The concept of „I”

[Shomwher]

How do we define ourselves? In one part we compare of course. On the other hand we have some idea of the self at once we are conscious of the feedback of our senses.

The idea of the I is very bittersweet. As everything the concept exists only in our head. The realities we carry with ourselves is defined arm-in-arm with it. It is a constant circle of information exchange and change.

As it only exists there, consequently one person perceived always differently, cause the worlds of persons can not match. It may cause friction between your imagined /you/ and others /you/. 

Growing up a person implements filters, to defend its mechanism; learn and experience, in order to achive a mutually positive relationship with the outside, to better survive.

The idea of I is relative. There is always smth added to it or deleted from it. But the amount of freedom of the actions you take is limited. Limited in a way, that taking the idea of /you/ in consideration, you can not really operate otherwise as you do. The problem of the illusion of so called freedom lays on this stone.

No organim wants to witness its End. It is not capable of destroying itself without deformation. It seems to me that as we were trapped, we just dont wanna know about it. Can we really change reality? Are we able to?

When does the notion of I really surfices in our mind? What makes us human? Compassion?- our byproduct of seeking benefit with the concept of time?
Its really interesting what kind of basic actions does our integrated brains runs: for me it really resembles to set mathematics- association, unions, section, etc.

[Syamsu]

When you would be in a court of law with an ominous judge and jury, then you might know to the core of your being that the real you is the you that chooses.

[Gertie]

I think you're right that 'I' or 'self' is a concept, and a fuzzy one at that. We certainly have a sense of Self, a sense of I, Me. And maybe that sense of I, is what I is, and will vary slightly from individual to individual, and from time to time within individuals.

I think it springs from us being embodied critters moving through time and and space, which a specific first person perspective manifesting as a 'unified field' of consciousness. Evidence suggests that sense of 'I' at the centre of all a baby's sensations, desires, responses, etc begins to emerge fairly early on, but I'd suggests it could be a cumulative thing, resulting from the brain's complex inter-connectivity, which other species have elements of too, tho not identical to ours.

Reinforced and made more concrete by that thinky voice in our heads, which comes later, and seems to serve the purpose of creating coherent narratives about the world around us and ourselves, including ourselves as an embodied 'I', moving through time and space in somewhat logical, predictable and therefore somewhat manageable/navigable ways.

How limited our decisions are is still an open question. There are experiments suggesting that the thinky voice in our heads is, at least in some cases, giving post hoc rationalisations for our actions, rather than making decisions beforehand which we then choose to enact. If we ever solve the Mind Body problem, of the relationship between between our mental states (including choices) and our physical brains, we'll have a better idea about that. For now, Free Will is something we don't understand enough about to answer.

What makes us human is simply the sum total of our shared properties, the nasty and the nice bits, like any other species.

What being an 'I' means to us in terms of personal experience, how we see or live our lives, well it's rooted in everything about us. Perhaps most poignantly in facing death. Our atoms might recycle, but I'd say when my consciousness created by the specific configuration of atoms creating Me is lost, then everything of value and meaning for Me is lost, and anything worth calling Me, a Self, is gone. Might be wrong, but that's where the evidence points.

-- Updated February 17th, 2017, 11:18 am to add the following --

And welcome to the board . Good topic.

[Papus79]

It's very difficult to say much of anything with certainty on the direct 'I' experience. As I'm sure you're well aware there are dozens of top-flight philosophers and information theorists pouring over that one and trying to come up with different explanations of where self-aware consciousness comes from; I doubt I'll have much to say that they haven't already.

As for the 'me' of it, ie. identity, I can't help but think that our struggles are really sent to us by how we interact with our environments. That interaction both shapes our priorities, tells us immediately what our weakness are (in some cases life-long and incorrigible ones), and we're forced to work out who we're allowed to be in such an environment where we have to blend our strengths and weaknesses as seamlessly as possible into one of the available social structures around us.

One of the places where I think we come closest to having actual freedom is internal metanarrative. We're never less free than when surprised, because when we're surprised our external circumstances have the upper hand on us. To the opposite, when we've carefully thought out our problems in life and even manufactured our own solutions we create a certain mediating zone. We give ourselves tools to use in life, we're able to find ways to edify parts of ourselves that society would be incapable of edifying. The quest for meaning and finding organizing principles for one's life has really become one of these areas where it's a struggle for anyone who really thinks about it and it takes a lot of work to resolve out where to go next, especially after one hope or dream or another has blown up.

As for discussions of death as some people brought up - I've noticed and interesting thing about both the mystic spiritual paths and just getting on well in life, ie. a lot of it has common ground that works just as well whether one is a reductive materialist or an idealist. That is if a person really strives for integrity and does everything they can to sort their lives out and reduce voluntary internal friction - that goes a long way in palliating human suffering and even making life quite meaningful and enjoyable, even if someone wasn't given a lot in life to start off with. In the end I tend to see it like this - whether we go on to Bardo, Devachan, etc.. or cease to exist is not something we have any choice in. From that perspective all we can do I think is focus on how well we live, how good we are to ourselves and others, and how far we were able to play the cards we were given. That might sound a bit sappy but I think that, and continuing self-education, is really all we've got for certain.