Humans have the capacity for reflective thinking…to think about our thoughts…the ghost in the machine :)…which helps to shape our ‘self’ in order to meet our needs…agree with Kant..an organizing principle… Love the challenges of your discussions✨
A painting of a pipe must be seen in order for the painting to complete its job of representing. Insofar as all thoughts are representations the self is there to 'see' them do their job. Insofar as the thought of my self is my self I can see why its called reflection.
I like to think there is a hierarchy of self. From least fundamental to most fundemental: - behavior + decision making - personality + memory - internal perception + language - sensation + emotion - the phenomenon of experience Computationally, I believe early evolutionary brains simulated the environment. Then evolved brains that internalized experiences of the environment. Finally, the simulation of a "self" reflects a weighted combination of internalized experiences. What algorithms determine the weighting would be a super interesting question in the Reinforcement Learning domain.
The self is the wall up against which the senses splat and the impact caused vibrations on the wall's back are what move the voluntary muscles, metaphorically speaking, naturally.
He concept of selves nerd an emperism varification after It show up though neurosience proceendings. Selves description are complex ativicties unkown in brains so far.
Isn't that the same question as ' what is consciousness '? Consciousness is the reason you have this feeling of self. The ' I ' is who you are and that at least partially comes from consciousness. Things such as feelings are partially chemical as well as being part of the brain.
It is not the same question! Consciousness is a quality, a potential. Consciousness for example is linked to an integrated state of information, but a self is also this integrated state of information entangled to the physical nerve system. It is way more complex then just consciousness. Think about, culture, genes, the brain hardware. all those have path and entanglement , interweaven with consciousness. So a self is way more complex. A self is there for not free from consciousness, nor a consciousness free from a self (both are entangled). A self is a kind of centred organisation between all elements including consciousness. An organized democracy, between all those unique elements coming together, like the quality of consciousness, the brain (instinct), genes blue print, culture, life experience etc etc.
@@blijebij More succinctly, the self is the thought that is conscious, a thought modulated by the senses, memories etc. and that generates sub thoughts to control the voluntary muscles. (Understanding that all thoughts are representations instantiated/encoded by neural discharge timing patterns and all logic in the process accomplished by synapses which link thoughts together mediating what we call thinking). Yes?
@LifesInsight Indeed, memories are more than emotion-neutral "photos" of events. They encompass the feelings of the individual at that time as related to the event.
Mathematics' is self. In math, the description is sets, the idea that a group of things can be put into a set and a set can define and include anything, including the set itself. The reason we perceive mathematics as so intrinsic is because we experience the self as a set, a part of our whole that can be included or disclosed as we define the parameters to what the set or self contains. Of course it can be considered fallacious to assume that anything can be part of your self, but that's exactly the perception we have. King's feel that it is their duty, or their fate to control or work for a set larger than their own body, even representing themselves in their kingdoms as if to personalize it with their self. The concept of self as we experience it is just emergent behavior that happens because of our ability to abstract and think of things without the "self" while still being these bundles of deterministic perceptions. A non physical perception born of the form and syntax of the mind is then used as another way to integrate with things around us. Individuals with disabilities that effect their cognitive or perceptual abilities don't have any less of a self, but are often found at the mercy of their deterministic principles more than their critical selves and struggle with it daily. Addicts, schizophrenics, and even people with learning disabilities can all show these same behaviors. Again, it's not that they don't have self, it's that their self is not as strong as their other internal influences and exhibit a loss of control, usually due to a physical distortion in the brain. Our ability to quantify things into formulas like mathematics is the same concept as mathematics itself, creating sets that are intangible or ethereal that can contain anything, including themselves, which is the same concept as how we perceive selves.
The "Self" is a social construct but it's also really your physical body with a functioning brain that identifies as an individual, unique, unitary process with volition and agency. A human being can reflect on their actions and life while other species cannot.
I see my body as the absolutely necessary substrate of the process that is the thought that is my self but consider the thought that is my self to be the owner of my body and not vice versa despite my self's absolute dependence on my body for my self's immaterial existence. My body is mere matter whereas my self is the process going on inside it. Change the process to a deep and dreamless slumber and the thought that is my self ceases to exist.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL And after you're dead your self ceases to exist. So the physical body is necessary for the self to exist. Your identity which is different than your self is formed by social interaction and you then see yourself as a unique individual with a unique history and story. We are here and live our lives for however long we live and then in one second beyond our knowledge or control we are gone and we are gone forever. Life is strange.
@@Resmith18SR Yes and one theory suggests that the concept of the self impressed on us by culture becomes the thought that is the self that constitutes the essence of the being-conscious-process.
.....the present state of the natural elements in movement, thereby changing its state to a newer one. The sun pulling of the earth. Man breathing some unseen gases and enduring the strength moving upward toward the head like the gases to the sun. And, keeping cool during this process.
Begs the question what is the organism that's experiencing? A plankton can experience its environment (food, salinity, temperature, etc), but does it have any concept of itself as experiencing, and say/think, "I experience, therefore, I am"?
@@Zerpentsa6598 Memory is the feature you're suggesting. Brains store experiences. These become predictive of stimuli, aka fear and all the emotions that branch off from fear. Lifeforms without brains don't experience that, but I think they just have a limited quality of self compared to us. They experience the stimuli similarly, but they don't remember it.
Well and concisely put. Also, I think some form of information retention and retrieval is important, at least for most humans, to have a sense of self.
All thoughts are about something. In other words, thoughts represent. But there can be no recognition of any representation in the absence of any memory against which a representation may be compared. Thus an organism cannot be conscious of anything until it has acquired enough memories to support recognition. William James suggests a new baby experiences a 'blooming buzzing confusion' but though I am a fan of his, I must disagree. I say a new baby, lacking any memories, simply can't be conscious. This is important because the only things deserving of moral consideration are things that have been conscious.
The orchestration of your combined perceptions and memories, creates an amorphous, yet intimately familiar structure. While you are experiencing reasonable "health" this familiar structure enables you to navigate a complex world.
