Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Namelesss
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

Post by Namelesss »

Greta wrote: January 2nd, 2018, 9:09 pm According to Jill Bolte-Taylor's experience during a severe stroke, there is both the self as per JKlint's description and the self as per Nameless's; one mostly driven by the left brain and the other mostly driven by the right side.
I have no clue about this fellow and his anecdotal experience, but strokes do not Enlighten people. At least there is no evidence!
It seems ironic that the self is more or less all we really have, yet we spend much of our lives trying to escape it via distractions, flow states, sleep, relationships, meditation, and many will even philosophise it away altogether.
Yes, good philosophy can diminish and make obsolete long held assumptions and, indeed, lead to Enlightenment!. See; Jnana yoga.
Yet no one ever attempts to 'escape' the 'Self!', once Realized! There is no 'distraction from', no 'context'! No 'other'.
And the 'Self'! is independent/transcendental of brain activity, as is the 'self'.
Small 's' self exists in/as 'thought/ego'. Thought/ego is not manufactured (or perceived) by the brain. Such 'materialism' is a long obsolete theory.
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

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I take Jill Bolte Taylor's experience very seriously. She is not alone. Consider near death experiences, which are similar, as well. The intersting part about these latter is not what a person may encounter in terms of images or other content. This is not nearly as important as the experience's quality: as more deeply real, sublime, profound, and so on. I take this seriously because while "sensory" content in an NDE is more readily dismissable and can be understood as, in the near death experience, the unstable activity of a dying brain, reports of quality cannot, that is, they are not interpretations of something as real, as might occur with an hallucination; the sense of something profound and more real than real is not mistakable, the powerful bliss of something entirely alien to ordinary everydayness is not mistakable since these kinds of things are not interpretations; they are givens.

Does this mean I am a full believer in all they say, along with their intimations of divinity and the overwhelming sense of god's presence, and so forth? Not really. But it does, to use a bit of an epistemologist's jargon, put some presumption in favor of belief that is difficult to ignore. After all, given a fair hearing, these NDE'ers, a few things are very clear: they are not lying (and Jill Bolte Taylor is certainly not lying). Of course, you can say they are, but i know liars and they simply aren't. They are intelligent people, many are doctors, professors and the reason why this is important is that education brings a standard of judgment to the testimony that leaves little room for foolishness.

Like I said, I don't therefore have solid beliefs of an objective nature on this. But keep in mind that the reason we push these kinds of things aside so blithely is because of two things: One is that the everyday world does not have a verifiable theoretical basis for belief in them, in other words there is no empirical proof; and the other is the justified belief that people who say fantastic things are just liars and cheats looking for attention and profit. But NDE people (Taylor, too) aren't lying. And as for the everyday/scientific verifiable true belief about the world, philosophy has the singular power of dismantling, that is, deconstructing, any belief. (And i do not even approve in the word 'belief'; too doxastically manichean for reality.)
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

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Jklint
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

Post by Jklint »

Metaphorically one can also think of "I" as a constellation of separate I's not all of which are compatible in a higher species. It's these discrepancies that lead to greater consciousness. Friction generates heat which creates the mental metallurgy and its amalgamation into "I"...a dangerous process which can lead to extremes of personality types and abilities.
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

Post by Namelesss »

