Former conspiracy believer here

[Nick227]

No, but it directly explains the "limited self". The organism can tell the difference between things that happen to other organism (or inanimate objects) and things that happen to it. That implies that the "limited self", and the implication is born out by every test you can imagine. It's not an assumption, but a conclusion from observation and experiment.

Hi PM,

I think perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "it" before. There are experiences, but this whole notion that they are happening to anyone is constructed. The experience happens is one thing. The experience happens to me is another. This latter is constructed by the mind, yet nothing is experientially different between the two. There is just the belief that it is happening to someone. I think it would probably be better to deal with humans rather than "organisms," seeing as we are humans, and do at least know what humans experience. What cats, for example, actually experience, I've no idea.

Nick

 

[PixyMisa]

Objectivity proceeds from two assumptions, as I have previously pointed out. I can only assume at this juncture that you are simply unable to examine the notion that this second assumption exists, which is fair enough.

Give it up, Nick, you're simply wrong on this.

You are saying that you have never experienced thoughts?

Non-sequitur.

As I said, the machinery of the brain generates experiences. You don't experience the machine.

This is one aspect of personal identity, yes, the belief that the body belongs to someone. As you say, the capacity for the human brain to believe in limited selfhood, that it has the necessarily neurological bits and bobs to do so, is obviously essential. However, this does not mean that limited selfhood exists, merely that the brain is capable of believing that it does. This is what gives humans their immense power to transform the world - the capacity to believe that they have personal identity.

You are conflating two different points that you raised yourself. The ability to conceive of the limited self is not proof of the limited self; that proof comes from experimenting with the real world. The ability to conceive of personal identity, however, is proof of the existence of personal identity.

If you can ask the question "Do I have personal identity?", the answer is necessarily yes.

I'd say they developed the notion of personal selfhood through the need to survive.

Or to put it another way: The personal self is so real that pretending it doesn't exist is fatal.

I will be happy to read the evidence once you have it.

Read up on alien hand syndrome now. It's more interesting, better studied, and by itself conclusively shows that personal identity is brain function.

Is there not a certain flow of thoughts involved in you writing your reply? Can you see that without this flow there would be no reply? Is it possible you could stop for a moment and ask yourself - how do I know that this is my thought, not that it might be someone elses, but that it has possession at all? It's all just thoughts. The entire personality is constructed and maintained solely through thoughts and the phenomenon of identification with thought. If you don't believe me, just sit and watch it happening!

We observe that our thoughts are our own, Nick. We can test this and confirm that no-one else is privy to our thoughts, nor are our thoughts shared with anyone else.

We can erase individual memories. We can and do voluntarily render ourselves unconscious. We can track the process of recognising our mother's face millisecond by millisecond as waves of signals pass through the brain. We can chemically and electrically trigger pain, pleasure, psychosis and seizures. It's all of it brain function.

Again, no assumption required, you just need to pay attention.

 

[PixyMisa]

Personally I believe that thoughts originate in the physical apparatus of the brain. As to the phenomenom of identification with thought, I think that will be a bit harder to track down! As to the sense of personal identity, well, if you're looking for that in the physical apparatus of the brain, then I can only wish you good luck.

Thoughts originate in the physical apparatus of the brain. Good, we agree there.

But identification with thought, and the sense of personal identity, are also thoughts, nothing more, and thus originate in the physical apparatus of the brain by your own stipulation.

 

[PixyMisa]

I think perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "it" before. There are experiences, but this whole notion that they are happening to anyone is constructed. The experience happens is one thing. The experience happens to me is another. This latter is constructed by the mind, yet nothing is experientially different between the two. There is just the belief that it is happening to someone. I think it would probably be better to deal with humans rather than "organisms," seeing as we are humans, and do at least know what humans experience. What cats, for example, actually experience, I've no idea.

Well, last point first: It's not clear that cats have an abstract sense of personal identity as we do, but cats are notoriously bad subjects for psychological testing. (For example, it was believed for decades that cats are colour-blind, but it turns out that they do see in colour; they just don't care very much.)

To your main point: Experiences are thoughts. They are brain processes. The identification with an experience is a thought. It's a brain process.

The identification of a thought or experience with oneself, even in the limited sense that a cat or a lizard or sea cucumber can feel it, is a brain function essential to survival. If I feel hunger or pain, I have to understand that I need to do something about it. Because if I feel hungry and Bob goes to lunch, or I feel pain and Joe pulls his hand out of the fire, things aren't going to go so well with me.

You're talking about more abstract levels of identification, but it is exactly the same process at work.

 

[Belz...]

I don't see how it even affects the notion that there is no "I" - that personal identity is a mental construct. Do you?