All thoughts are *about* something else, something that they are not, except for the unique thought that is about its self. Being about its self is the reason why the self thought is called a self. The self thought being modulated by other thoughts is what 'conscious' means.
Two things can be meant by self. One is the ego, which is who or what your mind tells you that you are. Your ego is everything you can tell yourself or tell others like your age, your race, your job, your values…anything that you can communicate is ego. It’s just a story we believe and is actually a false self. The deeper self, and what I would argue is the real self, is your awareness. Your “I am” which is witness to everything including the body and mind. That is the self that gives people the idea about souls or spirit. I’m not sure about all of that, but you are the witness consciousness of your life and that is more real than the socially constructed ego of mind.
@LifesInsight The important distinction is that you are not the mind. The mind is what generates mental objects and presents them to you, the aware self. Thoughts, dreams, perceptions...these are always changing and the self is the unchanging witness of all of it. You are the subject to which all mental objects appear. That is why ego is an illusion because ego is identifying yourself as the mind and believing any story it tells you.
@LifesInsight It seems to me that 'consciousness' is not a something that I have but being conscious is something that I am. Succinctly put: I am conscious. By 'I' I mean of course my self which I conceive to be a thought. This self thought is at the heart of the being-conscious-process, a process in which other thoughts modulate the self thought such that eventually and according to synaptic logic flow the sub thoughts that terminate in control of my voluntary muscles.
@LifesInsight "As soon as one takes the self as being thought, then what ever is there becomes masked or changed to fit one's perception of it" How so?
So then would you agree that the self must be a thought? That my self is a thought strikes my self as self evident more so than any other thought that modulates my self, i.e. of which my self is conscious.
Actually, I can imagine the robot being able to perfectly describe the space without the pronoun "I" anywhere in the picture. You simply give the robot a grid pattern and an orientation that it will always follow. Hmm- that does require a fixed point in space though, so that the robot can orient themselves relative to it when they get to the space you want described. Still- they could describe the space properly- you just wouldn't know which way to turn the picture once it's drawn. But if they always execute the same grid pattern- taking views at specific angles each time they hit a node- they could describe the space perfectly- excluding it's overall orientation. But hey- over all orientation relative to what- you? I mean once they leave the solar system and can no longer see the sun or any planets- there's really no way for them to orient themselves in any traditional sense- because orientation is relative. While on earth it's relative to our magnetic field, when off the planet I don't know what point of reference they use to orient themselves, but I would assume they choose a star or some other fixed point both they and mission control on earth can agree on. But if you're just imagining a robot in general space- no idea how it would orient itself in any way that would make sense to you here on earth.
If you were put into a coma, and split in 2 down the middle, and each half was kept alive in a separate room, upon awakening would you wake up as halfperson 1, or halfperson 2? You would wake up as both in some sense, each half would think they were the original person. So I don't think there is a self, cause there's no natural continuation of the original self (if there was one) or original experience assuming selves can't split that is.
There is only the same Eternal 'I', Basic of 'the Self', all Life-Units have their own Eternal Consciousness, as make them different than other. Selfes desire development, and 'take color' of the dynamic of Life.
Hume and Kant were referring to two different aspects of Self. Hume wasn't "wrong" when he wrote that the Self is the experiencer (of qualia and thoughts). But that's not the only thing that people mean when they talk about the Self, so Hume was incomplete... not wrong. People also think about the set of characteristics of an individual person, such as his/her memories, beliefs, values, skills, relationships, etc. When a person thinks about his/her own characteristics, this mental modeling of his/her own characteristics is the aspect of Self that Kant added to Hume's Self. At any moment, one can be aware of only a small fraction of that model of one's Self. So the sense of Self is highly variable, and can even disappear entirely from one's awareness at times when one is immersed in some other experience. Hume's Self, on the other hand, only disappears in deep sleep, after brain death, etc... when there is no conscious experiencing. So in my opinion, Hume's Self is more fundamental. Kant's addition is just a malleable, manipulable construction, similar to the mental models we construct to represent and understand the external world.
You are not an object; you are a relationship. Suppose a world with two entities: you and your preferred image of your real self (most likely not an Elon Musk or Brad Pitt here). There is a relationship between them with the self as the source and the image as the terminus. That relationship is YOU. The rest is accoutrements.
@@SurrealMcCoyI just commented on that in another thread on the relationship between Hume and Buddhism. As I said there, if consciousness is a form of information processing then it is an activity. It’s something we do, and therefore something that is in a constant state of flux.
Say, every year you replace 5% of an ocean liner so that in 20 years all its parts have been replaced once… At any point did it stop being the same ocean liner?
Consciousness is like a lawn mower with out the five senses to help it understand the world around itself. The five senses are the five energy fields that connects the body with the world and the entire universe to help it understand and know it self through growth. The five different energy fields works biological and electrical throughout all existing particles to help connect things or disconnect, the five senses are responsible for any forms of relationships inside the universe including stars on the galactic levels. These five senses branches out to make up the entire universe network brain power which is constantly flowing through every living existing being ; believe it or not this is the reason why every living creature on this Earth sleep, dreams and grow when at rest and also the reason why all species fight and forms relationships with each other even on a microscopic level and why everything is in order with the universe as well as creativity and perfection and death to help balance existence..
What is your evidence that only religious people can navigate or organise their anger? For example there is no correlation between atheism and violent crime. Are atheists really more prone to violence? It seems that this idea is so plainly, obviously contrary to reality it’s hard to understand how someone could come to post it.
Some teach that there is no self - that of the ' I ' sense of self, that's distinguishable from another and their ' I ' self. Some teach that there is only the Self - this is the true Self - the one without the ' I ', without the differentiation of i and you, me and them. Atman, Soul, Self - this is most real and true.
For sure, it's not physical in the sense of being an object. That's the mistake I think dualists make. However if conscious awareness is an activity then it can both be physical, in the sense that it is done by a physical body, and yet it can be abstract in the sense that it can appear and disappear as the activity stops, starts and changes over time.
