Enduring Problems in Philosophy

Sidis Coruscatis said:
Interesting that you use the term 'hidden'.

I meant to proselytize a bit about this game for a while, and now seems like a good time to post this video. It played a profoundly important role in my final casting away of nihilism and it bears some relevance to both biblical exegesis and the problem of identity (which is unfortunately not so well developed here).

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It's interesting to note that the idea of felix culpa is not a novel insight of recent times. The Catholic Easter Vigil mass includes the Exultet, the great prayer of rejoycing at the Resurrection. This prayer goes back to antiquity and includes these lines:

O wonder of your humble care for us!
O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!​

This 14th Century poem (written in middle English - the translation here lacks a bit of sparkle!) is to this day included in the readings within the Catholic Office, and rejoices in Our Lady who would not have existed had Adam and Eve not fallen:

Adam lay bounden, bounden in a bond
four thousand winters, he thought no to(o) long
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took
as clerics find written, (written) in their book
Had the apple not been taken, the apple been taken
our Lady would never have been heaven’s queen
Blessed be the time that the apple was taken
therefore we may sing: thanks to the Lord​
 
Sidis Coruscatis said:
Interesting that you use the term 'hidden'.

I meant to proselytize a bit about this game for a while, and now seems like a good time to post this video. It played a profoundly important role in my final casting away of nihilism and it bears some relevance to both biblical exegesis and the problem of identity (which is unfortunately not so well developed here).

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Just watched the entire video. I have on and off been writing a document on my thoughts on free will. I need to get that done. Too much of the reason in the video is dependent on the concept of free will.

As to what entails sentience, I have pondered the question within the context of considering a computer with an amazing algorithm such that its decision-making may have the complexity of (say) humans. When doing so, I keep coming back to what a machine's sentience feels like to the machine.

I appreciate that I am not furnishing a proof, but I feel like true sentience requires emoting as a natural consequence of decision-making and I tend to think that no matter how nuanced and complex a machine may be made to be, I think it lacks emoting and therefore is not sentient.

I guess I believe feelings are the necessary terrain within which reason resides and I appreciate not furnishing an iota's worth of support for my sense of things.

Finally, I need to finish my free will paper.
 
o2b said:
I appreciate that I am not furnishing a proof, but I feel like true sentience requires emoting as a natural consequence of decision-making and I tend to think that no matter how nuanced and complex a machine may be made to be, I think it lacks emoting and therefore is not sentient.
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I feel that you are right about this, and it isn’t just emoting. We tend to think of ourselves only in terms of our consciousness as being the yardstick of our sentience but it can’t be that simple. People are the end result of billions of years of evolution and our psyches are as much a composite of that as are our physical bodies. I suspect that most of this gestalt is required for our existence as people, and it won’t be easy to create the equivalent by engineering.

What I think might be possible is to create artificial extensions to our brains. That could mean plugging in a module to give us a new language or a skill, or synthetic memories, synthetic telepathy, etc. There’s evidence from VR that we can already give ourselves the illusion that the ‘I’ behind our eyes is located elsewhere. Maybe we can locate our sense of identity in such artificial brain substance as well - and even relocate ourselves totally into an artificial brain temporarily, or permanently when our body dies. I guess there are profound philosophical issues here that explore Ren’s canoe parable very much further.
 
Ren said:
Could spatio-temporal discontinuity be the primary cause of identity change? Death would represent an example, but being separated from a body (and added to another) would be another example.
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It's something to consider, but also I think we need to further explore what you mean by discontinuity here. My position also adds that what causes spatio-temporal discontinuity is its disconnection to its immediate system.

Recall my point on your Kidney becoming John's Kidney. Its essence as a kidney is not lost for it is able to connect to the rest of John's bodily systems. Hence, the discontinuity occured only in your body. It shall no longer be your kidney because it is no longer connected to your system.

