SELF
- Waechter418
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Re: SELF
- detail
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- thrasymachus
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Re: SELF
The trouble popeye1945, is confirming this. There must be something substantive presented IN experience that justified belief, and this can't be simply the dogmatic insistence that it is so. So, what is the basis for belief?popeye1945 wrote
The self is immutable, it constitutes ISness that which is in being. It can have a good or a bad constitution, but it has no identity. Many people consider the identity self, to be the real self, but identity is acquired from the context of ones environment, it then claims it's I, the never ending life experiences forming its growing identity, until death consumes that identity. When one is born, one just is, until introduced to its awaiting context.
It could be that you have intimations of a more profound reality in an experience deep in one's interior. Or, it could be you have an argument that can be explicitly stated and objectively defended. It could be both of these.
But not dogmatically believed. This is arbitrary. If you have had some mysterious intimation, don't be shy. Describe it. Such things are not nonsense, as I see it. Nor is argument off the table.
- thrasymachus
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Re: SELF
I think it is best to dismiss terms like "illusion" because this rests on the assumption that things are to be separated into real and illusory. But those psychological characteristics, how are they to be distinguished from something that is not psychological (merely)? I mean, when you look plainly at the contents of your own self, is there not something that defies inspection?detail wrote
There are different impressions of one's own self and consciousness of different people. The question is , if other people perceive the own self different than oneself and this alters time by time how much of the personality can be really observed in a scientific way? Is it possible to define a full psyhological caracteristic of a certain person from the outside or is this picture and these data just an illusion of the personality the person represents.
- thrasymachus
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Re: SELF
I think there is something to this. The trick would be find the self without these reductive analytic processes. How does one do this? It would be an attempt "find" what will not appear, because it is not an object, nor is it a concept you can analyze. It is entirely Other. One would first have to do some kind of neti neti (in the west call this apophatic theology). One would also have to do a positive search: Is there nothing at all there that attests to the existence of the self, if you will, "behind" the empirical self?Wisdom wrote
I think ironically when we attempt to define the "self" we loose our experience of it because we are trying to limit its form. The self while may seem like a point of consistency from behind our eyes, it changes with every ioata of a second. The difference may not be within our sensory experience but that does not mean its not a happening. Could this be the illusion the Buddhists speak of? Maybe after realizing enlinghtenment, your mind in all senses doesn't stick to anything. Floats on like a river washing itself away.
- Terrapin Station
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Re: SELF
thrasymachus wrote: ↑November 13th, 2020, 9:20 am because it is not an object . . .
I don't agree with that, but in that, it's important to realize that ALL objects, at least aside from elementary particles should there be any, are dynamic processes. They're not static, singular things.
- LuckyR
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Re: SELF
Context is key here. Self is commonly the median to measure relativistic variables. If I want to know the height of something I measure it, let's say it is 5 feet tall. That is an empiric measurement. If I am gauging if a guy is tall or short, I answer based on their relative height to me. Remember that the concept of self is established in infancy, when processing power is limited.popeye1945 wrote: ↑November 12th, 2020, 4:55 pm The self is immutable, it constitutes ISness that which is in being. It can have a good or a bad constitution, but it has no identity. Many people consider the identity self, to be the real self, but identity is acquired from the context of ones environment, it then claims it's I, the never ending life experiences forming its growing identity, until death consumes that identity. When one is born, one just is, until introduced to its awaiting context.
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Re: SELF
- LuckyR
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Has an identity? Sure. Has a sense of identity? Not so sure, I'll ask the next newborn I see and find out for you...popeye1945 wrote: ↑November 13th, 2020, 4:57 pm Actually I am not sure what is questioned here, is it commonly believed that an infant at birth already has an identity? The fact that infants needs to be given at birth a name, with which it will start to build an identity around I thought rather obvious. I have had the experience of being without identity, not knowing who I was, nor knowing the people around me, this after a rather bad physical battering. I was aware of being in a hospital, but all else was a blank, shaken up and bruised, it was just aware of being, and even with the wounds it felt great to be alive. There might be something to be learned from the separation of identical twins, each forming a unique identity but at the same time have much the same preferences, this I think would indicate a common constitution but their constitutions are subjected to a very different environment contexts. Well it will be interesting a least debate the possibilities.
