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Any proof of the existence of a self?

I think this is one of those "depends on how you look at it" type of things.
 
Beerina said:
What's "collective" unconscious?
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“My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.” -Carl Jung
 
Psychology is such a young science so let's wait a couple of centuries and see how it develops.


I wondered if the feeling of center (the self) is in fact created by a multitude of thoughts refering to an idea of a center; "my car, I am short, I'll become an astronaut etc).
That feeling is so varied, if I'm creative it's allmost not there, if I'm angry it's very obvious.
Maybe it's because of thousands of references to a center, an "I", give the pattern recognizing brain a "feeling" of "center".

I once wrote a recipe for a self:
take one thousand pieces of paper
write one line on every piece, that refer to a self (e.g. "I have a cat")
take one empty box
put all pieces of paper in the box
close the lid
wait until someone knocks from the inside, begging to come out
 
Wittyname said:
I once wrote a recipe for a self:
take one thousand pieces of paper
write one line on every piece, that refer to a self (e.g. "I have a cat")
take one empty box
put all pieces of paper in the box
close the lid
wait until someone knocks from the inside, begging to come out
Click to expand...
I did this very thing and when I heard knocking from the inside I asked who it was and the response sounded very rude so I just threw the whole box into a fire and started over again ...
 
trentwray, this is how I understand:

There are one identity that observes and manage several "subdentities", sort of realms in the totality of the brain. The identity is unbound to any subdentity, and can choose from which subdentity it will view (and therefore how it's view will be colored) the rest of the brain.
But, because the number and styles of the subdentities not yet are finalized, i.e. the brain is evolving, and the identity is occupied with this evolution, it produces an existential experience of not whole, not one.
Once this evolution is complete, all the subdentities will merge with the identity, forming one unit.
The conciousness will be one, we will be whole.

Correct?
 
Wittyname said:
trentwray, this is how I understand:

There are one identity that observes and manage several "subdentities", sort of realms in the totality of the brain. The identity is unbound to any subdentity, and can choose from which subdentity it will view (and therefore how it's view will be colored) the rest of the brain.
But, because the number and styles of the subdentities not yet are finalized, i.e. the brain is evolving, and the identity is occupied with this evolution, it produces an existential experience of not whole, not one.
Once this evolution is complete, all the subdentities will merge with the identity, forming one unit.
The conciousness will be one, we will be whole.

Correct?
Click to expand...
If you're summarizing what I was brainstorming outloud about the other day, that's basically it :)

One of the keys to the off-the-cuff hypothesis, was that the portions of our brain which are more or less "empty rooms", yet have the "lights turned on in the room" so to speak, are examining the needs and purposes of the other portions of our brain to find out what to become "next" that will be most helpful to us as a species. Considering our current need of global communication networks, entertainment input in virtual environments, stress related to securing our futures and understanding our psychological pasts, etc and so forth ... my idea was that our brain was trying to find ways to meet these needs for us to further evolve us in our environment. So it would only makes sense that we would "try" to develop abilities to communicate to others the way a phone works ... without a phone. Or the amount of worry and stress we spend on securing our futures ... to try to predict the future by looking for signs, thoughts, feelings, that might yield information for us (like a computer model). Considering our love of fueling our imaginations through visual and auditory stimuli ... why wouldn't our brains try and produce similar effects for us in real life (i.e. more ghost sightings, UFO sightings, paranormal experiences, etc etc)?

So those blank rooms have the lights turned on and maybe the basic, first step of a blank room is to know that , "I exist". After that ... it tries to decide how to furnish itself by examining the rest of the house. This might be what fuels part of the existential experience of the "unwhole" I suppose :)

It could be argued that religion and the paranormal has existed for thousands of years, and people have believed in ghosts and the supernatural for just as long. But how long is a long time? How long does a species take to evolve itself to "the next level"? I mean, the amount of knowledge we have available today for the average person to access and even be able to read/write to study it is tremendous. And compared to nature, our environment that we've created is increasingly complicated and foreign to us. We are more or less aliens in our own world in some ways. So in this sense, I was wondering if those parts of our brains that are waiting to evolve into the next useful function weren't just basically going ape-s*** in some of us LOL. So in other words, someone who is having "psychic" feelings might be completely delusional ... OR ... they might actually be experiencing say, 10% of an actual "ability" that humanity is testing to see if it's practical to be able to do naturally on some level. Does this mean that in 3,000 years we'll all be reading each other's minds? Perhaps not. But ... perhaps we could develop some other means of communicating that other animals possess already which we do not (like elephants for example, or dolphins, bats, etc). I mean, if animals evolve to better cope with their environment and the demands it places on them, combining with the "survival of the fittest" .... perhaps our brains view what computers and telephones and cell phones and televisions do as "competition" and in our attempt to be more like them ... we will actually get to do some of the things they do. Maybe one day we'll receive radio signals organically LOL.

