Philosophy Forums


The atom and the I

PrintPrint


Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6

The atom and the I
wuliheron
Tenured Poster
Avatar

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Jun 02, 2003
Location: Newport News, Va

Total Topics: 15
Total Posts: 4148
Posted 11/07/09 - 04:19 AM:
quote post
#41
reincarnated wrote:

Its the definition cited by you - how is this willy nilly? grin
Or perhaps its the case that when you decide what a word means to you, its not willy nilly, its only when someone else decides what a word means to them that it then becomes willy nilly? Is this perhaps what you mean? wink



It is a definition provided by me, not the definition.

Next you'll be insisting that a square root must be some sort of carpenter's tool.
reincarnated
the moving finger writes
Avatar

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Jan 30, 2006
Location: on the road to Samarkand

Total Topics: 31
Total Posts: 2122
Posted 11/07/09 - 04:45 AM:
quote post
#42
wuliheron wrote:
Next you'll be insisting that a square root must be some sort of carpenter's tool.

actually I thought it was a deformed vegetable?
(note that the Dutch word for "root" is the same as the Dutch word for "carrot", so the Dutch for "square root" is actually the same as "square carrot" - viz vierkante wortel)

crumpled bits of paper, filled with imperfect thoughts...
we all talk a different language, talking in defence...
and if you don't give up, and don't give in, you may just be ok...
(Mike & The Mechanics, "The Living Years")
Tobias
Metaphysical exorcist
Avatar

Usergroup: Moderators
Joined: Feb 17, 2003
Location: Just rub the mirror

Total Topics: 58
Total Posts: 5574
Posted 11/07/09 - 04:52 AM:
quote post
#43
Suggesting that the “self” is logically prior to the experience is simply another variant of the homunculus. A more rational explanation (imho) is that the self is created ab initio as part and parcel of the experience, that there is no self in absence of experience.


No, it is not a variant of the homunculus, with features and essence and all. That would imply that I myself would not be shaped by experiences, a sort of rationalist Augustinian type of position. No, I am going post Kantian, a self which gets to know itself through experience and through reflection. For experience to hang together so to speak and to be at all a possible experience it has to be connecte dto other experiences. The self or I is that connection no more no less.

How can they NOT be your experiences? How can your experiences be someone else’s experiences (ie not yours), or vice versa? Again, the suggestion is absurd.


I am not suggesting any such thing, I think we are talking past each other so I hope to clarify when discussing the following line.

You asked “what causes me to remain me?” But the only way you would NOT remain you is if you became someone else – which is what I am saying is absurd – it is logically impossible for you to be someone else. Therefore it follows that “you must remain you” (logically) – there is no other logical possibility (unless you subscribe to some form of dualism and homunculi).


Yes, I asked that question, but it is not a question where I am seeking an answer on. It is a rhetorical question and perhaps a reflective question. Look:

I said: "So what causes me to remain me? I can only answer that that is me. It might be my brain, or my soul, or God knows what (actually God is the only other applicable answer, but I leave it aside for now) What constitutes me, the person that I am, my identification, is my experiences."

Basically we agree on quite some points. What constitutes me, the I of self identification is what I experience and which experience I relate to myself as mine. So all is well and good, I am shaped by my experiences. That also means I change because of these experiences. If you and I are both comitted to the view that what I am is formedby my experiences than it can't be otherwise that I and you and everybody else change when they experience different stuff. However, "I" remain the same as well since all experience doesn't change my self identification one bit. They are all my experiences and the sense of me, does not change, whereas I on the view that it is simply the stream of my experiences should change. Exactly you are comitted to the view that I am someone else immediately upon experiencing something different. Hume is too.

Hence philosophers after Hume posited a self relation to get ou of this conundrum. A priori, I must have a relation towards myself, although this self is totally implicit and not prersent without experience. It is this self relation that is uncaused, because it is categorical. Now this self relation is implicit in Greek thought, totally unarticulated. My idea is that they reflected this in different articulations of relaity, that it is one an indivisable, but also that it is in flux because what constitutes myself are indeed my experiences. Hence Heraclitus' sentence "in the same river we step and do not step", is such a strong sentence because if it was about a river we wouldn't care one bit. I would just tell yeah so what and get on with my business. Heraclitus sentence is interesting because it strikes a cord about ourselves. We are ourselves and not ourselves everytime we experience something. Just like the river remains even though different water flows through it.

