Ren
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Enduring Problems in Philosophy
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John K
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Exactly - what we call the Milky Way is not a thing in itself but something that only exists in realtionship to us humans, and so with a rock too. They aren't to themselves what they are to us, because they aren't anything to themselves - there is no identity without the perception of it. Your concept of second order openness in Open Monism points nicely at the difference between people and things, and one of my suggestions is that people (and their equivalent if any) are the only part of the world that have intrinsic, self-referential identities rather than relative identities.
I have to confess that I'm exploring a particular room in the Positive Skeptic labyrinth pretty strongly here, because (for example) from a religious point of view, God always is aware of everything at all times and in all places throughout the universe from its beginning to its end, and his awareness generates the identity that manifests everything, though not in a simple way. For obvious reasons, this is not a helpful perspective when looking at things bottom up instead of top down lol.
John K
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I can only speak for myself here, with my particular experience of the world, and my limited knowledge of philosophy. There is a trap in thinking that tangible and intangible reality are not both substansive parts of the world we find ourselves in. This isn't some mystical idea (though it could include mysticism lol) but I'm thinking of the relationship between software and hardware in computing. It's pretty obvious from science that software is as fundamental as the material stuff of the universe. By that, I mean the laws that govern it. Now we could say that these laws are like identity in the way I expressed it - only meaningful in the eyes of a beholder. It can't be that simple though, because they obviously were at work long before humans existed - we wouldn't exist without them. It could even be that the software that governs the way our world works pre-dates its existence, because it maybe wouldn't have come into existence without them.
So is it all that far fetched to think of a human mind as being software that runs in a biological computer? I think not - and once we have emancipated our minds from the stuff on which it 'executes' it seems quite reasonable to think that we could exist independently of our present bodies. Of course we would need some sort of matrix on which to 'run' but it needn't be the body we currently have. In fact this is sort of proven by the way we continue to 'run' throughout our lives in many different versions of our physical bodies. This is just like a program that can and does run quite happily on many different computers.
Except it isn't that simple of course, because the analogy isn't exact - but it helps us to conceptually escape the total bind of identity to brain.
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@John K my problem right now is that there is no proof of the matrix. I mean I could believe and I most likely do, but I'm honestly somehow stuck in finding how it's manifesting in the human body. You mentioned about electrical energy earlier. I'm somewhat exploring that too.
(LOL now I see what @Ren means with "non-linear lateral".)
(LOL now I see what @Ren means with "non-linear lateral".)
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o2b
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Hey Ren,
I wonder if this muddies the waters. I had heard of this years ago and this is from a quick internet search. This article gives ten examples. It is intriguing.
https://listverse.com/2016/05/14/10-organ-recipients-who-took-on-the-traits-of-their-donors/
Organ donations and transplants have saved countless lives. However, some people claim to have received more than just the working organ. There is an increasingly studied phenomenon known as “cellular memory”—the theory that cells within an organ carry the memories and desires of the person to whom they belonged. While it’s still very much on the fringes of science, as more studies are done, more and more examples appear to be making the case that cellular memory may be more than just a wild theory. Here are 10 examples.
...
Not only did 17-year-old Amy Tippins develop a sudden craving and liking for hamburgers following her successful liver transplant in 1993, but she also suddenly developed a deep sense of moral and civic duty and an appreciation for her community at large.
That wasn’t the strangest thing she noticed, however. She seemed to have new abilities as well. She noticed that she would wander into hardware stores without realizing what she was doing. Also, she knew a whole range of complex do-it-yourself skills and was physically able to carry them out.
Amy had suffered from acute liver disease, which led to her requiring a new liver. She managed to arrange a meeting with the donor’s family and learned that he was a former U.S. Marshal named Mike James. His family stated that hamburgers were one of his favorite foods, but perhaps more importantly to Amy, they said that he loved to work with his hands and had undertaken several building projects at home before his death. His family also told her that his goal in life was always to help and protect other people.
Amy believes that through the liver transplant, she has absorbed some of Mike’s personality and sense of duty, as well as some of his skills.
So, it seems to me that regarding identity from the perspective of sentience, retention of identity and what defines it requires parsing within consciousness itself.
This is precisely why I wrote (#230):
I guess I don't see much if any significance to identity without sentience.
