How do I know I'm going to stay dead?
I used to subscribe fairly strongly to an atheistic notion of death (I.e. You cease to exist and rot in the ground ), but lately I'm not so sure.
Let's say I cease to exist at death. What is going to prevent me from coming into existence again? What's going to keep me dead?
Sounds like a silly question, BUT IT ALREADY HAPPENED ONCE BEFORE! I already came into existence once before (this lifetime), so I basically know that things which don't exist don't necessarily stay not-existing. There is nothing keeping them not-existing, stopping them From coming into existence. And I know for a fact (?) that I came into existence from non-existence once before at my birth (I didn't exist at all, and then I did). So why wouldn't it happen again? Reality already failed once before to keep me in non-existence, how do I know it won't happen again?
This is kind of worrying me, I don't want to be burdened with existence again and again. How do I make sure I stay dead and reality doesn't bother me again?
Let's say I cease to exist at death. What is going to prevent me from coming into existence again? What's going to keep me dead?
Sounds like a silly question, BUT IT ALREADY HAPPENED ONCE BEFORE! I already came into existence once before (this lifetime), so I basically know that things which don't exist don't necessarily stay not-existing. There is nothing keeping them not-existing, stopping them From coming into existence. And I know for a fact (?) that I came into existence from non-existence once before at my birth (I didn't exist at all, and then I did). So why wouldn't it happen again? Reality already failed once before to keep me in non-existence, how do I know it won't happen again?
This is kind of worrying me, I don't want to be burdened with existence again and again. How do I make sure I stay dead and reality doesn't bother me again?
Comments (286)
But the point is that either way, reality brought me/my experience/my life into existence where prior it did not exist at all. So let's say when I die, I don't exist in any way anymore. How do I know I won't come into existence in some form or another once again? How do I know I will cease to exist and CONTINUE ceasing to exist. Reality already (at least) once before interrupted my non-existence, why wouldn't it do it again? It's already proven (?) that I can not exist in any way, and then exist in some way, so when I die and cease to exist in any way, there's no guarantee that this will continue indefinitely. In fact it seems to me it's likely it will happen again. Nothing stopped it happening for my lifetime right now, don't see why when I next cease to exist in any way it will be any different?
Why is non existence before this lifetime any different than non existence after our deaths? They're both the same, right? Non existence is non existence. So to me it seems likely I'll exist in some way again after my death. I don't see why it's justified to believe that non existence after death is permanent, when the non existence before our present lives wasn't. Seems to me the logical conclusion is that non existence is not permanent.
So the argument here is
1. Non existence before this life is the very same thing as non existence after this life
2. Non existence before this life was not perpetual (I came into existence)
3. Therefore non existence after this life will not be perpetual either
Because we exist right now, and presumably didn't exist before this life, we can conclude that the nature of non existence is that it's not permanent. Non existence post death won't last forever?
It's hard to talk without using pronouns. I'm not really thinking I'll exist again as this human, or personality.
But even if there is no subject of experience, there is still an individualised experience existing (and it has a first person quality to it). What's to stop that existing again?
Or maybe there IS a subject of experience and it doesn't cease to exist when our bodies we experience die?
It just doesn't seem logical that the non existence before our lives now would be any different from the non existence when we die. Why was one impermanent and the other permanent, if they're the same thing?
I think what's most likely here is my/our understanding of time, the past, ourselves, and non/existence is seriously flawed. Maybe there is no past and times not linear, or maybe it is and I'm a soul which intermittently occupies various bodies.
Point is the more I think about the more illogical permanent non existence after I die is. Which sucks, I want to die and then stay dead. Life is mostly suffering I don't want to be bothered by it again unless it's really good.
Well, dearest Dukkha, let's try an experiment: you die and then we'll put your corpse out in a field. We'll check it every now and then. How long do you think we should wait before we decide you are going to stay dead?
As soon as the vultures, coyotes, rats, weasels, and various insects and beetles start working on your former abode, I think we can say, "Yep; he's not coming back."
Deal?
It isn't. If you are non-existent you have nothing (literally) to worry about, or more to the point, nothing to worry with.
Exactly.
Neither a "me" nor "I."
Oy vey. No it didn't. Prior to conception, there's no you with "a non-existence to interrupt"
Trying to summarise what Buddhism says about this subject in a few words would be impossible, but suffice to say that it teaches that all beings are caught up in the wheel of birth and death ('samsara'). Buddhists believe that the karmic causes that are set in motion during this life, re-form themselves into beings in the various domains of existence in future lives. This process is essentially beginningless, although it is not endless, as the Buddha represents the one who has 'escaped the cycle of re-birth' thereby bringing the process to an end.
This story is the subject of the well-known Tibetan iconographic paintings called the Bhavachakra (which literally means the 'wheel of becoming'.) Each of the six divisions in the wheel represent one of the 'six realms of being'; in the very centre, a pig, rooster and snake are chasing each other round in a circle; these represent greed, delusion and hatred, respectively.
The Buddha is at the top right, outside the circle, representing his escape from it.
The OP's question is reasonable only if one accepts that there is some integral part of the personality that exists outside of the corruptable brain. That is, if there was some magic moment when a soul dropped into your body prior to birth, why can't that same magic soul drop into a new body after it becomes disembodied after my death and I can live again? The trick for the OP is to explain how the body and mind are not intrinsically connected so that the permanent destruction of one does not necessitate the permanent destruction of the other. It would seem you'd need to resurrect my body if you wished to resurrect my mind and that would be the only way to recreate me.
Second, a real pet peeve of mine is the reference to Eastern theology in response to philosophical questions. We're all pretty attuned to the inappropriateness of references to Western theology (i.e. biblical cites), but every now and again we have to hear about Eastern systems like they matter here.
The other way of looking at it is that nothing exists. It is all about how you define nothingness, or rather how you can't define it, since nothingness has no definitions. An undefined state appears to be all things, but these things don't technically exist. In this way, nothingness is True and the universe is false. So all things have their basis in nothingness, including your mind and what you might call your 'soul'.
So let's discuss the concept of going in and out of existence. One can perhaps fall into a void in which there is no space, but if time still exists and definitions still exist then it isn't nonexistence. It may still contain all the laws of the universe and other concepts, perhaps even the mind. To fall further, one would have to abandon all concepts, all definitions. But there again you are left in an undefined state, a state where anything could seem to happen. It is a meaningless state, and since it is without time you spend no time in it. In fact, upon reaching such a state you immediately 'rebound' into all experience, since like dividing zero by zero all answers are possible and all equally false.
In short, you cannot cease to exist, for the core of your being is not based in the illusion of the universe but in the Truth of nothingness which does exist and from which all universes appear. The core of your being in a very real sense created them and you are now in the process of experiencing them, along with all the other manifestations of your core essence.
Buddhism is not 'theology' which pertains to theistic belief systems. Furthermore the poster's screen name is a Buddhist term. And finally the question by its very nature has religious implications.
There is a lot of documentation concerning children with memories of past lives. This comprises interviews with children who claim to remember having been another person in a previous life, the accounts of which are then checked against external (i.e. journalistic and documentary) sources (see this article. It is of course a truism that belief in rebirth is taboo in Western culture.)
1. There was a time in the past in which I (presumably) did not exist. Prior to my birth there was no me, my experience, my brain, anything.
2. I presently exist.
3. So we have Time A (1.) where I had no existence, and Time B (2.) where I do
4. Let's call the time after I die Time C, where presumably I won't exist in any way. I cease to exist at death.
What's the difference between Time A and Time C? Such that Time B followed from Time A, but a Time D *WONT* follow from Time C? What's my justification for believing time C will be permanent/unchangeable (i.e. an 'atheistic' death), when I know for a fact that Time A wasn't?
Note I'm not specifically talking about the same body or brain, or personality existing for a second time. All I mean by Time D is that it is not identical Time A (i.e. there exists something, there is some sort of existence. What form that takes I have no clue, but there is *something*).
I wouldn't take the death and rebirth thing literally. Remembering past lives, and already innately knowing the forms as Socrates suggested, and one need only "remember them" sounds a lot closer to the mark.
The living know only one thing, the dead don't even know that.
I think this is akin to asking: after all humans go extinct, is it possible for 'experiencing' at all to come into existence (i.e. would it be possible for a population of observers/first person experiencers to come into existence). And I do think that's possible.
Individualized experiencing/first person experiencing doesn't seem to be a 'personal' thing (in the sense of belonging to any one in particular). I.e. it just seems to be a general property of human bodies to be able to experience in the first person. My body's capacity for fist person experience isn't unique in any way -- and so it's more reasonable to say that experiencing would occur again (if bodies capable of it were to be formed again) than to say 'my experiencing' would occur again. What individuates any particular 'first person experience' is what's structuring the experience -- not the fact of experiencing: i.e. the memories, identities, beliefs that structure the immediate experience. But none of that carries over past the death of a person.
Considering what I wrote above, what that's particular to 'you' would carry over to the new body?
The sheer arrogance here! As Wayfarer points out, there are no Eastern "theologies." Secondly, I doubt you've read more than a page about them, because if you did you would realize that Eastern systems do matter and do provide compelling philosophical answers to philosophical questions. The analogy to biblical citations is absurd, as there is no notion of dogma or revealed scripture in the East, generally speaking, that is comparable to what one finds in Abrahamic religions. Even the word "system" is too limiting, when one considers the plethora of different schools of thought, which, though often outwardly opposed in many ways, are still accepted as orthodox according to the religion in question (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc).
This isn't an "atheistic notion" of death. Atheism is the denial of the existence of any god. One could therefore be an atheist and hold to belief in an afterlife of some kind.
Quoting dukkha
The answer to this depends on your metaphysic. If you are a materialist, then the fact that the material world is the only world there is would prevent you from coming into existence again, since the dissolution of your body would be the dissolution of "you" entire.
Quoting dukkha
There is none if in fact it turns out that you will be reborn. You have to show that it is possible to not do so in order to make sure you stay dead.
The six realms of rebirth is not a monolithic concept. It can and has been interpreted in a number of different ways, so your request to "prove it" betrays your naivety once again.
You didn't define a time D above that comment by the way. I understand what you're asking though, but I'm just pointing out that you didn't actually define a time D.
