I cannot see why you kep on about the koan. It is a nonsense question in the same way as your Lego house or the philosopher's beard. To clap has a specific definition from which it follows that one hand cannot clap. If Zen monks wish to use such non-questions to achieve some end, that's fine by me, but it doesn't change the nature of the ( non- ) question.
I could swear you brought it up. If I did, my apologies. If you did, well, I've been trying to figure out why.
Change at the atomic level. I suggest that your article is a loose definition of what goes on in the human body ,to make it intelligible.
I thought it was pretty clear. I encountered references to the study elsewhere on the net. They tracked atoms and found that atoms are replaced in the body at a rapid rate.
Consider change at the atomic level. There is no distinction between one atom of carbon and another, So substituting one for another makes no difference to the organ.
Not in terms of function, but in terms of identity.
The aging process is , as I suggested, the result of faulty copying, i.e., a loss of information. So, an organ can be said to be gradually disintegrating to the point where we die.
yes, primarily a separate issue, but one of the many changes that seems excluded by simply saying the self continues through time.
The evidence that my sense of self remains is that if I see a photograph of myself when I was a child I can recognize my " self" and relate it to how I am now. A different personality, same identity.
1) if you were amnesiac and didn't would you no longer be yourself
2) what is to this is more than mere convention? I am not saying we do not have information about our younger selves.
3) I also recognize my parents in photos, but I am not them. Perhaps all I 'recognize' is that the images I have recorded were from the vantage of that child.
4) That child had not seen that photo. Another, albeit minute, difference. Much of what you know about that child that child did not know. Your whole perspective is another difference. And of course a good deal of it is distorted or not quite correct. Witnesses are quite unreliable.
I cannot understand your preoccupation with the question of same self or different self. If you were to conclude that you had a different self each morning, what would you do differently from what you do now ?
That is not the point. I am trying to find out why you and Sarkus are so sure - I am not sure either of you is - that your selves continue through time. This is a philosophy forum under the heading of Eastern Philosophy. I can't see why you see this as so odd.
What evidence can you offer to suggest that we have different selves or however you would express it. For the sake of argument let's call it our core identity. I have offered evidence in terms of a personal history. In what way is this argument flawed. ? Your article does not addrress this issue; it merely describes what is happening to our bodies as we age. That is how I read it.
The article backed up the idea that the atoms are replaced. I included the whole article which ends up focusing on aging. But it begins by referring to a study that specifically showed via radioactive atoms that the atoms in the body are replaced at a rapid rate. I cannot understand how this wouldn't give one a moments pause to wonder about the continuity of the self. Bodies are made of atoms. If in one year 98%of the atoms are replaced after one year, after 20 we are talking about a very low % left of the original ones. I think it is obvious why, especially in a discussion with someone who does not believe in souls or some non-corporeal about the self, one can bring up the question and explore it. That's what a lot of us do here, we explore things. I would love it if you came back with what was to me a convincing answer to why this is the same self. In any case I find it an interesting puzzle.
By the way I thought of a good answer to my last question in the last post:
the sun. This is an object that obviously undergoes changes and is losing some matter and gaining some matter, yet we refer to it as the same object over time. I think it has vastly more integrity over time than the human body, but still, it's a good comeback.
I do, absolutely, think that it is useful to speak about 'me' back then and 'what I will do when I retire' but I am curious about seeing if this must in fact reflect reality. I am not convinced. If you find it trying that I keep on this way you can ignore me.
As far as the change being gradual rather than discrete, I would guess there are a number of studies that show that we do not notice changes as well when they are gradual: the frog in slowly raised to boiling water idea - perhaps this is an urban legend, but I doubt the phenomenon is. I did take sensory physiology and though it's been twenty years I am quite sure the body is less likely to sense gradual change, as compared to rapid changes, even if the final amount of change is the same. The gradual nature of the change can easily make it seem like some fundamental change is not taking place. But this does not mean it is not.
Where is the self that is the same when I was ten and now? What is it composed of? And if the answer is things that are not the same, why do we hold that the higher order object is the same when the components are not?