Of course I know I can't become someone else, but that does not render the question "what causes me to remain me" absurd. The fact that "I" do makes the importance of this concept come to light, It is therefore a reflective question.

"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"
To Mega Therion
Grand Moff
Avatar

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Oct 11, 2009

Total Topics: 3
Total Posts: 178
Posted 11/07/09 - 04:57 AM:
quote post
#44
Tobias wrote:
The I is never observed, I don't think that is really true. The I seems to be never observed but I observe myself calling me me and starting a sentence with 'I' lots of times. The I as a whole can also be observed. I recount memories and treat them as intimate. The 'I' is seldom articulated, but that is exactly what I mean. It lays dormant in philosophy but it might well be influential. The same idea I have about sexuality actually, but that is another topic. No, I don't think the I is redundant.


I observe people talking about God all the time, does that mean that one exists? My point was rather that we have no direct experience of a bare 'I', something like Kant's transcendental subject or Descartes's res cogitans. I really have no problem with using the 'I' as a useful fiction, which is what your examples refer to. And it can't have lain dormant in presocratic philosophy, which without exception viewed the mind as something material - a kind of fire in the case of Parmenides.

Tobias wrote:
It is funny how much influence Hume has. The whole atomistic theory of perception is I think suspect. We don't experience a sensation of red and a tactile sensation which we combine in a notion of tomato. How can this red be abstracted from the red object it is a property of? We always experience sensations in combination and always as my sensations, be it impliitly or explicitly. Otherwise every object would fall apart. I hold that in order to have a world, which we must have if we make claims about its unity or its flux, we need an I. The Eleans didn't have the concept explicitly, but I wonder if they could have the concept implicitly. This must be if Kant is right that every experience must be accompanied by an I.


The point is that we never experience an object directly; there is nothing like 'tomatoes' in our perception. After all, according to this view we would perceive a different tomato by day and by night, since they would have different properties. It seems to me that the most economical solution would be to admit only sense data such as the red quale in an account of our perception. I see more of a problem with a substance-property theory that would have every property depend on some mysterious substrate than with a bundle theory that would have properties stand alone, by the way.

As for us combining sensations into objects, this is true in most cases (but not, for example, in the case off floaters, afterimages and so on) but I don't see why we need some mystic subject to do it. I would say our brain is more than enough.

Jehu wrote:
While Parmenides does not explicitly state that that there is but one absolute, independent and immutable entity, it follows logically from his earlier argument: that there is only being (what is) and no non-being (what is not), and that this being is “…now, all together, one and continuous.” By the term “continuous”, I take him to mean that since there is everywhere only being, and there is naught else (non-being) that might separate that being, we cannot rightfully assert that there are a multitude of separate beings – not even two. For example, I cannot assert of my own leg and arm that they are separate entities, for each is related to the other, as parts of the same body. It is only when my leg is separated from the arm by that which is not of the body, that the two may be said to be separate.

With respect to the way of opinion, Parmenides is merely relating what was the commonly held view of his time, which is essentially dualistic, hence his description of the path of opinion as “The one on which mortals, knowing nothing, wander, two-headed [dualistic], for helplessness in their breasts guides their wandering minds and they are carried, deaf and blind alike, dazed, uncritical tribes, for whom being and not-being are thought the same and yet not the same, and the path of all runs in opposite directions.”

By the way, what did I say to make you think that I viewed Parmenides as a dialetheist?


Yes, but in those paragraphs he is describing a One. I would interpret him as saying that every one is fully determined by one property (thus 'limited', since it has properties, and 'continuous' since it can't be divided, that is it has only one determination, only one property), uncreated and unchangeable. Like I said, the explicit argument that there is only one One is Mellisus's; I would say that with so few fragments of the way of Truth remaining we might never know whether Parmenides held it as well. I would not, though, that your example with the body and the leg can't be what Parmenides meant, since he claims that the One is not only continuous but undifferentiated.