@@r2c3 Objects are a different ontological category from activities, but an activity is performed by objects. There can't be activities without objects, yet they are not the same thing. By analogy the running of an engine isn't an object. The engine by itself, switched off, is not running. When you start it, now it is running, and we can describe how it is running in many ways. Yet you can't have the running of an engine without an engine. I think we have slightly different views on life. For me living is an activity of a body. A living thing is physical system that is doing the activity we call living, which is analogous to an engine doing the thing we call running. Interfere with it enough and the process breaks down, and it stops doing the things that make it alive. Then it's dead.
both physical objects and activities are preceded by their conception... therefore conception's existence is independent from that of the physical objects and their activities. ..
@@r2c3 Conception as in description? It seems like a thing could exist and then be discovered, so the conception of it comes after. Do you mean conception as in consciousness itself? It has to be the consciousness of something or someone right? So unless we have non-physical consciousnesses then the body that will be conscious must exist first, just as the engine must exist before we can start it running.
"All you need is a robot and a position. You don't need a self." A robot? A conscious robot or a spy robot. A spy robot being a robot with no consciousness of its own but with cameras communicating with you and a body remote controlled by you. A conscious robot that has a mastery of language is a non-existent thing. Non existent like, apparently, what he considers the self.
No. Breath of the top and strength of force from the feet meeting in the middle or surpassing each other. In the many billions that exist less than 100 persons have done so with sheer patience and self-control.
What we say is a matter of convention. It's quicker to use pronouns such as "I awoke" than to provide mundane elaborations such as "my brain awoke." That's why pronouns were invented. Don't let convention fool you into believing it expresses a deep truth about the world.
@@deanodebo You’re implying that people only believe what they wish to be true rather than what they think is actually true. I don’t think that’s the case for most people. I’m willing to believe that people with different opinions to mine do so honestly, in general. I find attacking peoples motivations distasteful.
@@deanodebo Remember we have proved that it is your worldview that has no way to know anything with certainty because you cannot show that your god is anything but a figment of your imagination.
@@simonhibbs887 He chooses arbitrarily to disallow discussion about souls, no rationale given, other than he prefers to go based on what he “sees”. He also uses software and robot analogies. Whether you like it or not, that’s what happened in the video.
I believe self is a field of different biological Chambers set in different combinations of sequences for unlocking and locking pathways that can be activated by different types of chemicals coming inside and outside the body while mixing in with blood and oxygen. I believe each Organ in the body carries a different vibration signal that draws certain chemicals to their fields to be utilized.I believe the nervous system is like the ground wire for only sending signals back and forth to the brain.I believe the digestive system is for mixing chemicals for individual organs in the body. I believe the brain control only signals. I believe each organ draws attention to incoming chemicals from outside the body though different types of vibrations that attract them. The brain uses signals to control the entire body system. The five senses create a single vibration that compresses everything into a single package as self and a part from this world but Without space and without the world there is no awareness. logical truth without earthly chemicals the body cannot spiral into awareness.Real true out in deep dark space apart from light awareness will loose grip on reality and fade away and the body will become void.
There would be no point in telling lies if there were no self to benefit. Ricky Gervais made a very funny and very educational movie about this very thing.
You are conscious of your self. You don't experience now what your self was before. You don't even remember that self. So you are the WORST person to ask about it. You can only respond by referring to past experiences, NOT past perceptions of self. It's like the blue dot that marks the position of your phone when following directions in Google Maps. Exact analogy - your concept of self serves only to demonstrate where you are at this moment.
Seems to me it does not matter in the slightest how a human being is conceived or manufactured. To believe there's a moral difference is to become evil via obsolete tradition.
THE SELF IS NOT A 🤖 THUS 《 THE 👨 SELF ❤ IS 》 《 THIS ❤ FEELS 💔 》 WETHER ITS AT HOME 🏡 AT WORK AT CHURCH ⛪ OR IN THE COMMUNITY. THE ☔ RAIN FALLS IN 💔 HEART UPON THE JUST ⚖ AND THE UNJUST ⚖ . SO ITS JUSTICE ⚖ DENIED OR JUSTICE ⚖ INDEED WHO FEELS IT KNOWS IT BECAUSE THE 👨 SELF ❤ IS THIS ❤ FEELS 💔.
Interesting and careful take by Blackburn. Lost me on the robot analogy. It could very easily be imagined to give responses such as: From position X, direction Y, the following observations were made (e.g., an armchair with leather upholstery facing this direction). It need to give pronouns to justify the determination of 2 armchairs. It just needs to be able to collect, store, and retrieve information, and process language.
Selves or Self is a recognition of independence from the physical world including independence from our physical bodies... A robot, or computer, driven by its programmed switches can not have a sense of independence, no different than animals that are driven by natural instincts as its program... ..but human beings can freely feel or sense this independence which shows clearly that we are NOT ALL PHYSICAL ! Our selves are our free immortal souls sent here for a chance of salvation through faith... Believe it or not, your choice...
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL your self, which is your conscious soul, is always awake who is the free subject who observes your dream when your brain is sleeping..... your self or your soul only leaves when your brain is dead... ... and not remembering your dreams does not necessarily mean you had a dreamless slumber..
@@evaadam3635 "and not remembering your dreams does not necessarily mean you had a dreamless slumber" That is most certainly true but dreamless slumber was stipulated, not a failing to remember. "your self or your soul only leaves when your brain is dead" The flame of a candle does depart for new territory when it is extinguished. The burning process simply ceases. Life is a process analogous to the burning The being conscious process is the sole function of the self. Humans evolved to fear death because if they hadn't they would already be extinct. Fearing death is not a good reason to suppose a hereafter. One simply has to suck it up and appreciate the moments so that inevitably, when one is dying, one will believe one's experience beats non existence. (Although there are some who assert it's better to not exist). We exist for no time at all in comparison to the eternity of our non existence.