Note that I am still assuming that the kidney, neither yours nor John's, is entitled to its own temporality. However if the kidney is unable to connect to a system that allows for its functionality and temporality to thrive, it will lose its life. It will lose its identity. Suppose we transfer your kidney to a petri dish that provides a basic system for your kidney to thrive upon, it shall remain a kidney albeit no-one's. Therefore for as long as its temporality as a kidney is not taken away, it shall remain one at least in this scale.

Perhaps I am stipulating that our temporality, as in on the scale of our persona, may also be dependent on our functionality. If we are able to exist spatially, the temporal aspects of us shall be able to thrive.

Let me explore this further by pulling out some bits from that video Sidis' posted about the Talos Principle, particularly that of portions of a human body being replaced by a mechanical device. Let me also take John's statement on brains being able to allow to exist as parts of networks and not the human body. I understand these as recordings of neural patterns into a chip that will allow us to code such and apply it to the robot. At such, let's approach it in several ways:

A. WAY ONE- Temporality of the brain recorded into a computer to be coded and transferred into a robot. I assume that in this system the neural pulses were somewhat transcribed and embedded as a code, which is inputted into a fully mechanical system. In this case, I see it simply to be a recording of thoughts no different than an actual photograph. So to me, it's an elaborate memorializing of an identity and is not necessarily the identity itself.

B. WAY TWO - Physical brain to physical system. Specifically, let's take a human mind or brain taken out from a human body to be connected to a robot or another human body. For that original human brain to thrive, the systems of the robot will have to mimic the human body. It shall also have the equivalent of heart and other such organs that the human brain can connect to so that it can continue to function with its original temporality. This is because the brain in its essence relies on a greater system.

Suppose we transfer brain onto a pre-existing human system. Interestingly, brain transplant has never been successfully done. The mature brain carries with it so many complex neurological pathways that currently make it impossible to surgically attach each to any other host. At present, I daresay it is far more immediately possible to implant stem cells into our systems that can differentiate into becoming brain cells than to transplant a mature brain from another. The disconnection of the neural networks and pathways from the original system is difficult to replicate.

Suppose we are able to transplant it unto a robot, it will go haywire simply because the neural networks are no longer, thereby affecting the full temporality of the original brain. Suppose the system is enough to give the brain some pulse, there are at least a million questions that can be derived from it, for example will the robot have the personality of the original owner? Of course we don't know, but I am inclined to assume that it won't.


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I am more inclined to accepting that the totality of our identities is in reference to a wholeness and that identity change is in the discontinuity of that wholeness by virtue of a modified system. In as much as the disconnection of on kidney from a system changes the kidney, the system that is now devoid of the kidney is also changed.

Within our bodies, the identity of the brain as a brain and the kidney as a kidney, and so on are preserved for they are to function as they are, but in the same sense that Ren's Kidney is no longer John's when transferred, then a brain when transferred to a different host shall lose its original identity.

The theory that personality resides in the brain is still inconclusive on a temporal level. Although the brain is very clearly a command center and a recording device in one, its reliance with the rest of the bodily systems is still apparent. While the functionality of the brain is clear, there is no evidence of our temporality purely residing in it. I'm thinking it's connected to the wholeness of the body, which is also fueled by a higher scale of temporality.

Therefore I'm assuming that on the scale of one individual, essence and identity is a whole system with capacity for independence.

When portion of the brain is destroyed, we may still survive albeit with some compromised function like a loss of memories for example. Which then leads to the question of, if we lose our memories completely, do our identities change as well and are our essences gone? Will you still be yourself if you don't remember who you were?

If you give away your kidney, are you still Ren? Probably, yeah. But then you're a Ren with only one kidney so you are effectively changed.


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Tldr; I think I am going in circles here and am pretty much unsure of my argument because I don't really know. I think that tackling identity and essence on the scale of our personas is probably a different beast. Not that you implored me to take a look at that, more like I wanted to abduct the idea to a higher scale to check if it might still hold water.