And I would say it is quite suspect that Parmenides would devote an entire book, from testimony quite detailed and in certain cases original (the claim that even dead bodies have sensation, for example), to what he thought was simply an error.

The dialetheism bit comes from your tetralemma that the interdependency of the real and the apparent is neither real nor unreal nor both nor neither.

Edited by To Mega Therion on 11/07/09 - 05:03 AM
reincarnated
the moving finger writes
Avatar

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Jan 30, 2006
Location: on the road to Samarkand

Total Topics: 31
Total Posts: 2122
Posted 11/07/09 - 05:50 AM:
quote post
#45
Tobias wrote:
No, it is not a variant of the homunculus, with features and essence and all. That would imply that I myself would not be shaped by experiences, a sort of rationalist Augustinian type of position. No, I am going post Kantian, a self which gets to know itself through experience and through reflection. For experience to hang together so to speak and to be at all a possible experience it has to be connecte dto other experiences. The self or I is that connection no more no less.

I agree with the final 2 sentences, but where we seem to disagree is that you seem to think the self exists prior to or in absence of any experience (hence why I refer to this as an homunculus), whereas I think the self has no existence at all outside of the experiences which define and create the self.
Tobias wrote:
However, "I" remain the same as well since all experience doesn't change my self identification one bit. They are all my experiences and the sense of me, does not change, whereas I on the view that it is simply the stream of my experiences should change.

In what sense do you think that you do not change? I believe that I am changing all the time – I am most certainly not identical with the person that I was 10 years ago. So what is it, exactly, that you think is “unchanging” in all of this?
Tobias wrote:
Of course I know I can't become someone else, but that does not render the question "what causes me to remain me" absurd. The fact that "I" do makes the importance of this concept come to light, It is therefore a reflective question.

Nothing “causes” you to remain you, it is simply logically impossible for you to be someone else, just like it is logically impossible for the number 2 to be any other number apart from 2.

To simply ask the question “what cause me to remain me” implies that you think it must be possible for “me to be somebody else” (why? Because if you did not think such a thing possible then asking the question about what causes you to remain you, and thus prevents you from becoming someone else, would be nonsensical). It’s like asking “what causes the number 2 to remain the number 2” (as if it could ever possibly be any other number apart from 2). The question is absurd.

crumpled bits of paper, filled with imperfect thoughts...
we all talk a different language, talking in defence...
and if you don't give up, and don't give in, you may just be ok...
(Mike & The Mechanics, "The Living Years")
Jehu
Revealer
Avatar

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Nov 30, 2006

Total Topics: 3
Total Posts: 883
Posted 11/07/09 - 06:38 PM:
quote post
#46
To Mega Therion wrote:
Yes, but in those paragraphs he is describing a One. I would interpret him as saying that every one is fully determined by one property (thus 'limited', since it has properties, and 'continuous' since it can't be divided, that is it has only one determination, only one property), uncreated and unchangeable. Like I said, the explicit argument that there is only one One is Mellisus's; I would say that with so few fragments of the way of Truth remaining we might never know whether Parmenides held it as well. I would not, though, that your example with the body and the leg can't be what Parmenides meant, since he claims that the One is not only continuous but undifferentiated.

Indeed, for things do not differ one from an other in their ‘existential nature’, for a thing either exists or it does not, and if it does, its existence does not vary from that of any other thing, neither in its quality nor its quantity. Rather, it is in their ‘essential nature’ that things differ, that is to say, in their essential or defining characteristics.

And I would say it is quite suspect that Parmenides would devote an entire book, from testimony quite detailed and in certain cases original (the claim that even dead bodies have sensation, for example), to what he thought was simply an error.

I’m afraid that I don’t follow?

The dialetheism bit comes from your tetralemma that the interdependency of the real and the apparent is neither real nor unreal nor both nor neither.

I see, but there is no violation of the laws of thought here, it is an erroneous understanding of the nature of dichotomies that is at fault, especially that notion that is called ‘dualism’.

