks different says nothing.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Yeah there are many here who think they own the privilege of the "Absolute Truth" . Even in cases like this, which you can never be sure since science hasn't reached there yet. But they speak as if they have all the answers already. Don't give a fuck about them.
Thank you for your response.
But isn't the brain part of the body? Actually, is it inside the body? How can it be also connected to it? Is your heart connected to your body are does it reside in it?
Quoting Gobuddygo
By "us" you mean the body, right? So, we are our bodes, right?
But this is the whole topic about!
Quoting Gobuddygo
Certainly not. There are billions (not millions) of people in this planet who believe this, mostly in the East, of course.
Agreed. Metaphysical reductionism taken too far, is always illusory. Hence, psychology aside, the theoretical limits of speculative pure reason.
———-
Oh. Wait. I mis-read. You said a self and its world, modeling, where I took it as a self and the world, being modeled. With this new understanding, I disagree, insofar as the self and its world as a unified modeling relation does exist. Otherwise, what would suffice as causality for any model at all?
Thank you for your response.
Of course we are not our minds. We have a mind (which is non-physical). As we say "I have a thought, an idea, etc." (I suspect that this is just a reaction to the title of the topic since "mind" is irrelevant to my description,)
Quoting TheMadFool
Well, the answer is in my description of the topic. (Now I am sure you have not read the topic. Not OK!)
Who is "he"? Well, wataver.
"In a what way he was not living?" Dead? Well, wataver.
What is "his YOU"? You mean either his body or his spirit.. Well, I personally couldn't have any interaction.
I'm not sure though if all this is a very rational discussion! :grin:
Nope, not bad at all. Actually, conventionally necessary, but oddly enough, at the same time, philosophically impossible.
Humans. The only known species with the innate capacity to confuse itself.
—————
Is your son modeling, or merely characterizing? Even if he is representing both of you in a drawing, he himself is still outside the drawing itself, yet is undeniably the cause of it. But what is he really doing, if not objectively recreating a subjective appearance? Being young, his recreation may contain the extensive manifold of representations possible only with imagination, which could be false, but not the representations given from experiential maturity, which will be true.
I rather think a model, as such, should be a definitive representation of something, composed of a multiplicity of conceptions, as opposed to a mere caricature, which will always have the fewer. Helps alleviate the aforementioned confusion. A caricature is a model, but a model is not a caricature, kinda thing.
Can you give an example of such an expressuon?
It seemed to me that the most important word in this:
Quoting Alkis Piskas
is the word "living". You can only talk to whoever you're talking to while they're living.
Of course you are not your body, because your body could also be the inanimate thing lying on the floor once you're dead. We who remember you will still call it "Alkis's body", even though there's no Alkis anymore, just the body. There's only an Alkis while Alkis is alive, and that means while Alkis's body is a living thing. This is generally what people have in mind when they say, however clumsily it has to be said in our language, that Alkis is an emergent phenomenon.
This I don't understand. All models are wrong, and by design not definitive. They're all caricatures.
This morning it seems obvious that my little model of modeling is inherently static -- which I caught but ignored when I said it can't be kept up-to-date -- but that means it's literally a picture not a model; we could pretend it's a snapshot, a momentary state of a running model, and maybe that's better than nothing. A picture is worth a thousand words; it's maybe even worth a thousand lines of code.
Okay, I’m not a body. The second, and very obvious question is, "If you are a mind or a soul, then why do you say 'my mind or my soul', 'I have a mind or I have a soul', and so on?" You can't be a mind or a soul and have a mind or a soul at the same time, can you?
I’ve said this a number of times, but there can’t be a mind/body problem. Why? Because we don’t have any sense of what “body” means. Or material, or physical.
There used to be a conception of “body,” within the mechanical philosophy of Galileo and others in the early scientific revolution, with the principle of contact action. That was abandoned, since Newton in fact, and there hasn’t been a technical notion of it since. If we want to use it as an honorific term, fine. But what it amounts to is something like “the mind/ectoplasm problem”.
And of course I knew you accepted it--and necessarily so. I don't think you can escape the dualism by merely asserting that you're not "discussing" it. You're bound to it, I'm afraid.
Hi, again. Sorry about the delay but I made a long break ...
Yes, one can say that. Like a mechanic and his tools, a musician and his instrument, a painter and his brushes, a person and his loved one ... But all this is fugurative. In the example I gave, hypothetical of course, the driver can really believe the he is the car: a severe illusion and mental sickness. Madhouses though are plenty of such cases, and those are not hypothetical!
Quoting apokrisis
"Selfish" like one who is concerned mainly or sometimes only about his own interests, profit or pleasure?
Quoting apokrisis
What do you mean by "agency"?
Quoting apokrisis
What kind of resistance is that? Can you give an example?
Quoting apokrisis
Have you personally felt that compulsive necessity? Ot was it rather natural thinking, knowing and feeling of being a self? Is trying to know yourself using different means a "selfish" action? Is wanting to be a happy being something "selfish"?
Quoting apokrisis
Do you indeed feel that?
Quoting apokrisis
Are you indeed preoccupied with such a thing?
Quoting apokrisis
The hypothetical example I gave about the driver was not feeling the the car is part of him but that he can really believe the he is the car, which consists a severe illusion and mental condition.
Quoting apokrisis
Do you feel that the worlds is resisting you? In what way? It doesn't let be yourself? Aren't you yourself at this moment?
Quoting apokrisis
I consider this way too complicated as far as YOU (which is the subject) is concerned. To talk outside the box, I don't believe that all these reflect your actual life and behavior in the world. I can't believe that you cannot instead use simple reasoning about and experiencing of your existence. Because that would mean that you are more thinking about your life than actually living it!
I already answered that. But I can explain it a little more or better. If soemone thinks he is a body, it means that everything in him is material. Thoughts too? Yes, thoughts too. This doesn't mean that they can touch them. Neither can they touch their brain. But since they believe that thoughts are produced by and take place in the brain, they must be material, mustn't they? A neurosurgeon may then be able to find them and touch them! (What a stupid thing to say, eh? And this also shows how stupid is to believe that one is a body! Only that people usually don't go that far thinking of such things! Even if t's pure logic!)
Is this more clear now?
Quoting dimosthenis9
Thank God! :grin: (I know, but just hearing it, makes me feel better! :smile:)
Quoting dimosthenis9
Well, I am not sure if "exchange" is a notion that is shared by most in here ...
Quoting dimosthenis9
Right! Exactly!
Always a pleasure to "talk" to with you! :smile:
How can you reject a whole topic with one such a general and unsubstantiated statement?
... Sorry, I believe you can! :smile:
The "someone" is a product of the whole body. I could say the "someone" is located in the brain, but the brain is an inseparable part of the whole. The functions of the brain are almost entirely non-conscious. One of the functions of the brain is the manufacture of a self, which isn't "located" anywhere in particular (as far as I know). There are many brain functions that are specifically located, but not this one (as far as we can tell). The self is an emergent entity, and the self is real. It's located in the brain, just like memory or proprioception or the senses. It's just that it isn't located in this or that lump of brain tissue.
Because we are "embodied beings" (existing only in flesh) our 'self' can't be located anywhere else.
I think I'm a body. What's wrong with that? I don't consider my brain or the physical world as an essential part of me although I am bound to them in an unentangable way. This doesn't mean I am pure matter. There is more than matter alone. There is something inside of matter. Call it soul.
I disagree. The body itself (without the brain) is you. There is nothing in your brain that is you. You are not your brain but your body. Your body stands in an ununtiable connection with your brain (inner world) though. Like it is also connected with the physical world. That is, you stand in connection, or in between these two worlds (inner and outer).
Thank you for your response to the topic.
Very good question and point! :up:
I can think of 3 reasons:
1) They don't actually believe that they are a spirit. Most probably, they don't even know what a spirit is. OK, this is simple. Nothing more to say here.
2) They have an idea about being a spirit, most probably because they read a lot about that, esp. Eastern philosophy, but they have not realized it for themselves. It has not become part of their reality.
3) They know they are a spirit but it comes out automatically, as a habit of language. (And no one reminds them! :smile:) I can say this with certainty since I did it too in the past for some time even after I realized I was a spirit and not a body. You see you can't get rid easily of some language traps like these. Also hearing often people saying "my/your/his spirit" reinforces your habit. It's contagious!
(A very common parallel example: "The sun rises"! :smile:)
Thank you for your response to the topic.
The word "body" has a lot of meanings, of course. But its meaning here is very clear: "The physical structure, including the bones, flesh, and organs, of a person or an animal." (Oxford LEXICO)
So, I don't think we have to make a big deal out of this. There are more important issues to solve! :smile:
A remote consciousness would like to raise awareness about plausible deficiencies contained within the original post. Frankly speaking, I failed to locate a sound counter-proof for the thesis “we are only our bodies” in your post. You might have hinted that some physicalists can be incoherent, yet it doesn’t say anything against the concept on its own.
1.Your reconctruction
Because I was pretty confused by the “obviousness”, I decided to formalize your reconstruction of your opponents’ view.
P1. All mental activities take place in the brain
P2. The brain is a part of the human body
P3. The brain directs all the existence of a human
K. There is nothing else in a human being/life than a body OR The only thing that is in a human being/life is a body
In this explicit form it becomes clear that the conclusion simply doesn’t follow from the premises. P1-P3 suggest, if true, that all mental activities take place in (a part of) the human body and that a part of the human body directs the existence of the human.
Further than that we can’t conclude that all mental activities direct all the existence of a human. If a happens in b and b causes c, does it mean that a causes c? Probably not with necessity. A should be identical with b, so that we can say that a always causes c, if b causes c is true. Now, the brain, although indisputably consists of or rather contains mental activities, isn’t equal to those activities(imagine a dead person's brain in a formalin solution).
Just as in the previous example, the conclusion K can’t be reached given the three premises without another supporting one. The additional premise should be like this: the identity of a human(or everything a human is) is the entirety of his mental activities. Without this fourth premise the argument remains simply non-existent. Also, it seems that P3 is obsolete. It could be that P3 intended the content of P4, but the differences in wording and meaning appear to me vast enough for the premises to not be interchangeable.
The reason why I highlighted the misrepresentation was that in order to prove an argument wrong it should at least be in a form of one. After that it’s enough to prove why at least one of the premises is false. The fact that the initial criticized argument wasn't properly formulated already undermines the relevance of your critique.