Anyway, my guess would be that the brain would try to become one "conciousness" and thus, the "whole". In a way, it would be "making most of the muscle before making any more" I guess. Perhaps that is how we evolved to a degree in the first place? We made the most of whatever our brain matter was at the time ... and then exploded the size of our brains to a much larger size than we would need, until we maxed out that brain's potential as well. And once that size was limited, we exploded our brain size again ... etc etc. Each time, maxing out the ability possibilities of our brains. Currently, we obviously don't use all of our brain. So perhaps once we "max out" what we have, we'll make more in the future. ? ? ?

Anyway ... just brainstorming. That's all. Pun intended :) :alc:

ETA: and forgive me for doing neuroscience and/or principles of evolution / natural selection any injustice through my ignorance of the topics :(
 
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How do you know there is anything other than self?




I shall now run away to flee the bricks thrown by those previously dragged into discussions about solipsism.
 
trentwray said:
The teletransporter vs. materialism is interesting ... what it implies ... hmm ...
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For me it implies that bondage to this particular illusion is strong. Your body is destroyed and then recreated identically - according to materialism nothing is lost. Yet, you won't find so many materialists willing to get into the Teletransporter.

The belief seems to be usually that something must be lost when your body is destroyed and recreated - there must be some "experiencer" some "seat of observation" whatever - that needs to be transferred. Rationality versus fear, mostly the latter seems to win here.

Nick
 
Wittyname said:
trentwray, this is how I understand:

There are one identity that observes and manage several "subdentities", sort of realms in the totality of the brain. The identity is unbound to any subdentity, and can choose from which subdentity it will view (and therefore how it's view will be colored) the rest of the brain.
But, because the number and styles of the subdentities not yet are finalized, i.e. the brain is evolving, and the identity is occupied with this evolution, it produces an existential experience of not whole, not one.
Once this evolution is complete, all the subdentities will merge with the identity, forming one unit.
The conciousness will be one, we will be whole.

Correct?
Click to expand...

Why do you think there is one identity? What's wrong with a basic materialist perspective... The body is a machine. Consciousness is information processing. Self is an emergent phenomena caused by feedback loops in the information processing. Identity is just an aspect of self, not an absolute.

Nick
 
Nick227 said:
Read it. Care to point out where he considers there to be a self which persists?

Nick
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My apologies. In context, my reply does sound rather as if I am saying the book contains the proof the OP is asking after. I meant it merely as a recommendation for a great book to read on the topic. I should have made that clear.
 
The concept of the "center" is simply a view of the self. When asking if there is a self, shouldn't the question be more along the lines of, "is there something that can reasonably be called the self?"

I think this feeling of the self stems from the constancy of observations. At the heart of it, "we" feel that "we" are in control if "we" have a plan in mind, act with intent to carry out the plan, and in monitoring the plan, perceive that it is being carried out. I propose that in general, there's a "single-mindedness" to this planning, nominally speaking, such that in general mutually exclusive plans don't get committed to (e.g., normally, we wouldn't simultaneously decide to walk to the fridge and walk outside; though we might simultaneously decide to walk to outside and shove some gum in our mouth). In the same manner that our feeling of control stems from our observation that the thing we planned and "acted on" is the thing being carried out, I propose that our sense of self stems in part from our sensing this single-mindedness about the network.

This makes more sense to me than the notion that we have some built-in unexplained tendency towards a belief in the aforementioned "center".
 
yy2bggggs said:
This makes more sense to me than the notion that we have some built-in unexplained tendency towards a belief in the aforementioned "center".
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It seems to me that belief in the existence of a self reinforces physical and psychological integrity, and is thus likely to be evolutionarily favoured. The brain is a mass of different modules, originating from different periods of evolution, forced to co-exist and work together in a pretty tight space. To believe in the existence of a central "owner" of all this hardware, on who's behalf one is toiling, would seem to be one way of trying to keep it all together.

Nick
 
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Nick227 said:
It seems to me that belief in the existence of a self reinforces physical and psychological integrity, and is thus likely to be evolutionarily favoured. The brain is a mass of different modules, originating from different periods of evolution, forced to co-exist and work together in a pretty tight space. To believe in the existence of a central "owner" of all this hardware, on who's behalf one is toiling, would seem to be one way of trying to keep it all together.

Nick
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You mean we need a "conciousness boss"?

The idea is actually somewhat mirrored in other parts of the body to a degree. Take the heart for example. When discussing the electrical pathways of the heart and what actually makes it "pump", the heart basically works off a hierarchal system with a primary "pacemaker" (i.e. the sinus node), and if that fails a secondary one (the A/V Junction for example), then a third one (ventricular rhythms) etc etc. It's not an exact thing, but it's essentially like a president, vice-president, so on and so forth. The respiratory system is similar in the way it uses primary / secondary muscle, etc when more effort is needed to respirate.

Perhaps the conciousness is similar? Perhaps there is a "boss" that coordinates the whole machine, and the belief in this boss reinforces the integrity of the overall system. When that fails, perhaps we slip into secondary forms of "mental leaders" (like perhaps a childlike state, or mood disorders, or pure "logic" with flat affect :) , etc etc) and we lose the ability to function more synergetically (word?) as a machine.
 
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