Quoting dukkha
This question is confused. You're asking as if you're asking about time being "permanent/unchangeable"--which it never is, but you're thinking about it as if you're asking about you being in some state or other. In time A, there's no you to be in any state, permanent, impermanent, etc. In time C (or D, whichever you want to call it), there's likewise no you to be in any state, permanent, impermanent, etc. Nothing can happen or refrain from happening to an existent you, because there is no you at that point.
Quoting dukkha
In the gospel of the Egg-man it is sung:
"I am he as you are he as you are me
And we are all together
See how they run like pigs from a gun see how they fly
I'm crying."
There is no escape, settle down and be kind to your other incarnations.
I came to this conclusion thinking about those "duplicating machine" thought experiments. If a machine somehow duplicated everything about you, including memories, then whether that duplicate shared the same identity ended up relying on how we assign identity, by convention. It also made me wonder about those groups who anticipate some afterlife existence, especially if our genetic, environment or memories were altered in anyway would require special pleading for a connection of identity that we might or might not grant. Who is granting it and can they be objectively justified in granting identity in a way that contradicts our current conventions? If you took some historical figure and duplicated that person down to every detail, would we still be able to grant them the same identity without a physical "story" of how they were connected, or were they just a simulation of the original.
So, no need to worry about it. If something wakes up and thinks it is you, it won't be you. It also leads to the fact that we will never be able to "upload" our consciousness into computers or robots or inhabit other bodies.
Actually not so clear-cut as that. I regard Buddhism as revealed religion - the Buddha's teaching is described as a 'sasana' which is a 'dispensation', and the Vedas are regarded as revealed texts. What is radically different in Indian religions, generally, is that external authorities are deprecated, and experiential insight is emphasised; 'many paths up the mountain', which is quite inimical to Semitic religions. But had some Indian faith tradition been adapted by Latins in the early days of the Christian church, it quite easily might have become the same kind of dogmatic authoritarianism that was typical of medieval ecclesiastical Christianity. Have a look at this (non-scholarly) blog post, http://veda.wikidot.com/dharma-and-religion. I wouldn't defend everything in it, but I accept the basic point.
It seems to me indisputable that infants are born with some innate characteristics, talents, predispositions, attributes, and so on. Of course that is very controversial as the standard empiricist dogma still clings to the 'tabula rasa'. But child prodigies and even the abilities of 'savants' don't seem to me to be amenable to any kind of genetic explanation. I think it's possible that there's a medium of transmission that science doesn't understand - something like biological field effects.
The Vedas and the Upanishads are shruti, or revealed texts, true, but as your link makes clear, a diversity of opinion still exists within Hinduism. Can one be an orthodox Hindu and reject the existence of the gods and so reject the divine inspiration of certain men, the rishis? Yes. One could disclaim divine inspiration in the case of Christian scriptures, but then one would essentially be a Jeffersonian Christian and so not be considered orthodox at all. Most churches require belief in divine inspiration.
It isn't 'revealed by God', because the Buddha was not a God. But it is still 'revealed' in the sense that up until Guatama discovered the 'principle of dependent origination', this was not known by anybody, it was a genuinely novel discovery. Furthermore throughout the early texts, there is a formulaic expression regarding the Buddha's dharma that it is 'subtle, profound, difficult to fathom, perceivable only by the wise'.
Anyway, it's tangential to the thread and the OP seems to have no interest in the Buddhist account of the matter, so I'll leave it at that.
This response, in particular, encapsulates the confusion:.
"So, no need to worry about it. If something wakes up and thinks it is you, it won't be you. It also leads to the fact that we will never be able to "upload" our consciousness into computers or robots or inhabit other bodies."
Ironically, it's those arguing against the OP's coherence who cling most to old and ancient ideas about identity and the simplicity/unity of the soul. They're confusing "I" or "me" qua persistent self-identity (as in "I am Jake") with the actual question - which is about the emergence of conscious existence from non-existence - i.e. it's about the emergence of an (indefinite) process of identification, not of some specific, definite identity.
So the OP isn't really talking about whether he as the same person will exist, but, rather, whether he'll emerge into existence again - whether he'll get 'caught back up in' existence. Even as something different. The focus on pronouns misses the problem entirely - it's a problem that is difficult to pose due to the limitations of grammar.
My present experiences all have this first person phenomenal quality of 'subjectivity'. There's not just a free floating visual field experiencing itself, likewise for all my other experiences - rather there's this distinct feeling that it's all being felt by the same subject. All my experiences have this subjective component to them. 'Being felt by me'. All my various experiences have this unified quality to them, they're all brought together into a cohesive present experience, because they all feel like they're happening to the same subject.
So why are my experiences mine and yours yours, and neither of us can feel each others sensations. why am I me and not you? The most obvious answer (to me) is that there exists two separate subjects of experience. The subject of experience is just whatever it is that's undergoing all the sensations that make up your conscious experience. Whatever it is that those experiences are being felt/known by. I suppose whatever that thing is, it's not really knowable - at the very least it can't be sensed or experienced (because the subject would be the thing doing the experiencing). But it seems to me that it must exist. When you break your arm it's *your* pain, you're the one that has to feel it, it's being inflicted upon you and nobody else. How could this be if there is no subject of experience? If it's an illusion that the pain experience is being felt by a subject, what is it that's being fooled by the illusion? Nothing?
So, how do I know that whatever it is that's 'being pained' by my broken arm, is never going to be pained, or experience anything again after this lifetime?
Is there actually something that's 'being pained'?
I really have no idea what I am. That I even exist in any way is incomprehensibly bizzare!
I don't really grasp how the Buddha says there is no self, and yet you come back to the world in the next lifetime, and what you come back as depends upon your karma.
If there's no self, what lives the next lifetime? What accumulates the karma?
If I fall off a cliff, my conscious experience will cease. The question is, why wouldn't it start again? There was a cessation of conscious experience before I started experiencing this lifetime, but that didn't stop my lifetime coming into existence. So why would the cessation of conscious experience after this lifetime be any different from the one before? If they are the same thing, and we know because we exist right now that conscious experience follows after a absence of it, then it seems almost mandatory that conscious experience must follow after the absence of it at my death.
Precisely! You explained it far clearer than my ramblings haha.
That's a very good question, and quite a hard one to answer. First of all, in the early Buddhist texts, this is not a question that receives much elaboration, beyond the formulaic expression that 'the Buddha knows and sees the fate of beings in the next life due to their actions in the present life'. It is generally understood that beings are reborn in one of the 'six domains' due to their actions.
But the Buddha was emphatic that there was no essence, self or soul, which migrates from life to life. Those who interpreted his teaching to mean that there was a self that migrates, were corrected in no uncertain terms (e.g. Sati the Fisherman's Son.) This was because in the Buddha's day, there were wandering ascetics who taught just such an idea - that the self was an unchangeable essence that went from life to life, indefinitely, for countless lifetimes. But the question Buddhists ask is: where is this 'self'? Where is something that never changes? Show it to me! And of course the questioners can never do that, because there is no such thing.
So when asked if a person is reborn, a Buddhist will often answer the question with another question: 'are you the same person that you were when you were seven?' 'No'. 'Then are you a different person?' 'No'. So the same logic applies in the case of re-birth. In this life a being sets in motion a set of causes, which then cause the birth of a future life, that is born as a consequence of those actions. Is that being the same being, or different? It's the same answer as above: neither the same nor different.
The central philosophy of Buddhism is dependent origination i.e. everything arises because of causes and conditions. That analysis is applied on many levels, and takes quite a bit of study to understand. But the way it was formulated in the Buddhist tradition, was that mind (citta) is actually a stream of momentary events which gives rise to the sequence of lived experiences. This happens on a micro level, i.e. moment to moment, but also on a macro level, i.e. life to life. In Mayahana Buddhism, this 'mind-stream' was given the designation citta-sant?na (see here).
As to 'who this is happening to' - that's the million dollar question! When I was a child, walking to school, I used to have this odd idea - if I suddenly was transported into the body of the person walking towards me, but at the same time, I inherited all their memories, then how would I know anything had happened? It seemed to me that I couldn't tell. And that, I think, is because at the center of one's sense of being is a pure potentiality, that the sense of being can only be differentiated with regard to memories and the like (not that I would have understood it in those terms, at the time.) That is not how Buddhists explain it, but it is one of the ideas that interested me in Buddhism.
But then you need to ask it in different language. You can't say "Will I (re)awaken" or "Will he."
And course, "Will some other consciousness awaken after I die" is trivial.
Kudos to you if you can express an issue in this vein so that it's not simply muddled-to-incoherent thinking and so that it seems like an interesting and difficult issue, but we're sure not anywhere near that yet.
I don't agree at all.
Also a lot of people don't seem to get that if consciousness is simply the state of your brain, this means that the body and the world around you perceive - being conscious experience - must itself be a particular brain state.
So you're left in the horrible epistemic position of the brain state that gives rise to/is equal to your conscious experience not being within your head that you feel, see, touch, rather all those sense experiences, and the world around you, and the people you interact with, must all already be the particular state of a brain.
So basically you're a homunculus. An onboard body/world model within the brain of a physical human.
This is a horrible epistemic position to be on, because from the position of the onboard self/world model, you do not have any access to anything BUT the model. So if you have no access to the supposed brain which is carrying the conscious experience which you exist as within itself (or, as itself/as it's state), then I don't see how you can justify even positing it's existence. You can't know anything about it from your position, all you have access to is the phenomenal world.
Also what does it even mean to say that a state of a physical brain IS your conscious experience? How can something experiential be literally also a non experiential physical thing?
Actually, that is not at all established - it is the basic idea of philosophical materialism, in the form of what is called 'identity theory'. However it's not by any means scientifically established, and can be challenged on many grounds.
How do you know that? What's your argument to support such a belief?
He's wrong on both points, but that is my understanding of his views.
I remember clearly a realisation I had at the age of about 5, that when I die, I won't be aware of the passage of time, so a very very long time could pass in an instant to me. Also that the same circumstances which resulted in me being here would happen again eventually, so I would find myself here again eventually, and in my perception, it would have happened in an instant. So when I die, the next instant I would be reborn.
