crocodile deathroll

We are simply programmed by society especially Christian society to view our acquired memories as something better, as we are indoctrinated that we are answerable to our deeds to a higher power.
I feel that is a lot of nonsense myself. What is the point of being sent to hell for eternal damnation if you cannot remember the sinful deeds which cause you to go there?


I do not think that we are entirely unique from each other as once you reduce out physical matter down the level of quarks then we are in effect indistinguishable from each other and the worldline of these quarks are traced back the same singularity at the big bang. So what really make the matter in our bodies so unique?
I am of the view that your perception of the world is the some of your acquired memories, but once you die you will forget them all and as such would be subjectively identical to never being born at all in the first place.
You cannot feel the diaper on your tush but there were electric impulses in the brain or cell layouts as you when you were as a baby which are just as real as the ones you have now and emulated the same laws of physics.

[ November 23, 2002: Message edited by: crocodile deathroll ]</p>

Vesica

No, I meant the other way around.

I still can't tell which...let's try: 'The first one you posted' or 'the second one'.

We are simply programmed by society especially Christian society to view our acquired memories as something better

I am lost on why Christianity has anything to do with this when thoughts about the nature of 'self' and an immortality of the soul can be found in almost every culture throughout history....Is this belief social in nature? I assume! I have not met a lot of people raised by wolves or other social isolated situations....People with these experiences could answer whether or not the idea of self is social in origin.

but once you die you will forget them all

Quite true...but once I am dead I will no longer be discussing the essential nature of self/the soul/the enternal mind/body debate with you all....My point was all the participants are locked in thier perceptions....There is no way to examine this issue but 'from the inside'.

Anyway, Theli - I hope I provided some explanation or insight into why many are uncomfortable with conceptualizing conciousness as seated somewhere other than just in the brain. Feel free to ask any other Q's etc.

In conclusion, I think a lot of people don't care and don't think about this since life goes on regaurdless.....Then again, a lot of people just don't think (if they can help it).

Theli

Vesica...

hehehe...
I thought you were replying to my post here. I felt accused.

That's true. I guess it's not too practical to act as if (for instance) determinism is true in real life.

This is another thing that has bothered me, should you refer to the consciousness generally as an effect or as an object?

Ofcourse, we do in a way observe the self as a cluster of emotions, memories and interpretations, and while an explaination of those things as objects can seem foreign to the self. Making the soul a seemingly more accurate description of the self to the person.

Theli

Another thing that is pretty strange. People can sit here and claim that they don't really exist, or that that don't rule their own actions. And yet they watch their step as they cross a road.
Have I missed something here?

crocodile deathroll

Yes you feel you exist, but person posted this reply thousands miles away on the other side of the world cannot prove its existence to you as one of billions of isolated souls that is. You may be the only entity in the universe with has the property of soul. After all the universe really one requires to one "soul" to reflect back on its own existence, any more would only be unnecessary complications.

So this soul or "sense of self" is nothing other an emergent property of the universe at such time it a acquired a critical level of complexity, rather than the rather clumsy scenario of a plethora of contingent separate souls, in which if we examine all the possible scenarios of each individual soul from a happenstance view point of a sperm meets egg scenario are far more like to not exist all than exist.

Look at it another it is very hard to exist. In fact our existence is exponentially improbable, but if it just a matter of you manifesting yourself as one of trillions of other failed attempts, then chances of existing would be exponentially better

Synaesthesia

I think that the solispist methodology, "from the inside" is one of the major slipups in the history of human philosophy.

The fundamental controversy in much of philosophy of mind is the so-called "explanatory gap" created by the assumption that our experience is just as likely to be logically unrelated to anything observable. This is the underlying intuition behind both the widely discredited dualism and emergence or non-reductive materialism. The latter is an out and out contradiction although there is conceptual point to be made about levels of description.

Theli

crocodile deathroll...
Actually, I have seen a few people on this board that were uncertain of their own existence. Put that under a logical microscope and it's almost laughable.

So, you are saying that what makes a soul more appealing is that it has a (false) higher probability?

I think it has more to do with the idea that the soul is 'shielded' from the world.

crocodile deathroll

Yes the "soul" is reality's tendancy orientate itself around subjectivity where there is a conscious perception of time.

Beoran

I would disagree here, even though I tend to agree with naturalism. Large, structured quantities of atoms can have different properties than the individual atoms themselves. This phenomenon is called the "emergent propeties" of matter, IIRC. Life and consciousness are emergent properties of the atoms we are made of, and the structure in which they are arranged. The difference is subtle, but important to me. We are not merely "a collection of molecules and chemicals working as natural phenomenan(sic)". We are the emergent property of a structured collection of molecules and chemicals. In that, humans are different from dust or stones. They lack the emergent properties that we have, and can enjoy. ^_^

crocodile deathroll

Yes I fully agree with the emergent property theory and I feel there were emergent properties with stones and dust eg: "the formation of atoms as an emergent property in the early universe", or the nucleosynthesis of iron in supernova, but that had little to do the emergent property of human consciousness apart from being very essential ingredients. We need iron to carry the
oxygen in our blood to our brains.

I speculate consciousness emerged as it never did before as an emergent property when organic matter achieved a critical level of complexity then consciousness flashed into existence as a as an unstable and collective disorientated version at first then in a "phase transition" it became orientated to us observers.