What defines you as "you"?

Don't do that. It hurts.

 

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what hurts ?

 

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Come on, man.
Not here, not anywhere. We can have a drink, but I'm not going to sleep with you.

 

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neither do I want to sleep with you

but I don't presume to know exactly what you mean in post # 41

I'm not trying to figure out what you mean , ( I do that with my wife !!! )

I don't have the time or inclination

just tell me straight what you mean

 

I actually don't know, at this point in time.
It was reactionary.

I suppose... I understand subversion completely. I do it every day. I have a job. I know who I am there, and I know who I am here.
But I don't like it, and I never have.

That might sound spurious, but you have to understand that I believe it tempers responses. One is never completely honest with one whom one considers superior.
Once I garner that impression from you, I will always treat you differently. Yes?

So when I say "it hurts", I mean... I don't want to do that. But I will.

It hurts knowing what I am, as opposed to what I know I should be.

 

don't ever treat me as being superior to you , ever

and I would tell you that to your face

I'm who I am

I think differently , true

river

 

Great. This thread has descended into dithering drunks. Any one care to get back on track?

 

First, let's finish trashing equality.

 

Wrote a long reply, deleted.

Alright, you have my attention. I won't promise to reply to anything you write. Promises aren't my thing. Can't even promise I'll be here next week.

But you got it backwards, you know.

 

What's "on track", Landau?

 

See the OP and the pertinent responses. Such as my last.

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Something about the soul.

Look, until you folk can provide some substance for your beliefs, I'm not buying in.
Hell, I'll admit the possibility, but I'm not going to discuss it until it becomes something more substantial than that.

 

Oooh, yes. Let's.

 

equality is a fiction, a dream, a concept a construct, an ideal which has little or nothing to do with reality


.......
your turn

 

Buying into what? We're just asking questions no one has the answers to, and speculating. And it doesn't cost a dime!

 

When or whare ever they are stored... the ever changin me is my curent memories... an then ther were none.!!!

 

I'm glad you asked about what defines me. I can give a more detailed description than most people you will encounter.

A large portion of "self" resides as models of behavior, likes and dislikes, nuances of people I know or knew, details of their facial features sufficient for me to recognize them, details of their voices and even the sound of their walk so that I needn't see them to know they are present. Their cognitive strengths and weaknesses, anything they have ever done for or against me or anyone I know. These are all vital social survival imperatives and information. It takes up much more of our fancy mammalian neocortex than we would choose to admit. It is also the miracle that makes humans the top intellect on this planet, as explained by the next paragraph.

Another large portion of "self" is involved with our passions and obsessions. The process of building cognitive models of people we know can be co-opted into passions for activities, things, or even disciplines such as science. These all have nuances similar to the behaviors we notice in our social contacts. Various strategies to make things work the way we wish, or extra attention to things that go wrong are exactly the things that make us who we are, give us our own strengths and weaknesses, passions or obsessions. The same facility used for encoding and organizing facial features and sounds is easily co-opted to understanding and communicating effectively in spoken and written languages. It may take a lifetime for this to develop to its ultimate expression. It certainly did for me. For reasons I cannot relate, I'm intimately aware of the impact of all of these things, their limitations and intimate details, almost down to the particular ionization wave that is a neural impulse. This might be an unusual cognitive ability of mine I have no idea. Children who are blind from birth have no idea they are blind either. To me, the rest of the human race appears to have certain sensory and cognitive deficiencies I do not possess even in small measure. And I usually do not trouble myself to point this out, for the same reason it is difficult to explain what sight is to someone who is congenitally blind, but since you asked...

This is pretty much all that we are. Not really very much, is it? I hope this doesn't deflate anyone's estimation about how miraculous it is that such a simple adaptation is mostly all that has made us what we are, individually, socially, and culturally.

 

When or where they are stored - that's precisely my question. Where are they stored if after X years the brain's atoms, and therefore its cells, have all been replaced? That's what I meant earlier about the persistence of memory. How can it be so?

Hunh!?

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I have underlined most of the things you said that puzzle me. I am not trying to goad you, I just really can't understand. Your opening statement makes not the slightest sense to me, and your explanation following does nothing to help. I may as well have underlined your entire first paragraph.

In your next paragraph you blithely explain 'self' as if you are the only one who knows about the self. I don't really that we, or any one else for that matter, ever established if there really even is such a thing as self. (Google 'Buddhism' for more info). Again, the part of have underlined is especially obscure to me.

And this: For reasons I cannot relate, I'm intimately aware of the impact of all of these things, their limitations and intimate details, almost down to the particular ionization wave that is a neural impulse. This might be an unusual cognitive ability of mine I have no idea.

If you cannot relate them and 'have no idea' why tell us about it? And then with your allusion to bind children you also tell us you lack some basic sensory and cognitive abilities???

And twice in you post you speak of human cognition as a miracle, and yet 'nothing much'. So which is it?

 

Virtue. When your bad "it wasn't me."

 

Can anyone tel me how to edit a previous post please. I misspelled 'blind' in my last post. I meant 'blind children' not 'bind children'.

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