Hereandnow wrote: January 3rd, 2018, 12:13 am I take Jill Bolte Taylor's experience very seriously. She is not alone. Consider near death experiences, which are similar, as well. The intersting part about these latter is not what a person may encounter in terms of images or other content. This is not nearly as important as the experience's quality: as more deeply real, sublime, profound, and so on. I take this seriously because while "sensory" content in an NDE is more readily dismissable and can be understood as, in the near death experience, the unstable activity of a dying brain, reports of quality cannot, that is, they are not interpretations of something as real, as might occur with an hallucination; the sense of something profound and more real than real is not mistakable, the powerful bliss of something entirely alien to ordinary everydayness is not mistakable since these kinds of things are not interpretations; they are givens.
'Feelings'.. senses...
Ever heard one of the Truths in the Bible:
"The Heart is deceitful above all things!"
All I said, and I'll elaborate a bit, is that in the history of man, of which I'm aware, none have emerged from a 'stroke' in a state of unconditional Love/Enlightenment.
Perhaps there is an example to the contrary. No sweat. I have not seen it, hence my assertion.
Hereandnow wrote: January 3rd, 2018, 12:13 am I take Jill Bolte Taylor's experience very seriously. She is not alone. Consider near death experiences, which are similar, as well. The intersting part about these latter is not what a person may encounter in terms of images or other content. This is not nearly as important as the experience's quality: as more deeply real, sublime, profound, and so on. I take this seriously because while "sensory" content in an NDE is more readily dismissable and can be understood as, in the near death experience, the unstable activity of a dying brain, reports of quality cannot, that is, they are not interpretations of something as real, as might occur with an hallucination; the sense of something profound and more real than real is not mistakable, the powerful bliss of something entirely alien to ordinary everydayness is not mistakable since these kinds of things are not interpretations; they are givens.
'Feelings'.. senses...
Ever heard one of the Truths in the Bible:
"The Heart is deceitful above all things!"
All I said, and I'll elaborate a bit, is that in the history of man, of which I'm aware, none have emerged from a 'stroke' in a state of unconditional Love/Enlightenment.
Perhaps there is an example to the contrary. No sweat. I have not seen it, hence my assertion.
Does this mean I am a full believer in all they say, along with their intimations of divinity and the overwhelming sense of god's presence, and so forth? Not really. But it does, to use a bit of an epistemologist's jargon, put some presumption in favor of belief that is difficult to ignore.

Or hallucinations based on conditioning, seeing what one expects to see...
After all, given a fair hearing, these NDE'ers, a few things are very clear: they are not lying (and Jill Bolte Taylor is certainly not lying). Of course, you can say they are, but i know liars and they simply aren't. They are intelligent people, many are doctors, professors and the reason why this is important is that education brings a standard of judgment to the testimony that leaves little room for foolishness.
Jeez! They saw you coming a mile away! *__-
Have I got a billion pop-up ads and commercials and robo-calls and telemarketers... just waiting for your twinkling trusting eyes!
Like I said, I don't therefore have solid beliefs of an objective nature on this. But keep in mind that the reason we push these kinds of things aside so blithely is because of two things: One is that the everyday world does not have a verifiable theoretical basis for belief in them,
No, but science and philosophy does.
in other words there is no empirical proof;

Doesn't matter, Knowledge = experience!
Anecdotal evidence is often accepted in a court of law!
and the other is the justified belief that people who say fantastic things are just liars and cheats looking for attention and profit.

I would grace NO 'belief' with calling it 'justified', and certainly not that!
What is your personal meaning of 'fantastic'? It would be different for everyone, no?
I say many things that can be perceived, from certain Perspectives, as 'fantastic, and I am neither a liar or a cheat, and get all the money and attention that I need!
Reminds me of the snarky quote;
"There are two categories of people, people who fall into categories, and people who put them there." *__-
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

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Hereandnow wrote: January 3rd, 2018, 12:13 amI take Jill Bolte Taylor's experience very seriously. She is not alone. Consider near death experiences, which are similar, as well. The intersting part about these latter is not what a person may encounter in terms of images or other content. This is not nearly as important as the experience's quality: as more deeply real, sublime, profound, and so on. I take this seriously because while "sensory" content in an NDE is more readily dismissable and can be understood as, in the near death experience, the unstable activity of a dying brain, reports of quality cannot, that is, they are not interpretations of something as real, as might occur with an hallucination; the sense of something profound and more real than real is not mistakable, the powerful bliss of something entirely alien to ordinary everydayness is not mistakable since these kinds of things are not interpretations; they are givens.
Yes. It's easy to underestimate the profundity of death when one is not in the hot seat. There is talk of oxytocin being released in the dying brain, which may be an evolved survival trait, ie. those whose brains release oxytocin when close to death may be less likely to die of shock and thus more likely to recover and procreate afterwards. Perhaps when life was short and dangerous this trait was selected? Maybe. It's a bit of a stretch, especially given how NDEs have spanned history and geography.

