sakrilege

Mine would be kashi.

thetoastman

Ok.

Think of the last time you ate kashi.
You are a person.
You are a person who ate kashi.
In the process of eating kashi, I'm sure you would agree, you dipped the spoon in the cereal, lifted it to your mouth, and gleefully munched it to bits, enjoying the taste and texture, before sending the kashi south to nourish your body.

Here is a demonstrative drama. (I am afraid I am a poor writer and dramatist, but a close reading would, I believe, deliver sufficiently the point I'm trying to make):

T. Who was it that ate the kashi?
S. The person Sakrilege. (Right?)
T. Is sakrilege one thing or many?
S. Well, he is one thing, surely. But what do you mean?
T. Did the same person lift the spoon as ate the kashi?
S. Yes.
T. And we were wondering if a BRAIN is the same thing as a PERSON.
S. Yes. And I think it is.
T. Consider this. The brain is many things, but the person involved in making the decision to eat kashi is a simple thing (namely, a person).
S. Explain further, please.
T. The X lobes of the brain have to do with taste information. On the other hand, your Y lobes are concerned with motor skills, co-ordination, (for lifting the spoon, hitting your mouth) etc.
S. So?
T. The point is there are many different physical "places" in your brain involved with eating and experience kashi. Do you think there is ONE part of you doing the lifting, ANOTHER seperate part doing the tasting, another the swallowing?
S. No, it was ME who did and experienced all those things.
T. So you're saying the "Person" was one thing experieincing many things.
S. Yes.
T. But we agreed that the brain is a collection of things.
S. Or maybe there is a "center" of the brain which acts as pilot to the rest.
T. Each lobe, each part of the brain answers to itself.
S. Perhaps there is one supreme lobe, some center that mediates and experiences the information all the others collect.
T. Interesting. Are you saying that there is some pilot, some "man driving the car"?
S. Yes, that's how it seems. That would account for different parts of the brain handling different parts of one task.
T. I think you may be right. Do you think this "pilot" is physical or not-physical?
S. Phsyical, of course.
T. Is the pilot that thing we refer to you when we say "you" ate kashi?
S. It would seem so.
T. Your brain is a composition of cells. Which one of these cells is "you"?
S. Maybe we don't know where it is.
T. Supposing there is one lobe, or one cell, or one part of a cell, that mediates information from all the rest. If you destroyed that cell you would destroy the "person", wouldn't you?
S. Yes, or at least their ability to multi-task.
T. Right. However, there are many victims of various kinds of brain damage who retain their personhood.
S. That is true.
T. It becomes plausible then to posit something else, a different kind of thing. A thing *present* in each cell but not *located* in it.
S. I don't like introducing the possibility for something that I cannot see, or smell or touch.
T. We are only trying to explain an undeniable EXPERIENCE, that of consciousness. It seems a conscious being is a simple one, one that is not divided. It also seems that a brain is a complex thing, divided (by time and space). So we conclude consciousness is not a physical (in the same sense) thing. It is connected to our brain, it is present in our brain (recieving experiences), but it is not located in our brain.
S. Hm. Perhaps "me" is my ENTIRE brain at once, the collection of experiences.
T. Ah! Perhaps that is right. That is the only possible "out" from this argument, I think. But I don't clearly understand saying that the brain has a collection of experiences "at once". I DO understand there being a pilot, like we mentioned earlier. One person who experiences singularly the benefits of a complex machine. However, it seems that this pilot is not Physical.
S. that is something will have to explore further...
T. Consider this. If you cut a brain in half, you do not have "half" a person. You have a whole person with only half their brain.
S. Right..
T. Where is that "whole person"?
S. I can't imagine.
T. Well, I asked a poor question. All we want to know is if there is something OTHER than phsyical. If decide there is, THEN we can bother figuring out "where" it is.
S. The whole person, then, is "not-here".
T. that seems about right.

THE END.


The argument then runs thusly:
In a simple process like eating kashi, a person's body does many things.
A person's body lifts the food to the mouth; a person's body registers taste, etc.
A person's brain is involved with each of these processes.
A person's brain has different lobes and physical sections for taste, motor skills, co-ordination, etc.
If a conscious person IS their brain, different parts of the brain would be "aware" of taste, and seeing the spoon, etc.
However, there is a unified experience. (the person who decides to pick up the spoon and the one tasting the kashi are the same)
Then there must be a unified (essentially simple) experience-er.
The person experiencing is You.
Therefore You are not physical.
You are a non-physical being. (A "soul" if you will).


What do you think? If you are not compelled, which premise do you contend with? Is there one step you are particularly uncomfortable with?

As for me, I am persuaded. Though, I assure you, I am only interested in discovering the truth about the perplexing creatures that we are. If I have made an error in reasoning, you would be doing me a favor to correct it.

"I" experience many things at once. And that is because I am a mind and a mind is capable of many tasks being experienced at once, as opposed to a "brain" which is many cells, and each cell is a complex structure of sub-cellular objects, etc., NONE of which has any other than physical connection to another. Even assuming any one cell to be conscious, they would all have to communicate to eachother and there simply isn't enough TIME.

I am convinced that further study in the chemistry of the brain would only strengthen this argument, but I am very open to hearing otherwise.
Do we have any brain chemists, scientists, or experts in the house?

Shadowy Man

I'm not sure I see that this necessarily follows. However, granting this I continue...

