So... uhm... what makes you YOU?
How do you explain who you are?
How do you explain who you are?
A question of Identity...
- Thread starter Quantum Quack
- Start date
Beaconator
Valued Senior Member
What makes me ME is fairly simple to explain. I have a great insight into the life experiences of others. This is found in my ability to connect with nearly every individual on a personal level. I mean an extreme level of discernment I reach when I truly want to objectively see the connections I can make with most individuals. I can see their pain and their joy written on every action and every word that becomes a connection to life. My love is the most powerful tool I know.
so to summarize: "A unique way of loving" could be one identifier?
An intriguing question could be :
"How do you know you are not someone else?"
Example:
"Peter went to sleep one night and woke up as John
Maybe he finds out when he sit's down to his favorite meal (of "Eye of Yam soup"
) and couldn't eat it.
"How do you know you are not someone else?"
Example:
"Peter went to sleep one night and woke up as John
Maybe he finds out when he sit's down to his favorite meal (of "Eye of Yam soup"
) and couldn't eat it.
I am a biological entity, embedded in the constant motion of existence. I have a sense of self-awareness that is the sum of my personal experiences and interactions with my environment and all other living things.
Read up on basic Buddhism and learn that 'self' is an illusion. There is so much available about this on the Internet that I feel no obligation to direct you to it. As many of you will know, I am a Christian in faith, but I am fairly well read in the Buddhist philosophy (it's not a religious faith) and I cannot see where my faith and this philosophy contradict one another in any significant way.
In any case Buddhism offers a very cogent answer to the OP's question. As Siddhartha Gautama used to say, 'Come and see.'
In any case Buddhism offers a very cogent answer to the OP's question. As Siddhartha Gautama used to say, 'Come and see.'
of course "Identity" according to Buddhist philosophy is only one of many attachments or addictions that needs to be mastered as part of the journey towards enlightenment.
But the Op is not about what is Identity but more about what makes the identity "identifiably" YOU and why not someone else...
One thing that comes to mind is that of a matter of perspective ( sensory) That is to say, I am me because I sense from my own unique perspective (in 4 d space) and YOU sense from your unique perspective in 4 d space.
To extend:
We may be identical twins but still we are individually unique because of the impossibility of being only one perspective (physically)
I really had and maybe still am having trouble understanding the question. Memory - would be my answer, if I have understood the question. My identical twin, that plug ugly S.O.B., would have different memories and a slightly different perspective than I even if we spent all day together doing the same things. His perspective, and hence memory, may even be quite different. say, I enjoyed a game of volleyball on the beach, but he just found the day hot and the match tiresome, and maybe (outside my hearing) he overheard some friend of ours mention what a plug ugly S.O.B he is (though his twin brother is quite charming and witty!) and that spoiled his take on the event.
I have to go through this in order to address the above in the paragraph afterwards:
In the context of being a spacetime "worm" in a block universe, Peter might be all of the past versions of himself simultaneously. But the dependency of cognition upon what's stored in a working memory state specific to a particular moment -- as well as linguistic thoughts involved in identifying and understanding an event / circumstance having to stretch over several "nows" [the supposed illusion of time having a flow to it]-- leads to each Peter believing that he alone exists. The immediate sequence of present moments for an 8-year old Peter is what is real for that Peter; his memory / cognition is isolated from its future developments and the Peter of a year before resides in the detail-deficient or "summarized" vagueness of long-term memory. Likewise, a 41-year old Peter is consciously alienated from the other past/future body stages constituting his higher dimensional "worm" form; only his immediate sequence of nows is real for him.
Peter waking up to find himself in the completely different worldline of another person (John), minus accomplishment by artificial means, seems to imply the the additional factor of everybody being everybody simultaneously [in some underlying sense]. But likewise consciously isolated from each other just as past/future selves were in the former scenario for similar reasons (i.e., limited to dependency of cognition upon the applicable brain / body state). The difficulty of such a supposed psychic-migration event happening rests in that for John to know that he was once Peter means that the latter's memories have transferred to the former; which is a naturalistic no-no if such cannot be explained in a non-WooWoo fashion by physics.