I wonder if this muddies the waters. I had heard of this years ago and this is from a quick internet search. This article gives ten examples. It is intriguing.
https://listverse.com/2016/05/14/10-organ-recipients-who-took-on-the-traits-of-their-donors/
Organ donations and transplants have saved countless lives. However, some people claim to have received more than just the working organ. There is an increasingly studied phenomenon known as “cellular memory”—the theory that cells within an organ carry the memories and desires of the person to whom they belonged. While it’s still very much on the fringes of science, as more studies are done, more and more examples appear to be making the case that cellular memory may be more than just a wild theory. Here are 10 examples.
...
Not only did 17-year-old Amy Tippins develop a sudden craving and liking for hamburgers following her successful liver transplant in 1993, but she also suddenly developed a deep sense of moral and civic duty and an appreciation for her community at large.
That wasn’t the strangest thing she noticed, however. She seemed to have new abilities as well. She noticed that she would wander into hardware stores without realizing what she was doing. Also, she knew a whole range of complex do-it-yourself skills and was physically able to carry them out.
Amy had suffered from acute liver disease, which led to her requiring a new liver. She managed to arrange a meeting with the donor’s family and learned that he was a former U.S. Marshal named Mike James. His family stated that hamburgers were one of his favorite foods, but perhaps more importantly to Amy, they said that he loved to work with his hands and had undertaken several building projects at home before his death. His family also told her that his goal in life was always to help and protect other people.
Amy believes that through the liver transplant, she has absorbed some of Mike’s personality and sense of duty, as well as some of his skills.
So, it seems to me that regarding identity from the perspective of sentience, retention of identity and what defines it requires parsing within consciousness itself.
Sidis Coruscatis
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This got me started, now the brain engine is going!
I keep going back to Descartes in Meditations and how he put forth the body-mind complex, and then compare it to Wittgenstein's philosophy of language. And once again I have to refuse the notion that he was ever a dualist, or rather that he couldn't be a dualist without being a monist by the same token, just like you can't separate syntax and semantic without at once admitting that only together they can make any functional language. And I think these language components are crucial to consider, as they form much of reality in a more metaphorical manner of speaking.
What this says to me is that physicality can never carry any identity in any form in itself, but it rather serves as buttressing for the gestalt of identity. Whatever else identity is, it must be tautological by definition. If we make a perfect copy of a tree, it will look identical - but how can this be when there's clearly two of them now?! No, identity must be of the mind. If we remove a part of our body, we don't change identity because it was taken away, but rather because the syntactic integrity of the body-mind complex was violated, which muddles the semantic part. The corporeal parts, as syntax, is what provides familiarity with the world and ourselves - if we trace the etymology of a word, we will invariably find that its form is not identical to the previous iterations. The meaning was carried on and preserved to some extent, but the connotations, if not the denotation altogether, have changed. A doctor is a medically learned person, but apparently also a teacher. But have they ever been a teacher? How would I know except that I've been told?
This is the connection. Identity can't be a sovereign construct - it can never be yours alone. If I see a black box, does it possess that blackness and squareness by itself or is it some sort of exchange? Are the physical reifications of these concepts the portals through which I can impute those qualities? If so, then identity can never be self-constructed; it's always the effect of tandem events. Identity is the etymology of the mind.
Why do we then keep insisting on the immaculate consistency of language? Why can't a misspelling of a word be equally accepted to a proper spelling? Better yet, why can't a word mean anything that I want it to mean at any time? Barring the obvious communication problems, I have to assume it's for the same reason that when I awaken in an airplane there's a momentary sense of confusion and disconnect, just like there would be if the walls in my room were suddenly repainted overnight. There's something really terrifying about this dissolution of order and familiarity, which is what identity fundamentally is. I can't help but sympathize with the opponents of the gender revolution who would claim that a man and a woman are tied to specific things - because they know that's the world. Just like the revolutionaries who have been living through the other side of the coin know that this order is alien and must be done away with. There's no actual 'open-mindedness' happening on any side of the scenario - in fact, this is the only possible ironic apotheosis of such proposed open-mindedness.
When you assert that diversity must be cultivated and that all values are equally valid because any whiff of bigotry or exclusion must be squelched, conflict is inevitable, and not just because of the irony present in the formulation of the proposal. It's nihilism fighting itself, because it can't really do anything else. It's too painful to live in a world where the infinite multitude of things and names have no hierarchy, because nothing can make sense unless it's differentiated and excluded from each other.