Why, yes. Yes I do. The very act of severing the corpus callosum DESTROYS one mind and CREATES two new ones. If that isn't proof that the experience, the observer, and everything else, is seated in the brain, nothing is.

As to the phenomenom of identification with thought, I think that will be a bit harder to track down!

"Identification" ? You said thoughts originate in the brain. Obviously, people's thoughts don't interfere with each other. It follows that they are personal.

As to the sense of personal identity, well, if you're looking for that in the physical apparatus of the brain, then I can only wish you good luck.

I don't think the sense of identity is as easy to define as you think.

I don't see how it leads to that at all.

Because you're applying fallacious reasoning in order to claim that something cannot be known. If you're using that reasoning, you must use it for everything else as well. And the result of that is that nothing can ever be known.

 

[Belz...]

There are experiences, but this whole notion that they are happening to anyone is constructed.

You haven't been reading. Every possible test you can imagine will show that they ARE happening to someone/something. On the face of your claim, you ARE WRONG. It doesn't matter how many times you say it. Every one knows you are wrong and centuries of science have shown this. Please learn.

But identification with thought, and the sense of personal identity, are also thoughts, nothing more, and thus originate in the physical apparatus of the brain by your own stipulation.

Bolding mine. Pay attention, Nick.

 

[8den]

Jesus Nick this is getting insanely tenuous. Your original claims are in tatters as you've been shown to be demonstrable wrong in every "factual" claim you made, and have been reduced to ever more abstract arguments in an attempt to try and seem like you have a point.

 

[Belz...]

Jesus Nick

Well, there's a troubling thought...

 

[Stout]

Yep....

I'm out. I've smashed my head into the keyboard and put my fist through to many monitors in my vain attempt to try and keep up with this thread. Between my WTF??ing and researching topics that I've never heard of ( which is actually cool, and the reason I haunt these forums ) I've come to think of this thread as representing the entire JREF.

Whew

 

[Nick227]

As I said, the machinery of the brain generates experiences. You don't experience the machine.

Hi PM,

If you don't experience thoughts then that's your reality. It's not mine.

You are conflating two different points that you raised yourself. The ability to conceive of the limited self is not proof of the limited self; that proof comes from experimenting with the real world. The ability to conceive of personal identity, however, is proof of the existence of personal identity.

If you can ask the question "Do I have personal identity?", the answer is necessarily yes.

If you ask the question that way it is somewhat loaded!

Or to put it another way: The personal self is so real that pretending it doesn't exist is fatal.

I would certainly agree that for other primates some form of neuro-adaptation relating to identity could well have taken place to increase the chance of survival. A unreal and heightened sense of personal identity could have arisen as a biological necessity to preserve the species. It's for sure possible. I don't know the pathways involved but it doesn't seem unreasonable. However, this doesn't mean that this personal identity actually exists rather that the animal developed the capacity to imagine it did as a survival aid.

When you see in humans the degree to which they will cling on to the undemonstrable notion of personal selfhood, the way they will fight tooth and nail and even die to preserve it, then it's reasonable to assume that there's some serious hard-wiring in here!

Read up on alien hand syndrome now. It's more interesting, better studied, and by itself conclusively shows that personal identity is brain function.

I can't see that this has anything to do with it personally. That an phenomena can be made to be split in half through a physical act does not demonstrate that it arises physically. Even in conditions such a Multiple Personality Disorder there is nothing to suggest that any of the experienced senses of selfhood are actually real.

Why don't you simply find a medical condition or a brain lesion that can be made where there is no sense of personal selfhood, where this sense is removed? I think this would be great proof that the experience of personal identity arises from the structure of the brain.

We observe that our thoughts are our own, Nick. We can test this and confirm that no-one else is privy to our thoughts, nor are our thoughts shared with anyone else.

As I have said before, and even immediately above, it is not a question of thoughts belonging to someone else, but of them belonging to anyone at all. They are just thoughts.

We can erase individual memories. We can and do voluntarily render ourselves unconscious. We can track the process of recognising our mother's face millisecond by millisecond as waves of signals pass through the brain. We can chemically and electrically trigger pain, pleasure, psychosis and seizures. It's all of it brain function.

Sure, but can we locate the source of the sense of personal selfhood?

Nick

 

[Nick227]

Thoughts originate in the physical apparatus of the brain. Good, we agree there.

Yes, it's nice.

But identification with thought, and the sense of personal identity, are also thoughts, nothing more, and thus originate in the physical apparatus of the brain by your own stipulation.

Well, the phenomenon of identification I don't see so much as a separate thought, rather a quality in the thought, a quality that somehow gives the thought an intensely personal flavour. This quality suggests to the mind that there is something so personal about the thought that it must be expressed, that it must be acted upon. It cannot be allowed to simply come and pass away.