In any case, since openness is celebrated here, I think it wouldn't hurt to continue with an open-ended ellipsis...

Hah! Well this was a mess. Idk. I'll eat.
 
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o2b said:
As to what entails sentience, I have pondered the question within the context of considering a computer with an amazing algorithm such that its decision-making may have the complexity of (say) humans. When doing so, I keep coming back to what a machine's sentience feels like to the machine.
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That was my immediate thought too; even if a perfect replication of consciousness was possible and the product would be psychologically indistinguishable from a human, the change in bodily constitution would have to bring some ramifications for the experience of that consciousness. I'm almost sure that the totality of what we consider humanity is closely tied to our organic nature and any such synthetic sentience would invariably diverge from it in time. It's hard to guess where exactly these differences would originate, as AI development is still relatively nascent.
 
I would say the line would be quite blurry, and there would always be those who sit on either side of 'what is human' or 'what constitutes identity'. When given prosthetics until you are only the imprint of conscious thought, can you still be human if the line is blurred so far from that which was, to what is? I'd say it depends on everyone's perspective. As for me, I don't care if I have a body, as long as I have thought. I'm not really sure I care to identify as anything other than whatever I am. Our identity is just as tied to others as it is to ourselves. For we are, as they are. We know ourselves, because first we know them.
 
mintoots said:
If you give away your kidney, are you still Ren? Probably, yeah. But then you're a Ren with only one kidney so you are effectively changed.
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I fail to see how this is a problem. Remember that the issue is not how can there be both identity and change, but how identity can survive through change.

If I give away my kidney, I will still be exactly Ren, identity-wise. Just like a boat with a replaced part is still that boat. This is simply attested by language.

There is a distinction between identity change and preservation of identity through change. In the first case, identity is destroyed; in the latter case, it isn't.

I'm still mulling over the other parts of your message. I'm no longer very satisfied with the spatio-temporal continuity hypothesis, lol.
 
Ren said:
I'm still mulling over the other parts of your message. I'm no longer very satisfied with the spatio-temporal continuity hypothesis, lol.
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Ooooh. I'll wait for that. I'm not satisfied with half my message either.

Ren said:
If I give away my kidney, I will still be exactly Ren, identity-wise.
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Yeah.

But here's something I'm chewing on that I haven't quite put a pin down. What about connection? What if being connected to something brings forth identity?

Say a kidney is connected to the rest of the body, it retains its function, it stays a kidney, it retains its identity. On the scale of the individual, we are connected to the rest of the world. Spatially and physically, I consume resources, my consumption keeps me connected. I eject wastes, my waste keeps me connected to the rest of the world. If I'm disconnected, I lose the connection, I die as my metabolism won't have access to the physical chain, my identity is no longer.

In parallel, the kidney retains its identity because it is recognized by the rest of the system as a kidney for its functions. I, on another scale, remains a mintoots because the system of this forum recognizes me as a mintoots. Note that I'm using my digital identity. Isn't my digital presence as temporal as it gets? My temporal existence is only viable because of the connection of my spatial physical self to resources of the physical world, though. It isn't inherently separate to my being mintoots. But my being identified as mintoots is largely due to the forum's recognition of myself as mintoots. If I get disconnected from the forum, my identity will also only live in memory. Elsewhere, I am myself. If I am disconnected as m then I am also no longer m.

What do you think?
 
mintoots said:
Ooooh. I'll wait for that. I'm not satisfied with half my message either.


Yeah.

But here's something I'm chewing on that I haven't quite put a pin down. What about connection? What if being connected to something brings forth identity?

Say a kidney is connected to the rest of the body, it retains its function, it stays a kidney, it retains its identity. On the scale of the individual, we are connected to the rest of the world. Spatially and physically, I consume resources, my consumption keeps me connected. I eject wastes, my waste keeps me connected to the rest of the world. If I'm disconnected, I lose the connection, I die as my metabolism won't have access to the physical chain, my identity is no longer.