Maybe the postmodernists are onto something, but they aren't onto any facts. That's the uncomfortable implication of all this. Facts can't be at once facts and also in an eternal flux. Where is the intersection in the universal Venn diagram where reality and humanity collide into Truth?
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John K
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I'm the opposite myself
- I have never yet experienced being a brain, which to me seems like just another objective, physical part of my body. My 'I' is manifestly not the same sort of thing as my body in which it is hosted. I have no idea if that's the way others experience themselves within, though. To complicate things further, from a very important perspective, I don't really experience my inner world as me either - I seem to be like a window, or a portal, that faces onto two different worlds, the inner and the outer, and neither of them is me. But there's actually nothing particularly esoteric about accepting that 'software' is a real and integral part of our world. I'm anthropomorphising it by using that word, but it's a good metaphor for the way the world interacts with itself. If that didn't exist, there would be no world. It's pretty obvious as well that a computer program needs a physical computing device on which to run, but it isn't tied to a single physical device, and can even be transported to different types of hardware.
The idea of transposing a human 'I' intact to a different host is of course pure science fiction, and it may well be fantasy. I suspect that hard experience with brain extension prosthetics may start to explore this empirically within a few decades.
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Yes, I experience it similarly, John. I feel separate from my body, and separate from my 'self' in many ways. It's sort of as if the body is merely the means in which I am able to relate to this world and interact with it, yet it is not what I am. I know that I am something else apart from this 'shell', despite being able to control it consciously and unconsciously, yet who or what is another thing entirely. I imagine an Ai without form. It knows what it is, yet is separate from what it is. The form doesn't give it identity. The thought does. Perhaps, the form matters very little in identity. I think back to the original labeling of things which were seen in the world. We put labels on those things, but that doesn't give them identity. Their identity was already established; we merely recognized them and put them into words in relation to ourselves.I'm the opposite myself
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If we put it this way, then we're all God. Are we not? It also doesn't address how identity operates in the world that we know. It's almost akin to saying that if I see myself as an elephant, I can be an elephant or anything else at all. While the separation from the body is an intriguing experience that is not really alien to me, I was hoping to logically attack the concept of identity in this world while taking into multiple arguments. As strongly as I may feel about that which is esoteric, I wanted to turn off my feelings and tinker with the factual aspects of identity. Sometimes I have this thought: what if all arguments could meet in the middle because that's exactly where it should be ---not as a compromise, but as a fact. I'm trying to translate our abstractions and express them through logical thought (though I'm not so good at its language).I'm the opposite myself
But there's actually nothing particularly esoteric about accepting that 'software' is a real and integral part of our world. I'm anthropomorphising it by using that word, but it's a good metaphor for the way the world interacts with itself. If that didn't exist, there would be no world. It's pretty obvious as well that a computer program needs a physical computing device on which to run, but it isn't tied to a single physical device, and can even be transported to different types of hardware.
The idea of transposing a human 'I' intact to a different host is of course pure science fiction, and it may well be fantasy. I suspect that hard experience with brain extension prosthetics may start to explore this empirically within a few decades.
However, I'm also rather exploring so there is no one argument I am subscribing to here. I took on @Ren's hat and just wanted to see where thoughts could go but my agenda if it must be named is there in finding a definition of identity that is acceptable esoterically and logically. I know that's impossible but it's been an exciting goal for me. In other words, I'm having fun exploring this, which is also probably why I'm zooming in and out of possibilities as Ne as that may get.
(i'm looking at you Ren)
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Damnit.
Jk!
This is a good comeback. Incorporating the discipline of language as an approach to the question provides adhesion. You also made a good point there in establishing the importance of structure but where it's off for me is in the meanings that people tend to ascribe to that structure. Personally, to me, structure is great but only on a mechanical and operational level. Where I am offended by it is when a valuation system is attached to it such that it aggressively offends fluidity. I am thinking about gender dysmorphia, the caste system, etc. as examples to this. I do subscribe to the very importance of structure as even the spatio-physical is governed by it. Matter is arranged with a particular precision albeit the endlessness of its patterns. However, when meaning beyond syntax and semantics begins to sprout from this structure itself, I find it uncomfortable. To me structure is only acceptable if there is no higher merit awarded to any of the given pieces no matter the vitality of its role. Thus the brain isn't any better than the heart, whether as organs or as whatever other subliminal and commercial meanings there are attached to it. This, however is in the context of societal systems that govern the world. I'm aware that meaning persists to sprout from any structure.