It is not that which the eye can see, but that whereby the eye is able to see, that is the true reality.
Tobias
Metaphysical exorcist
Avatar

Usergroup: Moderators
Joined: Feb 17, 2003
Location: Just rub the mirror

Total Topics: 58
Total Posts: 5574
Posted 11/08/09 - 02:36 AM:
quote post
#47
I agree with the final 2 sentences, but where we seem to disagree is that you seem to think the self exists prior to or in absence of any experience (hence why I refer to this as an homunculus), whereas I think the self has no existence at all outside of the experiences which define and create the self.


The self exists logically only qua possibility before experience. A sense of self is acquired through experience, but for there to be an experience there must be someone that does the experiencing. But for it do be bale to experience anything to begin with that someone needs t have the structure of relating to that experience. That is what I would refer to as "I".

In what sense do you think that you do not change? I believe that I am changing all the time – I am most certainly not identical with the person that I was 10 years ago. So what is it, exactly, that you think is “unchanging” in all of this?


Yes, but this change still cannot disturb your self identification that is the point. Let's say you looked a hell of a lot more like me, Tobias, than you do now. You will not say that the experiences you had were actually more related to me Tobias than they are to you, no matter the fact that you looked exactly like me. Hence we can say that this change is there, but it does not interfere with the self, that remains the same, despite its change. Hence my Heracleitian formula.

Nothing “causes” you to remain you, it is simply logically impossible for you to be someone else, just like it is logically impossible for the number 2 to be any other number apart from 2.


The question "what causes me to remain me" and "is it possible to be someone else" are not the same question. I know I can't be someone else, but that still doesn't tell me what makes self identification possible and why I do not feel alienated from myself. For me the fact that something abides within change is a subject for reflection but because you are trapped in the in my view impossible empiricist claim of the slef being just a stream of stream of experiences, without ever question what makes these possible, you denounce reflexive questions. As nearly all analytics do.

At therion

My point was rather that we have no direct experience of a bare 'I', something like Kant's transcendental subject or Descartes's res cogitans. I really have no problem with using the 'I' as a useful fiction, which is what your examples refer to. And it can't have lain dormant in presocratic philosophy, which without exception viewed the mind as something material - a kind of fire in the case of Parmenides.


I never have a direct experience of matter either, but that doesn't mean I think matter exists. As for the word fiction, well I don't mind really what it is called, although a word like fiction means it is not really there but we assume it is there. In my take, the assumption of the I is the very essence of the I and so essence and existence here coincide, another pointer for it being the true subject philosophers were talking about.

The fact that the ancients viewed it as something material, like a kind of fire or air or whatever, indicates exacty its implicity. It is still couched in the mythological worldview philosophy tried to wiggle out from. Some concepts get more developed and some less. The I was undeveloped and only approached via roundabouts like causa sui or atom, the intuition they had, but not the terms to articulate it.

(My story is anachronistic, I know, but if it holds up, it might display the way philosophy progresed)

The point is that we never experience an object directly; there is nothing like 'tomatoes' in our perception. After all, according to this view we would perceive a different tomato by day and by night, since they would have different properties. It seems to me that the most economical solution would be to admit only sense data such as the red quale in an account of our perception. I see more of a problem with a substance-property theory that would have every property depend on some mysterious substrate than with a bundle theory that would have properties stand alone, by the way.


I don't really follow this because this theory you expound would lead to the view that we don't see a tomato at all by night but a different kind of thing, since it has different properties. I rather like the theory that we perceive properties and make a judgement based on our perception which conforms to the way we classified some objects. Perception by the way is as much based on memory as on actual registring of quales. such as when I know there is a tomato laying about in the kitchen and at night I like to eat it, when I see it I see a mere round shape but I still perceive the tomato. I perceive it as a tomato because I know I left a tomato on the cutting board last evening.


[quoteAs for us combining sensations into objects, this is true in most cases (but not, for example, in the case off floaters, afterimages and so on) but I don't see why we need some mystic subject to do it. I would say our brain is more than enough.[/quote]

'Subject' merely connotes the self reflective activity of the brain. It is that which makes an activity meaningful. Hence I say I walk and not "my legs walk", even though yeah, my legs do the walking.

