Dasein/dasein

[iambiguous]

John Locke & Personal Identity
Nurana Rajabova considers why, according to John Locke, you continue to be you.

Identity Principles

Before delving into Locke’s position on personal identity, it will be helpful to consider his principles regarding the identity or sameness of things in general. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke offers us two main principles in determining the identity or unity of things. One is the time and location principle: at any given time, one thing can exist at one place only.

This is the point I keep making in regard to "here and now". Depending on when you were born historically and on the culture able to fill your head with all manner of moral and political prejudices as a child, your identity is shaped and molded by things and by people that were often completely beyond your control.

Thus, many of the "principles" involved here are themselves no less rooted existentially in dasein.

On the other hand...

The same thing cannot possibly exist in two or more places at the same time. Suppose you see a chair in the front yard right at the moment. At the same time, you also see an identical chair five meters away. Despite looking identical, these two items being in different locations at the same time make you conclude that these are separate things.

Still, chairs of all shapes and sizes existed, exist and will no doubt continue to exist on into the future in all manner of locations down through the ages and in most cultures. But chairs aren't people. Chairs don't congregate in philosophy forums to explore their own existence. Their own nature. Their obligations and responsibilities around other chairs.

What's tricky about the human Self/"self" is the part that revolves around dasein in a free will world.

However, if you happened to see only one chair in the front yard in the morning, and two hours later you saw an identical chair in the backyard, you could easily assume that it’s the same chair you’d seen in the front yard in the morning. Someone possibly moved it. Locke concludes:

“It being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place; or one and the same thing in different places. That therefore, that had one beginning, is the same thing; and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that, is not the same, but diverse.”

And it all seems reasonable until you get to us...the human species. With the Benjamin Button Syndrome alone we can note just how awash human beings are in sets of circumstances that, embedded in conflicting goods, really are understood basically from subjective/intersubjective perspectives that have everything to do identity at the historical and cultural intersection of conflicting value judgments and political economy.

With people there are always going to be things that seem applicable to all of us. And that's because for all practical purposes they are. Here and now or there and then. Instead, it is in regard to value judgements that "here and now" self can become very much at odds with other "there and then" selves.

[iambiguous]

John Locke & Personal Identity
Nurana Rajabova considers why, according to John Locke, you continue to be you.

The second and equally important principle in determining the identity of things according to Locke, is the constituents that a thing is made of and is differentiated from other things.

Here the mystery truly deepens. Everything in the universe seems to be composed of much the same matter. And yet note all the ways in which these constituents -- elements -- can come together to create countless [and very, very different] "entities".

Especially on planets like Earth where the human species takes matter and reconfigures it into, say, smart phones?

And, of course, all of this assumes the human species "somehow" acquired autonomy from the "heavy elements" that came to exist as a result of massive stars exploding. And, really, how close are we to actually explaining that?

For instance, non-living creatures are “the cohesion of particles any how united” and that is where their identity also lies in. For living creatures, however, it is not enough for its particles to be united in just any way: they must be united in a way that would nourish and sustain the creature throughout its existence,

Unless it actually does turn out that every single particle throughout the entire universe is exactly in the only place it ever could have been in.

Whatever that means, of course.

Thus, their identity resides “in the participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized body". Due to this, it is very possible for living beings to continue existing even given the loss or change of their physical matter.

A little help, please. What on Earth for all practical purposes do you suppose this means? Especially given how, the older we get, the less organized all the parts become. Unless she means something entirely different.

We consider an oak growing from a sapling to a great tree still to be the same oak, and a colt grown up to a horse is all the while the same horse for us, despite in both cases there being many changes in the physical matter.

Yep, that's how biological life works alright.

As living beings, humans are no exception to this rule. As Locke says:

“He that shall place the identity of man in anything else than like that of other animals, in one fitly organized body, taken in any one instant, and from thence continued, under one organization of life, in several successively fleeting particles of matter united to it, will find it hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and sober, the same man, by any supposition that will not make it possible for Seth, Ismael, Socrates, etc to be the same man.”

Basically, this seems to describe the scaffolding of biological life. But what unfolds inside that framework is ever and always evolving from the cradle to the grave. In particular, regarding our own species. But human identity also includes components that no other lifeform on Earth possesses. And the gap here in some respects is just mindboggling.

[Age]

John Locke & Personal Identity
Nurana Rajabova considers why, according to John Locke, you continue to be you.

The second and equally important principle in determining the identity of things according to Locke, is the constituents that a thing is made of and is differentiated from other things.

Here the mystery truly deepens. Everything in the universe seems to be composed of much the same matter.