As Robert A. Heinlein pointed out years ago..."The difference between Science and the Fuzzy Subjects, is that Science requires reasoning, the Fuzzy Subjects just require Scholarship." Philosophy is, of course included among the fuzzy subjects, and like opinions and back sides, everybody has one.
Science sifts into Philosophy everywhere Science struggles to reveal with absolute certainty the absolute fundamentals of a variety of types of existents.
🤔…..ah yes, so easy for you two guys to sit in a nice room in comfortable armchairs and have such a discussion which (to our knowledge, so far) no other species can come close to doing. And then also imagine putting Simon’s robot in a cage so small that it is forced to crouch down unable to move significantly in any direction for hours upon hours…. …..then abused by guards who forced the robot in that little cage in the first place. THEN ask the robot to describe what it perceives about its surroundings. Like, say….a North Korean political prison facility where some of the human prisoners are forced into these little cages (many for no other “fault” then being related to another N. Korean citizen who defected or who spoke out against the government). Let’s see if Simon’s robot will describe that it is confined and really can’t describe much, except perhaps what it remembers seeing when being placed into the tiny cage…..OR, will the robot also describe its perception of hopelessness, of pain and suffering - and injustice? David Hume was a pampered elite….so far removed from most humans’ desperate condition and efforts just to survive….no wonder he had no rational idea of “the self”. I hope that the “soul” of David Hume….or would that be the “spirit”? 🤔….or essence?….or whatever entity continues to exist after the physical body dies, has a much different opinion now than when “himself” was physically existing on the face of the earth.
Robot analogies are weak and lazy, always. They try to build up men starting from that which he has built, which makes no logical sense at all. Furthermore, Consciousness and Awareness are not computable phenomena, so…next theory, please.
methep7 • The example with the robot is good. Consciousness and awareness are the same thing. And yes, artificial consciousness is "computable", but only as a starting process. Further down, it is totally self-sustaining and cannot be manipulated, controlled , rewritten, etc anymore. I'm talking about full Artificial Consciousness here ( AC ), not about AI. They are not the same when they're created artificially.
The self is an illusory construct formed in the cortex to allow an organism a particular point of view to address its needs. It is illusory because it can be evaporated with psychedelics or an intense meditation practice.
Just because the sensation of something seems to dissipate, that doesn’t mean that something ceases to exist forever. After psychedelics, to use your example, the organism reconstructs or reconstitutes its ego, albeit in a hopefully modified form, but metaphysical things are experienced as real, and there’s is no clear distinction between their legitimacy as illusory or not
@@jordanaugust4329 I never meant to imply that it ceases to exist forever, I would say that much was obvious. My point was simply to show how individuality can temporality be turned off. What is interesting is that the experience of losing ones individuality in this way is akin to the majority of religious/spiritual experiences that are reported.
I see the self, or conscious awareness, as being a process or activity. It's something we sometimes do. This is what gives it this abstract nature, while still being physical in the sense that it is done by a physical body.
@johnyharris That’s fair to say. Well, you said, declaratively, that the self is an illusion simply because it has the capability of disappearing momentarily, while I’m suggesting that the “self” is actually vital to the organism’s survival. So, to suggest that the self may be momentarily brushed off simply to view things at a broader scale, I conversely do no think it ever disappears, it just fades more into the background, so the organism can sense a broader scope of life, whatever.
@@simonhibbs887 I 100% agree. And at the moment, until AI convinces me otherwise, I still maintain it is a process of living organisms. Simply because we have not detected it yet in anything else. So I'm skeptical about it being biologically nonexclusive. However, this is a very fragile scepticism that I hold.
Quantum information, Quantum entanglement, Are, fundamental, underlying of Reality. Quantum Mind emerge, Quantum Body emerge, Mind and Body entanglement.. Consciousness emerge, Spacetime emerge, Holographic principal.
![30 ชั่วโมงคนเดียว บนรถไฟชั้น 3 โซเวียต [Around The World Ep. 2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/MlE9boAVqDA/mqdefault.jpg)
What a cogent perspective. Blackburn’s mind is well-seated, deep, and understanding.
what a lovely conversation ❤
Humans have the capacity for reflective thinking…to think about our thoughts…the ghost in the machine :)…which helps to shape our ‘self’ in order to meet our needs…agree with Kant..an organizing principle…
Love the challenges of your discussions✨
A painting of a pipe must be seen
in order for the painting to complete its job of representing.
Insofar as all thoughts are representations
the self is there to 'see' them do their job.
Insofar as the thought of my self is my self
I can see why its called reflection.
Our self is our soul and our purpose is to seek God and His help to return home to Heaven..................Falun Dafa
I love the way this man explains things
So far, i found my self as the awareness of the mind,my body and my environment. Whats liberating is it has no limit of what it can contains.
Our self is our soul and our purpose is to seek God and His help to return home to Heaven..................Falun Dafa
Thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you
I like to think there is a hierarchy of self.
From least fundamental to most fundemental:
- behavior + decision making
- personality + memory
- internal perception + language
- sensation + emotion
- the phenomenon of experience
Computationally, I believe early evolutionary brains simulated the environment. Then evolved brains that internalized experiences of the environment. Finally, the simulation of a "self" reflects a weighted combination of internalized experiences. What algorithms determine the weighting would be a super interesting question in the Reinforcement Learning domain.
mind blowing
The self is the wall up against which the senses splat and
the impact caused vibrations on the wall's back
are what move the voluntary muscles,
metaphorically speaking,
naturally.
He concept of selves nerd an emperism varification after It show up though neurosience proceendings. Selves description are complex ativicties unkown in brains so far.
Everything has a purpose the self experiences and this is what the higher mind the ferma has created through the self
Isn't that the same question as ' what is consciousness '?
Consciousness is the reason you have this feeling of self.
The ' I ' is who you are and that at least partially comes from consciousness.
Things such as feelings are partially chemical as well as being part of the brain.