Edited by Tobias on 11/08/09 - 02:51 AM

"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"
reincarnated
the moving finger writes
Avatar

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Jan 30, 2006
Location: on the road to Samarkand

Total Topics: 31
Total Posts: 2122
1 of 1 people found this post helpful
Posted 11/09/09 - 07:41 AM:
quote post
#48
Tobias wrote:
The self exists logically only qua possibility before experience. A sense of self is acquired through experience, but for there to be an experience there must be someone that does the experiencing. But for it do be bale to experience anything to begin with that someone needs t have the structure of relating to that experience. That is what I would refer to as "I".

You seem to be saying that there must be an homunculus in order for experience to take place (“for there to be an experience there must be someone that does the experiencing”). But what I am saying is that there is NO homunculus “doing the experiencing”, there is simply a “story” being constructed in your brain which relates all of the phenomena being processed to an artificial/fictitious “self” – a narrative centre of gravity. The processing of phenomenal information creates, ab intio, the experiencer along with the experience. This avoids the need to postulate some kind of homunculus which exists prior to, or in absence of, experience.
Tobias wrote:
Yes, but this change still cannot disturb your self identification that is the point. Let's say you looked a hell of a lot more like me, Tobias, than you do now. You will not say that the experiences you had were actually more related to me Tobias than they are to you, no matter the fact that you looked exactly like me. Hence we can say that this change is there, but it does not interfere with the self, that remains the same, despite its change. Hence my Heracleitian formula.

What is this “self identification” that you refer to? What is it that you think “remains the same” about the “self”? Can you be specific? (All I can identify is an apparent continuity of memory – which is constantly changing - but not something that “remains the same”).
Tobias wrote:
The question "what causes me to remain me" and "is it possible to be someone else" are not the same question.

I agree that the question "what causes me to remain me" and "is it possible to be someone else" are not the same question, but one question entails the other, in the following sense:

IF it is not (logically) possible for me to be someone else THEN it follows that me must (logically) remain me (there being no third option).

I am asserting that it is not (logically) possible for me to be someone else, thus (from the above) it follows that me (logically) necessarily remains me. No “causation” or “explanation of causation” is required – the conclusion follows logically.
Tobias wrote:
I know I can't be someone else, but that still doesn't tell me what makes self identification possible and why I do not feel alienated from myself. For me the fact that something abides within change is a subject for reflection but because you are trapped in the in my view impossible empiricist claim of the slef being just a stream of stream of experiences, without ever question what makes these possible, you denounce reflexive questions. As nearly all analytics do.

I’m not sure what you mean by “feel alienated from myself”?

Why do you consider the “self being a stream of experiences” impossible?

Why do you consider that the notion of the “self being a stream of experiences” entails that we do not question what makes this possible? Why does this denounce reflexive questions?

crumpled bits of paper, filled with imperfect thoughts...
we all talk a different language, talking in defence...
and if you don't give up, and don't give in, you may just be ok...
(Mike & The Mechanics, "The Living Years")
Tobias
Metaphysical exorcist
Avatar

Usergroup: Moderators
Joined: Feb 17, 2003
Location: Just rub the mirror

Total Topics: 58
Total Posts: 5574
Posted 11/09/09 - 03:58 PM:
quote post
#49
You seem to be saying that there must be an homunculus in order for experience to take place (“for there to be an experience there must be someone that does the experiencing&rdquowink. But what I am saying is that there is NO homunculus “doing the experiencing”, there is simply a “story” being constructed in your brain which relates all of the phenomena being processed to an artificial/fictitious “self” – a narrative centre of gravity. The processing of phenomenal information creates, ab intio, the experiencer along with the experience. This avoids the need to postulate some kind of homunculus which exists prior to, or in absence of, experience.


