Why is this my body?

[Cyperium]

So, which one would be "you"? Six weeks later when each has had different experiences, which one is "you"? Sixty years later???

Exactly, both can't be me. It doesn't have to do with experiences, simply the fact that I can only be one body is sufficient. The only difference physically of those bodies are the location.

If there's a you for every body configuration (a parallel you-verse?) then there's you before she told you she was dumping you, and there's you sometime later, sitting on a park bench stabbing your forehead with an ice cream cone because your eye-hand coordination hasn't fully recovered.

Yes, our bodies are changing. This doesn't mean that there are a lot of parallell me's. I'm only me, although my body is changing as I grow older, at least judging from experience.

There's you at version t minus x trying to figure out how to tie your shoes, and there's you at t plus x fumbling again, as if it all returns to roost.

Given a you-verse, then by sectioning your brain at the cusp of each brain-brane you'd probably notice that there is little or no rewiring of the pons where you mostly really live, but rather it's almost entirely peripheral rewiring, out in the cortex, where you left your car keys and what happened moments before you opened the message informing you you were penniless.

It's not just for lack of a cosmic screwdriver that picking your own lock is problematic. Get a friend to go with you, to do the play by play PET scans. You'd get a rendition of yourself as you see yourself, out in the cortex surfing, being Bond--James Bond, and everything else, like now, caught up in the mystery of whether the real you is behind door #1, 2 or 3.

On review of the integrated PET scan you-map (Arlo Guthrie's "twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was") you might end up with nothing more than a suspicion that you are merely a collection of nows in a plastic race condition along some cortical configuration at version x dot umpty ump. Although it might take a good long conversation over pints of stout (or whatever you're drinking) before you actually happened upon that particular phraseology.

You are synaptogenesis, you are the race condition, and you are now--but only if you subscribe to living outside of the pons, which (ironically) can be a very lonely place to be. That is, is a snail ever pining for anything? Not that you have any choice in the matter. Much as the folks down at the psych ward have no choice in their present configuration. What inhabits those bodies, you might ask. I doubt any of it's plainly rooted in the brain stem.

I don't doubt that those in psych-wards have a "me" too, that are equally rooted in their body.

Could be that some of them are what is called "philosophical zombies", where they have a body and mind, but no "me", or perhaps a body without a mind even.

This body or this brain? You as a system can't differentiate, but oddly enough after the lobotomy others perceive you as a collection of modules, only now with a few of them taken out of their misery.

Yes, the self seem to persist after lobotomy. But I don't think we can take away too much before we loose the self.

That ignorance is bliss--is reflected in the optimism and quick glee of folks afflicted with Down's syndrome. And it's nothing more than a congenital anomaly, so there but for nondisjunction during meiotic anaphase go you or I. Such a person might also ask why they inhabit this body, but not likely in a way that would plague them. "Why is that," you might ask, and from this perspective, which is the real affliction? Apparently the chromosomal duplication doesn't impair the brain stem, a fact that ties you-ness to something that went awry during or after the evolution of tetrapods, that is, reptiles are probably not afflicted by any disorder that converts infrared into a sense of well-being.

Undoubtedly anyone who feels left out--that they've not been dealt from the same deck as, say, the King of Saudi Arabia, or, in the worst of misfortune and proclivity to poor judgment, a piss-poor configuration such as mine--there probably does crop up in their minds at one time or another this ponderous question you pose. Then again, the ability to formulate the question itself seems to arise out of little more that the genetic predisposition to ask such questions. So you're also stuck with this other interpretation of yourself as a mere window on the continuum of all selves the preceded you in the family tree.

At some atomic level you could regard any instance of the you-verse as a delta from the last, so at stardate yada yada you are a particular axon terminal reaching tenderly for the dubious bliss of joining the synaptic cleft, fertilizing it with serotonin and sweet nothings, from which "then-you", as the delta, are born. Alternatively, you are the emanation of the action potential ushering forth from the marriage, finding yourself (so to speak) in a race condition with countless other incarnations already in circulation. This leads to the more conventional interpretation of you as electromagnetic waves and the pretty colors on the PET scan. Now just imagine they'd given you a coloring book in kindergarten and on every page was the outline of a brain and legend mapping Crayola colors to brain activity. If you weren't stuck choosing between Sienna and Mauve you might finish before they called for the books, then into the cosmic bin it might go and Ouila! here you are, exactly as you colored yourself to be, maybe even a fireman after all.