I'm thinking of poetry or music, and the way its elements are formed to convene to become something meaningful. I'm thinking of architecture which is experienced meaningfully albeit being just a logical composition of masses, voids, and details. Maybe meaning is subliminal to everything and that identity is in meaning... so then now I'm wondering, why should it have an impact on our psyche?
Which of course is a completely different tangent. Ne.
Ren
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That's actually an excellent counter-argument to the idea that the body is separate from 'real' identity. It's obvious that nobody can seriously imagine really being an elephant.
Min -- I don't know if you're aware of this, but you've just employed a reductio ad absurdum. A familiar item in the philosopher's arsenal.
I suspect that the reason for this sense of separateness from body/mind/etc. is simply that we experience ourselves in the first person, while we can only refer to our bodies, brains, minds, etc. in the third person or in the possessive. It's a linguistic fact easily misconceived as a metaphysical one.
A subjectivist take on identity cannot step outside itself, so I would distinguish it from identity and refer to it as sense of identity. Since that is subjective, anything goes really, depending on one's flavour of subjectivity.
But in fact (not subjectively), when we speak in the first person, we are always implying the unspoken totality of what makes us -- including body, mind, etc.
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Ren
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Well, Descartes did say the essence of mind was thought and the essence of matter was extension, so it does sound like pretty straightforward dualism.
What's contradictory about a purely physical world, i.e. a world without mind? I can perfectly well imagine it. But if that's a coherent notion, then it's monism and is different from a world with mind (i.e. a dualist world).
To shift the perspective somewhat, it might be fruitful to imagine what the identity of an object would be like prior to the historical appearance of consciousness. 500 million years ago, for example.
Is this possible at all? If not, then there might be a case that identity is not an intelligible concept outside of minds to conceive it. If yes, then it would turn out that identity is mind-independent after all.
Krypton
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I'll bite on this--I think you could conceive of an object that existed prior to consciousness' identity in a few ways.
You could first off define its identity as every non-relational trait that thing could be considered to have (what separates it from other things, also what you were saying earlier as the unspoken totality), but this would mean its identity would be constantly changing for most things beyond atoms. You could also include relational properties but that would make it even more fluid.
OR
You could define it by the meaning it has to us in the present, since we are learning about these sorts of objects now. This would probably be more stable.
Sort of makes me wonder how we should define "meaning" here. I'm pretty sure someone else mentioned this but as I don't want to comb through the thread, I'll just ask again--should we be defining something's meaning as its meaning to people generally, or to us as individuals (With multiple identities existing in the same "thing" based on different people's priorities)?
John K
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The problem I see with this is that, far from clarifying things, it means that there are many different “I’s”, all equally valid. It’s an illusion to think our bodies are constant things so an identity that includes them is necessarily ephemeral. It goes beyond that because the content of my mind is even more ephemeral than my physical form and if that too is my identity then it’s flickering from one I to another over seconds in time. At best it’s an approximate sort of I. It’s back to your parable of the boat - if it really is the same boat throughout all the changes then it’s identity has to be bound up with form and purpose rather than content.That's actually an excellent counter-argument to the idea that the body is separate from 'real' identity. It's obvious that nobody can seriously imagine really being an elephant.
Min -- I don't know if you're aware of this, but you've just employed a reductio ad absurdum. A familiar item in the philosopher's arsenal.
I suspect that the reason for this sense of separateness from body/mind/etc. is simply that we experience ourselves in the first person, while we can only refer to our bodies, brains, minds, etc. in the third person or in the possessive. It's a linguistic fact easily misconceived as a metaphysical one.
A subjectivist take on identity cannot step outside itself, so I would distinguish it from identity and refer to it as sense of identity. Since that is subjective, anything goes really, depending on one's flavour of subjectivity.
But in fact (not subjectively), when we speak in the first person, we are always implying the unspoken totality of what makes us -- including body, mind, etc.