There is a story being constructed, yes, and what features necessary in the story? A main character. Someone to identify with, let us call that main character "I". Now during the course of the story the main character changes but also remains the same, namely as the main character around whom the story unfolds. You whole language is tainted with the concepts you reject. "phenomena being processed", now something being processed presupposes something that does the processing. Than the "artificial or fictitious self", why is this self artificial or fictitious? If it is a necessary narrative centre of gravity, there is nothing artificial about it. Artificial it would be if it was possible in any other way, or if some sort of deceit is taking place, which makes us think we have a self whereas we have not, but since indeed all experience is necessarily related and processed, this self is totally natural, nothing artificial, or fictitious.

The processing of phenomenal information creates, ab intio, the experiencer along with the experience.


I agree, the processing, i.e. the relating creates the dychotomy of experiencer and experienced. And even this notion, the notion of a created dyschotomy from a unity, is an observation made by us. It remains our idea and image of the world, again we can't seem to escape seeing the world as a unity. It is by the way in your expression another causa sui, because the processing itself creates the idea of something being processed and a processer.

What is this “self identification” that you refer to? What is it that you think “remains the same” about the “self”? Can you be specific? (All I can identify is an apparent continuity of memory – which is constantly changing - but not something that “remains the same&rdquowink.


Despite the fact that everything, every cell in my body changed, all my ideas changed and even my name changed in the course of events, I still relate to my childhood experiences as my experience. They are jsut as much my experiences as my experiences right now are.

I agree that the question "what causes me to remain me" and "is it possible to be someone else" are not the same question, but one question entails the other, in the following sense:

IF it is not (logically) possible for me to be someone else THEN it follows that me must (logically) remain me (there being no third option).

I am asserting that it is not (logically) possible for me to be someone else, thus (from the above) it follows that me (logically) necessarily remains me. No “causation” or “explanation of causation” is required – the conclusion follows logically.


Of course, if it is logically impossible that I become someone else, which it is of course, that is the importance of "I", than the question of what makes it so is solved? No, than it is just beginning. I am not asking the question why it is a fact that I remain myself, I am asking rhetorically what makes it so and I am answering the question myself, "I" do. I remain the same through change. You remember that processing? The whole idea of a processer and a processed and that which causes both is our idea, it is our explanation for how things go. It is a philosophical notion. Since the world itself does not bring forth philosophical notions, we do, or better the history of ideas does. It is our endeavour to understand the world and oursleves.

I’m not sure what you mean by “feel alienated from myself”?


I never need to question whether an experience is really mine, I always feel it is.

Why do you consider the “self being a stream of experiences” impossible?


Because a stream of experiences is not self reflective, it does not experience itself as a stream of experiences. Since a self conceived like this is purely object dependent, it can't. It relates one experience to the other may be but would never ask why this is so. It cannot, because than indeed the self would never be experienced. However we do ask what we are, who we are etc. Self means exactly that, experiencing what you are and questioning this experience.. A stream of experiences can never do the trick of this 'meta question'. (analytics have solved this by proclaiming the question to be out of order, but that seems to me to fit the horse behind the carriage grin )

"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"
reincarnated
the moving finger writes
Avatar

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Jan 30, 2006
Location: on the road to Samarkand

Total Topics: 31
Total Posts: 2122
1 of 1 people found this post helpful
Posted 11/10/09 - 01:11 AM:
quote post
#50
Tobias wrote:
There is a story being constructed, yes, and what features necessary in the story? A main character. Someone to identify with, let us call that main character "I". Now during the course of the story the main character changes but also remains the same, namely as the main character around whom the story unfolds.

How does the main character remain the same? I don’t understand your point here. If the story simply identifies the character as the centre of narrative gravity of the story, and the “self” is defined as this character, how does the concept of “remaining the same” even have any relevance? I see this as a category mistake. Again, to use an analogy, if the number 2 is simply defined as the number you get when you add 1 to itself, how is it relevant to talk of “the number 2 remaining the same”, or each instance of the number 2 being the same as every other instance of the number 2? How could it be otherwise?
Tobias wrote:
You whole language is tainted with the concepts you reject. "phenomena being processed", now something being processed presupposes something that does the processing.