In my peak experiences I too felt that sense that what I was experiencing was somehow more in touch with actual reality than in my usual states. This was arguably supported by the effect the experiences had on me afterwards, where problems in my life that had not been clearly recognised or dealt with immediately became clear to me, along with their solutions, and I have been happier and more optimistic ever since. Not too bad for "illusions". Other "illusions" in my life were not so efficacious.
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

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Heidegger's project in Being and Time was to find the meaning of being. He started with the analysis of the meaning of the being of Dasein (“being here” or “being there”) and left open the question if there are other kinds of being and if there is a meaning of being in general. After going deeper in the analysis, ending with the meaning of Dasein as temporality, he asked the question if the meaning of being in general could be found in temporality, time interpreted as the phenomenological idea of “subjective” time, from which physical time can be constructed as a secondary phenomenon. So it seems to me that he concluded that the meaning of being in general is essentially the same as the meaning of the being of Dasein, or at least founded on that. I am not sure if my interpretation is correct or even near to correct, but it is something similar to what I think myself. There are questions left open with this interpretation, such as the subjectivity of animals and what is its relation to the meaning of the being of Dasein as it is described by Heidegger, which probably cannot be applied to the being of animals.

My interpretation is that the objects of the world are "ready-to-hand" and that Heiddegger abandoned the "present-at-hand" nature of them altogether, but I may be wrong in this. For objects to be "present-at-hand" we must take a peculiar attitude towards them, kind of stare at them, as was the case also with Wittgenstein in Tractatus, and which he later confessed to have been his mistake.
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

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Greta:
In my peak experiences I too felt that sense that what I was experiencing was somehow more in touch with actual reality than in my usual states. This was arguably supported by the effect the experiences had on me afterwards, where problems in my life that had not been clearly recognised or dealt with immediately became clear to me, along with their solutions, and I have been happier and more optimistic ever since. Not too bad for "illusions". Other "illusions" in my life were not so efficacious.
Right. The reason why I put value on the "sense" of the real lived experience and its' being intensified, is that it is precisely this that is the measure of what we call real in the first place. Being in the hot seat does present a diiferent set of priorities, and one is inclined to pay attention more to foundational issues like one's purpose in being here, and so forth.

But regarding the matter of the brain's extraordinary near death experience, it does not matter what chemical processes are in play; after all, the calling of a chemical process as such is just an interpretation. That thing in the head, as presence, is not a brain at all. So when the argument takes thsi course, and science puts forth its confidence about what is really happening, when pressed to justify, like all knowledge claims, one is led to a complete absence of thinking altogether. Our words are not anything beyond their pragmatic import.

This brings me to the intensity of the real experience: This is not a contingent event; it is an absolute. We're not saying something like, say, I met my dead uncle and it was him, really. That is an act of interpretation, taking the figure as something. Quality is different. One cannot be mistaken about a pain, for example, being there. It is, again, an absolute, I argue (and note the Cartesian/Husserlian approach here); and this goes for experiencing the real as well: My words may belong to an interpretative constitution, but the given, the "felt reality," this is precisely the measure of what real means!
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

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Nameless:

I would grace NO 'belief' with calling it 'justified', and certainly not that!
What is your personal meaning of 'fantastic'? It would be different for everyone, no?
I say many things that can be perceived, from certain Perspectives, as 'fantastic, and I am neither a liar or a cheat, and get all the money and attention that I need!
Reminds me of the snarky quote;
"There are two categories of people, people who fall into categories, and people who put them there." *__-
It all depends on what you are reading. I have had had lots of conversations with people think like you do, but when it comes to what they read and what kinds of thoughts fill their heads, they inevitably turn up short on argument.

For me to address the comments you made, you would have to be patient and read things you are likely not familiar with. At the very least, you would have to be willing to go dialectically one on one on each knowledge claims implicit in your thinking. I suspect a confident person like you are willing to go there.

Snark? Not where wisdom resides, I would say.
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

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Hereandnow wrote: January 3rd, 2018, 11:50 am
Nameless:

I would grace NO 'belief' with calling it 'justified', and certainly not that!
What is your personal meaning of 'fantastic'? It would be different for everyone, no?
I say many things that can be perceived, from certain Perspectives, as 'fantastic, and I am neither a liar or a cheat, and get all the money and attention that I need!
Reminds me of the snarky quote;
"There are two categories of people, people who fall into categories, and people who put them there." *__-
It all depends on what you are reading. I have had had lots of conversations ..., but when it comes to what they read and what kinds of thoughts fill their heads, they inevitably turn up short on argument.
I do not imbibe thoughts from books. Somehow I have the ability to think for myself. Yes, obviously a rare ability, I Know!
What I am reading... is your post.
Nor am I short on support for anything that I say!
So if you would like to focus on something rather than casting out vague ad-homs...