I think the problem with this issue philosophically is that it seems to hinge on whether one considers the existence of an immortal soul or the equivalent. Or whether one is of the opinion that we are an emergent property of physical material etc. In the former reincarnation is pretty much a given and in the later, it's impossibility is a given.
You can add me to that list, because that simply isn't true. It doesn't follow that if consciousness is simply a brain state, then everything is a brain state. I have no idea what your argument would be for that, but surely the argument isn't sound.
Quoting dukkha
I'm guessing that you buy some sort of representationalist theory of perception? I do not.
Quoting dukkha
Brains are not non-experiential obviously.
By the way, so you are, or were, an atheist who was also a dualist?
Plenty of people do not believe it. Those folks have mistaken beliefs.
Well, as if it matters that some people do not believe it or feel that it's "established." No matter what we're talking about, some people do not believe it or feel that it's "established." And otherwise, if you're proposing that there's a consensus that doesn't believe it, AND you're proposing that consensuses matter in such things, you're forwarding an argumentum ad populum.
Around here (and on another philosophy forum I've been frequenting), there are a bunch of people with religious views they need to protect, and who are various stripes of idealists (which is also probably a result of religious views they need to protect), so obviously they're not going to buy physicalism (or "materailism"), they're not going to buy relativism or subjectivism re value judgments, and so on. On my view, philosophical views are mostly ad hoc constructions supporting things we already believe. I'm not excluding myself from that, either, but it certainly isn't limited to me. That's how people operate in general.
Nothing at all unusual, just the normal sense of "state:" the particular (dynamic) conditions, that is, the particular set of materials and their (dynamic) relations at a set of contiguous points of time (or abstracted as a single point of time).
Well, the first part of it is that the very idea of nonphysical existents is completely incoherent.
He plans to do a brain transplant (probably in Asia from what I can gather).
I bring it up because I think it points to an identity issue that has to do with the "I" as referent to some indefinable essence that is referred to when I say 'I am constituted by my experiences', it is what makes these experiences mine.
So he goes ahead and finds someone (Joe) whoes is brain dead and the Doc gets all the consents, finds a place that will allow the operation and the operation is a success. What happens to the "I" that represented 'my experience', is the resultant being me or Joe, did the 'my' as in 'my body' die and a new 'I' emerge as some sort of synthesis of Joe & me? Or perhaps Joe is now me.
Even if there is some vital essence that persists, it could not be the "I", or mine that it was.
It's important to note that we use "I" or "self" in a couple different senses, one where we tend to only be referring to our conscious experience, our thoughts, etc., and one where we tend to refer to our entire body, or at least the parts of our body that are important to remain attached at any given moment (so that people don't strongly associate personal identity with the ends of fingernails, particular hairs, skin cells that slough off, etc., but they do associate it with their entire feet, arms, etc.)
In the mental sense, then the person whose brain is transplanted is the "I" or "self" in question, and Joe is irrelevant. In the entire body sense, it's a combination of the transplanted and Joe (since the entire body sense does include one's brain, too).
I think that brain transplants are certainly feasible, and someday they'll probably be relatively commonplace, but at first, there are likely to be a lot of issues that have to be tackled, akin to organ rejections and so on, re getting a different brain to work well with a particular rest-of-the-body . . . and that will probably always take years of physical therapy afterwards to be able to adjust to it and function normally re control of limbs and so on.
I think there may be a basic error in saying 'my experience constitutes me'. Suppose everything that is embedded in the brain could be downloaded, put on a disc and that disc were capable of being uploaded into as many brains as wanted, overwriting whatever was there. Are the resultants all the same individual? No, I don't think that it works, since they all would have different bodies.
The problem is that what you're describing is literally impossible, and we can stick to one simple reason that it's literally impossible: nominalism is true.
So what you're downloading onto a disc, assuming that could work somehow (I don't believe it could, but we can assume that it could for the sake of argument) isn't identical to the person in question, and what you'd be uploading into another brain wouldn't be identical either.
Hi and thanks, I am off for now, but I will think about it during the day.
Sounds like Lokis wager to me
If consciousness is a brain state then everything that is consciousness is a brain state. You know about your body (including your head) and the world around you through conscious experience. Therefore the body you experience and the world you perceive around you must be equal to the state of a brain.
Touching your head is a conscious experience. If consciousness is the very same thing as a brain state, then your sensation of touching your head must be the very same thing as a brain state. Therefore the brain state which is the very same thing as 'touching your head' can't be the state of a physical brain within the head you touch, rather your touch experience of a head is already the state of a physical brain. There's no physical brain within your head that you touch, rather all your conscious experience, including that of your head, is already the state of a physical brain.
You know about your head with proprioception, touch, sight, etc.
Sense experiences are the very same thing as states of a physical brain.
Your head you are conscious of is the state of a physical brain.
Therefore your head you are conscious of can't contain the physical brain state that your conscious experience of a head is equal to.
Non sequitur. That you know about things via your conscious experience doesn't imply that only your conscious experience exists. And re the way you're stating that, you're contradicting yourself anyway. You say, "You know ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND YOU." Well, on your view, there is no world around you to know about, since you think that everything is just conscious experience.
Anyway, the means by which you know about something isn't identical to what you know about. So that's a non-sequitur. The means by which you know about something also doesn't exhaust what you know.
Also, by the way, my guess was correct. It turns out that you're yet another representationalist/idealist/solipsist-if-you're-consistent. What the heck is going on that there are so many of you folks around lately?
I didn't imply that. I even said "equal to the state of a (physical) brain".
[quote=]And re the way you're stating that, you're contradicting yourself anyway. You say, "You know ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND YOU." Well, on your view, there is no world around you to know about, since you think that everything is just conscious experience.[/quote]
Even if that was what I was saying, there's more ways than just physical of understanding the world around you. You seem to be saying that if you don't understand the world around you as being physical, you must therefore hold that it doesn't exist!
"Equal to" is "identical to," which implies that that's all that exists (on that view). But again, that you know about the world via your consciousness doesn't imply that the world is identical to your consciousness (or equal to it). How you know about something isn't the same thing as what you know about. That line of reasoning makes no more sense than saying that you're eating a toaster because a toaster is how you make toast. A toaster may be the means by which you make toast, but that doesn't imply that the toaster is the toast.
Re the other part, I'm a physicalist who is of the opinion that the very idea of nonphysical existents is incoherent.
Also, again I'm curious if you are, or were, an atheist who was a dualist?
There is a misunderstanding of what I mean by "world around you". So there's a physical world, with a physical brain state. And then there's the "world around you", and what I mean by that is the lived world, your experience of being a body in a world. So that's your visual field, what you hear, what you sense, etc. These are conscious experience. So if conscious experience is equal to the state of a physical brain, than your sense experiences of being a body in an environment is equal to the state of a physical brain. Because your sense experiences include what constitutes your lived head (you see your head, you feel your head, etc), your lived head must be equal to the state of a physical brain, which is in a physical body in the external physical world.
Or put it like this, sense experience can't be located as the state of a physical brain while also be a direct perception of the head that encapsulates it, and the world beyond.
So am I wrong in thinking that you think there is a physical brain inside your head, and your conscious experience is equal to the state of this physical brain?
Which is the same physical world. You're just saying that you're limiting it to the world that you personally experience, and not, say, China (outside of film locations, documentaries, books, etc.), if you never get to China.
Quoting dukkha
What you're perceiving isn't your brain. You're not perceiving your perception. You're perceiving things like buildings and streets and traffic lights and trees and so on.
Quoting dukkha
. . . because? That would require an argument.
Quoting dukkha
"Conscious experience is equal to a set of states in the brain" just to clarify. No, you'd be right if you thought that.
Quoting dukkha
I don't see why you don't see that, but representationalism has never made much sense to me. I think it's an incoherent view.
How can your perception be located as the state of a physical brain, and yet somehow you're directly perceiving the world outside/beyond this brain?
How can what you see be a physical world and yet sight is located as a brain state?
Basically how can you see beyond a head when sight is within that head?
Don't you have any idea whatsoever what perception even is/how it works? Lightwaves stimulate your eyes, which send signals along your optic nerves to your brain, or soundwaves stimulate your eardrums with send signals along your auditory nerves to your brain, etc.
If you're not referring to that, what would you even be talking about with the word "perception"? It would seem that you're not talking about perception at all.
You mean incoherent to you, right?
Well, I'm not going to mean that it's incoherent to the people who feel that it's coherent, haha. So yeah, it's incoherent to me (and to the other people who feel that it's incoherent).
The idea that thoughts are simply brain states is called 'identity theory'. I think in formal philosophy, identity theory is no longer well regarded, as there are many arguments against it.
So consider this argument. If you two people share the same experience, could you expect them to have the same brain state? So when it is said that the brain state is 'the same' as an experience, what does 'the same' mean? Does it feel the same? Does it have the same meaning? So to even answer those questions means accepting that a configuration of brain tissues and neural chemistry 'feels like' something. But that is subject to the arguments of David Chalmers in his analysis of the 'hard problem of consciousness'. A brain state considered as an objective array of material, doesn't 'feel like' anything; the datum of what something 'feels like' is a first-person phenomenon.
There was a well-known Canadian neurosurgeon, by the name of Wilder Penfield, who was a pioneer of open brain surgery techniques. He used to stimulate patients' brains whilst they were conscious (as there are no nerve cells in the brain and the patients, under local anaesthetic, don't feel pain from the contact). He could elicit responses and sensations from the subjects by doing specific things. But the subjects seemed to know when these sensations originated with his actions, rather than as a consequence of their own decision. They would say 'you're doing that'. He also noted that despite rigourous and disciplined mapping of the areas of the brain by literally touching parts of it and seeing what parts of the body were affected by it, he was never able to trigger or elicit an abstract thought. At the end of his career, he had become a convinced dualist (as documented in his 1975 book Mystery of the Mind.)