In parallel, the kidney retains its identity because it is recognized by the rest of the system as a kidney for its functions. I, on another scale, remains a mintoots because the system of this forum recognizes me as a mintoots. Note that I'm using my digital identity. Isn't my digital presence as temporal as it gets? My temporal existence is only viable because of the connection of my spatial physical self to resources of the physical world, though. It isn't inherently separate to my being mintoots. But my being identified as mintoots is largely due to the forum's recognition of myself as mintoots. If I get disconnected from the forum, my identity will also only live in memory. Elsewhere, I am myself. If I am disconnected as m then I am also no longer m.

What do you think?
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I think it's possible to get lost in all this unless the concept of identity is carefully thought through. There seems to be a profound difference between the identity given to, say, (1) Ren's boat, (2) the identity of human beings as other people see them, and (3) my own sense of my own identity.

For the first of these the identity is really only meaningful in eyes of a beholder - the boat is only a boat because of the associations and functionality given to it by people, and it has no self identity as a thing in itself. If there were no humans to perceive it, it could not be a boat because this is meaningless without humans to mean it. It's tempting to think that aggregates and structures have identity even without us to see them, but these two are also human concepts that are meaningless without humans around.

For the third, what gives me my sense of personal identity is my conscious awareness of myself, both now and in memory stretching back to my early life. This seems to be something that remains unchanged, even though I'm not made of the same atoms from one decade to the next, and my ongoing life experience and my aging process mean that my inner life has also been turning over too. The idea of a soul that remains constant and survives all these changes, and even survives death, is a very good example of how this awareness can be interpreted in a way that illustrates it well - though I don't think belief in the soul is necessary for this perception.

For the second, it's more difficut and it falls somewhere between the other two. I am not directly conscious of your identity in the way I am of my own, so in many ways I relate to you like I do the boat, through your attributes. On the other hand you seem to have the same sort of inner awareness of yourselves as I do of myself, so it seems to me that your identity is self-generated like mine is. I know you by your external attributes of course and they are changing all the time, so your identity (to me) slides about as I learn about you, and as you change over time. Personally, I treat this as a secondary aspect, and hold that each human has an intrinsic identity that is constant - a soul if you like.

I'm sure it's more complex than this - these are my first-order ponderings. Perhaps our sense of our own personal identity might itself change through trauma or illness or spiritual / psychological adventure. Watching someone disintegrate over years of dementia temps me into thinking this might be, but my mother and father always seemed to have the same 'I' throughout their illness, even when it was bured deep.
 
John K said:
I think it's possible to get lost in all this unless the concept of identity is carefully thought through. There seems to be a profound difference between the identity given to, say, (1) Ren's boat, (2) the identity of human beings as other people see them, and (3) my own sense of my own identity.

For the first of these the identity is really only meaningful in eyes of a beholder - the boat is only a boat because of the associations and functionality given to it by people, and it has no self identity as a thing in itself. If there were no humans to perceive it, it could not be a boat because this is meaningless without humans to mean it. It's tempting to think that aggregates and structures have identity even without us to see them, but these two are also human concepts that are meaningless without humans around.

For the third, what gives me my sense of personal identity is my conscious awareness of myself, both now and in memory stretching back to my early life. This seems to be something that remains unchanged, even though I'm not made of the same atoms from one decade to the next, and my ongoing life experience and my aging process mean that my inner life has also been turning over too. The idea of a soul that remains constant and survives all these changes, and even survives death, is a very good example of how this awareness can be interpreted in a way that illustrates it well - though I don't think belief in the soul is necessary for this perception.

For the second, it's more difficut and it falls somewhere between the other two. I am not directly conscious of your identity in the way I am of my own, so in many ways I relate to you like I do the boat, through your attributes. On the other hand you seem to have the same sort of inner awareness of yourselves as I do of myself, so it seems to me that your identity is self-generated like mine is. I know you by your external attributes of course and they are changing all the time, so your identity (to me) slides about as I learn about you, and as you change over time. Personally, I treat this as a secondary aspect, and hold that each human has an intrinsic identity that is constant - a soul if you like.