This "You" might be non-physical, but there is still no reason to believe that this "You" continues to exist after the brain dies. The idea that the brain creates the "soul" is consistent with everything you said, and thus the "soul" can be destroyed when the brain dies.

thetoastman

Thank you for your remarks.

The second is an interesting point. Do you think the brain creates the soul? I hadn't considered the possibility until you said that.

There are no other examples of physical processes "giving rise" to a totally different thing like an other-than-physical consciousness...
But then again, that only proves that the "soul" is unique, if it really is a creation of the brain, since it is the only example. So that doesn't help us...

Hm.

Shadowy Man

Well, I don't believe in a "soul" because the connotations of that word imply an existence external to the body. However, I do believe in the consciousness, and I believe that that is what is experiencing as the "I". Thus, I believe that this "I" only exists while the brain is functioning. When it ceases to function, the "I" ceases to exist.

Undercurrent

I don't believe that S needs to posit a hierarchical command structure on the brain.

Consider the book on my desk right now (Proofs from THE BOOK, second edition, by Aigner and Ziegler). It is at some level, a collection of atoms. I also contains information (including a clever topological proof of the infinitude of primes that I've never seen anywhere else.) No atom of the book contains the proof of the infinitude of primes, yet the book itself does. There is no "pilot" atom which tells the book to contain such a proof. The predicate "contains a clever proof of the infinitude of primes" applies to the book as a whole, and while it may also apply to some subsets of the atoms in the book (those comprising the pages the proof is on, for example) it does not imply that every subset of atoms to which the predicate applies must itself have a proper subset of atoms to which the predicate applies.

Furthemore, some of the atoms have specific roles as part of the proof, (being part of the ink in the first "e" of the proof, for example,) but that doesn't affect the fact that "containing the proof" applies to the book as a whole, with no "pilot atom" containing the proof itself.

Similarily, it is possible that a live human brain, being concious, may have subunits that are also concious, and those subunits may themselves have subunits that have different specific tasks, but the predicate "is concious" applies to the brain (or some minimal subunit of the brain) without applying to any particular subunit.

To assert that there needs to be a "pilot lobe" one needs to first demonstrate that this is not the case.

m.

seebs

I think you can adequately explain "identity" by associating personhood with recognizable characteristic patterns within a brain, which may well survive having part of their substance destroyed, just as you can often recognize a partially erased picture.

I *don't* explain it this way, but it seems to me it would work. Patterns are an interesting case of a thing which is clearly not supernatural, but which occurs in no one place.

sakrilege

The one step is the one above because severe enough damage to the brain will leave a person a 'vegetable'. People can survive for years in a coma where, as I understand it, brain activity is limited to auto functions. It is important to me that a theory cover all the facts known.

Quote:

I am convinced that further study in the chemistry of the brain would only strengthen this argument, but I am very open to hearing otherwise.

I am very interested in study of brain chemistry but I am only a spectator.

sweep

I was thinking along those lines the other night: not literally, but would collective consciousness be close to what was thought of?

A floaty thing' offers a tenuous link between various states of consciousness, but if we look at the evidence, genetic information passed thro mating offers more of a 'sticking' solution between the 'state' of non-existence, which I think is a sticking point when, ironically, one holds that 'me is me is me' rather than a complete negation of the whole notion that one (1) ever was. Is it a prerequisite to not have existed in order to exist?

"A: right, here is the list of all non-existant entities, yet to be. Sorry, you existed before, no second chance!"

"B: can I be a cat?"

"A: no, you're destined to be a mink"

"C: how about me?"

"A: well, you make it out of the womb, but die prematurely. Sorry, hard cheese"

If that didn't demonstrate the prevailing idea of being and non-being, then perhaps I want my head examining. There again the way it has been explained so far leads me to no other brick wall. Space goes on forever, there are no brick walls. Is that why we need a soul, so that we don't bump into brick walls? Oops, it broke! therefor, it 'is' dead. No, wait, it isn't.

I don't think that a sense of I could even exist in a tarantula. As a human I tend to project a lot of my feelings into sentient machines, as though these things get really upset, but the bigger the machine, the more life I can see, and recognise within myself.

In the way of karma I think instead of legacy and proximal influence. Imagine a mountain: at the top a stream of water runs down the side. The water runs in different directions and forms a tree with the source, whatever that could be, at the top. Sure, this is an extremely reductionist perspective, but I know for sure that my fathers and mothers have passed on stuff that I either, (A) deal with OR (B) ignore.

Legacy and genetic information is passed on. Doesn't seem to make sense that (a god) appears from 'nothing' : "My! that was lucky, I'm an omnipotent god. Thank nothingness that my constitution was not such as to render me capable only of sliming over the soil. Even luckier that I didn't have to do anything in order to be a god"

But the deal seems to be that I exist, then I do not. I put it to you that (I do not) only reinforces the sticking point that me is me is me, up to and after total brain death. 1 could get ebola *god forbid*, the brain would turn to sludge leaving only a reptilian awareness, barely fit to say *I am*, and all the while, the heart beats, and this *thing* vomits out of both ends. sorry!

If me is me is me, then it's like perpetual winter in narnia, with all the stone people under a tower of death. Living forever is a stupid idea; absolute *I* would be a joke. My hell: me stuck with me forever in a subterranean cave, having to lick my way out over ten million years.