This is actually related to a well-known problem in neuroscience called the 'neural binding problem'. That term refers to a set of interconnected problems, but the particular aspect that is relevant here is the problem of the subjective unity of experience. Neuroscience has a lot of information on which aspects of the brain are responsible for specific mental operations. But the 'binding' process is the act whereby various kinds of visual and auditory data - shape, colour, number, location, direction - are combined into a whole. And the precise part of the brain that performs that all-important functionality can't be identified. In fact there appears to be no room for it, amongst all the other dedicated areas of the brain. The 'subjective unity of conscious experience' is basically the same issue as Chalmer's 'hard problem of consciousness' (which is referenced in the paper).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3538094/
[quote='TerrapinStation"]that you know about the world via your consciousness doesn't imply that the world is identical to your consciousness (or equal to it)[/quote]
But, how can you get outside of your consciousness, to compare 'your consciousness of the world' with 'the world'? You can't step outside your own cognitive apparatus and look at the world as it is. You can try and imagine it, but that is still a mental act.
You're not alone; I've noticed a similar thing on other forums. The ones I've interacted with seem to believe that internalism is necessarily a solipsistic position.
I am not sure. Do you think all experiences would have to be down loaded? or just those experiences that are pertinent to identity (if tech was this advanced, don't you think there would be a way to relevantly parse experience)....and beyond this even if something is physically impossible, it might still be logically possible and therefore relevant to the argument.
Maybe, but that is the problem for those saying we have some sort of specific identity, which is maintained even after death, which is exactly what I am questioning.
There's a problem already there. I'm a nominalist. Two people can't literally share the same experience. Two people can have similar experiences, we could say, however, and they'd be in similar brain states in some respects.
The brain state and the experience are identical.
Are you talking about in the case of two different persons? Again, they can't have the same experience literally.
I'm not sure what you're asking here. And does it have the same meaning to whom?
Again, we'd have to ask "Doesn't feel like anything to whom?" "Feeling like" something is always to someone. And actually, third-person brain states do "feel like something" to everyone who is conscious of them, because "feeling like something" is just another way of saying that there are subjective qualities (qualia) to that experience/perception. Of course, third-person perspectives aren;t the same as first-person perspectives, and that is just an extension of an ontological truism that isn't just about consciousness. For any object/phenomenon/event, x, x at spatio-temporal reference point R1 isn't identical to x at different spatio-temporal reference point R2.
Ridiculously simplistic and rather arrogant in a manner. He should have rather been convinced either that (a) no one had quite figured out just what to stimulate and how to stimulate it yet to produce abstract thought, or (b) that abstract thought must not amount to something as simple as could be engendered by touching particular parts of the brain; abstract thought must be some more complex systemic state that involves very fine-grained states of a large number of different neurons, synapses, etc., spread throughout the brain.
And the reason that we wouldn't assume that the whole is simply all of the relevant parts of the brain being in those states at that moment is?
Why would there have to be a specific part of the brain that's responsible for "unifying" all of the information rather than that being a factor that all of those parts are in the states they're in at the moment in question?
[quote]Quoting Wayfarer
Too many people here don't seem to even understand the concept of perception. You perceive the extramental world. You simply look at it, hear it, feel it, etc.
Quoting Wayfarer
There's no coherent reason to believe that it's not as you perceive it to be, at least not outside of evidence, when it's present, that an earlier perception was mistaken, because this present perception has it right instead.
Do I think that all experiences would have to be downloaded for what? None of them would be identical to the experiences that are being "downloaded," and none would be identical to the person in question.
I don't think it's logically possible.
Yeah, we can't quite define things, or capture them in their entirety in thought. We can't quite define, or show exactly what we our selves are, or even necks and heads for that matter -- but do we have any trouble actually doing it in practice?
Well, I think that's fine then, but it doesn't seem to leave much of an opening for discussion.
No, but what does that mean? I think it means that our notions about such concepts such as identity are faulty, as you state we seem to have no such problem in practice.
It means that our notions are incomplete. There are two problems with fitting the world in your head in its entirety... the first being that it's really really immeasurably big, and your head is comparatively minuscule. Secondly you'd also have to fit your head in your head too.
That brain states and experiences are the same means that, say, experience x, which is a unique, particular experience that only occurs in person S at time Tn, is identical to brain state y, which only occurs in the same person S at the same time Tn.
There's nothing contradictory about saying that and saying that person O can't have the identical experience x or the identical brain state y as S has. (Or that person S can't have the identical experience x or brain state y at time Tn + or - m for that matter.)
"The same" is identical. Seriously, if you're not familiar with that. I'm not going to waste my time explaining the concept of identity to you. It's a Phil 101 idea. If you haven't a basic grasp of Phil 101 ideas, I'm not going to proceed as if you're capable of a graduate-level debate about something.
Perhaps weirdly dovetailing into my conversation with TS, he thinks that our experiences can't be uploaded onto a disk, and he is probably right, but I don't see how that is logically impossible, which he maintains (for whatever reason). I think my experiences are what I recall and, they are not the actual experiences, any more than the information on a disk is the original information. So I don't think you would have to fit the world into your head, just as AphaGo does not have to calculate all the possible moves in playing Go.
What I'd be interested in for someone who thinks the idea of nonphysical existents is coherent to attempt to explain it to me so that I could make some sense out of it. I wouldn't bank on the possibility of success there, but I'd be interested in trying to understand it as someone who can make some sense out of it understands it.
But you said, in the post I was commenting on:
then
then
So, what I'm finding hard to fathom is, what is the basis for the assertion that 'experiences are brain states?' It's not a matter of you 'explaining anything to me' - I'm saying that your assertion of 'brain-states equal experiences' doesn't actually mean anything, it doesn't stack up.
What happened to saying that anything is contradictory? Or are you using words so loosely that "contradictory" is the same as "meaningless" to you?
OK, I will try in good faith. Consider a sentence, like the one you're reading. Now in one sense, that is a physical thing - it is a pattern of pixels on a monitor. Print it out - then it's a pattern of dots on a piece of paper. Engrave it on a bronze plaque - then it's a series of marks on metal.
In each case, the meaning is conserved, but the physical representation is different. Therefore, they're different kinds of things, there's a difference in kind between the semantic content, the meaning, and how it is represented.
I think the non-material nature of mind is analogous to that. The word 'intellligence' is derived from 'inte-legere', meaning 'to read between'. So intelligence interprets meaning. Whether that is 'reading the clouds' so as to predict rain, or reading this sentence, so as to form an argument.
The thing is that physical existents are, by virtue of being objects of the senses, able to be modeled in terms of quantity and described in terms of physical qualities. On the other hand things like meaning, love, hope, faith, anger, hatred, beauty, truth, goodness, spirit and so on cannot be quantified or described in terms of physical qualities. But we know they are real, nonetheless, and we intuitively know what they are even though we cannot give determinate accounts of them.
So those indeterminate realities are coherent if you mean that we can feel them and intuitively understand their natures; whereas it might be said that they are incoherent if the criterion of coherence is the ability to quantitatively model and qualitatively describe in terms of physicality.
The indeterminate realities are the subjects of poetic and religious understanding and perfectly coherent as such.
(Ignoring some other problems I think this has) Why wouldn't they just be different kinds of physical things?
The problem I have with it is making any sense whatsoever out of what a nonphysical thing could possibly be.
I think you are wondering, in terms of the physical, what a non-physical thing could be. See the problem?
The first problem there is that I think "able to be modeled in terms of quantity" is problematic. Maybe we could make that not problematic somehow, but I'm an anti-realist on mathematics, I don't think that anything really amounts to mathematics, and I think that "models" are a matter of interpretation.
Re "in terms of physical qualities," I'd agree with that, but because I think that qualities only are physical. Love, hope, etc. are physical things on my view--they're terms for particular brain states and particular behaviors/behavioral dispositions that accompany those brain states. So it's difficult for me to understand what it could possibly mean to say that they're nonphysical.
Yeah, definitely, but what other option do I have if I can't begin to make the slightest sense out of what a nonphysical existent is supposed to be?
I think your problem is not peculiar to you: after Cartesian dualism, philosophy tried to reify the concept of 'res cogitans', the 'thinking thing' as a kind of 'thinking substance' - which is, as you believe, an absurdity. So the counter to that became, let's ditch res cogitans altogether and proceed in terms of what we can see and measure - res extensia. This is in very simplified form one of the main drivers behind materialist theories of mind.
But I am arguing, in the above example, that 'meaning', as in 'the meaning of a sentence' can't be explained or reduced to physical terms (or, if it is to be explained, it will be a truly multi-disciplinary and very complex undertaking). Because a sentence can be encoded in a variety of different media, languages, and forms, and still have the same meaning, than that shows that 'meaning' and 'form' are different. And this is highly relevant to the argument.
What I'm challenging is that this actually means something. What is 'a brain state'? When asked, you can't even say what it is. It's a 'presumptive explanation' - 'hey, it must be brain state, otherwise I have to deal with all this spooky non-physical stuff.' But what does it mean to say 'a brain state'? Which school of philosophy says that? What are the arguments for it and against it?
I quoted a couple of sources, admittedly without much detail - we can't go into much detail here - but you simply swept them off the table as being 'arrogant and simplistic'. Well, pardon me, but that seems very much like what you're doing here. You're asserting a basic form of philosophical materialism without argument, without reference, as an axiom. What's your grounds for that?
But, it's simply a fact that physical things can be quantitatively modeled in various ways; so I don't understand your objection.
Let's clarify first what we're literally talking about. When we create a quantitative model, what is the object that we produce?
It seems there really is no pleasing some people.
Hmm, I can't really ignore what I was ignoring in my earlier response here.
I don't actually agree that multiple instances of sentences, say in different languages, have the same meaning.
In my view, meaning is subjective. It's a mental association that a particular individual makes at a particular time. A meaning at time T2 can't be identical to a meaning at time T1. And a meaning that S has at T1 can't be identical to a meaning that O has at T1, even when S and O are both looking at the same thing.
It might be important to note that I don't buy that there are any real (extramental) abstracts period.
Re brain states, how can there possibly be any confusion over what that's referring to?
You know what, say, "dishwasher state" would refer to, don't you? There's no way I'd be able to believe that you don't know what a state is (or what a brain is).
You're serious? Do you know what 'a brain state' is? The whole issue of the brain/mind problem is a huge controversy, with people lining up on different sides of the debate. The brain itself is, as I said, the most complex known natural phenomenon.