...philosophers and not "philosophologists", a term coined by Robert Pirsig ("Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", "Lila") to denote people who study other people's philosophy but cannot do philosophy themselves. He also says that most people who consider themselves philosophers are actually philosophologists. The difference between a philosopher and a philosophologist is like the difference between an art and aesthetics; one does and the other studies what the other does and theorizes about it.
For me to address the comments you made, you would have to be patient and read things you are likely not familiar with.

Not if you can think for yourself.
And not if you understand what you are saying. If so, you can put it in rather simple terms, common language, and be understood.
Any attempts to "baffle 'em with bullsh!t" will fail!
I can think for myself, and you have never read anything like what I offer.
Perhaps a familiar bit here and there, but if you let that blind you, it's your loss.
At the very least, you would have to be willing to go dialectically one on one on each knowledge claims implicit in your thinking. I suspect a confident person like you are willing to go there.

I won't have my precious and generous time here wasted, though, if you have a question, focused, I'd be happy to elucidate. As I said, anything that I offer here is quite supportable from various directions.

“Genuinely successful theories interconnect information from previously disparate areas of experience,” said Adolf Grünbaum, the Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh.
Snark? Not where wisdom resides, I would say.
Perhaps we'll talk about your 'wisdom' sometime...
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

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Hereandnow wrote: January 3rd, 2018, 11:40 am
In my peak experiences I too felt that sense that what I was experiencing was somehow more in touch with actual reality than in my usual states. This was arguably supported by the effect the experiences had on me afterwards, where problems in my life that had not been clearly recognised or dealt with immediately became clear to me, along with their solutions, and I have been happier and more optimistic ever since. Not too bad for "illusions". Other "illusions" in my life were not so efficacious.
Right. The reason why I put value on the "sense" of the real lived experience and its' being intensified, is that it is precisely this that is the measure of what we call real in the first place. Being in the hot seat does present a different set of priorities, and one is inclined to pay attention more to foundational issues like one's purpose in being here, and so forth.
Exactly. In death there will be an unusually singular focus, increasingly a dying person's world closes in on itself, shrinking until it includes only being, sensations, thoughts and emotions.
Hereandnow wrote:... the calling of a chemical process as such is just an interpretation.
Good point, the most practical angle for medical practitioners is not necessarily closest to reality.
Hereandnow wrote:This brings me to the intensity of the real experience: This is not a contingent event; it is an absolute. We're not saying something like, say, I met my dead uncle and it was him, really. That is an act of interpretation, taking the figure as something. Quality is different. One cannot be mistaken about a pain, for example, being there. It is, again, an absolute, I argue (and note the Cartesian/Husserlian approach here); and this goes for experiencing the real as well: My words may belong to an interpretative constitution, but the given, the "felt reality," this is precisely the measure of what real means!
Our basic wordless reality that is, naturally, difficult to put into words :)

A question about something I've wondered about and I'd be interested in your opinion as one who has given this kind of thing serious thought and read the works of many great minds. What do you make of the idea that each "I" is basically the same "I" peering through different vantage points? That is, the "I" would basically be that of life itself (or God, for those so inclined), rather than being truly separate.
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

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Nameless
Perhaps we'll talk about your 'wisdom' sometime...
You don't read, we have nothing to discuss. Farewell.
Namelesss
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Re: Who is I? The possessor of my body, mind, and spirit?

Post by Namelesss »

Hereandnow wrote: January 3rd, 2018, 11:48 pm
Nameless
Perhaps we'll talk about your 'wisdom' sometime...
You don't read, we have nothing to discuss. Farewell.
Sounds like you are defending imbibing all one's thoughts from books.
A self-serving and fortuitous retreat. Did I say something to upset?
At least I have the manners and respect and intellect to read what you have written to me, and thoughtfully respond.
I can see why you run, though...
Fare thee well, as well! *__-
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