2.Your first question
Appealing to conversational habits is a weak strategy to criticize a concept. If a person has a certain position and this person happens to express something using wordings that seemingly contradict his initial position, it might show the logical incoherence of a particular individual at best(though doesn’t say anything against the concept itself). Otherwise, we get futile statements like: “Since you, as an atheist, are using the expression “thank god”, you are contradicting yourself”. In other words: one saying that he has a body isn’t equivalent to this person actually having a body. Just as it’s not the same to say “I have a headache” and actually having a headache.
Apart from this, your first question suggests, that ownership of something implies the difference of owner and possession. With respect to this condition, there is still no contradiction in the sentence:”I am a specific part of a body and I have an entire body at use/under control”. The contradiction arises only due to an equivocation of “a part of a body=mental activities in the brain” with “a body”. Although the inner happenings of the brain are part of the human body, they’re not equivalent to it and can’t be used synonymously.
3.Your second question
Should you agree with 1. And 2., the second question couldn’t arise at all. The answer was already given in the hidden premise you forgot to/didn’t mention. According to your opponents’ view, the identity of a human being is the entirety of his mental activities, which evidentially include memories, qualia, sensations, etc. And the addition of the so-called illusionary nature of the “self” doesn’t matter much, since it changes nothing with the premises. Looks more like an excuse for your opponents to indulge themselves in an incoherence, trying to remain “human” in the conventional sense (whatever this may mean to them).
Sadly, you didn’t provide anything in favor of the idealism of human identity, since stating that "something is like this" is no proof without the “, because…” part. Your driver analogy presupposes a non-physicalist approach and is, due to a lack of argumentation for the approach, of little use.
4.Your third question
Lastly, the premise that "the identity of a human is the entirety of his mental activities" indeed suggests that, were it to happen, an artificial recreation of a certain cluster of mental activities would signify the birth of a new identity. Even if that entity doesn't correspond with our expectations of a human mind, we will still have no choice other than to call it a human being according to the initial criteria. Hence, it is irrelevant whether or when scientists will be capable of cloning. What actually matters is the justification of the criteria.
I hope my points were clear and helpful. Let me know if I made any mistakes.
I would love to do that, but then I'm afraid it would take a few pages! :smile: And most probably no one would read them! (A couple of responders have not even read the (whole) topic!)
OK. Thank you.
Nothing. But can you please tell me why you say "I don't consider my brain ...." Can you be a body and still have a body at the same time?
Thank you for your response to the topic.
That’s my point— there aren’t important issues to solve, because the problem is meaningless.
The “physical structure”, for example, means what? What is physical? Mostly this is used to refer to anything we more or less understand. It’s honorific.
If we simply want to play games with words, fine. But if no one can offer a technical notion of “body,” then asking whether or not this is the same as something else is a matter of how we want to define it. You say the body is X, fine— someone else says it’s Y, fine.
In science, things don’t get defined out in space. Nor in philosophy— if we’re serious.
Anger is a configuration of physical stuff? That makes sense??? So how does that work? You take matter and arrange it in just the right way, run some electricity through it, and...anger?
For me that's the mistake they make. For me it's not that mind exists on its own. Mind requires for sure brain. Brain (physical) generates something non psychical. Imo at least. Or if not generates, at least interacts for sure with something non-physical.
I can't understand why the materialists from the original view "that mind cannot exist without brain" (which I also find true) jump to the conclusion "so mind is psychical!". There is a huge logical gap here.
Why they can't accept the possibility that physical creates something that it's obvious non psychical!
Instead of that, they find more logical to consider thoughts as material! And I find it totally weird.
Yes. This configuration can be brought about by cocaine for example.
You mean that probably material world is much different than what we perceive from our senses? So that's why you think the base mind/body is false? Got it right or you meant something else?
Quoting Xtrix
What you mean with ectoplasm?
And if you believe that material world might be more that we can see. ,Why and how can we be sure that what we "call" "perceive" mind is how mind is indeed?That there isn't "more" of it also? Similar to the way that material world might be different from what we perceive.
No, I'm saying that we don't have a technical notion of what "material" means.
Quoting dimosthenis9
That's my point, actually. What do we mean by "body"?
We can define ectoplasm in all kinds of ways if we want to. That doesn't mean there's a "mind/ectoplasm" problem.
Oh OK.I got something totally different then.
So you think that since we can't define the exact words we can't talk about these things at all?
I think it's more like that both persons should clarify their definitions from the beginning and agree on a common base of what they will mean when they will use the word body. And that's it.
I find totally unfair not to be able to talk about such things. With that "word game" we would end up not being able to talk about anything at all,at the end!
No. It makes the point that the boundary between self and world is perceptually constructed. It is a fact of the modelling. And this is well known psychophysics.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
The usual meaning. The feeling of being free to choose and act on your own behalf.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I don’t have to be preoccupied as it is the very habit of psychology that constitutes this “me”.
We all have a history that makes us routinely who we are. And then occasionally we might get jolted into a more questioning state. Your foot slides on a muddy step and there is panic and disorientation.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
A common symptom of schizophrenia is this loss of sharp and secure boundaries between self and world. The fact that a normal level of embodiment can be disrupted is what shows that it is normally a continuous perceptual construct.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I am giving you the psychological explanation of why we feel about selfhood the way we do. The construction is so basic that it is an unthinking habit.
It is only by learning about the science that you might start to notice these things.
I don’t think you understand me as that reply makes no sense.
The point there is that there is the one general thing of a self-world modelling relation. It is a technical term for what is going on that biosemioticians and the theoretical biologist Robert Rosen would use.
So it is in fact a model of the causality of living and mindful complex systems - in Rosen’s words, of systems closed in their efficient causation. Or as Howard Pattee puts it, systems with an epistemic cut. It is a mathematical claim with mathematical generality.
Then the point I was making is that the modern human psychological self is constructed of four distinct levels of semiosis. That is why it becomes such a confusing thing.
I live in at least four worlds. There is my genetic world - the selfhood that is my immune system, metabolism and other stuff way below my neural world of perceptual awareness.
Then I live in the consciously experienced world that is constructed by neural semiosis.
Then there is the sociocultural world that I experience through sharing language as a world-constructing code. This socially constructed world includes me as now a self-conscious being. I stand outside myself and see myself from a sociocultural perspective as a player in that larger realm.
On top of all that, there is the rational and mathematical self-world model that takes shape through science and philosophy as a new level of human culture and world-making. I see the world around me - both my perceptual environment and my social environment. And on top of that, I experience a rather Platonic sense of the world and of being that comes from a habit of high level abstraction.
This leads to the making of rather self conscious statements about consciousness and self consciousness - the view of the self as a natural and social creature from the further vantage point that is a self now placed in a world of scientific and philosophical arguments.
So the sources of the self get stacked up and most people don’t even realise the fact.
But the science of semiosis does provide the truly meta view.
My brain is not part of my body. It's a mere aid. So I am my body. I don't have a body, I am my body. I have an inner world that I can use and that shows me things, like ideas or thoughts. It lets me perceive the physical world and it makes me feel. I am more than just matter. Matter is an abstraction. Something is taken away from it which is obviously present. Physics is nice but the vision that only quantum fields exist is an empty (though enjoyable) view.
Eastern (Buddhist) philosophy is about realizing emptiness and pretty much the opposite of what you appear to be indicating.
Still don’t get how being and having a body is fundamentally different from being and having a spirit, btw.
OK. Thanks.
Just like last time, you assume dualism in your questions.
What makes you think that there exists a subjective experience, a “mental stuff” of being angry?
No, the certain configuration IS what we refer to when we refer to an experience. It’s not something that “brings about an experience”, it is it. This configuration = Anger.
Any time we say “He was angry” it can be translated as “He had this specific physical configuration”. Usually including shallow breaths, frowns, and other things.
Quoting RogueAI
Seems that way. Considering the ones that don’t have it display “dead” not “angry”.
Do you think a lobotomy would change your mind about this?
It is all about emergence, from the moment you are born to what you are at present is one continuous emergent process, enmeshed within the evolution and emergence of everything in the biosphere, in a continuous process of moving forward in time.
I'm an idealist. I think there is only mind and thought. That makes more sense than assuming there is only physical stuff. You can be wrong about physical stuff existing. I cannot be wrong about mind and thought existing.
Are you denying mental states and subjective experiences exist? That's absurd.
Think of a sunset. Is there a sunset in your brain? Then mental states aren't the same thing as brain states. When you were a child, and you didn't know anything about brains, you knew what anger was. Do you think an alien race that can't feel anger can know what it's like to be angry just by studying our brains?
That's a poor translation, since anger is also a feeling. When you're angry do you feel a certain way? Of course you do. Isn't the essence of pain not nerves firing, but rather it feels bad? Pain hurts? Isn't that what makes torture so bad? Because someone is experiencing intense suffering?
Why is electricity necessary for experience? What is it about moving electrons that is required for the feeling of pain to exist? Of course you don't know, so there are two moves you can make: there's no such thing as the "feeling of pain" or "we don't know but we'll eventually find out". Both are unsatisfying answers. Your theory produces absurdities and suffers from explanatory gaps.
So what is a rock, in your view? Does it exist independently from my thoughts about rocks? And how does it do so? I think there is merit in investigating your view as well as mine.
Quoting RogueAI
I am denying that they are any more than a pattern.
I'll use an analogy: A computer program is no more than a specific arrangement of ones and zeros. In the same way a mind is no more than a specific arrangement of matter.
In both cases, you can't pick the thing up, it has no mass (computer program or mind, arrangements have no mass), yet that doesn't make it its own substance, rather a pattern of physical stuff.
Quoting RogueAI
Please explain why what I said necessitates the existence of sunsets in our brain.
Imagine if someone told you: "Programs are definitely more than patterns of 0s and 1s, that's absurd. When you shoot someone in a video game, is there a gun in your computer? When you were a child you didn't know anything about programming, yet you could still play videogames" How would you respond to them?
Quoting RogueAI
That's debatable, but shouldn't be in opposition to my position anyways.
Quoting RogueAI
Those are the same thing.
Imagine that same person saying: "Isn't the essence of shooting someone in a video game the blood and gore? Definitely not just a couple of 1s and 0s flipping, that's absurd".