Now there's disagreement amongst the experts as to what a 'brain state' is. Yet you're comparing it to a dishwasher?
Is it that you don't understand nominalism, or that you're just kind of stubbornly insisting on a non-nominalist interpretation?
I'm a nominalist. I don't agree with your characterization there. I can explain why, but if you don't really care if you understand it, or if you're just going to proceed as if it's not a possible stance or something, then it's probably not worth my time.
Re brain states, by the way, you saying that you don't know what a brain state is doesn't amount to saying that you don't know how it would link up with mental states. Forget about mental states. Do you know what a brain state is outside of that?
And yet you accuse others of not having an understanding of "phil 101" ideas!
You seem to have a naive realist understanding of perception and people are finding it difficult to reconcile this with your identity theory.
Also I think this feigned "non physical things as a concept is just so incoherent like wow I can't even begin to grasp how that would work" inability is just silly. Pinch yourself, in what way is that subjective experience of pain physical? How can you account for that sensation in terms of atoms and forces, or neuronal cells and axon charges?
Also if mind=brain then isn't some sort of panpsychism necessary? If consciousness is the very same thing as a physical brain state then atoms must have as a part of them a conscious aspect, in order for the atoms in your brain to literally be equal to conscious experience.
Or if not, and say conscious experience is an emergent property of particular states of a brain, how do you explain this? How does something which is not conscious - atoms/neurochemical reactions in a physical brain- produce or give rise to consciousness? So a rock isn't conscious right? So why do the atoms/physical 'stuff' which make up a physical rock not give rise to conscious experience, whereas the atoms which make up a living, awake physical brain do? Why are some particular brain states conscious and some not? Why is the state of a physical brain of a person under general anaesthesia not conscious, whereas when it wears off, the particular brain state is conscious? What is so incredibly special about highly specific arrangements/processes of physical matter such that it produces this new magical property of consciousness? This position is basically that physical things are not conscious except when you arrange them in this incredibly specific manner (a living awake brain), which somehow gives rise to a new property of physical things (consciousness) not seen anywhere else in the physical world. How? Why? Where does this new property (consciousness) come from?
You're basically just glossing over the hard problem of consciousness, and then acting like everyone is totally illogical for not doing the same.
It's not that I'm unfamiliar with nonphysical existent talk. It's that I think the talk is incoherent.
Wayfarer is asking what identity refers to as if he's unfamiliar with identity talk. If he were to think that the concept of identity were incoherent, that would be a different issue.
Quoting dukkha
Well, yeah, I buy (basically disjunctive) naive realism. Why folks would have a difficult time reconciling that with identity theory, who knows.
Quoting dukkha
It's a brain state. Whether one can give a blueprint of how it works so that someone thinks it's a satisfactory blueprint has no bearing on whether it's a brain state or whether it's physical. It's not as if something isn't physical just in case we can't produce a blueprint for it that someone finds satisfactory.
Quoting dukkha
Because . . . you believe that only brains exist? What??
Quoting dukkha
So if there are atoms that have some property when they're in particular relations with each other, then all atoms must have that property no matter what sorts of atoms they are, no matter what relation they're in with other atoms, etc.? All physical things have unique properties. Those properties hinge on the specific matter that comprises them and the dynamic, structural relations of that matter. That's not at all something unique to brains and the property of consciousness. Also, for all objects/processes you can only know properties from some reference points and not from others. That's not unique to brains and the property of consciousness either.
I have studied the history of nominalism, I understand what motivated it. But in itself that doesn't justify what you're arguing. I don't think it will be worth your while to 'explain' what you mean, because as I am saying, I don't think what you're providing by way of explanation makes any sense.
Did you notice the quoted passage immediately above your response to me? That it not my opinion or judgement. It is about that fact that there are tens of thousands of scientists engaged in trying to understand 'the brain'. And yet, you compare 'brain states' with 'dishwashers'. Do you see why I think that might be problematical?
I don't even know what you're implying
Quoting Terrapin Station
How do you deal with the private language argument?
Do you mean the kind of talk that is in this article? http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/ Perhaps if you could point to somewhere in that article as a reference to what you're talking about, it might help make your point.
That in no way indicates that you understand nominalism.Quoting Wayfarer
As if I'm talking about justifying anything. You don't seem to understand the stance.
No. I mean the general concept of identity period.
By noting that, like usual, Wittgenstein is wrong.
You asked what a brain state even refers to.
How can you be looking directly at the (physical) world, when your sight is equal to a particular brain state? It's like you're saying that we look through our eyes like they're windows onto the world, and yet our conscious experience of sight exists within a brain. You've confined consciousness within a brain and yet you claim we are conscious of the world beyond this brain directly. You can't have your cake and eat it to.
You're claiming that when you touch the keyboard you're typing on you are directly feeling an object in an external physical world, and yet at the same time your experience of touch exists within/as a physical brain state. How can touch experiences be physically located within a brain, and yet when you experience touch/haptic perceptions, you are in direct contact with the physical world existing beyond this brain state.
If when you look at a table you are directly seeing what is physically there in an external world, your visual perception cannot at the same time be confined within/as a physical brain state. How can you directly be perceiving an external world if your perceptions are located within a brain?
— Wayfarer
No. I mean the general concept of identity period.
You mean your concept of identity - which, you've already assured us of, is peculiar to you, as meaning is only ever subjective, and no two people ever share exactly the same meaning.
It's bad philosophy to just arrogantly assert things are right or wrong without argument or justification, which you have repeatedly done in this thread.
I understand it, and I think it's mistaken, and furthermore that your purported explanations don't add up. That's all there is to it.
The article on brain-mind identity might have been more germane to this particular debate but never mind.
I'm not sure quite what work 'dynamic' is doing here. States, as I understand them, are generally static. Or at least to consider something qua state, is to consider it through the lens of certain fixed properties. Anyway would it be fair to say that 'states' as you here define them could equally be called 'processes'?
But granting this vague dynamism you mention, how long does a brain state last? Can brain states last hours? days? weeks? months?
And, perhaps more to the point, does a single brain state persist for the life of an individual - such that we could say to be Alex is to have brain-state-alex?
A scale model, a perspective drawing, a mathematic or geometric model, an audio or video recording, a photograph, a map, a computer simulation; these are just a few examples.
First, in philosophy of perception debates, do you understand that no one is saying that we don't perceive things, or that perception isn't involved?
I'm not referring to anything unusual by identity. We can simply talk about objective definitions and usage. Definitions are different than meanings.
Oh, you mean like just mentioning the PLA as if that's sufficient?
The work that "dynamic" is doing is emphasizing that I don't believe that anything is really static.
I still want to understand more about brain states, consciousness and personal identity!
The reason I provided the reference to the SEP article on brain-mind identity, is because it is about the argument you seem to be pressing. When you say that 'love and hope are simply brain-states', you're arguing from what is called, in philosophy of mind, 'brain-mind identity theory'. That's what the theory is about. But then when I point that out, you say 'I don't mean that'. So I think everyone here is struggling to understand what you are saying.
In regards to 'identity' - the basic 'law of identity' is expressed very simply: 'In logic, the law of identity is the first of the three classical laws of thought. It states that "each thing is the same with itself and different from another". Symbolically, a = a.
Is that what you mean by 'identity'?
Identity in mind/brain identity theory isn't some special or unusual sense of identity. When you ask what identity refers to, I take you to be saying that in general, you're simply unfamiliar with the philosophical concept of identity, even though you apparently have at least a basic education in philosophy--so that "what do you mean by identity" thus simply seems trollish. And yes, identity as it's used in the "law of identity" is the same sense.
Quoting csalisbury All states are really processes, yes.
How long can a brain-state last? Are we using the term right when we talk of a 35 year long brain state?
And does a person have the same brain-state for the entirety of their life?
If these questions seem faux-naif, I'll admit they are, but walk with me down this path?
I'm not trying to counter your view with another (because I quite sincerely don't have one, just some confusions). I'm trying to get you to articulate your own.
Since its dynamic, and since time is identical to change/motion anyway, brain states, just like states of anything else, are always changing. Re abstractions, we can say things like "Joe was hysterically laughing for 15 minutes," as if an identical state persisted for 15 minutes, but that's an abstraction, it's glossing over details to parse a temporal range of states as "one thing."
(Especially since even this 15 minute long state is an 'abstraction,' which suggests that it's just a way we have of thinking and talking about things, something that isn't quite accurate. Unless you're saying that the abstraction itself exists? Everything points, in your account, to there being only very short pre-abstracted states/processes (which are always changing, so never fully the same.) Already we're in murky territory - can brain-states be abstractions? If something is constantly changing and never static, then how do we determine whether it's the same as itself? -but we can pass this over for now. And we probably should.)
Do you have a reason for believing this? You seem to just be asserting/assuming the conclusion that conscious experience is physical.
Hence why there's no conceivable reason that you'd need to ask me to explain identity to you.
Quoting Wayfarer
For a couple reasons. In my experience online, any "chumming up" is taken as a wholesale endorsement of the other person's views, at least for the issue at hand. Two, there is never any other philosopher where I agree with their views wholesale on any issue--typically, no matter who we're talking about and no matter on what issue, I disagree at least as much as I agree. And three, it has no bearing on whether something is correct that some particular philosopher forwarded whatever view they did.
The views I present are my views. I'm not parroting anyone else's views.
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, that someone else has the same view that you do isn't at all a support of a view.
I present just as much support for my views as anyone else does. I don't present formal arguments for anything typically, and that's not how I typically formulate views for a number of reasons, including my views about what logic is. But no one else typically presents anything like a formal argument for their views either.
I'm not expecting to persuade anyone to change their mind about anything. I fully expect that that won't happen in any case in general. I'm simply presenting my views as such. You're going to think that my views are wrong, not well supported, perhaps fallacious, perhaps incoherent, etc., and I'm going to think just the same thing about many of your views. I'm going to think just the same thing about most views I disagree with.
Of course. It's countless, really, since it's always changing and since any way of counting it is going to be essentially arbitrary.
But you don't.
The implication being, you understand it, and I don't, which I don't accept.