What do you mean by 'much the same matter'? What 'other matter' is there, exactly?

And yet note all the ways in which these constituents -- elements -- can come together to create countless [and very, very different] "entities".

Especially on planets like Earth where the human species takes matter and reconfigures it into, say, smart phones?

And, of course, all of this assumes the human species "somehow" acquired autonomy from the "heavy elements" that came to exist as a result of massive stars exploding. And, really, how close are we to actually explaining that?

As it appears, MUCH CLOSER than you think, or realize.

For instance, non-living creatures are “the cohesion of particles any how united” and that is where their identity also lies in. For living creatures, however, it is not enough for its particles to be united in just any way: they must be united in a way that would nourish and sustain the creature throughout its existence,

Unless it actually does turn out that every single particle throughout the entire universe is exactly in the only place it ever could have been in.

Well how else could it be in any other place?

Whatever that means, of course.

Whatever 'that' means is, obviously, whatever you want or make 'it' to mean.

Thus, their identity resides “in the participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized body". Due to this, it is very possible for living beings to continue existing even given the loss or change of their physical matter.

A little help, please. What on Earth for all practical purposes do you suppose this means? Especially given how, the older we get, the less organized all the parts become. Unless she means something entirely different.

We consider an oak growing from a sapling to a great tree still to be the same oak, and a colt grown up to a horse is all the while the same horse for us, despite in both cases there being many changes in the physical matter.

Yep, that's how biological life works alright.

Except there are actually not 'many changes', but only one, continuous, change.

As living beings, humans are no exception to this rule. As Locke says:

“He that shall place the identity of man in anything else than like that of other animals, in one fitly organized body, taken in any one instant, and from thence continued, under one organization of life, in several successively fleeting particles of matter united to it, will find it hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and sober, the same man, by any supposition that will not make it possible for Seth, Ismael, Socrates, etc to be the same man.”

Basically, this seems to describe the scaffolding of biological life. But what unfolds inside that framework is ever and always evolving from the cradle to the grave. In particular, regarding our own species. But human identity also includes components that no other lifeform on Earth possesses. And the gap here in some respects is just mindboggling.

So, what are the 'components', exactly? And, what is the 'gap', exactly?

And, there is absolutely NOTHING that boggles 'the Mind'.

[Belinda]

Age wrote:
"And, there is absolutely NOTHING that boggles 'the Mind'."

Belinda commends your fortitude . Most of the people i know are constantly puzzled or otherwise agnostic, and most people ignore problems of existence as insoluble , or they think what the priest or Oprah Winfrey tells them to think.

[iambiguous]

John Locke & Personal Identity
Nurana Rajabova considers why, according to John Locke, you continue to be you.

Identity of Man vs. Personal Identity

Personal identity is not the same as human identity, because for Locke, the man and the person are different things, despite our frequent interchanging of the terms. They are different because their constituents are different.

This is basically what I come around to here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-man ... sein/31641

We are all the embodiment of the human species. As such there are going to be things that are applicable to all of us. Biological imperatives, social constructs or otherwise. And yet no two of us will live exactly the same life. Even among identical twins there are going to be the things that eventually make each of them unique.

Man, according to Locke, is made of two sorts of substance: the physical matter (ie the body) and the non- physical matter (ie the soul). A person, on the other hand, in addition to having physical substance and a soul, also possesses consciousness, which in a way unites soul and substance together while giving perception to the being.

And Locke's own consciousness was able to substantiate the existence of a human soul...how? And he pinpointed the neurological and chemical interactions that demonstrate the unification of the body and the soul...how? Instead, as with most of us here, he did the best he could as a mere mortal in connecting the dots between words and worlds.

Still, it's not like the philosophical and scientific communities today have come together to celebrate Locke for having come closest to understanding the interactions between "I" and "we" and "them" given particular social, political and economic contexts.

Specifically, a person is a thinking being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places. This he can do only through consciousness. Therefore, says Locke, personal identity or the continuing ‘sameness’ of a rational being consists in this alone.

Click of course.

And given free will, yes, each of us sustains a sense of identity that goes wherever we go from the cradle to the grave. Unless, of course, we are afflicted with any number of conditions that seem able to take this consciousness of ours and twist it into any number of conditions that are "beyond our control".

Substance cannot be the essence of our personal identity. The evidence for this lies in our very bodies. It is true that we feel our bodies as part of ourselves, for we feel when we are touched, and are affected by the good or harm that happens to them. But we do this only whilst all the particles of our bodies are vitally united to our thinking conscious self. This feeling of parts of our body gets lost the moment they’re disconnected from that body. A prime example Locke mentions are cut off limbs.