It is not the same question! Consciousness is a quality, a potential. Consciousness for example is linked to an integrated state of information, but a self is also this integrated state of information entangled to the physical nerve system. It is way more complex then just consciousness. Think about, culture, genes, the brain hardware. all those have path and entanglement , interweaven with consciousness. So a self is way more complex.
A self is there for not free from consciousness, nor a consciousness free from a self (both are entangled). A self is a kind of centred organisation between all elements including consciousness. An organized democracy, between all those unique elements coming together, like the quality of consciousness, the brain (instinct), genes blue print, culture, life experience etc etc.
@@blijebij
More succinctly, the self is the thought that is conscious, a thought modulated by the senses, memories etc. and that generates sub thoughts to control the voluntary muscles.
(Understanding that all thoughts are representations
instantiated/encoded by neural discharge timing patterns and
all logic in the process accomplished by synapses which link thoughts together mediating what we call thinking).
Yes?
Self is created by the accumulation of experiences in reality in which the mind creates memories of 'you' having had those experiences.
@LifesInsight Indeed, memories are more than emotion-neutral "photos" of events. They encompass the feelings of the individual at that time as related to the event.
Could it be that the concept of the self
which is something culture teaches,
becomes the thought that is to what the word 'self' and 'I' refers?
There’s definitely some truth in what you just said.
Mathematics' is self. In math, the description is sets, the idea that a group of things can be put into a set and a set can define and include anything, including the set itself. The reason we perceive mathematics as so intrinsic is because we experience the self as a set, a part of our whole that can be included or disclosed as we define the parameters to what the set or self contains. Of course it can be considered fallacious to assume that anything can be part of your self, but that's exactly the perception we have. King's feel that it is their duty, or their fate to control or work for a set larger than their own body, even representing themselves in their kingdoms as if to personalize it with their self.
The concept of self as we experience it is just emergent behavior that happens because of our ability to abstract and think of things without the "self" while still being these bundles of deterministic perceptions. A non physical perception born of the form and syntax of the mind is then used as another way to integrate with things around us. Individuals with disabilities that effect their cognitive or perceptual abilities don't have any less of a self, but are often found at the mercy of their deterministic principles more than their critical selves and struggle with it daily. Addicts, schizophrenics, and even people with learning disabilities can all show these same behaviors. Again, it's not that they don't have self, it's that their self is not as strong as their other internal influences and exhibit a loss of control, usually due to a physical distortion in the brain. Our ability to quantify things into formulas like mathematics is the same concept as mathematics itself, creating sets that are intangible or ethereal that can contain anything, including themselves, which is the same concept as how we perceive selves.
Me self is front and center full time. I don’t think I ever have an un-self-conscious moment. I actually dislike it.
I have felt a deeper self since I was very young. Explain that one.
Kudos from 444 Gematria!
The "Self" is a social construct but it's also really your physical body with a functioning brain that identifies as an individual, unique, unitary process with volition and agency. A human being can reflect on their actions and life while other species cannot.
I see my body as the absolutely necessary substrate of the process that
is the thought that
is my self but
consider the thought that is my self to be the owner of my body and
not vice versa
despite my self's absolute dependence on my body
for my self's immaterial existence.
My body is mere matter whereas my self is the process going on inside it.
Change the process to a deep and dreamless slumber and
the thought that is my self ceases to exist.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL And after you're dead your self ceases to exist. So the physical body is necessary for the self to exist. Your identity which is different than your self is formed by social interaction and you then see yourself as a unique individual with a unique history and story. We are here and live our lives for however long we live and then in one second beyond our knowledge or control we are gone and we are gone forever. Life is strange.
@@Resmith18SR
Yes and one theory suggests that
the concept of the self impressed on us by culture
becomes the thought that is the self that constitutes
the essence of the being-conscious-process.
We gave the ability to observe our own thoughts and actions. So we are both the actor and the observer . So, there is that.
You can’t observe your own thoughts. You can reflect on them after you have them.
Our self is our soul and our purpose is to seek God and His help to return home to Heaven..................Falun Dafa
I am curious about the robot's answer to the question: "How does 'I' feel like?".
I think the "self" is a state of mind which allows the organism/being to experience present reality😅
.....the present state of the natural elements in movement, thereby changing its state to a newer one. The sun pulling of the earth. Man breathing some unseen gases and enduring the strength moving upward toward the head like the gases to the sun. And, keeping cool during this process.
Begs the question what is the organism that's experiencing? A plankton can experience its environment (food, salinity, temperature, etc), but does it have any concept of itself as experiencing, and say/think, "I experience, therefore, I am"?
@@Zerpentsa6598 Memory is the feature you're suggesting. Brains store experiences. These become predictive of stimuli, aka fear and all the emotions that branch off from fear. Lifeforms without brains don't experience that, but I think they just have a limited quality of self compared to us. They experience the stimuli similarly, but they don't remember it.
Well and concisely put. Also, I think some form of information retention and retrieval is important, at least for most humans, to have a sense of self.
All thoughts are about something.
In other words, thoughts represent.
But there can be no recognition of any representation
in the absence of any memory against which a representation may be compared.
Thus an organism cannot be conscious of anything
until it has acquired enough memories to support recognition.
William James suggests a new baby experiences a 'blooming buzzing confusion' but
though I am a fan of his, I must disagree.
I say a new baby, lacking any memories, simply can't be conscious.
This is important because the only things deserving of moral consideration
are things that have been conscious.
Is it not self evident that
a self is a thought and that a self comes into being gradually and that
a material body is requisite for this to happen?
Supposedly it is very deep to realize there is no self, but I've never understood what people even mean by the term self.
The orchestration of your combined perceptions and memories, creates an amorphous, yet intimately familiar structure. While you are experiencing reasonable "health" this familiar structure enables you to navigate a complex world.
All thoughts are *about* something else, something that they are not,
except for the unique thought that is about its self.
Being about its self is the reason why the self thought is called a self.
The self thought being modulated by other thoughts is what 'conscious' means.
"but I've never" - there you, you found your self.
OK, fair enough. These are all good responses.