Forums are for arguments, you express a viewpoint, and then hopefully defend it. On the basis of all the posts I have read of yours, there are only a couple of things you say - love, hope, etc, are brain states; you're against moral realism. But you don't give reasons, nor provide arguments, or references. So, I think that's about all to discuss, otherwise it's just wheel-spinning.
Yes, there area bunch of reasons. Let's take turns presenting some. You'll present your reasons for thinking it's nonphysical.
My first reason is that the idea of nonphysical existents is incoherent.
Okay, what's your first reason?
Right. I don't buy identity through time.
Here it is again: The basic 'law of identity' is expressed very simply: 'In logic, the law of identity is the first of the three classical laws of thought. It states that "each thing is the same with itself and different from another". Symbolically it is represented as a = a.
So, are you in agreement that this is what identity means?
You brought up the "law of identity." I wrote, "And yes, identity as it's used in the 'law of identity' is the same sense." Why doesn't that count as an answer to you? How is that ignoring what you wrote?
At any rate, sure, what dictionary do you have in mind?
Yes, since that's the standard definition of identity, and I said a number of times that I'm not using that word unusually.
Ok, got you.
If Alex has brain state 1 at one time and brain state 2 at another time, then we're talking about two different Alexs. Thus if nervous Alex (brain state 1) is nervous because he is about to be tortured (this will be agonizing brain state 2) (I'm abstracting here! of course there are multiple brain states throughout!) then he is confused. He won't be the one being tortured. There's nothing to worry about.
Is this fair? If not, why not?
You don't need the brain state part. Just simply, any x at T1 isn't identical to "x" at T2. That's what it means to not buy identity through time.
Quoting csalisbury
That something is non-identical through time doesn't imply that there's no connection through time. But sure, if one ONLY cared about identity through time, then that person wouldn't care in that situation.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by a connection which isn't related to identity? Alex 1 and Alex 2 aren't the same person, they're just connected, is that right? Can you explain how that works? I hope you won't say that I know quite well what you're talking about. People tend to do that same thing with Qualia or the sense of having a soul. It just won't do!
First, you need to make sure that you're not conflating "personal identity" with the more general, logical notion of identity. I'm not sure that you're not conflating the two. They're two different ideas.
Anyway, sure, Alex at T1 is causally connected to Alex at T2, they're contiguous, memory is involved, there's a sense of a continuous self involved, and so on. Those are some examples, although by no means is it an exhaustive list, of the connections.
Fair enough. One might think that 'personal identity' is a subclass of the much broader class of 'identity' but if there is no identity over time, then personal identity is just a way of talking. The 'identity' part of 'personal identity' is far too loose. Yes? Personal identity literally can have nothing to do with identity if identity doesn't persist across time. Do you agree?
Let's look at each of your connections with reference to this central question. Why should nervous alex (Alex1) be nervous about becoming tortured Alex (Alex2)?
1. Causal connection. The executioner's feeling of duty is causally connected to Alex's anguish. Does that mean that the executioner should be nervous about the torture he himself is to soon feel, being causally connected it? Clearly not. So causal connection does not get at the matter.
2.Contiguity. The executioner's blade is contiguous with alex's flesh, both in space and in time. Does that mean the blade should be nervous about the torture it is to soon feel. Clearly not. So contiguity does not get at the matter.
3. memory. If nervous Alex is aware he'll be knocked unconscious prior to execution and given a drug that'll prevent recollection, would he be right not to be nervous about the impending torture (since, at that time, he won't remember earlier states?) Clearly not. So memory does not get at the matter.
4. Sense of self. Well what is this? Is the sense of self a physical thing? Is it a brain state? But if it's a brain state the only way it can extend across multiple brain states is to be connected. Through what? Through a sense of self! But what is a sense of self. Is it a brain state? But if it's a brain state...
I don't think you're using causal connection I the sense that I'm using it. I'm talking about causality in what we could call a (direct) "physics sense."
How is the executioner's "feeling of duty" causally connected to Alex in that sense?
(Also, just btw, I'm going to need to split soon, but I can continue this silliness tomorrow)
True, but we're talking as peers aren't we. If you think that identity does not persist over time, then the very idea of personal identity is incoherent. The only way to salvage it is to make it a conventional term that has nothing to do with identity. Unless you're claiming that identity doesn't persist over time except for one kind of identity, personal identity, which does.
And I clearly presented two ways of understanding the relationships between the two terms.
Let me do it again.
Does there exist any identity that persists over time? Yes or No.
If no, then 'personal identity' is a conventional term that doesn't have to do with actual identity. It refers to something that is not, strictly speaking, an identity. While it means something quite specific and is not meaningless, it doesn't actually refer to a persisting identity.
If yes, then you are wrong to say that identity can't persist over time.
What am I missing?
What would that have to do with how the terms are conventionally used?
Yes, if you're claiming that it's the same sense of direct, causal connection.
Well, you'd be able to recognize a CAD model of a Cadillac as opposed to a Cad model of a Dodge pickup, wouldn't you? Surely something counts as a model of something else if it is recognizable as such.
How is that not about my interpretation?
Ok.
The executioner's muscles move a knife which cuts into Alex's flesh and his nerves and cause pain.
I'm assuming you're not asking for the physio-mathematical explanation of how sharp edges cleave flesh? I'll admit I'm not qualified to provide that.
Okay, and you're saying that has what to do with the causal connection between Alex at T1 and Alex at T2?
I understood you to be saying that it was an interpretive matter as to whether a Cad model of anything actually counts as a model. I'm saying it would count as model if it is recognizable as such; and that doesn't seem to be a matter of mere interpretation.
I'm not saying it has anything at all to do with it.
You cited causality as a way of understanding why T1 Alex has good reason to be nervous about T2 Alex's suffering. Since the executioner is also causally responsible for T2 Alex's anguish, yet has no reason himself to worry about suffering that anguish, then pointing to causality doesn't explain why T1 alex's anxiety is justified.
I don't know how to figure that "recognizing" something like that wouldn't be a matter of interpretation.
But that was what we were talking about!
I brought up causal connection as an example of the non-identity connection of Alex @ T1 to Alex @ T2. That was the whole point of that.
Once more:
You cited causality as a way of understanding why T1 Alex has good reason to be nervous about T2 Alex's suffering. Since the executioner is also causally responsible for T2 Alex's anguish, yet has no reason himself to worry about suffering that anguish, then pointing to causality doesn't explain why T1 alex's anxiety is justified.
If you're willing to state, for the record, that a person who knows he is going to be tortured soon has no good reason to be anxious about his impending torture, then we can leave it at that. (please please please don't do the juvenile thing of saying something like 'well, there's no good reason to be anxious if it's inevitable!' That would miss the point entirely.)
Is your dog interpreting anything when she recognizes you?
Did you stop talking about models, or are you suggesting that things are models of themselves or something like that?
& We're done! Thanks for playing Terrapin. You've defended your position well! I raised some objections and you made the very good point of someone who is about to be tortured has no reason to be worried about that.
LOL
Just to note, by the way, that this whole thing started because I had said, "That something is non-identical through time doesn't imply that there's no connection through time," and then you asked me to elaborate that, so I did.
In all seriousness, LOL again. I didn't say anything about whether anyone had a good reason for anything. I said "That something is non-identical through time doesn't imply that there's no connection through time" in response to your silliness that that could be the only connection, you asked me to explain, I did, and then you poorly attempted to play Socrates. When that backfired on you, you bailed, but of course it was my fault.
Yes, you gave a two or three sentence elaboration, and I responded to it very clearly, point by point. Here's that post again, since it's where you appear to have lost the plot:
And what did my comments have to do with supporting whether someone has a "good reason" for feeling some way?
The first line of questioning established that you hold two important beliefs: A person has many many many brain states throughout their life and identity does not persist through time.
This raises an obvious question:
If, as you say, "Your consciousness, your sense of self, etc. are simply brain states re your particular brain" and if identity does not persist over time, then how is it that we talk of the the same person having multiple brain states throughout their life, rather than a myriad of people, one for each brain state?
Either we need a more robust theory of identity, or we need a robust conception of some other type of continuity.
It is useful to examine a problem as abstract as this by focusing on a concrete and visceral example: Alex is worried about his future torture because he believes that he (not someone else) will experience that torture.
Here is what I said:
Let me break this down. I'm offering a hypothetical example of a man awaiting torture according to the viewpoint of someone who neither believes in the persistence of identity over time nor has supplied an alternative, robust explanation of continuity. I am not insinuating that, based on your own beliefs, you ought to agree with the scenario as I've presented it. I'm offering up something absurd as a foil that will allow you to articulate your own position.
Importantly, this is where the 'good reason' comes into play. "There's nothing to worry about. Is this fair? If not, why not?" is synonymous with 'does he have a good reason to worry [that he, not some different future alex, will suffer?]" It's possible that you may not be familiar with this usage of 'good reason.' It's very common among the english speakers I know, but perhaps it's a regional thing. If so, I apologize for the confusion.
As I'd hoped, you did not simply agree with my scenario (implicitly agreeing that yes, there is something Alex has to worry about) but began tentatively to articulate a corrective:
Now we're getting somewhere. We seem to both agree that we'd be worried if we were soon to be tortured (while we may not agree about whether we can worry about existing again after death, we understand worrying about things that will happen to us within our own lifetime.) To understand this, we ought look not to identity, but to connection.
I then asked you to explain what you meant by connection here, since it's doing a lot of work! You gave some reasons and I explained why those reasons, while fine, are not enough to explain why one would be worried about one's future torture.
Note where we are in terms of the argument: We are still trying to understand why the fear of impending torture is different than the fear of existing again after death. This significance of this question is that identity and brain-states alone don't explain why you, I, anyone would worry about our future torture. You have recognized this and offered the additional idea of 'connection'
So you offer a quick sketch of what you mean by connection, I explain why it seems insufficient to address the question at hand.
And that's where everything goes haywire.
You ask me to explain the causual connection of the torturer to the victim. I do. You ask what my point is. I say my point is that causal connection cannot explain why T1 Alex has a good reason to worry about T2 Alex's suffering, as you had implied. Instead of responding to the argument, you say that you never said anything about 'good reasons' (though it's perfectly clear what 'good reason' means in this context) and then to talk about the nature of justification and fact.