Again, given the extent to which you believe that you understand this, how is it applicable to your own life? You have a body and a conscious mind "somehow" intertwined in a Soul that encompasses...I?

And cut off limbs are one thing, brain tumors and mental illnesses that reconfigure "I" into any number of virtually unrecognizable "selves" another thing altogether.

[Belinda]

Iambiguous wrote:

Substance cannot be the essence of our personal identity. The evidence for this lies in our very bodies. It is true that we feel our bodies as part of ourselves, for we feel when we are touched, and are affected by the good or harm that happens to them. But we do this only whilst all the particles of our bodies are vitally united to our thinking conscious self. This feeling of parts of our body gets lost the moment they’re disconnected from that body. A prime example Locke mentions are cut off limbs.
Again, given the extent to which you believe that you understand this, how is it applicable to your own life? You have a body and a conscious mind "somehow" intertwined in a Soul that encompasses...I?

And cut off limbs are one thing, brain tumors and mental illnesses that reconfigure "I" into any number of virtually unrecognizable "selves" another thing altogether.

Locke, I think did not know about how the components of human nervous systems work. Pareses and paralyses too are examples of when we don't feel or can't control a limb. There is also the phantom limb phenomenon when an amputee feels pain in the absent limb.

In the cases of paresis, paralysis, and phantom limb the subject identifies as himself. The reason for this is the habitual frame of selfness. Selfness is learned in early infancy after the infant learns that he is not the same person as his mother. Two year olds can play great games saying "No!" to commands. He generalises his changed relationship to his mother towards the belief that he, his mother, and all are separate persons.There is not much doubt that bees and ants never form the selfness concept or frame for thought.

The newborn is perhaps not tabula rasa in all matters but in the matter of selfhood he is tabula rasa like what he was in utero.

There is no nervous tissue or structure to which the name "will" can be appended.It's a mistake to describe the process of decision making as 'will' as this can lead to reification.The cliche 'in two minds' concerns the feeling of being indecisive, and In actual fact one part of a cerebral cortex does not exchange information with another part of the same cortex about what it's doing. This lack of communication is therefore unlike the efferent and afferent nervous connections between a leg and a brain. I suppose natural selection would not allow for such redundancy.

[iambiguous]

John Locke & Personal Identity
Nurana Rajabova considers why, according to John Locke, you continue to be you.

But the soul is not the place where personal identity resides, either.

No, really, you tell me: where does "I" manifest itself most convincingly for you?

For many, it's all in the eyes. Though not of course for those like Maia. Others say it's the mouth...the place where "I" comes out given the words choosen in which to convey itself.

Other than that? Well, the assumption sometimes is that somewhere in the brain resides the mind resides the self.

As for the soul, sure, an invention that pulls everything together. And then on top of that, it assures us that "I" will continue on, well, forever.

To prove this, Locke invites his reader to think of themselves as having a non-physical soul, and that soul as having previously belonged to someone from history, such as Socrates, Nestor. Then he asks them to reflect whether they have any consciousness of the soul they believe they’re carrying. If they do not remember any of their experiences from past lives, then it would be simply a mistake for these people to conceive themselves as the same person as the historical person whose soul they supposedly have.

More to the point, beyond the "anything goes" thought experiments, how exactly would someone go about actually demonstrating this past self? Or, perhaps, even more surreal, what if they actually could?

[Iwannaplato]

John Locke & Personal Identity
Nurana Rajabova considers why, according to John Locke, you continue to be you.

But the soul is not the place where personal identity resides, either.

No, really, you tell me: where does "I" manifest itself most convincingly for you?

What's your answer?
You have expressed a - very human - concern about the loss of yourself at death. This implies strongly that you think something/something that is present now, today, continues up until that time of the death. THEN it gets lost. Something that continues or persists, THEN gets cut off.

What is that self you are concerned about losing? What makes you think it is the same you next week, etc.?

Or is it just others that think there is a self?

[Belinda]

Deciding to deliver the subjective ego self from living is the last act of the ego self.

[iambiguous]

John Locke & Personal Identity
Nurana Rajabova considers why, according to John Locke, you continue to be you.

But the soul is not the place where personal identity resides, either.

No, really, you tell me: where does "I" manifest itself most convincingly for you?

What's your answer?

Right, like in regard to things like this I am any less "fractured and fragmented". In fact, things like this are more likely to leave any number of folks drawn and quartered.

And it's not the answers we give that most intrigues me. It's the part where we attempt to demonstrate why our answers -- answers derived largely from what we believe "in our heads" -- are that which all rational men and women are obligated to share if they wish to be thought of as rational men and women.