Now you will. Our self is our soul and our purpose is to seek God and His help to return home to Heaven..................Falun Dafa
According to Hume, you just need the razor, you don’t need Occam.
Two things can be meant by self. One is the ego, which is who or what your mind tells you that you are. Your ego is everything you can tell yourself or tell others like your age, your race, your job, your values…anything that you can communicate is ego. It’s just a story we believe and is actually a false self.
The deeper self, and what I would argue is the real self, is your awareness. Your “I am” which is witness to everything including the body and mind. That is the self that gives people the idea about souls or spirit. I’m not sure about all of that, but you are the witness consciousness of your life and that is more real than the socially constructed ego of mind.
@LifesInsight The important distinction is that you are not the mind. The mind is what generates mental objects and presents them to you, the aware self. Thoughts, dreams, perceptions...these are always changing and the self is the unchanging witness of all of it. You are the subject to which all mental objects appear. That is why ego is an illusion because ego is identifying yourself as the mind and believing any story it tells you.
@LifesInsight
It seems to me that
'consciousness' is not a something that I have but
being conscious is something that I am.
Succinctly put: I am conscious.
By 'I' I mean of course my self which I conceive to be a thought.
This self thought is at the heart of the being-conscious-process,
a process in which other thoughts modulate the self thought such that
eventually and according to synaptic logic
flow the sub thoughts that terminate in control of my voluntary muscles.
@LifesInsight
"As soon as one takes the self as being thought, then what ever is there becomes masked or changed to fit one's perception of it"
How so?
Our self is our soul and our purpose is to seek God and His help to return home to Heaven..................Falun Dafa
Awareness is known by awareness alone.
So then would you agree that
the self must be a thought?
That my self is a thought strikes my self as self evident
more so than any other thought that modulates my self,
i.e. of which my self is conscious.
Actually, I can imagine the robot being able to perfectly describe the space without the pronoun "I" anywhere in the picture. You simply give the robot a grid pattern and an orientation that it will always follow. Hmm- that does require a fixed point in space though, so that the robot can orient themselves relative to it when they get to the space you want described. Still- they could describe the space properly- you just wouldn't know which way to turn the picture once it's drawn. But if they always execute the same grid pattern- taking views at specific angles each time they hit a node- they could describe the space perfectly- excluding it's overall orientation. But hey- over all orientation relative to what- you? I mean once they leave the solar system and can no longer see the sun or any planets- there's really no way for them to orient themselves in any traditional sense- because orientation is relative. While on earth it's relative to our magnetic field, when off the planet I don't know what point of reference they use to orient themselves, but I would assume they choose a star or some other fixed point both they and mission control on earth can agree on. But if you're just imagining a robot in general space- no idea how it would orient itself in any way that would make sense to you here on earth.
If you were put into a coma, and split in 2 down the middle, and each half was kept alive in a separate room, upon awakening would you wake up as halfperson 1, or halfperson 2?
You would wake up as both in some sense, each half would think they were the original person.
So I don't think there is a self, cause there's no natural continuation of the original self (if there was one) or original experience assuming selves can't split that is.
There is only the same Eternal 'I', Basic of 'the Self',
all Life-Units have their own Eternal Consciousness,
as make them different than other.
Selfes desire development, and 'take color' of the dynamic of Life.
Hume and Kant were referring to two different aspects of Self. Hume wasn't "wrong" when he wrote that the Self is the experiencer (of qualia and thoughts). But that's not the only thing that people mean when they talk about the Self, so Hume was incomplete... not wrong.
People also think about the set of characteristics of an individual person, such as his/her memories, beliefs, values, skills, relationships, etc. When a person thinks about his/her own characteristics, this mental modeling of his/her own characteristics is the aspect of Self that Kant added to Hume's Self.
At any moment, one can be aware of only a small fraction of that model of one's Self. So the sense of Self is highly variable, and can even disappear entirely from one's awareness at times when one is immersed in some other experience. Hume's Self, on the other hand, only disappears in deep sleep, after brain death, etc... when there is no conscious experiencing.
So in my opinion, Hume's Self is more fundamental. Kant's addition is just a malleable, manipulable construction, similar to the mental models we construct to represent and understand the external world.
The self is an illusion. No Language, no self!
You are not an object; you are a relationship. Suppose a world with two entities: you and your preferred image of your real self (most likely not an Elon Musk or Brad Pitt here). There is a relationship between them with the self as the source and the image as the terminus. That relationship is YOU. The rest is accoutrements.
Good thing there aren't other cultures that have been debating about the nature of the self for thousands of years and we can start from Hume.
Hume was right. The West has a real problem in accepting that the Self has no solidity.
@@SurrealMcCoyI just commented on that in another thread on the relationship between Hume and Buddhism. As I said there, if consciousness is a form of information processing then it is an activity. It’s something we do, and therefore something that is in a constant state of flux.
How can anyone call cells that physically died and replaced themselves a self ?
Is he the same self as 7 year old cells or 21 yr old new cells etc etc
Say, every year you replace 5% of an ocean liner so that in 20 years all its parts have been replaced once… At any point did it stop being the same ocean liner?
Consciousness is like a lawn mower with out the five senses to help it understand the world around itself.
The five senses are the five energy fields that connects the body with the world and the entire universe to help it understand and know it self through growth.
The five different energy fields works biological and electrical throughout all existing particles to help connect things or disconnect, the five senses are responsible for any forms of relationships inside the universe including stars on the galactic levels.
These five senses branches out to make up the entire universe network brain power which is constantly flowing through every living existing being ; believe it or not this is the reason why every living creature on this Earth sleep, dreams and grow when at rest and also the reason why all species fight and forms relationships with each other even on a microscopic level and why everything is in order with the universe as well as creativity and perfection and death to help balance existence..
Sometimes, anger is very real and could kill(and only religion can navigate,organise your anger)
What is your evidence that only religious people can navigate or organise their anger? For example there is no correlation between atheism and violent crime. Are atheists really more prone to violence? It seems that this idea is so plainly, obviously contrary to reality it’s hard to understand how someone could come to post it.