Quoting RogueAI
"Why is electricity necessary for computer programs? What is it about moving electrons that is required for video games to exist? Of course you don't know, so there are two moves you can make: There's no such thing as "video games" or "we don't know but we'll eventually find out". Both are unsatisfying answers. Your theory produces absurdities and suffers from explanatory gaps."
I'll say it again, but when someone says "There is no such thing as feelings of pain" they aren't saying that feelings don't exist, they're saying they're not what you think they are. They aren't an independent existence, they're a pattern. So far you keep saying that there is an explanatory gap, but I don't think there is one.
On the other hand, if all that exists are really just thoughts of rocks, how come it seems like rocks stick around when no one is thinking of them? How come we can both look in the same area and spontaneously both think that there is a rock there at the same time! Quite a terrific coincidence that we chose to both daydream up a rock in the same place at the same time. What is the source of all this constancy?
I was never an idealist, but I was at least a dualist at one point and idealism continues to make no sense to me.
Thank you for your response to the topic.
I really can't undestand that. But even if I could, it sounds totally irrelevent to the topic and my description of it.
I also read some quotes that you brought in in your post and they are definitely not mine. Not even close. E.g. “we are only our bodies”, “obviousness”, "the identity of a human is the entirety of his mental activities", "the identity of a human is the entirety of his mental activities", ...
So I can safely conclude that this is not a reply addressed to me but to some other member!
It's a pity to hear that, since I aimed at a logically coherent depiction of the physicalists you're debating and the soundness of your argumentation against those. To be honest, I'm curious whether others share your stance on my critique.
What problem?
Quoting Xtrix
See https://www.thefreedictionary.com/physical+structure
Quoting Xtrix
What games? I brought in a definition from a standard dictionary. I also brought in another one, above. If that is what you are calling "games" or you think that consulting dictionaries to get the meaning of terms is uselsess, no wonder why you find everything meaningless!
Yes, I am rather for that!
Quoting dimosthenis9
I wonder about that too! I could understand this for people in general, even for hardcore Science who can only handle material things, but I really can't for philosophical thinkers who are supposed to apply rational thinking!
Quoting dimosthenis9
Exactly! There are so many reasons for doing that, i.e. leaving the issue at least "open", and mainly the inability of proving that thinking (esp. higher level thinking) takes place in the brain.
Well, I have a couple of explanations for that kind of "philosophical" behavior that characterizes these people.
(Note: I am referring to the people who have something valuable and pertinent to say, not the weeds, the clueless those who have nothing to do with philosophy and are here for fun, neither the really crazy guys, those who have gone nuts. And there are quite a few of them in here!)
1) They lack critical thinking or they don't trust it because they have been "burnt" in the past (proven often wrong, etc.) That's why most of them prefer to bring in quotes from various philosophers rather than presenting their own views. Critical thinking is not at all an easy thing!
2) They have a view about something and they stick to it because they don't want to change it. Such a thing would mean for them weakness or failure and it will also shatter their reality of the world. This might be very unpleasant! Yet, "deep down", they are aware of the conflicts in their views and reality. This may be even more unpleasant! And yet, they don't understand that by closing the door to other views and not questioning their own, they cannot build a solid reality. It will always be frail!
There are of course more ...
Are you one of the crazy guys? :smile: No, seriously: what do you think is matter? There are quantum fields of (nearly) point particles and these fields interact by means of gauge fields. This interaction is needed. Otherwise the fields waver out into infinity (or to a point, in auxiliary momentum space representation). The fields can form global and local patterns and on our neural network virtually ALL processes and forms can be present.
Usual meaning?! Well, I have never met this word used in the way you define it! I also looked, specially for that, in a couple of standard dictionaries and I found nothing, not even close to that definition! BTW, it is very close to that of "free will" and self-determination.
OK, now I will have to re-read your whole reply to understand it's contents, because it contained that word quite a few times!
I thought your critique was excellent. I spent some time admiring your reason and evenhandedness.
Welcome to the forum. :up:
An agency is that possessing agents. I am an agent and at the same time I am an agency as I possess my body. My brain and the physical world are necessary. I (my body) can't do without them and kuckily I'm tied to both. The brain is my (and your is your) inner world, an expressing of the non-material aspect of stuff) and the outer world is the expression of stuff's material side. What is matter? More than matter! It's magic stuff. Outside you can see the difference and inside you can feel the difference..
I have not asked this question from you. Well, you just picked it up. OK, but I would prefer that you had responded to the topic itself. Anyway, since wer are here ...
Quoting DanLager
But you just said your brain is not part of your body. You see, the feeling (which accompanies "having a body", and which is natural) is in conflict with your mind (i.e, what you think about that). This is what can often happen when we think about things in life and rely on ideas instead of experiencing these things directly.
Quoting DanLager
If it is not part of your body --which is not true, because you can see it yourself in a brain scan (MRI/MRS)-- then where do you think it is part of?
Indeed Buddhism considers the spirit, the mind and the body as one enity. Also Buddhist medicine is based on a holistic view of the human being. However, the meaning and use of term "spirit" is different in Buddhism. They have another term for what in the West we call "spirit": Atman. So it's just a different word. Taosim uses the word "ghost" for we call "spirit". And so on.
Anyway, even if I agreed with your point, this would not be "opposite" of what I indicated. It would be just a case where my indication could not be applied. But this would not mean that dualism is inexistent in the whole Eastern philosophy! (E.g. Hinduism, Yoga, Taosism)
So, what I can see and didn't like at all, is that you tried to find a way to totally refute my indicating of the Eastern philosophy by just mentioning Buddhism, based on the word spirit". This is unfair. Not OK!
I was totally honest with you. I really didn't undesrand your point. Do you find it rational to blame someone because he honestly didn't undestand something you said?
Thank you. Interesting. But how could one get to that? Certainly not by using a dictionary. Also, I don't know how many people in here know about that term/expression. That's why I believe it is always wise to write within parentheses the definition of terms that are not common.
Anyway, better late than never! :smile:
I can see the physical world too. But I don't consider it as a part of me. I interact with the world outside and that of my brain. Both interact with me too. They form each other. My brain is not an essential part of me. It serves to give me ideas and feelings and thoughts. To make me live!
One thing to consider is that the body continually changes, and indeed every cell is replaced every seven years, but the self maintains a sense of continuity. That is related to the issue of the unity of subjective experience - that although the body is composed of parts, indeed of billions of cells, the self is a simple unity. Which suggests that the self transcends the physical body in being able to create and maintain a sense of continuous existence, while the body itself is subject to constant change.
No. It's related to the simple fact that replaced cells are almost identical to the new cells. The telomeres in the DNA of the new ones are a bit shorter.
Really interesting approach.
The self is the body (but without the brain).
Thank you for your response to the topic.
Where does "too" refer to?
Quoting Newkomer
How is this done? How is your brain giving you ideas and feelings? Can you give me one or two examples?
To seeing the brain on a scan.
It makes my body feel pain or an itch. It gives me fantasies about quantum fields and curved spacetime. I can litterally see with the eyes turned inward.
Roughly, everyone except you.
:grin:
I knew I was special! :grin:
Pain and itch are sensations, not feelings. Feelings refer to emotions.
Quoting Newkomer
It gives you fantasies ... And also makes you solve equations and think about life and the whole universe ...
Are you talking about this sponge-like organ in your skull, full of neurons? This stimulus-response mechanism?
Are you talking about this?
Well, my brain gives me emotions too! Im feeling good vibes right now. A gift from the brain inside. A massively parallel neuron concert that plays for me. ?
Atman is Hindu, Anatman (not-self) is Buddhist.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
:brow: It’s not OKAY that you still haven’t answered my question about how being and having a body is fundamentally different from being and having a spirit. This is the third time I’ve asked.
Maybe I’m missing the point here but the concepts of ‘body’ and ‘self’ both change, are composed of parts, indeed millions of neural connections, yet have a simple unity.
It’s unbelievable how often this mistake occurs. I’ve written about it elsewhere:
Quoting Alkis Piskas
The mind/body problem is meaningless, unless we know what "body" is. As I said before, there WAS once a technical notion of "body", within the mechanical philosophy and early physics of the 16th and 17th centuries. That was based on the principle of contact action and the idea that the world behaves like a machine, like the machines of the time -- clocks, for example.
That was destroyed by Isaac Newton. As Hume writes, he “seemed to draw the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored Nature's ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.”
There has been no technical notion of "body" since. Chomsky has interesting things to say about this.
If we want to sit around and invent definitions for what "body" or "material" or "physical" means, we can. Outside an explanatory theory, it's a complete waste of time. Appealing to "common sense" and the dictionary, or common usage, is also a waste of time. It would be like pointing to the dictionary definition of "work" in a physics class. Is that what physicists mean by "work"? No -- not even close to what we ordinarily mean by work.
So there is no mind/body problem.
Right, that would generally not be OK. But I don't have to answer all the questions after some point in a discussion, when an important mismatch has occurred. Yet, I will answer your question since you asked me to. Can you please remind me exactly what that question was?
I can't really connect this to "I can see the physical world too." ... Anyway, this is not important. Let's drop it.
How is being and having a body is fundamentally different from being and having a spirit?
Fourth time I’ve asked.
OK, I believe you. But it would be better to look up the term "emotion": "A strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.", Oxford LEXICO).
What the brain gives you is a physical response to an emotion. Not the emotion itself. The brain is only a stimulous-response mechanism. The vibrations you mentioned are such a response. The adrenaline you may feel in your body (they say dogs can smell it) from a strong fear is such a response. And so on.
I looked at your reference. You say "I've been surprised at the number of times people have appealed not only to 'common sense,' but specifically the dictionary, in an attempt to support their claims about the meaning of various terms." I am afraid to say that this is the only way a discussion or simple communication can take place. Common or similar definitions of terms consist the common reference on which both interlocutors can be based. And dictionaries are a means to provide that common reference. Another way is for one interlocutor to provide his own definition of a term, independetly of dictionaries. This way, the other interlocutor knows what he is talking about. Doing neither of them calls for unnecessary misundestandings and conflicts between the two interlocutors. It's only too logical. ("Common sense" as you mention in your reference of your link.)
I strongly advise you, as a professional translator and linguist, is to start using dictionaries. You will thank me when you will start "saving" your discussions from unnecessary misundestandings and conflicts.
Misunderstood and unknown words are the main reason why comminications fail.