You've gotta love the PET scan, but where's the you-ness in it anyway? If there is a you-verse and each synapse is the delta that branches to the next you, what does it mean? Each wavelet of delta-you racing down its axon, headed for who know's what, or why, probably has a nominal spectrum, and the sum of these ("sigma-you", 1/3 of a fraternity) ought to resemble at least the sum of all cell tower signals in the world, which may seem quite profound until you realize you were probably only wondering what you just ate that gave you heartburn or why some particular fool is responding so moronically to your thread.

Yes, there's a lot of activity that can be measured in the brain, however the subjective experience can't be measured, it might be a "illusion" but where is that illusion?

But since this all seems to emanate so far from the brain stem, it's still hardly you anyway, depending on your definition, of course, and given that the brain stem is hardly a product of semantics.

I'd still stick with Sheh's answer, that you inhabit this body and nobody else's because it was your parents who made you and not somebody else's parents. And since each (healthy) body comes with sucking reflex, a bootstrap loader connected to the parietal cortex, and a world of stimulus to fill it up, this moment you're having is inevitable. Nevertheless you're still stuck in the pons, just being, while the rest of you is out there maybe reading Sartre but nevertheless becoming.

To say that it was because my parents made me, is irrelevant, as they wouldn't be my parents wouldn't the body be mine. Whoever was the body, he would say that it was because it was his parents that made him. It's not actually answering the question of why this body is mine. What makes me exist as this body instead of any other body.

I suspect it would be more disconcerting to ask: why is this my body and not my sibling's, if parenthood alone were to blame congratulate. Here you would have to back the clock up a few ticks to ascertain why that particular fruit dropped from the tree during ovulation, and why that particular swimmer was lined up on the diving platform, rarin' to go, and why it took the first place trophy.

If I didn't exist but some other existence was my body, then they would ask the same question and never even think about that I could have existed instead as that body.

This just goes to show that causality is a beast.

You mentioned hypnosis a while back. That, some extreme meditation, and probably psychoactive food of some rare variety alluded to in Altered States might lead you to the well of yourself. That, or deliver you from the quest altogether. In any case, happy hunting.

While digging for the rent money I'll be searching among the skeletons in my closet for any additional clues.

Hypnosis can be used to bring back memories that are lost. It wouldn't help me answer the question of the thread though.

Different kinds of 'things' 'exist' in different ways. A stone on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan doesn't exist in quite the same way that Sherlock Holmes (a fictional character) does.

Yes, I agree.

I don't think that anyone wants to deny that some poorly-defined but perhaps kind-of intuitive "you" exists in the fictional character sense. At the very least it's a plot device, a useful psychological avatar we might say.

I wouldn't say that it is fictional, as we do perceive ourselves to exist. The "illusion" has done it's job and isn't a illusion anymore. It is the real thing, even if it can only be that thing while the brain is in operation.

The disagreement seems to revolve around whether this conceptual device has any substantial reality and whether it can exist independently of the processes occuring in the body in which it finds itself, and independently of the psychological states and personal history of that embodied individual.

It doesn't have to exist independently of what is causing it. It just needs to exist to be a real thing. It might not be possible to objectively measure it, as it is a purely subjective phenomena.

Disagreement swirls around whether it even makes sense to speak of 'self A' being transferred to B's body and given all of B's memories, knowledge and predispositions. (What exactly would we be transferring if we did that?)

That depends on what gives rise to a unique self. Maybe it's a process in the brain, and not so much a structure. If so we would have to transfer the process so that another brain could take on that process instead.

As with anything physical though, it can be duplicated, but the self can't be two. The self can only be singular, so I doubt that the unique self is anything physical. How can it be, when most, if not all, physical things aren't unique, but are things that happen again, and again. Also, physical configurations can be at several places at the same time. It's said that there are no unique electrons, but that each electron is the same electron, there aren't anything physically that distinguish the properties of one electron from the other.