I'm sure it's more complex than this - these are my first-order ponderings. Perhaps our sense of our own personal identity might itself change through trauma or illness or spiritual / psychological adventure. Watching someone disintegrate over years of dementia temps me into thinking this might be, but my mother and father always seemed to have the same 'I' throughout their illness, even when it was bured deep.
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So, to you, identity resides more fully in the temporal/soul and its corresponding imprints whether perceived by another or not, but that this is an inward-looking identity and perception of another is a different demon. Did I understand this correctly, John? (Sorry I tend to rephrase and echo to check myself).
 
Ren said:
I'm still mulling over the other parts of your message. I'm no longer very satisfied with the spatio-temporal continuity hypothesis, lol.
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Ok, let's see if I can salvage this hypothesis.

I want to say that the kidney as a whole experiences spatio-temporal discontinuity (from Ren's body), while Ren's body as a whole does not. It would then follow that the kidney is no longer Ren's kidney, though it remains a kidney; but Ren's body is still Ren's body.

At what point does Ren's body stop being Ren's body? I think @mintoots makes a convincing argument that it stops being Ren's body when it stops being an integrated biological organism (i.e. at the moment of death). As long as it remains an integrated biological organism, it retains spatio-temporal continuity.

Now the weakness with the above is this idea that the body is Ren's body. What if the miracles of science allowed Ren's brain to be swapped with John's, with the result that Ren's consciousness is now in John's body, and John's consciousness in Ren's body? Allow some time to pass: would it still make sense to say that Ren's mind is living inside John's body, and John's mind in Ren's? Will there not come a point where Ren's new body is taken to be his body, and similarly with John?

But if so, then it would seem that consciousness/mind is a part of the system with more influence over identity than others. If that is the case, the spatio-temporal discontinuity thesis has not really managed to eliminate the concept of essence from the account, as least as far as the human organism is concerned. It is still tacitly assumed that there is something essential about the brain, as opposed to other body parts; because the brain is associated with a mind.

Perhaps the spatio-temporal discontinuity thesis works simply better in the case of anything not human, i.e. anything without a mind. Once you add mind to the mix, it no longer works. And that makes sense, in fact, since spatio-temporal discontinuity is a purely physical thesis. You cannot expect it to work on a body-mind compound. By definition, it will have nothing to say about the agency of mind.

This conundrum has really helped me understand better why the concept of essence has been historically so closely associated with the concept of mind, lol.
 
@charlatan — You might be interested in having a look at the discussion we've been having over the last few days regarding the concept of identity.

Methinks you might be interested to chip in.
 
John K said:
For the first of these the identity is really only meaningful in eyes of a beholder - the boat is only a boat because of the associations and functionality given to it by people, and it has no self identity as a thing in itself. If there were no humans to perceive it, it could not be a boat because this is meaningless without humans to mean it. It's tempting to think that aggregates and structures have identity even without us to see them, but these two are also human concepts that are meaningless without humans around.
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Wouldn't that be true of anything whatsoever, though? Would the Milky Way really be the Milky Way without human minds to conceptualise it as such? Would a rock still be a rock?

Perhaps it turns out that any identity whatsoever is linguistically (or conceptually) constructed... This is exactly what Postmodernists claim.

It's easy to see the thread of logic from this basic argument to the concept of gender fluidity in Judith Butler's books, etc.
 
Ren said:
Perhaps the spatio-temporal discontinuity thesis works simply better in the case of anything not human, i.e. anything without a mind. Once you add mind to the mix, it no longer works. And that makes sense, in fact, since spatio-temporal discontinuity is a purely physical thesis. You cannot expect it to work on a body-mind compound. By definition, it will have nothing to say about the agency of mind.