What I want to do is to take up where we left off. If there's something particularly irksome about the term 'good reason' to you, I am all too happy to jettison it, because I'm interested in the argument itself.
So to return once more to where this all came from
Again, I would love nothing more than to continue this conversation in good faith.
So here is where we are: You laid out what you meant by 'connection.' I responded with my doubts. Can you respond to that? You still have not.
You did? Especially to a person who just read a bunch of stuff about Leibniz, it's reasonable to imagine that causality here is an illusion. So some reasoning says yes, some reasoning says no. The sequence of words "there is no fact of the matter" was apparently typed by Terrapin, which signals us that there's some Quine on the scene somewhere... maybe he read it... maybe his aunt's next door neighbor mentioned it.. we don't know.
Are you really talking about what's reasonable? Or what's common sense? Or are you conflating the two?
The world of philosophy is huge! But an argument cannot progress if we spend it hunting influences, seeking proper names. If we do this, we become more like birdwatchers than philosophers, seeking examples in the wild by their distinguishing marks. It is far more fruitful to follow the argument itself, and where it leads.
Oh. I was addressing the way you kept coming back to "reasonable." All we have to do to determine if the anxiety is common sense is to do a poll. Observe the results.
Determining if the anxiety is reasonable is a different ball of bananas.
Quoting csalisbury
Fear not. I wasn't hunting anything. "There is no fact of the matter" seemed like a standard waving amongst enemy troops. Not saying it was... it just struck me that way. Terrapin may have never heard of Quine.
As for your admonition to look to arguments rather than names, you're preaching to the choir. And.. I'm fine with zero contact with you beyond. Happy trails, dude.
I don't remember it ever being easy to sustain discussions on PF. Stuff comes up. You don't feel like defending or even explaining x. The trust level is close to zero. It's a wonder anything ever happens.
I explained this already. First, I'm talking about identity in the sense of logical identity, not personal identity. Again, these refer to two quite different ideas conventionally.
The continuity obtains via the sorts of connections I mentioned between Alex @ T1 and Alex @ T2, especially direct/contiguous causal connections between the two,
Well, of course one can't sustain a discussion by just abandoning it when it's not going exactly how one would like it to go.
Yeah, I can see that your concern is sustaining philosophical discussions.
Do you say consciousness reduces to physical stuff or are you eliminative? What is a logical identity.. or a logical x from your POV?
I'm not at all an eliminative materialist. I say that consciousness is identical to physical stuff--namely, to particular brain states. If you want to say "reduces to" that's okay, although reductionism is often characterized in a way that I don't agree with, but arguably it's a straw man characterization.
I'm not using logical identity in any sort of novel manner. Just plain old morning star=evening star identity.
'I say that consciousness is identical to physical stuff'
But you also say:
' I'm talking about identity in the sense of logical identity, not personal identity. Again, these refer to two quite different ideas conventionally.'
Is what you call 'personal' identity identical to physical stuff? Is 'oneself' wholly and solely physical? If it is, then how is there a difference between 'conventional' and 'personal' identity? If it isn't, what's the difference?
In respect of 'consciousness being identical to brain states' - I have pointed out that this is the subject of various objections, one of which involves the nature of meaning.
Your response to that was:
'In my view, meaning is subjective. It's a mental association that a particular individual makes at a particular time.'
So, if you don't agree that meaning can be expressed consistently between different people, and that different people all mean different things by words, how is debate possible?
I still think the best way to talk about the OP is to delicately draw out the aporias of common-sense understandings of identity (whether that be an eternal soul or brain-states.) This doesn't leave you with an answer, but it leaves you with a better sense of what the problem is. I've become more and more convinced that aporia isn't something to be overcome, but maybe the terminus of philosophical inquiry. Like the old socratic cliche - you come only to know that you don't really know much of anything. A big part of the problem is that you have these analytic/continental or spiritual/material splits where both sides come in with a kind of a priori understanding that the other is wrong - and that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to have a good faith, good old fashioned dialectic discussion.
So you're a physicalist who's maybe a little foggy on how to characterize consciousness. We could say the very same thing of a lot of neuroscientists. But being that this is a philosophy forum, I think I could point out some ways it looks like you're walking around a philosophical minefield. But I wouldn't do that unless it was understood that I'm not interested in being combative.. I respect your right to think whatever you want... and hey... only if you're interested.
Looking to the OP, my first thoughts are that one's identity is on two levels, the subjective identity and the objective self. I think that the OP is referring to the objective self, but doesn't make this distinction, or recognise it and probably only thinks about it in the subjective sense.
Also, as I take an interest in mysticism, my approach is largely apophatic.
Everything is "physical stuff" on my view, I'm a physicalist. So yes, personal identity is physical.
Here are a couple definitions of "personal identity" since either you're pretending to not know what that term conventionally refers to, or unbelievably, you somehow managed to get a bachelor's in philosophy without any familiarity with it:
Quoting Wayfarer
If you're really curious about my views re what meaning is, what understanding is, what communication is, etc., it would probably be better to start a separate thread about that. It would be a huge tangent that wouldn't have much to do with the topics we've already hijacked this thread with.
In your opinion you mean?
Quoting Mongrel
You can do that if you want to. It's extremely unlikely that you're going to present anything I'm not already familiar with, though, and I'm just going to respond with explanations why your take on it is mistaken or misconceived on my view. If that would have some value to you for some reason, though, I have no problem with that.
Yeah, I wouldn't say it will do me much good, although I always figure there's some value in refining how I'm expressing things with respect to my personal ideals of expression . . . but in this case that would be kind of a stretch of a search for a benefit.
Anyway, it seems kind of like you were assuming that I must not be familiar with the perspective you'd be expressing. That's not the case. I just don't agree with that perspective.
So you will quote a textbook definition of what 'identity' consists of, and condescend to others for apparently not understanding it, and then contradict the definition of what you quoted in what you actually write. In this thread alone, you have cast doubt on the nature of the words 'meaning', 'identity', and 'causality', specifically so as to maintain a position which you're able to change at any time, according to the requirements of the moment. That is why csalisbury gave up on the dialogue, and why I am also doing that.
I'd like to read a post of yours to me without literally sighing and wondering what the fnck you're talking about, what the fnck you're reading, how your understanding of what you're reading can be so off base, etc.
First, where did anyone ask me anything resembling anything in the realm of "Is there actually such a thing as personal identity?"
This sort of comment from you is in the vein of your earlier comment about stating or implying a contradiction, but when pressed to back that up, you simply dropped it/changed the subject.
You seem to have forgotten that yesterday, csalisbury was pressing you on this very point.
To which you replied:
So, the 'two Alexes' are 'casually connected' - but does that mean they're the same person? You won't answer the question.
CS then presses this point by asking four detailed questions, all of which you evaded, and then CS asks
'But what is a sense of self. Is it a brain state?'
But you evade the question by then calling into doubt the 'nature of causality':
to which you answer:
Then after all that, you bring up the question of 'what constitutes a good reason', and whether Alex1 and Alex2 are the same person.
[csalisbury appears to express frustration amidst mutual exchange of LOL's and then gives up]
So - this is a muddle. Please stop condescending to others by implying that they 'don't understand philosophy', when the problem is at your end.
[quote=terrapin]So yes, personal identity is physical.[/quote]
[quote=Terrapin, quoting a definition he suggests is representative] Personal identity is the concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life.[/quote]
Strangely, Terrapin's definition of personal identity is entirely different from the definition of personal identity he says should be familiar to anyone with a philosophical background.
No one's asking you to change your mind, Terrapin, we're just asking you to be consistent enough to make discussion possible. As things stand, this has proven impossible. This is not an attack on your character, it's just asking that you play by the minimal rules necessary to have philosophical debate. One can't play chess if the other player is free to call the queen a pawn, or a pawn a queen, as it suits them. I have had long debates with many people I staunchly disagree with, I have no problem with brooking ideas that don't mesh with mine. Those are my favorite debates! That's what I've been trying to do here.
If you would like to respond to this by suggesting that I don't understand basic philosophical ideas or some such, I will not be surprised, but I'll be bummed out all over again.
Only if you (as I suspect he would argue) make the mistake of considering this concept of personal identity as non-physical.
For the non-eliminative materialist, minds are physical. Any idea or concept we hold, the existence of a "mind" state, is a physical presence. In this sense, I'd say he would by justified in arguing that you are just ignoring any thing he says.
Like much of philosophy, you bring in substance dualism which as a first principle, that our thoughts and experiences cannot by physical, which is to completely dismiss the whole point of non-eliminative materialism. With respect to his position, the discussion can't even begin because you've rejected the idea outright. Anytime he tries to make his argument, you turn around and say: "Your argument is meaningless. Can you please say something that makes sense so the discussion can begin."
The basic philosophical ideas you understand are no doubt many, but it's clear you don't understand the one he's talking about.
What does this have to do with personal identity? You're saying that you understood csalisbury to be asking me about personal identity by the term "identity" when "personal identity" conventionally refers to a very different idea than "identity" does, and when I was clearly talking about identity in the more general, logical sense?
Haha, yet one of the sources I quoted was the SEP.
Quoting csalisbury
And of course you're specifying examples of inconsistency rather than just making the accusation. Er, uh, wait, I guess you're not.
As a nominalist, I don't believe that an identical brain state in someone else, or in the same person at a different time, is possible.
Also, I wouldn't say that "continuity of consciousness" has anything to do with whether one (or someone else) is in an identical brain state at two different times (or at different places). "Continuity of consciousness" has to do with the causal, contiguous, memory-oriented, etc. relations of someone's brain at two different times.
What about uploading someone's mind into a computer, or into a replicant, surely provided the same computation that is going on in the nervous system, is going on, the person would remain alive?
.....
I'm not sure how my post could have possibly gone over your head, but I guess it did.
( I was not calling your source into question? Why do you think that? )
Re-read it again (hint: look at the bolded words)
Talk about going over someone's head. my post wasn't at all about you calling a source into question.
As for his arguments --- what arguments? He's simply stated that he's a nominalist and a physicalist and a few of his beliefs. And that's fine, I'm not saying he shouldn't be those things! but there's nothing philosophically interesting about stating what you believe.
