Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Brain processes and individual experience
I had some trouble trying to find out what davidsmith73 was talking about, but I think Interesting Ian explained it quite clearly:
Interesting Ian said:
I would say that different experiences do not alter the self one iota. It only affects our personality.
I think davidsmith73 assumes three different layers where all the others see only two. First, we have all this matter (your body with your brain). Next, we have the experiences (including qualia, feelings, memories, and so on). And finaly, we have the Self which is experiencing alls these experiences.
What davidsmith73 is asking (if I got it right) is something like: according to materialism, it is obvious that my experiences must be attached to my body and my brain (they are caused by my brain, according to materialism). But why is it that my self is experiencing just
this set of experiences and not just any other?
This problem gets even worser if we concede that there are no separate physical processes, just one big universe. If consciousness
is a brain process, then there can't be two consciousnesses that are completly seperated. But two Selfes are (by definition, I would guess) perfectly separated.
The assumption of a third layer, the immutable self (explicit in the case of Interesting Ian, supposed in the case of davidsmith73 (hope it is not just a strawman I am attacking)) seems to be very troublesome to me. You would have to explain how it is possible for the Self to experience some experiences (perhaps by having some second-degree-experiences?). Also, what evidence do you have that there is indeed such a Self? Maybe you think this is the thing you couldn't have more evidence: isn't it clear that a Self does exist? I am thinking, therefore is it not obvious that I must exist?
But all I know about it is that there are some experiences. I have no idea who is having all those experiences. And few materialists would agree that there is an immutable Self that stays unchanged , regardless of what ever happens (just the personality changes, according to Interesting Ian). By the way, all this was explained long ago by David Hume, if anyone is interested.
davidsmith73 said:
The fact that materialism holds that the physical universe does not contain any truly separate processes means that experiences cannot be separate either since they are the same thing as a physical process. Individuality should not exist.
I think the idea that two consciousnesses (what's the proper plural?) are completely separate and can't interfere is quite absurd. What are we supposed to do here? I am moving my fingers on my keybord to fiddle with your consciousness. Well, but only
I am experiencing my qualias, right? So even if somebody else is typing some words to transfer her thoughts, ideas or emotions into my brain, my qualias are unique, and so am I, right?
Maybe a photon that arives in your eye doesn't trigger a spark in your brain, but due to some unlikely, but possible quantum effect causes a spark in my brain. Maybe a neuron firing in my brain causes something to happen in your brain due to some weird and completly unlikely quantum process. But such effects are so unlikely that it is impossible to notice them at all. So for all practical reasons, my brain processes are seperate from your brain processes, as long as we do not communicate. But this is completly sufficient to explain why your experiences
seem to be seperate from my experiences: because they are, for every practical reason. If my eyes see something red, your brain will not experience a red impression. And this is sufficient to be able to speak about "my" experiences and "your" experiences.
To reuse the stomach example once again, how can you define on an atmostic level where one digestions ends and another starts? You can imagine examples where the difference between two digestions becomes some grey-in-grey. But usually, we know quite well where one digestion ends and another one starts.
From a materialistic point of view, you could imagine some kind of Siamese twins with connected brains. Depending on how their brains are connected or separate, maybe they would claim "we are two different selves" or "I am only one self" or some bizzar states in between, like "I feel like having only one immutable self, but two completly different personalities, sharing the same memory" or "I feel like having only one immutable self, but two completly different personalities, each one having its one separate memory", or "I feel like one person in the morning, but like two in the afternoon" and so on.
After all, the idea of a self sounds a bit like a little homunculi sitting in my head, experiencing my experiences. How does he do this? Is there a little homunculi inside the head of my homunculi experiencing the experiences the homunculi makes? And so on. Just drop the self and stick to the experiences.
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Maybe a bit off-topic:
davidsmith73 said:
Materialism proposes that an experience is the same thing as a physical process and has an objective existence as such.
No, it doesn't. Some Materialists say that experiences are physical processes. Others say they are caused by physical processes.
Sorry. In my defense, the OP did not so postulate imo, but that is where the thread has gone.