If all life in the universe died, would there still be a universe with stars, planets, galaxies, etc.?
This is nonsensical. You say that the brain is a stimulous-response mechanism and that emotions are part of that mechanism (“The vibrations [feelings] you mentioned are such a response.”), and yet claim that the brain doesn’t produce emotion itself.
OK, I'm really sorry that I put into that trouble and waiting.
I will answer with another similar question: "How is consuming and having an apple different from solving and having a mental problem?" Semantically, their difference lies on physicality. One is physical and the other non-physical. Otherwise, linguistically they are parallel grammatical constructions.
Well, examine better what the other said before coming out with criticsm. More specifically examine again the meaing of emotion. I have put time axplaing all this to you and you seem to ignore what I said.
OK. That's it for me. I'm out of this utterly failed comminication.
You appear to be suggesting that it's impossible to be and have a body because the body is physical and that it is possible to be and have a spirit because it is not physical. Is that right?
I think the trouble you're having is due to not realizing that both 'body' and 'spirit' are concepts. Both of these concepts refer to particular phenomena and neither of them is the thing itself. My body and spirit differ from your body and spirit. I could recognize your particular body or spirit if I knew them well enough, knew their unique characteristics.
Spirit, by itself, doesn't refer to any particular spirit and is nonphysical, right?
Body, by itself, doesn't refer to any particular body and is nonphysical, right?
Your spirit refers to your particular character, how you act and react, which are physical phenomena, right?
Your body refers to your particular body and its various unique features, which are physical phenomena, right?
Anyway, both eating an apple and solving a problem require a brain.
You could at least try to make sense.
Tell that to physicists.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Agreed. But outside an explanatory theory, like in the sciences, we can define words however we want. Common usage doesn’t help, nor does armchair meaning creation. If I define nature as God’s creation, or “work” as my job, or “energy” as my stamina, etc. — fine. Best to clarify what you mean by your words.
But the questions you’re raising, in philosophy and science, have a long history, and most of them have technical meanings given to them. We’re not interested in defining things in a vacuum.
I can define the heart as the liver, if I want to. That’s what I mean when I say “heart.” Okay…does that advance the field of medicine?
Which is exactly why this entire thread is a complete waste of time.
What do you mean?
I think that is a very important point. The subjective unity of consciousness is very hard to explain in physicalist terms. One aspect is the neural binding problem, specifically that there is no identifiable neural system which integrates disparate visual data into the integrated whole we actually experience.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
?tman is Hindu terminology, not Buddhist. Buddhists don’t utilise that terminology, in the Buddhist lexicon, all phenomenal objects are ‘anatman’, not self. And there’s really no Buddhist concept corresponding to ‘spirit’.
I just finished a book on thousand brain theory that accounts for this, I believe. Take a look if it interests you.
That's a very good book! The whole cortex is equally structured. The whole universe can be "played out" on it. There are virtually infinite possible neuronal paths. Well, actually a 1 with 10exp40 zeros...
OK. So, if you agree with this you should also agree with bringing up a definition from a dictionary, because it's the same thing. One has just to remove the source! :smile: (Only that mentioning the source is more honest than looking as if one has conceived that definition himself. The same holds when you quote another person, e.g. a philosopher, as this is often done in here.)
BTW, we are talking a lot about "definitions" (too official a term) and maybe we forget that they stand for "meanings"! And what is more essential in a communication than undestanding the meaning of the words used in it?
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Xtrix
I agree. This is the best way.
Quoting Xtrix
Didn't get that.
Quoting Xtrix
It won't have any effect at all on medicine, as far as you are not a doctor! :grin:
But then, why are you participating in it? You could just ignore it. And thus avoid passing your hard critique as well as wasting the time of others ... So which of the two is actually a waste of time: my topic (in which 22 members have participated and has 139 replies up to now) or your participation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80tman_(Buddhism)
https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Atman_(Buddhism)
Next time bring in your reference(s) too! :smile:
The first ref starts:
As it happens, I did an MA thesis on this topic. Whereas I think you're using the word without much idea of what it means
Oh, I forgot that you are only wasting my time ... OK, I am done here.
I was wondering about this. Will not reducing everything to information and interacting forms forming each other take all meaning away? Except that of information...
There is a mind/body problem in the same way there is a binding problem (wayfarer linked above) but I believe it comes from not having access to the full picture.
Luckily! It's impossible in principle. The brain is too smal to represent the whole body at once. In parts its possible.
This approach to the issue resonates with me for I feel it leads to a deeper insight about the self. Others have jumped on the bandwagon as well. See vide infra:
Quoting praxis
Let's continue. People say,
1. My body such and such.
2. My mind such and such.
3. My brain such and such.
4. My soul such and such.
.
.
.
What they mean, what's implied,
1. I'm not the body.
2. I'm not the mind.
3. I'm not the brain.
4. I'm not the soul.
.
.
.
So, what is this I, the so-called self? All that could be the self appears in a list as above and yet, we ourselves, deny every item on that list to be the self, the I.
It's like someone giving you a bag of things and saying there's a flse in it. You proceed to take objects out of the bag one at a time, each time asking, "is this flse?" Everytime the reply is "no". After a while, the bag is empty and flse still hasn't been found.
Is the self an empty word? It seems like it for every possible referent we could think of is not the self. Forget about the self being what the self can't be - other people, trees, animals, etc. - the self can't be what the self can be - the body, the mind, the brain, the soul, thoughts, etc.
Is the self an illusion?
OR, more intriguingly,
Is the self a thing that transcends this our reality - its referent, what it is, resides in a realm beyond the one we know? It's not that the self, the I doesn't refer to something, it's just that this something is not of this world.
One of the really obvious things I have now come to realise after blathering away on forums for 10 years, is that the question of the nature of meaning and of the nature of information are separate subjects. There is actually no discipline of the study of 'meaning' - well, apart from linguistics and semiotics, on the one side, and then literature and drama, on the other, along with the visual arts, cinema and the like. But 'discerning meaning' is one of the uniquely human abilities, which we generally take for granted, because we do it so naturally. Whereas 'processing data' is what computers do, and do very easily.
[quote=Steve Talbott, Logic, DNA and Poetry; https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/logic-dna-and-poetry]Computers [can] outstrip any philosopher or mathematician in marching mechanically through a programmed set of logical maneuvers, but this was only because philosophers and mathematicians — and the smallest child — are too smart for their intelligence to be invested in such maneuvers. The same goes for a dog. “It is much easier,” observed AI pioneer Terry Winograd, “to write a program to carry out abstruse formal operations than to capture the common sense of a dog.”
A dog knows, through its own sort of common sense, that it cannot leap over a house in order to reach its master. It presumably knows this as the directly given meaning of houses and leaps — a meaning it experiences all the way down into its muscles and bones. As for you and me, we know, perhaps without ever having thought about it, that a person cannot be in two places at once. We know (to extract a few examples from the literature of cognitive science) that there is no football stadium on the train to Seattle, that giraffes do not wear hats and underwear, and that a book can aid us in propping up a slide projector but a sirloin steak probably isn’t appropriate.[/quote]
Quoting TheMadFool
Check out the Wiki entry on transcendental apperception.
We've crossed that bridge. People, especially if they're careless, say things like, "I have a body" implying they don't identify with their bodies. Therein lies the rub.
In the body there is a lot to rub. What if I say that I am my body and I am in the middle of brain and physical world? The brain thinks for me. I dont think at all...
Hi! This is a pleonasm, since "vide" means see! :smile: (Trivial comment of course ...)
Quoting praxis
BTW, this is my quote. (Actually it's part of my description the topic). @praxis just quoted it ...
Quoting TheMadFool
How is "I'm not the body" implied from "My body such and such"?
In fact, people "My body such and such" and they believe or claim that "I'm the body". This is what this topic has shown, since most people in here believe they are bodies.
Quoting TheMadFool
I can find a few explanations for it: the guy might 1) have made a mistake, 2) believed that the bag contained a flse, 3) call 'flse' an 'apple' or 4) have tricked you. There' may be more ...
But I guess you mean (2).
Quoting TheMadFool
Maybe as a concept, and depending on how you define it. But never as YOU, yourself, the person, the identity, the living unit, the human being. YOU, TheMadFool, with whom I have this exchange. And YOU are not empty!
This is why I say that people are lost in concepts instead of seeing the obvious, using simple logic. They seem to trust concepts more than what they themselves can experience directly. This is really sad.
Quoting TheMadFool
Are you an illusion? (I hope not, because I would have to imply that this comminication is also an illusion!)
This topic was simply about YOU, not the "self" as described in psychology and by the various philosophers through the ages.
So, are you, are you in the middle of your brain, are you the body? If you are, you are. Nothing to discuss but I was mainly interested in how people answer, tend to that is, "no" to such questions.
No. I'm between my brain and the physical brain. I am my body. I...AM...IN...BETWEEN. I let the the two (inner world and outer world) play and play along. A part of me is autonomous, luckily. The brain radiates into me (long dendrites) and the physical world has a grip too. Luckily. So who thinks? Not I!
I'm experiencing some memory issues.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
My cat breathes. My body breathes. I breathe. Notice the difference and the similarity? When you use "my" you are not the same as that which is yours.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
You're begging the question. How can you say you're conversing with me when I made it clear to you I don't know who me is? :chin:
Quoting Alkis Piskas
What's the difference? Sorry about the previous remark.
Quoting VerdammtNochMal
Good luck!
Thanks!
Certainly.
Quoting TheMadFool
"Begging the question" means "to elicit a specific question as a reaction or response". What specific question are you referring to?
Quoting TheMadFool
You may not know who you are, that's OK, but I I am very certain that there is someone out there with whom I am conversing. That's where my "you" refers to.
Quoting TheMadFool
No problem.
Quoting TheMadFool
Oh, I see. Well, I have made it so clear that even a child could undestand it. (Please don't get offended by that. I always try to explain things in the most simple manner and with the simplest words, so that even a child can undestand. Of course, I know that this upsets all those who want to dive into an ocean of concepts just for intellectual pleasure or other personal reasons.)
So, maybe you just don't want to see how simple YOU is --I swear it is! :smile:-- and how unncecessarily complicated the concept of "self" can be. Well, at least as far as this topic is concerned.
Quoting TheMadFool
OK.