If anyone's interested, I'll lay out that whole first discussion and if there's anyone who's willing to take it up where Terrapin gave up, I'd love to continue it.
I'm not quick enough to understand, so please break it down for me.
Quoting csalisbury
Yet one of the sources was the SEP.
[quote=csalisbury]Terrapin's definition of personal identity is entirely different from the definition of personal identity he says should be familiar to anyone with a philosophical background.[/quote]
What do you think I meant - or was suggesting - when I said this?
I still suspect things are going a bit over your head, but maybe I'm wrong. What did my post mean?
I figured that you "meant" just what you typed. If not, you should type what you have in mind instead. that's what I do. I don't type one thing and "mean" something different.
So then why ask what you meant, as if it might be different than what you'd typed? (This isn't a rhetorical question by the way, I'm expecting you to honestly answer it if you'd like to have a conversation.)
Quoting csalisbury
Does the SEP have any relationship to philosophy? Or is it "enitrely different" from received views in philosophy?
Ok, right, so you think that I was suggesting your quote came from a bad non-philosophical source. That's what I assumed you thought.
I just got confused because you said "Talk about going over someone's head. my post wasn't at all about you calling a source into question."
".....
I'm not sure how my post could have possibly gone over your head, but I guess it did.
( I was not calling your source into question? Why do you think that? )
Re-read it again (hint: look at the bolded words)"
That's a yes or no question. I wouldn't count any answer that doesn't have "yes" or "no" in it, or at least an explanation why you can't answer yes or no ("I can not answer yes or no to that because ______") to be an answer to that question.
If you want to have a conversation with me, you need to answer questions that I ask you; that is, you need to answer them in a manner that I consider an answer to the question at hand.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's circle back (again)
Ok, right, so you think that I was suggesting your quote came from a bad non-philosophical source. That's what I assumed you thought.
I just got confused because you said "Talk about going over someone's head. my post wasn't at all about you calling a source into question."
So, now that we've had a unnecessary exchange of posts because you wanted to also be the one talking about things going over people's heads, even if it didn't make sense for you to do so, let's circle back.
".....
I'm not sure how my post could have possibly gone over your head, but I guess it did.
( I was not calling your source into question? Why do you think that? )
Re-read it again (hint: look at the bolded words)"
Thanks for answering, but we're not done yet.
Is the SEP "entirely different" from the received views in philosophy?
Right, so a definition from the SEP isn't entirely different than what one would be familiar with if one is educated in philosophy, right?
Keep going!
Okay, but you said that the definition I gave was entirely different from the definition of personal identity one should be familiar if one has a philosophical background.
Re-read it again (hint: look at the bolded words)
What I quoted, because it's what I was addressing, was this sentence:
"Strangely, Terrapin's definition of personal identity is entirely different from the definition of personal identity he says should be familiar to anyone with a philosophical background."
There were no bolded words in that sentence.
I wasn't addressing anything else other than that specific sentence. That's why I quoted only that sentence.
It might have but I was addressing only that sentence. Are you saying that that sentence can't stand on its own as a claim?
?
Yes, I am absolutely 100% saying that. Part of reading and talking and thinking is understanding how sentences fit together. (And you wouldn't have mentioned the SEP to begin with unless you were understanding that sentence in the context of the post as a whole!)
Let's talk a little bit about how philosophical discussion (or any most discussion) works. People make arguments. Arguments are made of many different parts. To understand an argument you have to understand the different parts.
Right, so you're claiming that the sentence you quoted isn't consistent with the SEP definition?
It's certainly fun to watch yourself continually hoisted by your own petard. So keep going.
You don't know what you're talking about TS. You define words to suit your arguments and then ridicule others for not knowing what you mean. Your posts are a complete muddle, and I'm one less poster you're going to have to deal with.
You could sell me a bridge more easily than you could convince me that you have any sort of philosophy degree or significant philosophical background, even self-taught.
Or was that supposed to be something other than insult?
So my point (which Willow understood immediately, having perhaps an enviable natural facility for bold-spotting ) is that you consider personal identity to be physical, while the SEP considers it to be conceptual.
That I consider it to be physical has absolutely nothing to do with the conventional definition of "personal identity," and nowhere did I claim that it did.
The issue of whether it's physical or nonphysical has absolutely nothing to do with any conventional definition of it.
You asked me if I considered it to be physical, which struck me as a strange question, but I answered, because I answer and don't just ignore questions (well, at least when it's not a matter of cutting off long posts and attempting to do one thing in them at a time prior to intending to go back to the rest).
Again, "The issue of whether it's physical or nonphysical has absolutely nothing to do with any conventional definition of it," including the SEP definition. So a stance on whether it's physical or not can't agree or disagree with the SEP definition, which makes no comment on that.
In what way? Not re physical/nonphysical. AGAIN, their definition has NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT. It makes no coment about any issues in that realm.
What's the example? What's P in this case?
Wait, you are referring to definition you quoted, right?
Yes. Those definitions say nothing about whether anything is physical or nonphysical. That's not an issue that anyone addresses when talking about personal identity, which again, is why you asking that question struck me as very odd. It's not that one couldn't address it, but it doesn't really matter for what personal identity is what one takes to be the ontological status of personal identity re whether it's something physical or nonphysical.
It would be kind of like worrying about whether ethical or aesthetic judgments are physical or nonphysical. You could talk about that, but it's difficult to see what impact it would have on what people are usually interested in re ethical and aesthetic judgments (with respect to characterizing what they are functionally, for example).
Which again, says nothing about the physical/nonphysical issue.
"Personal identity is the concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life."
Nothing about this quote strikes you as suggesting that personal identity is conceptual?
Of course, but that has NOTHING TO DO with whether something is physical/nonphysical
Can I assume that you think concepts are physical?
Yes, of course. I'm a physicalist.
And people who aren't physicalists will likely think that concepts are nonphysical.
The word "concept" itself doesn't suggest either.
Re the other comment, I'm not going to assume that for whatever ridiculous reason, you believe that the word "concept" necessarily implies an ontological commitment re physical/nonphysical.
Let's get back to that in one minute. Do you agree that the word "concept" doesn't imply an ontological commitment on the physical/nonphysical issue? I want to resolve what we were talking about first.
Okay, but the mere mention of something being "conceptual" doesn't at all suggest an ontological commitment. Dualists are going to probably see concepts as being nonphysical, and physicalists are going to see concepts as being physical. Neither position matters for talking about concepts in a functional context however.
Anyway, okay re "real." It depends on whether you're asking in more of the colloquial sense, so that you're simply asking if something obtains or occurs however it does, or whether you're asking in the stricter philosophical sense, so that you're more or less asking if something is objective or mind-indepedent.
In the colloquial sense, yes, of course concepts are real. In the stricter sense, no they're not real, which is just to say that they're not objective or mind-independent.
One quick question before delving in: Do you think animals have personal identity? Or just humans?
Well, I think that humans are animals first off. But re "non-human animals," I'm fairly agnostic on that, though I'm fine assuming that non-human animals who have brains that are pretty close to our own have mentalities that are pretty close to our own. That would diminish as brains differ more strongly (as we consider different species).
My point is you are now (as of the post I initially responded to) rejecting the idea of physical minds a priori. You immediately read the concept of personal existence as inconsistent with a mind that was wholly physical.
For a while you were going along quite nicely, until you got to the meat and bones, where upon you began asking questions that assume substance dualism at the base. Ones which reject that personal identity is consistent with a wholly physical existence.
When Terrapin spoke about the distinction between identity in existence (the different existing person of each moment) and some distinctions of logic (the unity of meaning expessed by some states of the world--e.g. an individual over time), you accused him of missing the point. As if unity of personal identity meant someone's existence was not entirely physical.
He did not ignore the question. You rejected his answer without consideration. Certainly, it was not the clearest or most eloquent answer. As a non-eliminative materialist, he doesn't make enough a distinction between the existence of experiences and brains to make his position obvious (he sounds mostly like a reductionist), but your response was shallow one which did not even make an attempt to consider what he was talking about.
Now I did say that if one believes that identity does not persist over time, then personal identity is either not a subset of identity or is incoherent. Again this was in response to "identity does not persist over time." If he meant, simply, that things do not remain indiscernible over time, and so are not identical in one limited sense of the term 'identity', then it would have been prudent not to have said, simply, "identity does not persist over time."
( & btw I'm not even a dualist!)
First, you never brought up personal identity per se, and I was never talking about that (until I realized that maybe you were conflating the two, then I brought it up just to point out the conflation).
I pointed out that (logical) identity is not the only thing someone might be concerned with re your example.
Re just addressing one thing, yeah, I was starting the one-point-at-a-time approach so that stuff wouldn't get overlooked. Then YOU dropped it when I made it clear that your objections had nothing to do with the idea of connections between Alex @T1 and Alex @T2 (I asked you what your example had to do with that, and you said "nothing")--but that was what I was talking about.
"The same turtle" is an abstraction that hinges on what an individual requires to consider something the same x at two different times. Or in other words, there aren't correct or incorrect, factual answers to such questions. It's a question about how individuals conceive of this.
X is the same turtle to S just in case x at time T1 and x' at T2 meet S's criteria to call it "the same turtle." X isn't the same turtle to U just in case x at T1 and x' at T2 do not meet U's criteria to call it "the same turtle."
[quote=terrapin]Re just addressing one thing, yeah, I was starting the one-point-at-a-time approach so that stuff wouldn't get overlooked. Then YOU dropped it when I made it clear that your objections had nothing to do with the idea of connections between Alex @T1 and Alex @T2 (I asked you what your example had to do with that, and you said "nothing")--but that was what I was talking about.[/quote]
I already explained this. I explained it in the post you're referencing:
[quote=me]You cited causality as a way of understanding why T1 Alex has good reason to be nervous about T2 Alex's suffering. Since the executioner is also causally responsible for T2 Alex's anguish, yet has no reason himself to worry about suffering that anguish, then pointing to causality doesn't explain why T1 alex's anxiety is justified.[/quote]
& I have already addressed the confusion over "good reason" in my long break-down post.