Seems a simple enough question, with perhaps a simple enough answer, which usually simplifies to "because it is your body/brain". But it just isn't that simple, that answer is actually a part of the same question, in other words "why am I this body/brain?". Some people will go on to explain things about how the "illusion" of self-hood arises in the brain and how your identity is formed through memory and through time, but it doesn't answer why that self-hood is strictly mine, why I was the result of those memories. In fact, I strongly suspect that any answer will beg the question "why is that what defines me?". Yet it is obvious that there must be a answer. I also find it fascinating that there even is a me to be defined (and thankful for that of course or I wouldn't exist and a different "me" would be this body/brain). Also, what if there is no "me" to be defined by a particular body/brain/memories? Would we have a body without a subjective self? A "philosophical zombie"?
You are who you are because you have chosen certain ways to think, believe, study and a number of other things which during your lifetime makes up who you are. Everyone can and does change as time goes by because we learn and are influenced by many things that we come into contact with daily. I have used my lifetime trying to understand many things including what my "purpose" of living is for. I have concluded that also changes throughout life as many different things happen to us all like marriage, children, work and on and on. Reading and listening to how others think, believe and behave , as just a few examples, makes me ponder about what it would be like to think that way and sometimes I make changes in myself to reflect those new ideas and ways of living. So I am changing to become something different than who I was yesterday into a different but not totally different me. I think many of us try new approaches to life for various reasons and one is to improve ourselves to make ourselves better so that we feel an accomplishment in that we have altered a lifestyle that was one way one day and something new the next. Changing to feel more comfortable with ourselves and those around us is paramount in order to live more harmoniously with ourselves as well as those we are in contact with either daily or from time to time. So who I am today will alter from time to time and that makes us who we are because we can do that. We choose to either keep the changes or not which again is our choice and makes us who we are for better or worse.
Thank you for answering the question "why am I the way that I am?", it was a good answer to that question and I can relate in many ways to the situations you describe. However, the question "why am I who I am?" was meant literally (not as the characteristics of a person), and I would be glad if you had some thoughts on that as well.
Why I am who I am is a compilation of many things from my upbringing, my parents, my genes, my friends and my education just to name a few things that come to mind. I can't change my genes nor my parents so those are two of the most important things that why I am who I am. All I can do is make myself into what I want to be doing those things I mentioned in my other post.
You are who you are because you are a biological machine with capability of asking that question, therefore, you are! Who else would you be? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
You have a lot of "my" in the post, why are they yours? Keep in mind that I don't really expect a answer, it is the lack of a answer that is interesting for me. It would be good if people realised that the answer can't be found in nature, or physics. At least not as we understand nature and physics today. I guess I could have been some other biological machine capable of asking that question. That I am a particular biological machine is what begs the question "why am I this particular biological machine?", and why not "what does it mean to the machine that I am?" and "would it mean anything else if anyone else were that machine?". Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
what if we all were "me"? we like to think of ourselves as unique individuals but that might not be the case. the only real difference between you and your neighbor is the experience.
Our brain accesses our mind which is outside our brain. We are more than the sum of our parts. Humans will only ever understand whats inside there minds, nothing more. Science knows it cannot understand lots of things, and it cannot understand this. Science has severe limitations, and the human mind will be all it works out. Its how demon possession works also, whom ever gets this freq would be able to inhabit your brain too. Yep you could in theory have more than you in your brain, as your brain is just an interface. Demon possession is known to be true in small amounts by shrinks no matter what you believe. So even though you think you know someone, and you think they are one person, its possible, yes possible that another entity could take them over, no matter what you heard, or think. Your brain accesses your mind that is outside your body. So you should be able to see why and how such a thing called demon possession could work, and all human groups have believed in it over the years.
Impossible. If you are you, then other is not you, and you are not other. You could never have been other. You are a particular biological machine because you are an object in space that exists in space and time. All the times that you are, you are, and the times you aren't, you aren't, but at NO TIME does YOU=OTHER according to you, not other. Did I say that clear enough? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It means to the machine that you make decisions for the machine, and ultimately the machine relies on you to make sound decisions so that the machine can keep machining as a component of the big machine that's machining in space. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Edit: Pink Floyd already welcomed you to the machine. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! If the machine was somebody else then you would be somebody else, so put yourself in their shoes.
