erehwon

This subject confuses and confudels me.

I was once ok with myself, but was forced to look backwards at my "self" when i came into this subject. In fact i almost felt that i was up in the 90"s on oxymorons scale.

Then I found that my self disintergrated because b4 this i thought I knew who I was where I was ,and what I was.Then I find out I may not be what I was at all ,hence hereto I began to see that my self could be something else --that could have been there when I thought I was what I mightn't be.

My problem is that I don't know if I am what I was b 4 this problem arose, or whether I am in fact something that wasn't there when I thought I was what I was- but is there and I aint what I was at all .

But at least I know who I am.I am me.Wait a minute that's two of us ,I and me,SHIT, .... im running at about a 3 on Oxymorons scale now ......wait a minute who thought that thought????????

Amos

Good one erehwon!!

As long as "you are happy with yourself" it don't matter much "who you think you are."

dostf

I have always defined self as the combined sum of our attributes. When taken together as a whole, they are inevitably defined as "me". This self is however "supposed" that is to say it is not a "real" thing or entity. Your "youness" is a combination of heredity, experience, genes, upbringing, education etc. etc. Ther is no "YOU" and there is no "ME". This is however a particularly difficult point as very few people are able to even logically grasp this IMO.

Be seeing you...

crocodile deathroll

The self IMO is reality oriented around the observer "subjective reality". Any without any concept of a supreme sentient being like God/Brahman etc it is the only means to which the universe can gain any insight of its own existence.

MyKell

What? How is that? Postmitotic cells are not, up to my knowledge, renewed! Very minimal neurogenesis takes place in the adult Central Nervous System, but it doesn't cause renewal of neurons.



Neural "pathways" do not get strengthened by myelination. Thank mother nature, otherwise, you would get your unmyelinated pain fibers to myelinate everytime you feel pain. Imagine how that would be... Anyway, there is no such thing. I think you're talking about "synaptic strengthining"... Long term potentiation and all that.

Well my view on the self is rather incomplete at the moment. A few things that I have thought about are:

1. The self is a phenomenology by it's own right. Just like we feel the visual scenery in front of us through a mental scene, we feel that our cells are united by some homuniculus inside our brain. Now, that doesn't mean that there is a hominuculus, but the illusion is probably felt by everyone reading this paragraph.

2. The concept of the self is a late evolutionary characteristics that only humans and chimpanzees have. None of the other species can recognize themselves in the mirrors as far as I know.

3. The self arises later in development. Children recognize their parents long before they recognize themselves.(Parents at 6 months, Themselves at 2 years)

4. The self arises due to social interaction. My guess is that, just like all other complex phenomenologies, the self comes from the outside world. Recognizing that people label YOU as YOU, gives you the concept of YOU. It is not intuitive to know that you are an individual.

5. The self is an ever changing entity. This is not metaphoric, it is literal. You are not You a year ago, period. Therefore, my guess is that the self is as changing as the synapses that give aid in their emergence. It is directly related to memories, value systems (emotion, motivation), and the current environment one is living. You cannot isolate the self from the environment

6. About what makes the self. This is a step beyond what makes consciousness. It's a very difficult concept that I will not try to explain because I will most certainly get wrong. What exactly are the neural/biological correlates of the self, how they unite to give rise to the feeling of the self is a question that we are a bit far from answering at the present time.

crocodile deathroll

To the best of my knowledge it is the soma that is constant but the axons dendrites and synapses are in a state of flux and matter turnover throughout our lives and it is through that system we get out sense of self on not the soma

MyKell

This was not what I understood from:


Do synapses change every seven years? I'm unaware of such a fact.

So yes, I agree that synaptogenesis and synaptic remodeling does take place in the adult although the evidence on which is conflicting. A few months there were two papers in nature that showed conflicting results about the amount of synaptogensis that takes place in adult mice. They were obtained from two-photon microsopy of live transgenic mice having their neurons tagged with EGFP or something. One was from Svodoba's lab.

However, how much that correlates with the self is unknown at the present time

MyKell

P.S.

I agree with, I actually mentioned that in my earlier post:

crocodile deathroll

I made a few grammatical errors in my last post. I really meant:
To the best of my knowledge it is the soma that is constant, but the axons dendrites and synapses are in a state of flux and matter turnover throughout our lives, and it is through that system we get our sense of self, and not the soma.

I think you got the gist of what I meant anyway.
Thanks

Nowhere357

Overall I think the reply is too dismissive. The idea that self is an emergent property does not explain the existence of self-awareness, to some people. It certainly is not obvious. I find my self-awareness to be the only thing I know for sure, yet science SEEMS to deny it.