This conundrum has really helped me understand better why the concept of essence has been historically so closely associated with the concept of mind, lol.
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A part of me is still thinking what if we're over-rating the mind? Yeah, sure the neural imprints are there evidenced physically by electrical impulse which we record but what if like in a CCTV system, as in the cameras, it's only just the screen that allows us to observe. What if the system is total? It's throughout the rest of the body? So then the mind is not just in the brain, despite it being the relative control center where wires converge. Maybe it's the pull-box. In any case, it's still dependent on the system, isn't it? Take Stephen Hawking. Yeah, sure he is dominated by his mind at such a point in his life but as his body completely failed, there never was a Stephen Hawking. Maybe we're looking at it too closely into bits and pieces. Maybe it has to be a functioning system and it has to have some amount of connection with each other.
 
mintoots said:
A part of me is still thinking what if we're over-rating the mind? Yeah, sure the neural imprints are there evidenced physically by electrical impulse which we record but what if like in a CCTV system, as in the cameras, it's only just the screen that allows us to observe. What if the system is total? It's throughout the rest of the body? So then the mind is not just in the brain, despite it being the relative control center where wires converge. Maybe it's the pull-box. In any case, it's still dependent on the system, isn't it? Take Stephen Hawking. Yeah, sure he is dominated by his mind at such a point in his life but as his body completely failed, there never was a Stephen Hawking. Maybe we're looking at it too closely into bits and pieces. Maybe it has to be a functioning system and it has to have some amount of connection with each other.
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We might well be overrating the mind, but I cannot help but observe that we're finding it difficult (if not impossible) to provide a concept of identity without tacitly taking it for granted.

Either as an essential property of human identity, or at the tacit subjectivity/inter-subjectivity that gives the very concept of identity its intelligibility, as John's post showed.

I take very seriously the idea that without minds in the universe, there might not be any 'identity' as such.
 
Ren said:
We might well be overrating the mind, but I cannot help but observe that we're finding it difficult (if not impossible) to provide a concept of identity without tacitly taking it for granted.

Either as an essential property of human identity, or at the tacit subjectivity/inter-subjectivity that gives the very concept of identity its intelligibility, as John's post showed.
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Okay so then take this, where exactly is the physical manifestation of the mind? Is the brain conclusively the physique of the mind? i'm not convinced that it is. Mind/soul/temporal. John was onto something in pinning identity to it, but what I cannot completely accept is that it is essentially deviated from the body. I think it's always one and the same. We may attempt to change its components but the union must somehow stay, so there then is a potential spatio-temporal crosspoint. So, instead of looking at it in microscales, what if the individual organism itself is a station point for spatio temporal intersection. And then it repeats again throughout across scales. What if there never should be any such spatio temporal separation?*

This assumption is for living things only.
 
Moreso if the physical body requires a consistent connection to everything else physical to survive, isn't that also true of the mind/soul/temporal? That it must stay connected to the body and or something else to stay alive, and thus, identifiable.
 
You've fed my brain to death with your Ne, lol. I'll try to come back to it once I've been able to digest your thoughts.

Your reasoning is very lateral and somewhat non-linear -- have you ever noticed that? It's not a criticism, by the way. Just an observation.
 
Ren said:
You've fed my brain to death with your Ne, lol. I'll try to come back to it once I've been able to digest your thoughts.

Your reasoning is very lateral and somewhat non-linear -- have you ever noticed that? It's not a criticism, by the way. Just an observation.
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Lateral and non-linear. I'm visualizing that but I'm not sure what it means about my thoughts. LOL

My Ne. I didn't realize I have it! Am I INTP then? I'm not so this is confusing.

Well, yeah. It can't be a criticism if the benchmark hasn't been established nor clarified. Objectively, it's just a way of thinking.

Now I'm not sure what you're thinking about me. Not that I thought about that but now I suddenly am.
 
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