A public-wide or consensus confirmation of a universal generic subjectivity behind the individual instantiations of it is thus obstructed by skull-housed information having to be moved / duplicated in a slow, old-fashioned classical manner rather than whatever "magic" might be sported in fringe theories. Peter finding his "software" patterns downloaded into an android body by high-tech is remotely tenable in sci-fi land, but the other happening (minus artificial means and intervention) currently seems more in fantasy territory.
Paul Davies: "Our senses tell us that time flows: namely, that the past is fixed, the future undetermined, and reality lived in the present. Yet various physical and philosophical arguments suggest otherwise. The passage of time is probably an illusion. Consciousness may involve thermodynamic or quantum processes that lend the impression of living moment by moment." --That Mysterious Flow; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN; SEPTEMBER 2002
As you might have already gleaned from earlier, I don't consider such speculative appeals to the asymmetric arrow of time and quantum processes to even be necessary for explaining why one would only seem to be solely experiencing "this moment" in this body in this place. Kind of overkill.
Yes indeed!
Just to clarify my point though,
To narrow down the idea of perspective in the context I am using, take two identical video cameras and place them directly opposite each other say 1 meter apart.
View the feed on a split screen and compare the results.
Even though the cameras may be theoretically identical, they individually view from a unique perspective in 4 dimensional space. In fact it is impossible for one camera to view exactly what the other camera views unless it becomes that camera.
Co relation:
In Buddhist Philosophy the nature of the "existential" ego is similar I believe. It may be one ego but because of 3 dimensional space being the "conscious" reality we have two unique egos. (Dualism vs Aikya or Yoga)
To me this is only one aspect that our existential egos gain a significant sense of uniqueness of identity.
Interesting!
Do you believe:
- That time must have duration for the perspective, for identity to be realized?
- That identity in any given moment (with out time duration ) could be entirely non-ascertainable?
- Therefore time duration [ passing of time ] is needed to know (experience) yourself to be you?
This comes back to a question I posed to the forum a few years ago:
Who are you when you are unconscious (no time passage)?
I am a biological entity, embedded in the constant motion of existence. I have a sense of self-awareness that is the sum of my personal experiences and interactions with my environment and all other living things.
Then personal experience or the memory of those experiences is what works for you?
It appears that a good memory is critical to this topic yes?
Thinking about the devastating effects of Alzheimer's Disease
and noting the possible relationship between loss of memory, thus identity, thus ego [Buddhism] thus life (corporal)...
Do you believe that Identity and Life are directly related?
To be honest one of the things that prompted this thread was due to watching this fav. music video by Bruce Springsteen:
Streets of Philadelphia
Where it appears [my interpretation] Bruce was suggesting he felt lost due to transcending his roots. That being, past childhood living, in the challenging environs of the "Streets" of Philadelphia.
"Unrecognizable to my self"
...
"Felt my self fading away"
etc
[video=youtube;4z2DtNW79sQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2DtNW79sQ[/video]
Streets of Philadelphia
Where it appears [my interpretation] Bruce was suggesting he felt lost due to transcending his roots. That being, past childhood living, in the challenging environs of the "Streets" of Philadelphia.
"Unrecognizable to my self"
...
"Felt my self fading away"
etc
[video=youtube;4z2DtNW79sQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2DtNW79sQ[/video]
Genetics , psychology , enviroment , and life experiences and the melding of all in degrees of , proportion , which can have change ( but not necessarily )
Have you ever read anything on the intriguing Chimera Genetics specifically regarding Humans who live in a state of at least two sets of genetics in the one body.
So are we discussing exceptions or the norm
Possibly by including discussions about why the question posed is not as easy to answer as it seems is worth undertaking?
But is it necessary ?
Is anything on sciforums, necessary?