I would argue that if somebody claimed they had accomplished that, that there would be no reason to think of the result as 'self A occupying what was B's body'. It would simply be 'self B' in its own body.

There would be no way to prove it, and it wouldn't even be known to themselves, but there is a huge difference to exist in one body instead of another either way.

In other words, it's likely the history, body, memory, knowledge and attitudes that are individuating the 'self' abstraction. They are what distinguishes one of these 'self' constructions from all the others. The causality that perpetuates the body and its processes and states through time is likely what gives the 'self' whatever temporal continuity we imagine it has from moment to moment.

I don't see the causal link between the history, body, memory, knowledge and attitudes, to the self. I could arguably be another body, with different memories, knowledge and attitude. I don't see why they make me exist in this body instead of any other. I can think of myself having a different personality. If I did I would still exist as my body.

Who else would it be?

Somebody else would exist and call it "my body".

Perhaps we should say that "you" are the product, the result of your body's history, experiences, knowledge, feelings and so on. These are the qualities that make you you and not somebody else. Other people have different bodies, histories, memories, experiences, knowledge, attitudes and feelings that make them them. This is how we distinguish between different people, it's what individuates them.

You are talking about their personality, not their "self". Anyone could have a different personality without having a different existence altogether, they would still exist as their body whatever memories they had.

For those who aren't familiar with the jargon, I'll add that 'individuate' is a term from philosophical logic. It means "the determining of what constitutes an individual: that is, one of something. Principles of individuation are the principles by which things, normally of a kind, are distinguished into single individuals, most often at some given time." (Oxford Guide to Philosophy p. 432)

I'm suggesting that individuation of 'selves' might be the crux of the issue in this thread.

It seems to me that you are rather talking about developing a personality, I would think that a baby (even if it is to young to remember it later) would still have a unique subjective existence even though it has no memories or no personality, or would it be in some kind of mix between everyone and no one, just because it has yet to have formed any experiences? Some kind of existential limbo?

Duplicating a person is a problem-case that's widely discussed in the philosophy of personal-identity. (We had a thread about it here on Sciforums a few months ago.)

My answer would be that if Person A was duplicated, the two duplicates Person A1 and Person A2 would have become two persons, because they would no longer enjoy privileged introspective access to each other's psychological states.

But at least initially after the duplication, they would each have equal justification for claiming that they were the continuation of Person A. They would each think of Person A's memories as their own memories.

Yet, only one of them would still exist as Person A. If you were the one that was duplicated, then you must agree that Person B is a completely different person altogether even if it has exactly the same memories. There can only be one you, but there can be any number of duplicates of the body.

But as time went on, as those earlier memories receded into the past and each duplicate had its own post-duplication experiences that the other didn't, they would diverge and become increasingly different. So we can perhaps imagine the trajectories of their lives as a Y.

Time doesn't have to go on, we must realise that no matter the justification of who is "really you" you are still uniquely ONE individual, even though there are exact replicas of the body.

[wynn]

I'm suggesting that individuation of 'selves' might be the crux of the issue in this thread.

That would assume that it is clear to begin with what the "self" is.

I think we would first need to clear up what the "self" actually is, and then take it from there.

[Cyperium]

That would assume that it is clear to begin with what the "self" is.

I think we would first need to clear up what the "self" actually is, and then take it from there.

The self is just a word describing what it is like to exist. Things could objectively exist, but to have a self is what it is like to exist. The self is to exist subjectively. It is the subject to existence.

I would argue that, if no one was ever aware, then there would be no difference between the universe and nothing. Cause by what right does it exist? Nothing is there to confirm it.

[Yazata]

we do perceive ourselves to exist.

Do we? How does that happen?

We are obviously aware of our own bodies and think of them as "ours". We are aware of our own thoughts, memories and emotions, and think of them as "ours". We possess various skills (how to ride a bike or play a musical instrument perhaps) that we can't directly introspect but can demonstrate by performance, and think of those skills as "ours". We have various psychological propensities to behave in various ways, and to the extent that we are even aware of them we think of them as "ours".