Quoting TheMadFool
Good luck for what? You keep saying that! I guess then that it's your motto! :smile:
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Doesn’t simple logic suggest any “you” represents a “self”? Seems logical that when the topic is about some arbitrary YOU, it can be nothing but a topic about some abstract yet validly represented self. The statement “the topic was simply about YOU, not the “self”, seems then, not to so much contradict itself, as to be a misnomer. Any YOU is a “self” without equivocation, but any YOU is the “self” is equivocal from perspective.
Am I not forced to trust the conceptual validity of a disconnected yet validly represented self, given from my own thinking alone, from the very impossibility of having the ability to experience it?
While I agree with the proposition, “YOU are not your body”, declaring the certainty of a negation does not warrant any affirmation related to it. What affirmation would I gain from being informed “how simple YOU is”?
They stop existing too. But what exactly does that prove?
Who/what is this someone you're conversing with?
I maybe off the mark but here's the deal.
Just like you think there's someone you're conversing with, I too am under the impression that there's a someone I refer to with the pronoun "I".
What could this "I" be? That, my friend, is the critical question.
Since, from our discussions on how we use the word "my" it seems, at the end of the day, we're very uncertain as to what the "I" is.
Let's be systematic.
I could be,
1. The body (includes the brain).
2. The mind, the consciousness.
3. A soul.
Last but not the least,
4. Practically anything.
However, at the risk of repeating myself, we say things like,
5. My body (you mentioned this)
6. My mind
7. My soul
Therefore, the "I" can't be the body or the mind or the soul. Have I left anything out? Doesn't look like I have.
Option 4 above is just there to ensure we've exhausted all possibilities - clearly ( :chin: ), I'm not my pet dog, or my neighbor's cat, or my neighbor, or the stone in your garden (I'm sure you live in a pretty house), or the mountain I see when I look out the window, you get the idea.
In essence, we've, like Cantor did with infinities, checked each and every thing the "I" could refer to and, luckily or not, none are a match.
The "I" is an illusion! It doesn't refer to anything at all. Thus, the someone that's chatting with you is ???
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Your account of the matter/issue ignores the simplicity and glosses over the complexity that inheres therein.
Oh, I don't know that anyone's proving anything here...
It does seem to me though that my voice is a property of me; is it conceivable that I could still have this property after I have died?
No it isn't. And you won't have it. But that says nothing. Mind requires brain and body for sure. But that doesn't also mean that mind is brain/body. You can't jump to that conclusion.
Wouldn't dream of it. Brain and body are, as you say, necessary but not sufficient conditions for mind. Is something else necessary? Will I have a mind after I have died?
I answered you already. No you won't. But I m not sure I got your point here.
(I would prefer that you responded to the whole topic than picking up stuff from here and there. Anyway, I guess this is better than nothing at all ...)
Simple logic cannot be based on fuzzy and debatable concepts like "self". Simple logic can only be based on basic, simple, easily definable things that everyone can undestand. That's why it is also called "common logic", a term that I don't like because the word "common" can be interpreted in different ways.
Quoting Mww
Do you consider youself, a person a human being something arbitrary? Do you consider the abtract concept of "self" something more concrete than YOU, yourself, the TPF member with the username @Www, the one who has written that comment and with whom I commuincate at this moment?
Quoting Mww
A lot! More than you can think of! (Hint: It has to do with realization, not concepts)
Not quite, I switched it up on ya, substituting soul for body. After asking four times you finally addressed the question by asking a question, the point of which, you pointed out, is that you can be and have a spirit because the spirit in not physical. I then explained how both body and spirit occupy the same existential footing, proving your “argument” to be every bit as nonsensical as it appears to be on the surface.
I can't say. You are mixing matter with ideas with actions ... You have to group them at least by kind!
Realization is a concept. I think you may mean what some refer to as trans-rationality, as opposed to rationality or irrationality, and generally speaking, the realization is that ‘spirit’, and indeed everything, is illusory.
Well the obvious. Mind.
But my point is that most people from the statement (mind requires brain as to exist) which I also find true. Jump to the conclusion "so mind is brain". That doesn't make sense. It's a logical gap.
For me human brain generates/or interacts with something clearly non psychical (mind). I find it more logical than considering mind, thoughts etc as something material and physical. Thoughts being physical and material seem outrageous to me.
But yet, it's only my opinion and nothing more.
How can something non-physical interact with something physical?
Continuing to discuss this subject cannot and will not lead anywhere.
OK, I'll tell you something I have not told anyone yet in here. It's the bottom line:
YOU is not something to be analyzed. In fact, it has nothing to do with thinking. It has to do with realization and cognition. You can realize it or you cannot. There's nothing else to it. And I really hope that sooner or later you will realize it! Not only you, but everyone in here who hasn't yet.
That's the million dollar question for me. I can't answer you that, cause I have no idea how it is done.
People who believe their mind is their brain or that their self is their body have either swallowed the scientism lie or are too scared to think about life after material death.
And your right,it's not to do with thinking. It's obvious and Intuitive.
All true artists and dancers know the material body is not the spirit!
Never trust scientists on these matters!
Trust your instincts only!
These do not relate to each other.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
This only works if realization does not involve understanding. If you can’t inform me of how simple YOU is, because it is that which is only given through realization, perhaps you can inform me how realization is possible without the understanding which necessarily accompanies it.
Even granting that realization without concepts is epiphany, that still couldn’t inform me of how simple YOU is, if I didn’t subsequently transpose such epiphany into the representations, in this case the concepts, made explicit by the contents of it.
If “more than I can think of”, indicates that which is beyond the capacities of my thinking, or, which is the same thing, that of which the conceivability is either not immediately present or altogether impossible, then all that is necessarily beyond my comprehension. If how simple YOU is, is a realization more than I can think of.....how in the hell would I ever be informed by it? Here we would have an unintelligible epiphany, which is, of course, a contradiction.
All that to say this: one can force his intelligence to deflect only to a certain point, after which it becomes deniable by an observer.
Or maybe it would be better to think of it in a different way. In a way, everything we experience is a simulation and both 'body' and 'spirit' are part of that simulation. Seen in this way, everything is non-physical. After all, do physical things exist in the absence of minds? I don't believe that they do, or they both do and don't exist, or however best expresses non-duality.
It depends "who" would replace humans as to observe it I guess.
But I am not sure about the answer either. We, humans, name the world "physical" . But is it indeed or only what we can perceive?Our limited "reality"? And isn't " physical" just one more "human invention"? Named that way due to his limited sensations? I think that might be a discussion for another thread.
But for one thing we can be sure." Something" exists for sure!
For me, the existence of mind is the strongest evidence for humans that there is much more than we see . The way we can be so sure for our mind existence i always found it a really miracle!
That's why I think that physical (body-what we perceive) interacts with something non psychical (the whole "invisible world" that we can't perceive or we perceive it different, limited) . That interaction brings in life Mind.
Maybe Mind is Spirit after all.
Nonsense. You don't experience inside your brain.
What about your feet?
Feel what?
Panpsychism is compromise materialism. Half hearted waffle.
And yet, part of us is inside the brain. If you can't take away any part without destroying the whole, it's also sensible to say that we are inside of electrical impulses, as well as being electrical impulses.
We have this annoying habit of dissecting everything into its constituent parts, though.
Matter could very well just be how mind happens to seem, but it gets confusing if you look at it in terms of linear time. Linear time should be thrown out the window, as it isn't really real. The truth is that mind has always existed, and "before" and "after" are ridiculous concepts.
And, as far as dissection goes, and everything's codependency, there's no reason to assume that the entirety of the universe could exist in the absence of any part.
So, in my opinion, we are the body, and every atom of the body...every electron, as well as the action of electrons jumping orbits...and part-in-partial to every last photon of the universe as well.
So, we can't be located, and "YOU" or "ME" is something we cling to out of sheer terror. But matter and time are not as they seem.
The Earth itself (and the Sun) are hurtling through the galaxy. If we could get another perspective of ourselves, all we would see is a blur, like a car going by at 29,000 miles per hour on the highway.
It's been determined that location and velocity can't ever be precisely measured. And what you're really left with is a phantasm. And the truth, as I see it, is that we are spirits living in a spiritual world that becomes mundane to us through familiarity.
There are really limitless directions to travel through time, though, which has dimensions, just as traveling through space is traveling through time.
Nuff said, but, really, as far as scientific understanding goes, I doubt we've scratched the tip of the iceberg.
I think that in one sense you are correct. If by "body" you have in mind what we commonly refer to as human bodies, meaning your limbs, your stomach, your legs and so on, then of course it doesn't make sense. It leaves out the notion of person. And a body (in this sense) is not a person. One can go to a morgue and see many bodies but no persons.
In a more strict sense, we don't know what bodies are. Or where bodies stop being bodies. I have yet to see a person existing absent a body. And my mind is part of my body.
But the main thrust of your argument is sensible.
Do keep up! I'm not a materialist. Try reading closely.
Panpsychism is a wishy washy half materialist theory.
Be brave,go full spiritual non materialist!
Bravo!
Now please disguise your accounts or you will get banned again!
What are you getting banned for?
Sorry,I'm Married to the best Woman on the planet with two Beautiful Children.
Good luck anyway.
Where were you hiding all that time? :grin:
I need that kind of support. More precisely, to raise my hopes! :smile:
Quoting Ambrosia
Well, you are one in a million! (Actually, one among the ~25 people who responded to the topic! :smile:)
Quoting Ambrosia
Of course not. I never stop saying that (in different words!)
Always good to touch base with a kindred spirit who rejects the materialist mindset,yet doesn't run to descartes nonsense or platonism either!
Isn't yourself, the person I communicate with, the human being, ... all one? Aren't these things YOU? If not what else are they?
Quoting Mww
Right. It doesn't.
("Realization": "An act of becoming fully aware of something as a fact." (Oxford LEXICO))
Quoting Mww
As it looks, I can't (because I tried). Realization can sometimes happen with information --that's why I tried-- but it most often occurs at some usually unexpected moment.
When you will realize it --and I really hope you will at some point-- you will see why I say "simple".
OK, but can you also quote where does this refer to? Thanks.
Quoting Manuel
What else could I have in mind? :smile:
Quoting Manuel
What could a more strict sense be and how else can you think of bodies? The kind of objects considered in Physics? Or something else?