Because I am who I am for that's me. I've answered your query as best I could and if you don't think it is an answer then it is you that has a problem with understanding what I said rather than what I said. The answer is found within yourself and you are part of nature in which physics also resides. Just because we do not fully understand nature yet doesn't mean that we aren't trying to.
Isn't this question a bit like asking "why is a wooden chair made of wood?" Just as a wooden chair could not be made of anything else other than wood, you are you because you could not be anyone else. You are a pattern of activity that inhabits a single space at a single time, and reacts and interacts according to that space, that time. As such it is necessarily unique (no two patterns occupy the same space and time). The "me" could be seen as just a means of identifying and self-referencing the pattern from everything else. Ooh. Head rush. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
A follow-up question to this would be, "If you were anybody else, would you even know the difference?" I don't think so. I don't think our consciousness of ourselves, as being this conscious being at this moment in time, is tied to anything objective, be it our brains, or our memories, or our relationships, or our possessions. Consider this thought experiment: imagine they were able to modify your brain thru nanotechnology to become exactly like someone else's brain. All the cells and synapses reengineered to be exactly like another brain. That means all your memories, desires, and personality traits would be gradually replaced by another's. (For argument's sake let's say your body was reengineered to be exactly like that other person too.) But let's say you were conscious while this process was goin on. Would you just blank out forever at a certain point in the transformation process to be replaced by a totally "other" consciousness? I don't think so. I think you would continue being a conscious being until you end up having the brain of another person. Objectively you would BE that other person, in no way distinguishable from them. But subjectively you'd still be the you you always were conscious as. This demonstrates the nature of self-identity as opposed to individuality. Of being a "what" as opposed to a "this". The person you identify as could have been anyone. What makes you you is totally independent of that. It is an inherent grasp of oneself being conscious, in this precise instant and no other, that makes you you. What makes THAT you is a bit of mystery to me. Is it a soul--a core or essence that transcends objective physicality and time itself? Maybe so. Thus the somewhat buddhist quest in life to detach our true self as present consciousness from all the equipment that it is objectively attached to. IE. you are not just a son, or a father, or a plumber, or a democrat, or the owner of a porsche, or so-and-so with this name and age and this particular autobiography. Your "selfness"--your quintessential irreducible being-- is inherent and is rooted in the timeless Now.
I could never have been the other machine? Then how could the other machine have a subjective? Because the only way that I could never have been the other machine would be if the other machine couldn't have a subjective, otherwise I see no reason why I couldn't have been the other machine (and obviously thought that that machine was 'I'). Obviously I'm always me, that's not the question, the question is why "me" is this body, if I were any other body then that would be "me". So do you have any argument why I couldn't have been that other body instead? Fair enough, I guess Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Yes, so why is this particular machine what is me? If you were another body then you would still claim that, so that can't be the answer (you're taking the simple route, or rather, you are taking a even simpler route which is something called "circular argument"). And the opposite can't be true? That you have a problem with understanding what I said and thus gave the wrong answer? We should always try to understand nature and physics, that doesn't mean that all answers are available to us. Claiming that you are you because of your brain is simply rephrasing the question. So that isn't a answer even so how could it be that simple? The question is why I couldn't be anyone else, before I existed I was no one, so why am I now this particular body from all the available ones? I will of course always identify myself as "I" no matter which body I am. That doesn't mean that "I" could not have been a different body, I would perceive a different life, but I would still call myself "I". I think that the question could be misunderstood, I'm trying to explain the actual question, but it's hard to avoid misunderstanding because of the ambiguity of "I" and "you". As you might expect the question still isn't answered by that, since "why am I this particular pattern of activity?" still isn't answered. It is necessarily unique, there's no question about that, but why am I this particular unique body (or pattern of activity)? I wouldn't know the difference obviously since I have no memory of being this body if I become another. However existentially there would be a difference, I would live a entirely different life. Exactly! That is the main point. The difference between us subjectively can't be physical. The subjective must be necessarily unique, and there are no unique things in physics. I personally think we have a soul. I have gone through a lot of options but the soul is what fits best, even if that means introducing something that can't be explained by physics as we know it.