The processing (of phenomenal information) takes place in the brain – but it is not necessary that “somebody” carries out that processing. Why do you say this is a concept that I reject? I don’t understand your point here.
Tobias wrote:
Than the "artificial or fictitious self", why is this self artificial or fictitious? If it is a necessary narrative centre of gravity, there is nothing artificial about it. Artificial it would be if it was possible in any other way, or if some sort of deceit is taking place, which makes us think we have a self whereas we have not, but since indeed all experience is necessarily related and processed, this self is totally natural, nothing artificial, or fictitious.

I use the terms artificial and fictitious simply to make it clear that the “self” is not a “real” thing in the sense of an entity which exists outside of the story – it is created by the story. In a similar sense that Sherlock Holmes is fictitious, but he still exists within the stories that are told about him.
Tobias wrote:
I agree, the processing, i.e. the relating creates the dychotomy of experiencer and experienced. And even this notion, the notion of a created dyschotomy from a unity, is an observation made by us. It remains our idea and image of the world, again we can't seem to escape seeing the world as a unity.

I’m not sure what you mean by a “unity” here. I don’t see the world as a unity (but maybe I don’t understand unity in the same sense that you intend it?).
Tobias wrote:
It is by the way in your expression another causa sui, because the processing itself creates the idea of something being processed and a processer.

How is it a “causa sui”? The “idea of something being processed” is created by the processing which takes place, but the processing which takes place does not cause itself. Where in any of this do you think something is “the cause of itself”?
Tobias wrote:
Despite the fact that everything, every cell in my body changed, all my ideas changed and even my name changed in the course of events, I still relate to my childhood experiences as my experience. They are jsut as much my experiences as my experiences right now are.

How could they not be yours? By definition, your experiences are yours, I see no logical alternative.
Tobias wrote:
Of course, if it is logically impossible that I become someone else, which it is of course, that is the importance of "I", than the question of what makes it so is solved? No, than it is just beginning. I am not asking the question why it is a fact that I remain myself, I am asking rhetorically what makes it so and I am answering the question myself, "I" do. I remain the same through change. You remember that processing? The whole idea of a processer and a processed and that which causes both is our idea, it is our explanation for how things go. It is a philosophical notion. Since the world itself does not bring forth philosophical notions, we do, or better the history of ideas does. It is our endeavour to understand the world and oursleves.

We seem to be talking past each other. Nothing causes you to remain you, in the same way that nothing causes the number 2 to remain the number 2. It’s a definitional thing – there is no logical alternative to the fact that you remain you.
Tobias wrote:
I never need to question whether an experience is really mine, I always feel it is.

Again, this is true by definition. How can an experience that you have logically NOT be yours? If this is all you mean by alienation, then again the reason why you never feel alienated from yourself is because this is a logical impossibility.
Tobias wrote:
Because a stream of experiences is not self reflective, it does not experience itself as a stream of experiences. Since a self conceived like this is purely object dependent, it can't. It relates one experience to the other may be but would never ask why this is so. It cannot, because than indeed the self would never be experienced. However we do ask what we are, who we are etc. Self means exactly that, experiencing what you are and questioning this experience.. A stream of experiences can never do the trick of this 'meta question'. (analytics have solved this by proclaiming the question to be out of order, but that seems to me to fit the horse behind the carriage grin )

It is reflexive if processed in a reflexive way. Reflexivity is simply a contingent property of certain processes. Some processes are reflexive, some are not. Higher level mental functions such as reasoning (example “asking why this is so”) emerge at a different level in conscious processing, far beyond the fundamental reflexive processing function which creates the “self”. Before one can start to question why we are and who we are, we first need to feel that we are. This is all that I claim the reflexive processes do – they create the feeling that we are (by spinning a story that there is a centre of narrative gravity in which all these experiences are grounded).

I don’t understand why you say that a stream of experiences (and the information processing that goes along with this) could never do the trick of this “meta question” – I see no problem.

crumpled bits of paper, filled with imperfect thoughts...
we all talk a different language, talking in defence...
and if you don't give up, and don't give in, you may just be ok...
(Mike & The Mechanics, "The Living Years")
Download thread as

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6



Sorry, you don't have permission to post. Log in, or register if you haven't yet.