I think that Descartes has laid too deep and well worn a trap so that any suggestion that human identity is based on a kind of software leads straight down a dualism rabbit hole. There is nothing necessarily dualistic about software and it’s impossible to conceive of our world without it, any more than we can conceive it without matter and energy. They are inseparable partners, but only software can carry other than ephemeral identity.
John K
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Not God .... that would be a burden wouldn't it
I was simply exporing the second of the types of identity that I described myself being aware of a few posts back - that of myself. That's not how I think of the identity of external things which is very much bound up with their factual attributes and their purpose (if any). Any logical analysis has to start with something that is accepted as true without logical support - either intuitively or through perception / observation. My axiomatic position on identity is that it is an artefact of consciousness and so meaningless without consciousness. Of course the immediate consequence of this is that there can be no identity of anything without there being consciousness of it.
But what is it that you mean by identity? It's a word that seems to signify different things to different people here, and some of the differences in perspective may well arise from that.
I love that you are playing with this from different conceptual angles by the way. It's great fun, and very informative, to take different perspectives even when they conflict, and see where they lead. I don't have a firm single world view myself.
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Sidis Coruscatis
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But what is meaning beyond syntax and semantics? How can any meaning transcend its semantic component and still mean anything? I understand that you're implying the inherent unity of human value in Christ. But its manifestation in us is messy, especially since we're not Christ. Can your loved ones never ascend this ladder of personal hierarchy and merit? It reminds me of Kantian ethics, in that their day-to-day application is by far more noble than any other moral system, but there is a point where their consistency turns into a particularly benighted way to think, because the context demands their contravention in order for any good to be preserved at all.
Imagine that there is some such quality that's recognized within a specific archetype of man, which is known to bring prosperity. If we consider society as a unit which consists of people as its cells, it makes sense to me that it would eventually grow fond of it and try to foster it. The only problem is that society, just like evolution, can be slow to react to changes in its environment so that these qualities will persist to be asserted even when the circumstances no longer necessitate it to such degree. Reforms and revolutions will happen. But that says nothing about the former historical importance of the previous institutions, and some may claim that their preservation will still be needed in the future.
I don't see your reasoning here; why shouldn't it have an impact if meaning is strictly bound to the realm of psyche?
John K
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Pondering out loud ….
One way is if the semantics point to something beyond themselves that isn’t expressed in language, but itself carries meaning - eg an experience or an awakening of some kind. A Zen koan is an example, or maybe TS Eliot’s Four Quartets.
There seem to be plenty of things that carry meaning that aren’t syntactical - paintings, an expression of face and other body language, music, dance, the migratory flight of birds, the height of the noonday sun, animal tracks etc. On the other hand could that mean that we put too narrow a boundary around language, and maybe we should include other types, non verbal forms of symbolic representation, as language too as long as they convey meaning? These other types don’t reduce so well to a set of common components like verbal language does though.
What exactly is language I wonder ……
Sidis Coruscatis
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Can you? Only if a tree makes a sound when it falls in an empty forest. But it's a koan. The only way to answer that question is to unask it.
Is there anything in this mindless physical world that doesn't represent the objects as they appear to your mind in this world? You may say that in this imaginary world, cat tails grow out of the ground instead of grass and trees are covered in snake skin, but these are just amalgamations of things of which individual parts exist in a different conjunction in reality. There can't be any empirical existence if it isn't perceived by something. You are just as much a vital component in the phenomenon of sound as is the falling tree. This is also why Descartes makes a big deal of thinking about God; because it's the only thing we can consider without being presented with any physical form of God, ever. Perhaps because God represents the underlying logic of the physical world to him.
If my account of identity is correct, then it would also mean the dissolution of essence, unless that essence itself lies in change, but then it wouldn't be essence at all! He says this quite clearly in the second meditation. But it's hard to deny, at the same time, that thought does seem to be inseparable from mind.
Sidis Coruscatis
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It's funny that we both brought up koans at the same time, but I still am not convinced, though I admit that koans are a different animal. The problem is that for me, anything that is a symbol or is being symbolized in whatever form or shape, such as that my mind can grasp it in even the most tenuous grip, must exist within some system of language. Note that I'm speaking of escaping semantics which are already freed of their rigid syntactic shell. Can anything be thought of, felt, perceived in a way that doesn't bear with it any implication of relative state of affairs between the object and you?