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Re: SELF
- Jack D Ripper
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Re: SELF
That is all there is to some schools of philosophy. They use words to make stupid crap sound better than it is. To use a homely expression, it is just putting lipstick on a pig.
- Jack D Ripper
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Re: SELF
Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑August 26th, 2020, 8:43 am Depending what we mean by "self", Buddhists believe there is no such thing, that the 'self' is an illusion. I'm not asserting this is correct, but I am observing that the very concept of self might be subject to some doubt. So self is something, perhaps like consciousness, that we have difficulty defining or describing, never mind explaining. 🤔
I think that needs to be fleshed out a bit more, to get people to have a better appreciation for such ideas. Here is something similar:
THERE are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our Self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt a farther proof of this were to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be deriv'd from any fact, of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing, of which we can be certain, if we doubt of this.
T 1.4.6.2, SBN 251-2
Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explain'd. For from what impression cou'd this idea be deriv'd? This question 'tis impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and absurdity; and yet 'tis a question, which must necessarily be answer'd, if we wou'd have the idea of self pass for clear and intelligible. It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos'd to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is deriv'd; and consequently there is no such idea.
T 1.4.6.3, SBN 252
But farther, what must become of all our particular perceptions upon this hypothesis? All these are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other, and may be separately consider'd, and may exist separately, and have no need of any thing to support their existence. After what manner, therefore, do they belong to self; and how are they connected with it? For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.
T 1.4.6.4, SBN 252-3
But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is compos'd.
I plan on revealing the source of the quotation later, but the point is, that the idea of "self" as a thing is problematic. One has a succession of sensations, but none of them are of the "self".
And, of course, the selection above is only part of what was written by that author on this subject.
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Re: SELF
Why/how experiential consciousness exists at all remains a mystery. But we know experiential (what it's like) states correlate with brain states. And we can see how evolution has molded brains in terms of utility, why for example we have a reward system which makes eating when we need calories pleasurable, and sticking our hand in a fire not so much. Likewise social rewards of approval, as we are a social species. And so on. All phenomenological experiential states seem to be explainable in evolutionary utilitarian terms.
As is, I suggest, the sense of being self, navigating an 'outside' world. Because human consciousness manifests as a discrete, unified field, located in space and time, correlated with a specific material body, and with a first person pov. And in a way which makes the cacophany of sensory perceptions, sensations, emotions, memories, thoughts, etc coherent. A Sense of Self seems to be the sum of all the intricacies of how that adds up to being experienced as a Me-Here-Now, located in an external world.
Although the processes involved in all that are incredibly complex, and yet to be pieced together, it's fairly straightforward to grasp in principle. Because we're accustomed to understanding things in physical, cause and effect, material terms. It's how our scientific toolkit helps us make sense of the world.
This 'what it's like' aspect of phenomenal conscious experiencing also introduces new types of qualities into the world. Emotion, knowledge, value, meaning, purpose, wellbeing, interests, morality. Everything which makes existing matter. These are qualiative in nature, they only enterred the world when consciousness emerged. A universe of dead rocks acting in accordance with physics might as well not exist. It wouldn't matter, one way or another.
The relationship between this dead, meaningless aspect of the material world, which can be fully described in objective, measurable physicalist terms, and the the conscious experiential world of Subjects with a sense of self raises many philosphical conundrums. Not just the Hard Problem or Free Will, not just epistemological and ontological, but questions about the very nature of Being. Which science, rooted in our physicalist observations, doesn't seem equipped to answer.
But then, what can? Are the questions Phenomenologists explore answerable? Even meaningful? Or is the material world, which through physical processes somehow resulted in conscious Subjects emerging, the full story? I think the latter is all we can ever address beyond untestable speculations, enmeshed in bias and solipsism.
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023