Quoting Manuel
Of course you can't. You connect the body to the person. Even a dead body is still considered a person by the great majority of people. And even when a dead body is burried and it is eaten by worms and becomes just bones, or it is cremated, people still believe that these are the person himself. Do you think this is rational?
(BTW, have you heard women say "I want that you like me for my mind not my body!" ? :grin:)
Quoting Manuel
OK, thanks.
Ha, ha! Nicely said! :smile:
Quoting Thales (first philosopher, first scientist)
Are you, by any chance, saying Thales is wrong!?
:joke:
Animism is different from panpsychism.
Do keep up old boy.
:smile:
I just read that back on those days, according to Xenophanes of Colophon, there really was no difference between gods and humans. Thus, Xenophanes' monotheism.
This piece of information is still fresh in my mind (I came by it just an hour or so ago). What do you make of it?
Animism has always been the primary religion of mankind,still is but in an occluded way.
Some crafty animists made the gods/ancestors into one and then reified that "god" into an abstract concept or principle. But one that has effects. "The laws of nature".
The "grand theory of everything".
Xenophones was a rascal and bullshitter.
Initially of course gods were humans,animals,the earth,and ancestors.
Still are! Today they are called doctors,lawyers,politicians priests and the supreme fake monotheistic God is the "Laws of nature".
How? Care to flesh that out for me? Thanks.
Quoting Ambrosia
Ok and there's got to be a good reason for doing that. What could it be?
Quoting Ambrosia
First natural theologian who found out about how we anthropomorphize god. Not nice!
Quoting Ambrosia
You have a point. I always was intrigued by the fact that God's supposed to oversee our well-being (health, justice, and so on) and yet, we have hospitals and courts.
Animism is the belief there is agency behind phenomenon,which is true.
Before it was gods,spirits,demons,nowadays its DNA,quarks,evolutionary selection,laws of nature,all animism/agency in disguise.
The reason for monotheism and a grand theory is simple,maximum political control. Monoplisation of narrative. Great for political empires and nation states.
Posts like this are becoming the new normal.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
When you say:
"Right this person, is YOU. YOU, as a human being, the same YOU since you were born, not your body, which is in constant change. You can trace YOURSELF in your mind since you were a child to this moment. It is always ONE thing."
I think that's correct. That's the idea of a self as distinct from a body, as I understand it.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Yes, mostly physics. We have our intuition of what bodies are then there's the more in depth study of them. In our intuitive sense, it makes no sense to say that we are our bodies, anymore than it makes sense to say that we love or laugh with our brains. Or walking with our legs.
People do these things, not individual organs.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
We treat them as such, especially following death, such as funeral and the like. But I don't think if you ask any of them is that thing in the casket an actual person, any of them would say that it is a person.
It never was the general notion contained in your thesis to which I took exception. I took exception only with the argument sustaining it, which is technically unsound for lack of critical thinking.
You begin with “YOU are not your body”, followed by “YOU is unanalyzable”. Even if you were merely trying to relieve some folks of a particular belief, you can’t do that by telling them the subject of the belief can’t be given due diligence. Not to mention the obvious occasion of forcing yourself into a contradiction, in that if YOU is unanalyzable, what ground is there for saying anything at all about it, especially in asserting what it is NOT?
And, no, you couldn’t inform me of how simple YOU is, for the very reason that it is unanalyzable. By asking you to inform me, you presupposed I didn’t already realize what your response would have to be. Analysis of “I” is possible; analysis of “you” is not. The former is a rational deduction with an intrinsic certainty, the latter, if susceptible to any kind of informal comprehension, is a mere empirical inference contingent on supposition from reason that does not belong to it. Hardly analytic, I must say.
Anyway.....enough of this. If I made my point, fine. If I didn’t, that’s fine too. The point being.....in case it’s buried too deep.... “iff it is true that an “I” is not the body in which it resides, then it is also true that all iterations of “I” are not the body in which it resides”. Now it should be clear no YOU is or needs be involved. Conflicts with realizations, analysis and inferences are eliminated, and everybody can go home, confident in that he speaks only for himself.
Right!
Quoting Manuel
OK.
Quoting Manuel
Do you mean how the body and organism works?
Quoting Manuel
I don't believe that either. But I can't say what exactly each one feels after a loved person has gone. One moment you can hear them saying e.g. "He/she is now in heaven", etc. and the other moment speaking to them over the grave on their visits to the cemetery. Why do they need to go there? Can't they speak to them from any place?
This subject brings in something else quite interesting: While persons are alive people believe that they are bodies and treat them as such, but after they die, and their body is burried or cremated, they believe that they continue to "live" and exist somewhere (as spirits, souls, etc.)? Do you think that this has someting to tell us? :chin:
Something else than pure matter. Pure matter, near-point-particles, is an abstraction. Something is missing. Panpsychism?
OK, fair enough.
Quoting Mww
1) Which argument specifically is this? (I have said a lot of things and brought in quite a few arguments to support my thesis.)
2) How it lacks critical thinking? (Direct and general statements like this are no good. Esp. when counter-argumentation is missing!)
I know that you go on with a general analysis and argumentation, and I'm certainly willing to respond to it, but I would like to answer that first because it sounds important ...
That's the whole point it is examined here. Why to make such a fuss about definitions since you also clearly got what he meant from the start??
Not that I disagree with the things you mention but I think that "word definition" game that many TPF members play each time, it is exhausting and many times it turns into ridiculous.
You don't do that often as I have noticed so that goes in general, not for you.
With that way imo we miss totally the purpose of the issue.
Don't get me wrong, I find definitions extremely important but what I find more important is Wording. Express yourself in all ways as to make someone realize what are you talking about. Even if you don't use definitions perfect, express everything that will make your general point here.
I didn't find Akis all definitions of You properly either. But I didn't care at all since at the end I got right what he refers to when he says "body" and "you".
No, I mean I have in mind our ordinary commonsense intuitions in which we think of ourselves as having a mind and a body. This includes the current perspective in which a woman isn't her body or the idea that he hurt his body (but not his mind), etc.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
This is very closely related to one's beliefs. If someone is religious, they may think that. Heck, even a non-believer (like me) thinks about X as if they were somewhere. But this is a way of coping and behaving, it's not as if I think they are anywhere once they're gone. Much like I don't think a person is anywhere before they are born.
So I don't think this tells us much outside a persons' belief.
I believe I was quoting Alkis Piskas there, not my own words. Panpsychism is an interesting view, I don't think it's correct, but it's worth thinking about and pursuing.
I am coming more and more to the conclusion that we simply cannot shake off the folk-psychological idea of matter as "dead an stupid". But I think matter is way, way richer than our initial intuitions may say about it.
So "pure matter" includes thoughts, desires, wishes, dreams, visions, etc., etc. Quite a fascinating phenomenon, it seems to me.
It is a fact. How else can the hard problem of consciousness be solved?
I don't think it's a fact, it's a belief. You cannot show that atoms are conscious or experience something minimal. They may or they may not.
How to solve the so called hard problem? I don't think it has a solution. Like many other issues, it'll remain a problem.
I don’t see any profit in repeating anything. If there’s something new, related but different.....fine. Bring it on.
You think it's a fact? What about me eating atoms? They will enter my brain. I feel my brain. Doesn't that mean the atoms contain something more than pure matter?
I said I do not think it's a fact. You can speak of you eating atoms, or seeing them, or feeling them. That's a particular from of description.
You could also say that your are eating and feeling cells as well. Or even the quantum vacuum, which as far as is known, is the the deepest thing postulated in physics that I'm aware of.
I don't think my nails are conscious, nor my stomach, nor most of my body unless something hurts or tickles.
I think physical stuff is all there is. Including thoughts, imagination, etc. If certain configurations of physical stuff lead to mind, then physical stuff is richer than we initially think.
But what's the true nature of physical stuff? Why should a huge collection of interacting almost pointlike particles see, hear and feel and see dreams and thoughts?
If I'm honest I'd say I don't know.
Then again why should anything in the universe be able to think at all? It seems to be the case that for the overwhelming majority of the universe's history, there was zero thinking of any kind. And then, in a fraction of a second, there is thought.
So, the only thing I can say, other than I don't really know, is that physical stuff has exquisite malleability given certain parameters.
That malleability is true. But I can imagine that all organisms, if matter doesn't possess something "extra", all life operates in the dark, so to speak. A face expressing fear would be very strange in that case.
I'm not understanding. I'm saying matter can be conscious: we are conscious matter. Matter has inherently as a potential of (by way of a specific configuration) giving rise to experience.
So if it's already a potential in matter, why postulate something "extra"?
If the potential is the extra then there's no need.
1) Intuition has nothing to do with common sense. Intuition is the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.
2) OK about the mind, but do you need intuition or even thinking to just observe your body and be aware of the fact that you have a body and of your body itself?
Quoting Manuel
But it is exactly about belief that I'm talking. And what I discribed shows a big conflict in one's beliefs: a body w/o spirit and then spirit leaving the body. We don't know which belief of the two is stronger. This is not important. What is important is that there is a possibility they actually believe there's a spirit which is connected to a body. Isn't that right?
Quoting Manuel
This might also be the case, i.e. the belief about the spirit leaving the body is not real or strong, but it is just an emotional reaction to the loss. Yet, this doesn't change what I am describing above and have also described earlier.
Quoting Manuel
This is quite reasonable, since we have no sound evidences about the truth of that.
Anyway, this is another story! :smile:
But you are. How can you have a mind (if you are your body you can), and be your mind (in which case you don't have a mind)? What's so important about your mind that you wanna be it? Who do you see in the mirror? Your mind?
I see. So, you are just spreading venom with your baseless criticism and also in wasting people's time.
I am done with you. :meh:
What's so bad about being your body (you put an exclamation mark behind your statement that we're not our body!)?
Nothing. An exclamation mark can indicate a lot of things other than "bad"!
One example is the exclamation mark in the above sentence! And in the previous sentence! And in this one!
(Wow! I think I have overdone it! :grin:)
!!!!! !. :grin: It is there to pay attention? It must mean something... !
Yes, you can say that. Something like "Linsten guys!" ... But not as if I was dictating it or something. It is so evident to me that I am not a body that I tried to pass this belief to others who believe they are bodies. But this has a story behind it.