But in all that, the hypothetical owner of the body, the memories, feelings and perceptions, the skills and propensities, never seems to enter into our direct awareness at all. It's always hiding just beyond our vision so to speak, imperceived in that mysterious void that subjectively lies just behind our faces.

A person's sense of him/herself is something that appears in their thinking and speech through what appears to be kind of an instinctive inference. Perhaps it arises as an artifact of the subject-object grammar of our natural languages. Perhaps it serves as kind of a cognitive avatar when our nervous systems are remembering, imagining, assigning blame or praise, or critiquing behavior. Perhaps it serves as the focus of our bodies' self-preservation instincts.

The question isn't whether the idea of 'myself' exists, we all agree that it does. The question is what the word 'myself' actually refers to. In particular, the question is whether it names some non-physical or supernatural substance, some mysterious transcendental essence of ourselves.

That's where the philosophical leap takes place, that carries us far beyond anything that we can directly observe in our own experience.

[spidergoat]

then clearly you don't have even close to half the personality disorders you make out to have ....

I don't have any personality disorders. I have a developmental disorder. And what does that have to do with the subject?

Advice that you seem capable of accepting, sure .... but given that you are the one advocating all discussions of truth or illusion via the medium of words is not possible it simply makes you appear hypocritical

You are describing all of Zen Buddhist literature.

[Yazata]

I wrote:

I'm suggesting that individuation of 'selves' might be the crux of the issue in this thread.

Wynn disagrees:

That would assume that it is clear to begin with what the "self" is.

This is from the beginning and the end of Cyperium's original post:

The question is simple; How come I am in this body instead of any other body? ...

Isn't it true that someone that is now in another body, just as well could have been in my body instead of me?

I'm wondering about how 'selves' are individuated. What makes 'myself' (mine, yours, Cyperium's or anyone's) unique and individual, different from everyone else's 'self'?

That seems to be the question that lies at the heart of Cyperium's original conundrum.

We can ask the individuation question without knowing precisely what 'selves' are ontologically. Whatever 'selves' are, we still need to have some way of telling them apart and distinguishing one from another. It that wasn't so, then Cyperium's original question would be meaningless.

Wynn again:

I think we would first need to clear up what the "self" actually is, and then take it from there.

I think that examining individuation is the most direct route to addressing Cyperium's original question. But that logical-semantic route is almost certainly going to deliver us into a discussion of the ontological issues that you want to discuss. (It already has, many posts ago.)

The individuation question is directly relevant to the ontological question.

If we propose to transfer Person A's 'self' into Person B's body, and in so doing give Person A's newly arrived 'self' all of Person B's individualizers: B's history, memories, feelings, ideas, skills and habits... then precisely what do we imagine that we would be transferring between them? How would B be any different after the supposed transfer than before?

In other words, I'm questioning whether the idea of a 'self' retains any meaning at all apart from the individuation stuff.

[Cyperium]

Do we?

Well, at least I perceive myself to exist. If that is my body or simply some fragment of the brain, is a different question, but whatever it means to exist that is what I perceive.

How does that happen?

I don't know how existence happens, I do know what it is like to exist though. Who knows, perhaps a rock knows what it is like to be a rock? Perhaps all of existence has a subjective part to it? All I know is that my body has a subjective part of it, which defines what it is like to be a body.

Perhaps it takes a brain to define what it is like to exist, in such a case a rock might not have a subjective, but only a objective definition.

We are obviously aware of our own bodies and think of them as "ours". We are aware of our own thoughts, memories and emotions, and think of them as "ours". We possess various skills (how to ride a bike or play a musical instrument perhaps) that we can't directly introspect but can demonstrate by performance, and think of those skills as "ours". We have various psychological propensities to behave in various ways, and to the extent that we are even aware of them we think of them as "ours".

But in all that, the hypothetical owner of the body, the memories, feelings and perceptions, the skills and propensities, never seems to enter into our direct awareness at all. It's always hiding just beyond our vision so to speak, imperceived in that mysterious void that subjectively lies just behind our faces.

We can't objectively observe ourselves, the very definition of "ourselves" is the subjective observation. In fact, no objective observation can exist of the subjective, as a observation requires a observer and in the end a observer needs to be subjective for what is observed to be meaningful.