No, tolerance. Our self is our soul and our purpose is to seek God and His help to return home to Heaven..................Falun Dafa
Some teach that there is no self - that of the ' I ' sense of self, that's distinguishable from another and their ' I ' self.
Some teach that there is only the Self - this is the true Self - the one without the ' I ', without the differentiation of i and you, me and them.
Atman, Soul, Self - this is most real and true.
They help Santa at Christmas.
5:51 conception itself has different characteristics from the physical matter and its source is still a mystery 🤔
For sure, it's not physical in the sense of being an object. That's the mistake I think dualists make. However if conscious awareness is an activity then it can both be physical, in the sense that it is done by a physical body, and yet it can be abstract in the sense that it can appear and disappear as the activity stops, starts and changes over time.
your first and second sentences seem to contradict oneanother...
@@r2c3 Objects are a different ontological category from activities, but an activity is performed by objects. There can't be activities without objects, yet they are not the same thing.
By analogy the running of an engine isn't an object. The engine by itself, switched off, is not running. When you start it, now it is running, and we can describe how it is running in many ways. Yet you can't have the running of an engine without an engine.
I think we have slightly different views on life. For me living is an activity of a body. A living thing is physical system that is doing the activity we call living, which is analogous to an engine doing the thing we call running. Interfere with it enough and the process breaks down, and it stops doing the things that make it alive. Then it's dead.
both physical objects and activities are preceded by their conception... therefore conception's existence is independent from that of the physical objects and their activities. ..
@@r2c3 Conception as in description? It seems like a thing could exist and then be discovered, so the conception of it comes after.
Do you mean conception as in consciousness itself? It has to be the consciousness of something or someone right? So unless we have non-physical consciousnesses then the body that will be conscious must exist first, just as the engine must exist before we can start it running.
Hume said, when he looks, he can’t find a self. When I look, I find a self quite easily.
"All you need is a robot and a position. You don't need a self."
A robot? A conscious robot or a spy robot. A spy robot being a robot with no consciousness of its own but with cameras communicating with you and a body remote controlled by you.
A conscious robot that has a mastery of language is a non-existent thing. Non existent like, apparently, what he considers the self.
They're Elves without the S and they fix your boots while you sleep😂
Does my mind wake up in the morning, or does my body wake up? We say I wake up, not my body woke up.
an alarm clock also interrupts the circadian cycle :)
If the self or consciousness is a process, rather than an object, then it is something that an object can do, and sometimes it might not do it.
No. Breath of the top and strength of force from the feet meeting in the middle or surpassing each other. In the many billions that exist less than 100 persons have done so with sheer patience and self-control.
No one eats the fruit of a tree even when the shoots are apparent.
What we say is a matter of convention. It's quicker to use pronouns such as "I awoke" than to provide mundane elaborations such as "my brain awoke." That's why pronouns were invented. Don't let convention fool you into believing it expresses a deep truth about the world.
He so wants us to be soulless robots
Do you hold your beliefs because you genuinely think they are true, or just because you would like them to be true?
@@simonhibbs887
Your worldview doesn’t have a way to know truth with certainty. So why would you bring it up?
@@deanodebo You’re implying that people only believe what they wish to be true rather than what they think is actually true. I don’t think that’s the case for most people. I’m willing to believe that people with different opinions to mine do so honestly, in general. I find attacking peoples motivations distasteful.
@@deanodebo Remember we have proved that it is your worldview that has no way to know anything with certainty because you cannot show that your god is anything but a figment of your imagination.
@@simonhibbs887
He chooses arbitrarily to disallow discussion about souls, no rationale given, other than he prefers to go based on what he “sees”. He also uses software and robot analogies.
Whether you like it or not, that’s what happened in the video.
I believe self is a field of different biological Chambers set in different combinations of sequences for unlocking and locking pathways that can be activated by different types of chemicals coming inside and outside the body while mixing in with blood and oxygen. I believe each Organ in the body carries a different vibration signal that draws certain chemicals to their fields to be utilized.I believe the nervous system is like the ground wire for only sending signals back and forth to the brain.I believe the digestive system is for mixing chemicals for individual organs in the body.
I believe the brain control only signals.
I believe each organ draws attention to incoming chemicals from outside the body though different types of vibrations that attract them.
The brain uses signals to control the entire body system. The five senses create a single vibration that compresses everything into a single package as self and a part from this world but Without space and
without the world there is no awareness. logical truth without earthly chemicals the body cannot spiral into awareness.Real true out in deep dark space apart from light awareness will loose grip on reality and fade away and the body will become void.
Our self is our soul and our purpose is to seek God and His help to return home to Heaven..................Falun Dafa
"We need an ego so, if you’re in a restaurant, you take your fork and put it in your mouth instead of somebody else’s"
-- Terence McKenna
Pretty good
This steak. Mine, all mine
And i assume there can only be war, too, if there's an ego?
There would be no point in telling lies
if there were no self to benefit.
Ricky Gervais made a very funny and very educational movie about this very thing.
Genes, upbringing, traumas.
You are conscious of your self. You don't experience now what your self was before. You don't even remember that self. So you are the WORST person to ask about it. You can only respond by referring to past experiences, NOT past perceptions of self. It's like the blue dot that marks the position of your phone when following directions in Google Maps. Exact analogy - your concept of self serves only to demonstrate where you are at this moment.
replicants...
Seems to me it does not matter in the slightest
how a human being is conceived or manufactured.
To believe there's a moral difference is to become evil via obsolete tradition.
THE SELF IS NOT A 🤖 THUS 《 THE 👨 SELF ❤ IS 》 《 THIS ❤ FEELS 💔 》 WETHER ITS AT HOME 🏡 AT WORK AT CHURCH ⛪ OR IN THE COMMUNITY. THE ☔ RAIN FALLS IN 💔 HEART UPON THE JUST ⚖ AND THE UNJUST ⚖ . SO ITS JUSTICE ⚖ DENIED OR JUSTICE ⚖ INDEED WHO FEELS IT KNOWS IT BECAUSE THE 👨 SELF ❤ IS THIS ❤ FEELS 💔.