I launched this topic after I saw the disappointing (for me, always) results of my poll "Does thinking take place in the human brain?" a few days before. About 80% of the people who voted and/or responded to it thought they where just bodies with a brain. So, you can also take my exlcamation mark as a kind of protest! :grin: (Of course, they too protested back, "But we ARE bodies!" :grin: )
Only the three B's are needed. And we are just our bodies, without brains!
I knew a guy once, maybe 30-40 years before you were even born, got all pissy over something I said, did an abrupt about-face, yanked the door open with a major flourish......and walked right into it. Funniest damned thing I ever saw. Felt sorry for the dumbass, though, like to broke his nose. After I got over my hysteria and he got over his tantrum, we burned a doobie, went about our business, never saw each other again.
(Sigh) I see petulance is still comical, after all these years.
Are you a 100 years young then? I mean, Piskas has 40. Plus 40 is eighty. Plus about 20 gives 100.
Probably. But it's hard to say with much confidence.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
They may actually believe that. I don't see any reason to suppose it's true. As to why it is important, that would be connected with how much comfort or solace this gives each person. But beyond that, I don't see any substantial issue, unless someone wants to speak of dualism, which is fine.
I agree. There's certainly no substantial issue, since people live with the same beliefs confortably for eons! Lucky ones, they don't care about philosophical issues! :grin:
I'm curious what you think of Buddhism and other Eastern belief systems, which have existed for thousands of years, and its doctrine of no-self. They believe that this intuition that you hold so highly is the primary cause of all human suffering. Are the millions who've held such a belief throughout history all deluded fools or are they on to something important?
A convoluted topic. There is good reason to affirm that anatta does not deny the self, at the very least in early Buddhism. But, maybe more importantly, anatta signifies an absence of unchanging essence in any phenomena … much including bodies. Hence, to the same degree one were to interpret anatta to signify absence of selves, one would likewise need to affirm an absence of bodies, this so as to be consistent. Thereby implying the Eastern notion of emptiness. As in "form is emptiness".
To affirm “you are your body” can thereby be as contrary to anatta as something like “you are your soul”. As to bodies not having an unchanging essence, neither do selves (or even souls) require an existentially unchanging essence in order to be.
I have the conviction I'm nothing more than my centralnervoussystemless body. The butterfly tattoe on my left arm is a pretty unchanging essence.
Unless the tattoo is brand new, it has faded a bit over time, hasn't it? Hence, it has changed. You may be referring to the tattoos overall form, but given sufficient time that too will change.
I wrote you at exactly the same time in anothercthread! Youre right about the tattoo!
I’m pretty sure that most Buddhists don’t claim to be their bodies.
Such an astute observation … like point out that water is not dry. And what does this have to do with what I've written?
But for the record, nor have I yet encountered any Buddhist who claims that they are inexistent. If you’ve come across any such in your readings, please point them out to me.
Also the butterfly will get wrinkled one day. The one on my arm that is. Unless I die premature...
Except when it's not (as when frozen), of course. :razz:
No-self is just a common term in the enlightenment biz and nothing to get especially excited about. Empty doesn't mean non-existent, or rather it means both existent and non-existent, and neither existent nor non-existent... and I've gone crosseyed. Anyway, I'm still curious about what @Alkis Piskas thinks about all this emptiness boloney.
Frozen water is called ice. :smile:
Ice is just slow H20, smart guy.
Ice is ice.
It makes me, my body, move slow when I'm cold.
You are dealing with one of two basic definitions of the self, specifically the subjectively reckoned "I". The other self is the self of objective reality: a bunch of atoms and molecules forming tissues of various types an in a particular pattern as determined by one's DNA code.
Pick up a copy of cognitive scientist Doug Hofstadter's (of "Godel, Escher, Bach" fame) book, "I am a Strange Loop". Read it, ignoring all he has to say about "souledness", "levels of souledness", and morality, and you will have a fair picture of how the subjective "I", which is analogous to Freud's "Ego", develops, which is, basically, by means of continuous reanalysis of the self concept pursuant to the urgings of a continuous feedback loop of perceptions regarding interactions with objects (including other people) in the world. Professor Hofstadter has the cog sci stuff right, in my opinion (and as you would expect), but I think he gets a bit lost in trying to integrate his concepts of morality and correct behavior into his work.
That's exactly who I am(except for my central neres, which are inside me)! The DNA though determines only proteins. Nothing more and nothing less.
Yes, but the subjectively reckoned "you", the "I" from your own perspective, is much more than just your body. It is the "I" which results from the constant battle between the primitive "Id" and the idealized "Superego", occurring within the continuously changing context of a feedback loop involving all of your life's experiences. That's a mouthful, is it not!? This is the "you" which, indeed, is not your body, but is so much more...
That's what you think. There is no "superego". Though every brainless body, every I, animal or human, or even bacteria-like (which are only bodies), is super!
The so much more lays inside my brain and the outside world.
Sounds like outdated science.
Do you consider the brain as part of you. Or do you possess it?
No, I am certainly not. I have not used the terms "self" or "I" in my thesis except to quote people's reactions like "Ah, the 'I', the 'self' is an illusion ...". In fact, I don't only ignore the terms "self" and "I" but I feel that they are responsible for the whole confusion created about the nature of a human being!)
Quoting Michael Zwingli
Thanks, I'll pass. I don't have that much time (and patience!). But I'll respond to what yourself have to say ...
Can you state your thesis (again...) in a concise way? Who is you?
Maybe. I don't keep up anymore!
So, what is in fashion these days? :smile:
Ask a scientist.
A 1000 brains.
By my "thesis" I mean my "description of the topic". I used to use the latter at the beginning, but then I changed it to my "thesis" for short and because a few in here seemed to like more this term!
My bad! Anyway, now you know what I meant and you can read my description of the topic, which BTW you should have done in the first place. You see we are both wasting time because you didn't. But it's not only you. People in here like to pick up statements from responses here and there, without having read the topic to which they belong. And they ask me about things which I have already mentioned and explained in my description! How can such a thing be productive?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11791/you-are-not-your-body/p1
To give a fresh recount is always productive. You say yourself you changed. :smile:
OK. Bye.
Is that all you have to say? People often do that after I said something. Saying goodbye.
Hmmm... I would say that the brain is part of the "real me", of my objective self, but something that is had by my subjective self, the subjective "I".
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Ah, I see. It seems that I was misapprehended in my understanding of your premise. So, when you state that "a man is not his body", you are defining "a man" in the objective sense...as a real object in physical reality? If not, then how so?
So the real you is the brain and body combined? Even including the outside physical world?
The brain is part of, a component of, the body, just like a nose or any other body part. Based upon all the evidence that we have, the objective human being is simply that body existing as an object within objective reality, which I usually like to call "the universe", even though the term "objective reality" also comprises (infinite?) space, and whatever may exist within space, which is as yet impossible for us to discern, outside of our universe...perhaps other distant "universes" (which would make our "universe" but one element of a "multiverse").
You can also see the whole physical universe as a part of you. Like your brain and nose. Like that you is everything. A limitation is required though. The kimits are constituted by my body, in tight and non-separable connection with the inside world (the brain( and the physical universe, the outside world.
What evidence?
Scientific evidence. What I meant by including that clause in my post, is that we have no evidence for any part of the human being other than the body (the"soul", for instance).
What about me seeing color, feeling emotions or love, feeling sorry for other people, or playing joyfully with my puppy dog? Aint that proof?
Quoting Michael Zwingli
Wouldn’t it be the more consistent to say we have no objective evidence for any part of the human being other than the body? It is true there is no other empirical, re: objective, evidence of the human being other than the body, but the whole of the human being may not be found in the body alone. And if that is true, more than objective evidence for the whole human being would be required, wouldn’t it?
Admittedly, the subject effectively changes from “human being” to “being human”, but are we not entitled to consider that form of reality?
————
Quoting Thunderballs
......just like that.
:100:
Yes...objective evidence...nice catch!
Quoting Mww
I think that this reflects the distinction that I draw between the objective homo sapiens which I am, and the subjective "I".
Yeah, but that may be just to dig a deeper hole. Being human can be a general objective proposition, a universal form if you’re into the Greek thing, which reduces technically to empirical anthropology insofar as it covers all of us, or, maybe (sputterchokegasp) psychology. Still, the only way to even think about it, is from being A human, which is a strictly Enlightenment thing, which reduces to proper subjective metaphysics.
Pick yer own poison, I guess, right?
Quoting Mww
That's what philosopphy is all about: Diggin holes.
Quoting Mww
It can be. To me, being human is the full realization of the potentialls Nature offers us, in the sattisfied and fulfilled knowledge (whatever that means) that the gods are quietly contemplating their creation of eternity and infinity. Being human can be universal or Solar-systematic.
Quoting Mww
I like their old ancient gods. These turned into one super monster by Xenophanes and this laying the foundations for the modern notion of one scientifically investigable reality is less sattisfactory.
Quoting Mww
Scientific culture should be subjected to it!
Quoting Mww
Poetry!Quoting Mww
I don't agree. A human is more than a thing..
Quoting Mww
Cheers mate!
:smile:
Agreed, in principle. I would agree unequivocally, if you’d left off the “which I am”. Whatever “I” am, “I am” not an objective homo sapien.
Except....there’s always one, seems like....
Quoting Thunderballs
....”thing” here relates, albeit euphemistically, to “Enlightenment”, not a human.
The only human “thing”, is its body, as says.
:up: strike "which I am", and add "which represents my physical reality".
Perfect.
You said "To give a fresh recount is always productive. You say yourself you changed."
OK? Bye again!
What premise exactly?
I had though that you premised the statement that "you are not your body" upon the "you" representing the subjective self, but apparently I was wrong. You will have to inform me of what said "you" represents within that statement, which is why I asked above:
Quoting Michael Zwingli
But what's the change? Change in the true realityQuoting Mww
Indeed! But what a thing! Neither matter neither soul. But both at the same time! Between the soul of the brain and the matter of the outside physical world! With eyes to see and cry and express, ears to hear, a mouth to speak, shout, and sing, and two hands to type you this. All informative patterns with an entropy value that expresses not much.
But if human is an Enlightenment Thing, aint it a thing? Whats an enlightenment thing? A way of enlightened thinking (according to science and scientific ratio)? Is a human founded in enlightenment?
And yet....attempts to reduce metaphysical dualism to a non-starter, continues.
Quoting Thunderballs
A way of thinking yes, but not necessarily according to science, but instead, according to the principle sapere aude.