A person's sense of him/herself is something that appears in their thinking and speech through what appears to be kind of an instinctive inference. Perhaps it arises as an artifact of the subject-object grammar of our natural languages. Perhaps it serves as kind of a cognitive avatar when our nervous systems are remembering, imagining, assigning blame or praise, or critiquing behavior. Perhaps it serves as the focus of our bodies' self-preservation instincts.

I would rather think that the subject-object grammar arises because of the sense of being something, and observing something. We observe the objective and this makes it subjective. We can't observe our selves, instead that is the subjective - which don't need to be observed but where all observations are turned subjective as well.

The question isn't whether the idea of 'myself' exists, we all agree that it does. The question is what the word 'myself' actually refers to. In particular, the question is whether it names some non-physical or supernatural substance, some mysterious transcendental essence of ourselves.

That's where the philosophical leap takes place, that carries us far beyond anything that we can directly observe in our own experience.

Yes, we can't observe it objectively, instead the subjective (the "self") is a observation of its own existence. To observe it externally would be to go outside of its existence, which can't be done - how could we observe something subjective from the outside, when it requires to be inside the subjective to make a subjective observation?

[Dr Mabuse]

"The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there." - Yasutani Roshi

[wynn]

We can ask the individuation question without knowing precisely what 'selves' are ontologically. Whatever 'selves' are, we still need to have some way of telling them apart and distinguishing one from another. It that wasn't so, then Cyperium's original question would be meaningless.

How can we distinguish one self from another, if we aren't sure what a self is to begin with?

The individuation question is directly relevant to the ontological question.

It seems to me that your individuation question also supposes that a self is somehow developed, created, processed - that it is not a given regardless of space/time/activity.
That's an ontological assumption right there.

If we propose to transfer Person A's 'self' into Person B's body, and in so doing give Person A's newly arrived 'self' all of Person B's individualizers: B's history, memories, feelings, ideas, skills and habits... then precisely what do we imagine that we would be transferring between them?

How do you know that these are the relevant individualizing factors?

On the grounds of what do you assume that a person's history, memories, feelings, ideas, skills and habits etc. are what distinguishes them from another person?

In other words, I'm questioning whether the idea of a 'self' retains any meaning at all apart from the individuation stuff.

That will depend on what we suppose that "being an individual" entails.

[lightgigantic]

"The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there." - Yasutani Roshi

then I guess Yasutani should go the extra mile and accept responsibility for being deluded since distinguishing between the "I's" who are not deluded and the "you's" who are is technically not possible for him

[lightgigantic]

I don't have any personality disorders. I have a developmental disorder. And what does that have to do with the subject?

actually I was talking about you apparently being unable to fearlessly cross teh road without looking and fearlessly taking a bath (even though the latter would offer a drastically higher number of personality deaths to the conglomerate number of individuals your body houses eg bacteria)

You are describing all of Zen Buddhist literature.

which tends to be full of disciples getting smacked in the face by their gurus whenever they start to speak on the subject ...

[wynn]

You are describing all of Zen Buddhist literature.

which tends to be full of disciples getting smacked in the face by their gurus whenever they start to speak on the subject ...

Of all Buddhist schools, Zen seems to be the most misunderstood ...
As if pretty much anything could pass for Zen ...

[lightgigantic]

Of all Buddhist schools, Zen seems to be the most misunderstood ...
As if pretty much anything could pass for Zen ...

If you are talking about "In fact this applies to all words. Words are artificial separations of a continuous process into separate frames. Useful for the purposes of discussion, but not the ultimate truth." ...you are kind of setting yourself up for a type of smack in the head made famous by a certain type of literature

[wynn]

If you are talking about "In fact this applies to all words. Words are artificial separations of a continuous process into separate frames. Useful for the purposes of discussion, but not the ultimate truth." ...you are kind of setting yourself up for a type of smack in the head made famous by a certain type of literature

No, my point is simply that some people all too easily think they're doing Zen (or Buddhism in general).
Such people wouldn't do well in an actual training in Zen (or Buddhism in general).
Despite its free-style-seeming nature, Zen (or Buddhism) isn't simply "anything goes," as many people think to be the case.