Thus there develops within the mind the idea that there is something somewhere within that is unique and precious, and that it is this that is having these thoughts. This "thing" the mind conceives of as "I," it's own unique personal identity. It cannot find this "I." It cannot demonstrate the existence of this "I." Yet it will surrender even its life on occasions to protect it.

Now, this phenomenon of identification, and the assumption of personal identity that arises in its wake, could certainly arise as a brain function. However I've not seen anyone try and locate it.

There's an interesting chap called Ramachandran at the University of California in San Diego who studies a lot of similar stuff. Maybe I will search a bit more.

Nick

 

[Nick227]

To your main point: Experiences are thoughts. They are brain processes. The identification with an experience is a thought. It's a brain process.

If you relate an experience, if you frame it, then it is certainly created by thoughts. I agree. However, the raw materials of experience, sensory perceptions, are not thoughts.

The identification of a thought or experience with oneself, even in the limited sense that a cat or a lizard or sea cucumber can feel it, is a brain function essential to survival.

None of these creatures need a sense of selfhood in order to survive. They need simply to react defensively.

If I feel hunger or pain, I have to understand that I need to do something about it.

The experience of hunger arises. It does not need any "I" for it to do so. The thought that food is required arises. It does not need any "I" to do so.

Because if I feel hungry and Bob goes to lunch, or I feel pain and Joe pulls his hand out of the fire, things aren't going to go so well with me.

You're talking about more abstract levels of identification, but it is exactly the same process at work.

Identification is that the quality of the thought suggests that there exists a personal "I."

Nick

 

[Belz...]

Hi PM,

If you don't experience thoughts then that's your reality. It's not mine.

Nick, I get the distinct feeling that you're trolling, now. You MUST know that this is not what Pixy said.

However, this doesn't mean that this personal identity actually exists rather that the animal developed the capacity to imagine it did as a survival aid.

Did you understand the analogy with the calculator ?

Please, take some time to answer my points.

When you see in humans the degree to which they will cling on to the undemonstrable notion of personal selfhood, the way they will fight tooth and nail and even die to preserve it, then it's reasonable to assume that there's some serious hard-wiring in here!

What is that supposed to mean ?

I can't see that this has anything to do with it personally. That an phenomena can be made to be split in half through a physical act does not demonstrate that it arises physically.

What ? What else COULD it mean ? Please, humour me. If it is not physical, how can it POSSIBLY be affected by physical acts ?

Why don't you simply find a medical condition or a brain lesion that can be made where there is no sense of personal selfhood, where this sense is removed?

It's called death.

 

[Belz...]

If you relate an experience, if you frame it, then it is certainly created by thoughts. I agree. However, the raw materials of experience, sensory perceptions, are not thoughts.

Aren't they ?

 

[Pardalis]

Let's chip in to give Belz a gift for Christmas.

This level of patience has got to be rewarded somehow.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Let's chip in to give Belz a gift for Christmas.

That's the most theologically inappropriate suggestion I've ever heard.

Dave

 

[Nick227]

Why don't you simply find a medical condition or a brain lesion that can be made where there is no sense of personal selfhood, where this sense is removed?

It's called death.

Possibly valid. Though not yet demonstrated!

My mistake anyway. I should have said "the lesion which removes the sense of personal identity but which leaves all other processes intact."

Must admit I'm quite taken by the notion that identification is a neuro-adaptive reflex that primates developed to cope with some form of life-threatening environmental condition their existing defences were unable to cope with. Perhaps they needed a sense of heightened individuality to reinforce a desire to survive that was insufficient on its own to do the job. If so, it's ironic that this evolutionary trait, passed on to humans, has brought them arguably to the brink of destruction.

Maybe I will write to Ramachandran about it. Or maybe the sense of identification around this belief will dissipate.

Nick

 

[8den]

It's certainly propitious to get Belz a policy present.



Sorry but this thread is evoking MJD1982 memories.

 

[Nick227]

Yep....

I'm out. I've smashed my head into the keyboard and put my fist through to many monitors in my vain attempt to try and keep up with this thread. Between my WTF??ing and researching topics that I've never heard of ( which is actually cool, and the reason I haunt these forums )

Whew

Hey Stout,

That's some heavy identification, dude! Your dopamine circuits must really be locking in. It's a good process. Hypatia used to exhort her students to "keep digging up the I within," if my memory serves me. Ramana Maharshi too. No one found it yet! It's the world's most enduring illusion.

I've come to think of this thread as representing the entire JREF.

It does! How many rationalists does it take to find an "I?"

Nick

 

[Pardalis]

It does! How many rationalists does it take to find an "I?"

It only takes one persistent woo to find a black "I".

(just kidding of course)