Interesting and careful take by Blackburn. Lost me on the robot analogy. It could very easily be imagined to give responses such as:
From position X, direction Y, the following observations were made (e.g., an armchair with leather upholstery facing this direction).
It need to give pronouns to justify the determination of 2 armchairs. It just needs to be able to collect, store, and retrieve information, and process language.
Selves or Self is a recognition of independence from the physical world including independence from our physical bodies...
A robot, or computer, driven by its programmed switches can not have a sense of independence, no different than animals that are driven by natural instincts as its program...
..but human beings can freely feel or sense this independence which shows clearly that we are NOT ALL PHYSICAL ! Our selves are our free immortal souls sent here for a chance of salvation through faith... Believe it or not, your choice...
And what happens to your self when your body is in a state
of deep and dreamless slumber?
The answer is of course, your self is non existent.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL your self, which is your conscious soul, is always awake who is the free subject who observes your dream when your brain is sleeping..... your self or your soul only leaves when your brain is dead...
... and not remembering your dreams does not necessarily mean you had a dreamless slumber..
@@evaadam3635
"and not remembering your dreams does not necessarily mean you had a dreamless slumber"
That is most certainly true but
dreamless slumber was stipulated, not a failing to remember.
"your self or your soul only leaves when your brain is dead"
The flame of a candle does depart for new territory when it is extinguished.
The burning process simply ceases.
Life is a process analogous to the burning
The being conscious process is the sole function of the self.
Humans evolved to fear death because if they hadn't
they would already be extinct.
Fearing death is not a good reason to suppose a hereafter.
One simply has to suck it up and
appreciate the moments so that inevitably, when one is dying,
one will believe one's experience beats non existence.
(Although there are some who assert it's better to not exist).
We exist for no time at all in comparison to the eternity of our non existence.
As Robert A. Heinlein pointed out years ago..."The difference between Science and the Fuzzy Subjects, is that Science requires reasoning, the Fuzzy Subjects just require Scholarship." Philosophy is, of course included among the fuzzy subjects, and like opinions and back sides, everybody has one.
Life is a fuzzy subject, but we still have to live it.
Science sifts into Philosophy everywhere Science struggles
to reveal with absolute certainty the absolute fundamentals
of a variety of types of existents.
Elves? 🧝♀️
🤔…..ah yes, so easy for you two guys to sit in a nice room in comfortable armchairs and have such a discussion which (to our knowledge, so far) no other species can come close to doing. And then also imagine putting Simon’s robot in a cage so small that it is forced to crouch down unable to move significantly in any direction for hours upon hours….
…..then abused by guards who forced the robot in that little cage in the first place. THEN ask the robot to describe what it perceives about its surroundings.
Like, say….a North Korean political prison facility where some of the human prisoners are forced into these little cages (many for no other “fault” then being related to another N. Korean citizen who defected or who spoke out against the government).
Let’s see if Simon’s robot will describe that it is confined and really can’t describe much, except perhaps what it remembers seeing when being placed into the tiny cage…..OR, will the robot also describe its perception of hopelessness, of pain and suffering - and injustice?
David Hume was a pampered elite….so far removed from most humans’ desperate condition and efforts just to survive….no wonder he had no rational idea of “the self”.
I hope that the “soul” of David Hume….or would that be the “spirit”? 🤔….or essence?….or whatever entity continues to exist after the physical body dies, has a much different opinion now than when “himself” was physically existing on the face of the earth.
Id?
Robot analogies are weak and lazy, always. They try to build up men starting from that which he has built, which makes no logical sense at all. Furthermore, Consciousness and Awareness are not computable phenomena, so…next theory, please.
methep7 • The example with the robot is good.
Consciousness and awareness are the same thing.
And yes, artificial consciousness is "computable", but only as a starting process. Further down, it is totally self-sustaining and cannot be manipulated, controlled , rewritten, etc anymore. I'm talking about full Artificial Consciousness here ( AC ), not about AI.
They are not the same when they're created artificially.
The self is an illusory construct formed in the cortex to allow an organism a particular point of view to address its needs. It is illusory because it can be evaporated with psychedelics or an intense meditation practice.
Just because the sensation of something seems to dissipate, that doesn’t mean that something ceases to exist forever. After psychedelics, to use your example, the organism reconstructs or reconstitutes its ego, albeit in a hopefully modified form, but metaphysical things are experienced as real, and there’s is no clear distinction between their legitimacy as illusory or not
@@jordanaugust4329 I never meant to imply that it ceases to exist forever, I would say that much was obvious. My point was simply to show how individuality can temporality be turned off. What is interesting is that the experience of losing ones individuality in this way is akin to the majority of religious/spiritual experiences that are reported.
I see the self, or conscious awareness, as being a process or activity. It's something we sometimes do. This is what gives it this abstract nature, while still being physical in the sense that it is done by a physical body.
@johnyharris That’s fair to say. Well, you said, declaratively, that the self is an illusion simply because it has the capability of disappearing momentarily, while I’m suggesting that the “self” is actually vital to the organism’s survival. So, to suggest that the self may be momentarily brushed off simply to view things at a broader scale, I conversely do no think it ever disappears, it just fades more into the background, so the organism can sense a broader scope of life, whatever.
@@simonhibbs887 I 100% agree. And at the moment, until AI convinces me otherwise, I still maintain it is a process of living organisms. Simply because we have not detected it yet in anything else. So I'm skeptical about it being biologically nonexclusive. However, this is a very fragile scepticism that I hold.
Quantum information, Quantum entanglement,
Are, fundamental, underlying of Reality.
Quantum Mind emerge, Quantum Body emerge,
Mind and Body entanglement.. Consciousness emerge,
Spacetime emerge, Holographic principal.