Quoting Thunderballs
Hmmm. This can only be answered as a matter of opinion, and mine would be.....these days, with the current evolution of technology and empirical knowledge in general, basically he is, but practically, he may not like to admit it.
You might the following conversation between a caterpillar and Alice in Lewis Carroll's book Alice In Wonderland interesting:
[i]The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the
hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.“Who are YOU?” said the Caterpillar.This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”[/i]
Note: Caterpillars pupate and metamorphose into butterflies
[quote=Zhuangzi]Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.[/quote]
Nice! :smile:
[i]"I don't know why I did that! ... I was not myself!"
"I am not the same person anymore. I have changed a lot!"
"What you did was very bad! I cannot recognize you anymore!"
"I thought I knew you, but I was wrong!"[/i]...
...
Sounds nice, but in what form does this intelligence exist?
I would prefer, of course, "consciousness is everywhere" instead! :smile:
Quoting Santiago
I don't undestand "small point's concentrating hips of it" ...
Quoting Santiago
I liked that!
Quoting Santiago
How could we not be anything? We should be something since we are aware (conscious)! Awareness (consciousness) is something. I am aware therefore I exist. (To paraphrase Descartes' "I think, therefore I am"! :smile:)
I couldn't be bothered reading through the 10 pages of responses to find out if the comments I put here have already been said but I also wanted to 'respect' your request to look at this thread. So, I decided to simply respond to your own original questions. At the outset, I would include myself in the 'you exist only within your own brain' grouping. One of the majority you suggest. I have put the questions you ask, and I want to address, in bold
The first, and very obvious question is, "If you are a body, then why do you say 'my body', 'I have a body', and so on?" You can't be a body and have a body at the same time, can you?
I am not a body, I have a body, yes. Body parts can be replaced, ultimately I could become a brain in a box.
So, a second question follows as a consequence, "If you have a body, then what are YOU?"
I am a human mind, created through human procreation and my existence became possible due to the evolution of the universe and the consequential availability of the required raw materials.
My individuality/awareness/consciousness etc are examples of possible phenomena that can occur when an immense diversity, manifests by combination. In less flowery rhetoric, I am a random human mind created from all the possible human minds that could be created, from all the related processes, available to the universe. But no 'controller,' no god behind this. All processes in the Universe came from random action until the emergence of sentient lifeforms.
Is that which is YOU at this moment, who does this and that, YOU who have grown up from a baby and did all these things in your life, YOU who was a good student, YOU who have won medals in athletics and prizes in contests, YOU who got married and had children, YOU who became a president of a company, YOU whom will still be in the memories of people who knew YOU, after you pass away, YOU ... Is all that an illusion? That is, YOU don't exist and have never existed?"
I do not agree at all with the posits that "I" does not exist or that individual free will or individual consciousness is not real.
Do people who communicate with you feel that they communicate with a brain or with a person?
With a person, I hope
Right this person, is YOU. YOU, as a human being, the same YOU since you were born, not your body, which is in constant change. You can trace YOURSELF in your mind since you were a child to this moment. It is always ONE thing. You may have felt millions of different emotions, various injuries and sickness since you were a child, but it is still, always YOU who have been subjected to all that.
Yes Its me but my body is just part of my interface and it allows me to interact with my environment.
So, what is this YOU? It is the spirit, soul, elan vital and other names people have given to the vital princeple, the animating force and the identity itself of the human being.
I came into existence because the possibility of doing so happened. I am alive and I can contribute/detract from objective goals such as giving meaning/significance to the universe. I think that's my primary function. I will die and disassemble (no soul/spirit/life after death in my opinion), adding to the raw materials available for producing new humans. In this sense, all lifeforms are connected.
Thinking that you are your body is like a car driver who gives so much importance to his car (he can't live without it, etc.) that he eventual believes he is that car! On a higher level, the driver knows he is separate from his car but he still believes that his body drives the car. Yes, like a robot in science-fiction movies! Which made me think of another question regarfing the impossibility of the idea that the person is his body: In that case sience could clone persons, not just their body, but every trait of their personality, their behavioral characteristics, their medical history, all their memories, in short the whole package! Well, good luck with it!
Yeah a bit dystopic but lots of possibilities in what you state. I think aspects of cloning and use of technology (the cyborg concept) could be very useful in the future to help enhance longevity of human lifespan. The Universe is a very big place. More planets than grains of sand on Earth. 8 billion humans is a very small number in that sense. We could have a billion planets each and that would just be a splash. If we are going to see it all and add to its significance in pursuit of meaning then we need longevity, until we get bored to continue living and decide to become raw materials again. Its the cumulative effect of human lives on the Universe that is the most important aspect of all of this. What will be the final result? Maybe at some point, the pantheist/cosmopsychist position will prove accurate, if the result is that the Universe itself becomes self-aware.
My intention was only to prove that the belief of "We are out bodies" is nonsensical and unsubstantiated.
I don't understand 'we are out bodies.' I assume you were meant to suggest that the idea of the mind existing outside of the body is nonsense and if that was your intention here then I agree.
And I'm really surprised that most people in here prefer to stick to such a belief than, not to believe
This can only be understood on the basis of whether or not I am correct about what you meant by 'we are out bodies', so I won't comment on it further.
but, just leaving another door open to the explanation of the mind-body connection. I can understand that this is not Science's task, since for it only material things exist, but for independent philosophical thinkers?
again, a bit dependent on my assumption above but I agree that the Scientific approach to these issues is more restrictive compared to the 'pure conjecture' and 'pure opinion' on offer to a philosophical epistemology.
I will reply to your last 3 messages in a while, using private messaging ...
Ok
Yes, I know about this kind of interpretations. I was once (a very long time ago) involved deeply in Eastern philosophy ...
Thats just a viewpoint held by you and some others and not one I subscribe to.
You can hurt/kill with your body (punch/kick/with a weapon). So, you are not your body.
Your body is (your mind's) (a) tool cum weapon.
It's even more serious than this. How did Descartes establish there was an "I" doing the thinking? He made some assumptions even here. A more accurate exclamation might have been, 'There is thinking."
Please use "Quote" to give me the exact reference to what I have said. Because I don't remember having ever said that Descartes, with this or any other statement, proved the existence of his body!
(BTW, I have never said or left be implied that Descartes proved the existence of this body, as @Ree Zen mentioned.)
Interesting point. However, the existence of "I" is not based on an assumption. It is self-evident. I am aware of being aware. That's the proof --for me-- that I exist. And if you need a proof for yourself too, I could ask you, "Whom are you talking with?". And if this is not a "hard" evidence, I could make it harder: by kicking you. You will feel that kick and you will know for sure that I exist, and you will never ask me that again! :grin:
Then, stating "There is thinking", as you say, brings questions like, "Where?", "Who claims that?", "OK, but what does that prove?", etc. It's also a circular argument/reasoning, because saying "There is thinking" is itself a thought, i.e. it comes from thinking.
Never said you did. :smile:
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I get that common sense seems to indicate an "I" in daily living, which we may well have to presuppose is true to function in the reality we seem to be in, so we can certainly stop here. But this only goes so far. Even Nietzsche said of the cogito that there was an unjustifiable presupposition that there was an I.
And just to be a pain, and I don't know where I sit on this - Descartes went to all the trouble of imagining that an evil demon might have tricked him into seeing a fake world, but he never went the whole way to wonder what if the thoughts he was having were inserted by the same demon? Ever met anyone with schizophrenia? Thought insertion and the sense that your mind isn't really yours is a common experience.
Not that Heidegger is popular around here, but my shallow, incomplete reading of him suggests that the Cartesean distinction between subject and object are open to question. Heidegger appears to reject this distinction and posit that there is no subject distinct from the external world of things. He challenges the very idea of subjectivism and individualism that emerged from the cogito. All this means is that some very smart thinkers have taken the cogito in ways alien to Descartes' conclusion. I don't have the ability to tell for certain which view is the more accurate account. But I can say which one is more useful. :razz:
I saw one in the mirror! She thought she was me... I told her not to talk nonsense.
I know! But the quote by @Ree Zen's that you brought up was an anwer to me and leads back to me! (OK, I'm a little sensitive to being attributed statements I have never made, esp. if they are false! :grin:)
Quoting Tom Storm
I see. But there a lot f things Nietzsche has said that I don't agree with! :smile:
Quoting Tom Storm
OK, I think enough is said about Descartes ... I have not even mentioned him in my present topic!
Quoting Tom Storm
Only in movies! :smile: But, not only schizophrenics, a lot who suffer from severe mental illnesses have no sense of themselves; they are not aware that they exist. Their mind is just messed up.
As you see, I avoid using "I" or "self" as concepts, because they only create confusion, misunderstandings and trouble! I prefer using "YOU", "ME" etc. referring to real and concrete things: human beings, persons, myself, yourself, ourselves, ... This clears up a lot of things because one has to think in real terms: personal experiences, examples in life, etc.
Quoting Tom Storm
If you mean that they misunderstood Descartes' thoughts, ideas and conclusions, I can really believe it. That's why I never rely on what known philosophers or "experts" say. I prefer to use my own positions on a subject --if I have any-- and talk with persons based on their own positions. Some depend only on quotes by and positions of philosophers to provide arguments in a discussion. And very often, they bring in quotes that are either false or have never been actually said by the person: E.g. the famous "I know that I know nothing" is know to never having been actually said by Socrates! :smile:
So, the rest of your statement not withstanding, this appears to be your conclusion. In which case I am going to have to assert the fact that this is complete nonsense. To assert that you are not your body, one would have to provided instances of oneself existing outside of one's body. The illusion that you are highlighting is little more than the human brain and its structures (all a part of the body, mind you), operating in unison to provide the body with consciousness capable of, in particular, superior pattern processing - info on that can be found here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4141622/ - And which is little more a higher form of cognitive trackinf of patterns of reality, which the body is a part of. The brain is perceiving it's own body in a manner that can be reliably patternized; that is perception of all objective patterns, not "the self." The self is the sum total of all biological systems that distinguish human life from all other forms of life, both in terms of species and in terms of individual members of the same species. Each human is itself and is perceiving itself and is perceiving other humans. The issue you are highlighting is a non-issue. It's not that we are our bodies, it's that we can be nothing OTHER than our bodies and all of that which comprises us, including self-perception. Hope that helps.
-G