So what are concepts then? And why do you deem the notion of "self" any more substantial than that? It all seems to come from the same place doesn't it?
kuroyume0161
Graduate Poster
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How do you quantify the 'self', Iacchus? Does it constitute more than its parts or do the 'parts' constitute more than it?
Ah, yes, but what is the soul, without the experience that accompanies it? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that the soul is that which is capable of having an experience? If there was nothing to experience, then yes, there would be no need for a soul.
If that is your definition of a soul then, yes, I would tend to agree.
However, most people's definition of the soul is a permanent 'self' that transcends life and death, and here I would strongly disagree.
And yet what is experience, if not something we expand into? Does this make us any less substantial, because we expand and grow? Is the huge redwood tree any less substantial than the seedling that resides at its base?
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How do you quantify a forever changing and expanding Universe?
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Mojo
Mostly harmless
Concepts are things that a consciousness thinks about. I am quite capable of thinking about things that don't exist. I know that my consciousness exists, because I am experiencing stimuli, or the illusions of stimuli. If my consciousness didn't exist it wouldn't be there to experience anything. I choose to assume that the stimuli that my consciousness experiences are not illusions, but represent interaction with a real universe (to take any other approach would be, in my opinion, insane). In that universe, there is no evidence that consciousness exists as anything other that brain processes.
So, when we think, are we using our brain? ... Or, is our brain using us? Why is it that most people don't even experience the sensation of brain?
Illusions? How so? And what makes "you" any different than the illusions that you experience?
Can a hermit crab experience itself outside of the new shell that it moves into?
Yes, and why do "you" feel compelled to make that choice?
Which of course is the Universe that "you" feel compelled to believe in.
What is experience though? Is it something tangible, that we could physically put our finger on? I am referring to that which we experience within ourselves, not without.And then he stopped making sense again...
Ah well, it was good while it lasted
ImaginalDisc
Penultimate Amazing
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Experiance is something external, by definition. What we "exeriance within ourselves" is thought, memory, and perception not experiance. You know, if you head to your local state university, they'll have a great many text books on neurology.
Yes, but how does experience show up externally, outside of what we've internalized?
Bone_Vulture
Appealing and hollow
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Honestly, I'm beginning to think that Iacchus is a cleverly programmed bot that'll pick random philosophical phrases from online dictionaries to attach to prebuilt arguments / questions, then searches an online thesaurus for opposite terms to the arguments the responding people make, forming a limitless number of new, (more or less) marginally sane arguments / questions. With a large enough cache of prebuilt sentences, the Iacchus bot can babble on and on forever.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
From this thread ...
Yes, but there are certain folks -- around here even -- that would contest that "I" doesn't even exist.So, which "I" are we referring to then? The one that exists as a concept? Or, the one that exists in the "id?" Of course when referring to the former, we would have to ask how a concept is capable of conceptualizing itself?
Very strange. But then again, if both do arise from the same source (the id), that would satisfy the notion of conceptualized "I," as well as the realized "I." In which case we have to ask, however, if there is another continuum, that exists beyond the realm of our senses and, time and space?
There are bodies, there are thoughts, there are emotions, there are sensations, there are habits. There is no soul, there are no spirits, there is no self beyond them.
There may be another thing beyond the sense, but without evidence it is speculation.
Have you met someone with demntia Iacchus, or someone with head trauma, all those things that you think are "I", they get tottaly messed up and guess what they disappear?
POOF.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Through the evidence of external behaviors, IE the report of the individual. Then you have to consider the validity of the report.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Uh, yes , although it is kind of messy.
These experiences you have, they are biochemical events in your brain. They are the products of the apparant tangible reality of our bodies. Every event you percieve appears to be the product of biochemistry. Which is why mood altering drugs exit, and things like dementia and brain traum aler the nature of perceptions.
ImaginalDisc
Penultimate Amazing
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Example: I am cooking. I reach into the oven and take out a tray with my bare hand. I burn myself. Next time, I use an oven mitt.
Or, did you mean "can we measure and quantify experiance"? Not yet. Maybe not ever. However, if I were to damage a part of my brain which contained memory, or regulated access to it, I would lose some or all of my experiances. Therefore, experiance has a physical storage medium. Without it, I would never learn anything, and would babble innanely, forever asking the same questions.
Much like you.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Are you saying that you don't experience the perception of thought?
Why are there people who are blind Iacchus?
Is it because of a biological issue or a spritual one?
Just because there are perceptions does not mean that they are valid. Press the palm of your hands to your eyes Iacchus, do those lines and shape exist out side or inside you.
They do exist, but where are they?
You do know that hermit crabs leave thier shells don't you. They use the perceptions of thier apparant bodies.
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Yes, and why do "you" feel compelled to make that choice?
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Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
You don't, you observe it, the quantities are from the observations.
You know , I imagine that three hundred years ago you would have believed in a static and unchanging universe. If you existed then.
Yet there would be no need to put "me" and/or "you" into the picture if it was all seemless and part of the environment would there? Why do we have a sense of identity and the need to differentiate between anything then?
Or, let me ask you this. Are you capable of discerning between the cup you are drinking out of and the water you are drinking out of the cup? Obviously the two are related (i.e., the process of drinking) but, they're not one and the same.