A p-zombie is supposed to blend in successfully with the rest of us. Such a human body that functioned as expected for a "normal" person would accordingly still have to exhibit subjective selfhood characteristics in terms of outward behavior. A showing of the external world would just as much be missing from its sensory perceptions as its personal thoughts would be lacking inner manifestation. Thus, ironically only observing non-zombies would have empirical evidence for even that body-behavior version of a zombie's "self". What always seems to get detoured around when it comes to the unlikelihood of successful zombies, though, is the evolutionary reasons for why they would universally (as a group) be pretending to have experiences which they did not. Even if they were provided, the causes for a zombie's deceptive reports would at least be traced to micro-structural differences between us and them. That alone would disqualify a p-zombie from being a 100% faithful physical duplicate of a regular human's body (nothing added or taken away except experience). Of course, a Nicholas Humphrey or other eliminativists might contend that those supposed physical differences which would produce their stories of having phenomenal consciousness are instead also the very same "reasons" why we claim to have such -- i.e., we are actually all zombies engaging in this pretense. In Humphrey's view, the evolutionary benefit of this inherent make-believe is that it makes us feel special, gives us an incentive to live. As if there is something magical taking place in a material existence that is otherwise absent to itself when minus the illusion / deception / pretense of experience (a "showing in the machine"; of both personal thoughts and an external environment; a map of presentations). But how "make-believe" reporting could conjure something -- appearances which fill the emptiness of those functional, mechanistic, dynamic relationships of highly organized skull matter -- is either not explained deeply or satisfactorily in terms of today's physics.... Or, if it is, how is it then that those hallucinations can be hallucinations (how can "showing" as images, sounds, odors, felt surfaces be hallucination when the latter is dependent upon such "showing" to begin with, even if judged an erroneous manifestation?). Apparently what is really intended by such disparagements is "false": It is false that material being / activity exhibits itself as "stuff", as something, as anything. These are our illusions, "not real" in the sense of truly portraying the universe as it is independent of phenomenal consciousness [the putative "nothingness" that greeted Madalyn Murray O'Hair after being gruesomely dismembered by Waters, Karr, and Fry].
You seem to think that there is somehow choice? An implication that you could have been someone other than you are? Bear in mind that you can not prove that there is any other "I". As such it might be fair to say that the reason you are the "I" that you are is because there is only one. And it is you. But that is solipsistic thinking. And you still haven't answered why a wooden chair is made of wood? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I asked why I am who I am, not simply what I am. To rephrase the question (which automatically happens with your answer); Why am I this specific body/brain? I don't see what you mean here by "a showing of the external world would just as much be missing from its sensory perceptions", why would it be missing? The brain would still need to process the visual world. I guess when we sleepwalk we are kind of a philosophical zombie. But they do have everything that would qualify as a experience, they need the visual processing and judgement from that, they may need to talk to others in order to get external input on how to handle some information, etc. So they wouldn't pretend to have experiences, zombies wouldn't be blind, they would simply not have a subjective sense of the experience. We might not notice from behavior if they were conscious or not, perhaps not even measurement would allow us to notice the difference as the subjective might be spread throughout the brain structure without making such a big impact. If the mind is strictly physical, and the brain is strictly physical, then it wouldn't waste energy on something that didn't lead to surviving, right? So even though you think that the brain is making you believe that you are special, and have meaning and all that everything is actually just a survival instinct, equally applicable to the non-subjective brain. By not credit the mind as real, you are in fact arguing for the possibility of a philosophical zombie, where the only difference was that it didn't have the illusion, everything else is essential, or how could the illusion otherwise give feedback to the brain as if it suddenly mattered? No, I don't. The reason why you don't see what I mean (cause you don't or you wouldn't have asked that question) is that you assume things, instead try to see what I mean. That there is such a possibility, I could throw a dice and get any number. But after I've thrown the dice I can't change that the number was a specific one. Likewise I can't change who I am, but there is a possibility that I could have been a different body. Yes, I don't believe that I'm the only one here, so if there are any other "I" then why am I this specific "I" instead of any of the others? Because wood is a versatile and cheap material, sorry, I didn't think I had to answer it Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
By positing the existence of a soul to try to resolve your dilemma aren't you're merely pushing it back one step, since you can then ask "why is the basis of my selfhood this particular soul and not some other"?
Because if you were a different body/brain you would be someone else. :shrug: It really is that simple. You complicate it by assuming that you exist independantly of your body. No, you are the one making the assumption. (example follows)