Then the part where what we do believe in our heads about things like this are rooted existentially in dasein far more than anything philosophers can conclude.

Though, sure, if anyone here believes they have a soul, give it a shot. Let them note, for example, all of the empirical evidence they have accumulated so far to back it up.

You have expressed a - very human - concern about the loss of yourself at death. This implies strongly that you think something/something that is present now, today, continues up until that time of the death. THEN it gets lost. Something that continues or persists, THEN gets cut off.

That, in my view, is how it works in a No God world: Birth...School...Work...Death. And what gets lost is, well, among other things, all that you love and cherish.

Isn't that why souls anchored to one or another spiritual/religious path are so crucial here? It's the crumbling material body itself that must rationalized.

What is that self you are concerned about losing?

The part that brings me enormous fulfillment and satisfaction, of course. In fact, when, instead, one's life is filled with enormous pain and suffering, not only are some not concerned with losing whatever it is they think their own "self" is, they end it themselves.

What makes you think it is the same you next week, etc.? Or is it just others that think there is a self?

Huh?

My whole philosophy "here and now" revolves around suggesting that from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year we might encounter new experiences, new relationships, new sources of information and knowledge that sends "I" in any number of new directions. And, in particular, in regard to our value judgments.

Again, that's the whole point of possessing a soul some argue.

As for what others here think their own self is, let them explain to us how, say, they fit it into the human condition itself. Then going back to their explanation regarding how the human condition fits into their explanation for the existence of existence itself.

[Iwannaplato]

Right, like in regard to things like this I am any less "fractured and fragmented". In fact, things like this are more likely to leave any number of folks drawn and quartered.

Oh, did I say you were less fractured and fragmented (than whom?) I apologize. I didn't mean to say that.

And it's not the answers we give that most intrigues me. It's the part where we attempt to demonstrate why our answers -- answers derived largely from what we believe "in our heads" -- are that which all rational men and women are obligated to share if they wish to be thought of as rational men and women.

OK, but you seem to assume, yourself, that at death something that persisted, stops persisting THEN. Have I misunderstood you? I have never seen you lament that it won't be you tomorrow. I have seen you question what an authentic or real self is, but I missed where you have expressed that you worry about the persistence of self through the life. If you do, please let me know. That answers the question.

Then the part where what we do believe in our heads about things like this are rooted existentially in dasein far more than anything philosophers can conclude.

Though, sure, if anyone here believes they have a soul, give it a shot. Let them note, for example, all of the empirical evidence they have accumulated so far to back it up.

I wasn't asserting there was a soul. Who are you responding to here?

You have expressed a - very human - concern about the loss of yourself at death. This implies strongly that you think something/something that is present now, today, continues up until that time of the death. THEN it gets lost. Something that continues or persists, THEN gets cut off.

That, in my view, is how it works in a No God world: Birth...School...Work...Death. And what gets lost is, well, among other things, all that you love and cherish.

Sure, but then you seem to think there is a self that gets lost AT THE END of life. That there is a persistent self. So, I am asking you about that.

Isn't that why souls anchored to one or another spiritual/religious path are so crucial here? It's the crumbling material body itself that must rationalized.

That's about after life. I am talking about a persistent self. It seems you believe in one. You worry about the loss of self at the end of life. So, there is something to lose, and it persists up until that point in your estimation. That's not, for example, what the Buddhists believe and they would want an argument that all rational people would believe, perhaps.

What is that self you are concerned about losing?

The part that brings me enormous fulfillment and satisfaction, of course. In fact, when, instead, one's life is filled with enormous pain and suffering, not only are some not concerned with losing whatever it is they think their own "self" is, they end it themselves.

So, you do believe there is a persistent self, one that seems to stop existing at death, but one that persists through time, despite, for example, all the matter in the body being replaced over time via eating/breathing and excretion.

What makes you think it is the same you next week, etc.? Or is it just others that think there is a self?

Huh?

My whole philosophy "here and now" revolves around suggesting that from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year we might encounter new experiences, new relationships, new sources of information and knowledge that sends "I" in any number of new directions. And, in particular, in regard to our value judgments.

So,will it be the same self in a year? in seven?

[Belinda]

Maybe the feeling of unitary self is because of unitary memory.

[phyllo]

So,will it be the same self in a year? in seven?

I recall discussing this with him.

He told me that the Iambiguous that came back from Nam was the same guy that went to Nam.

Yet, he repeatedly says how profoundly the experience changed him.

What can one conclude?

He doesn't understand the ideas behind a non-persistent self?

He believes in a persistent true self?

He hasn't thought much about it, in spite of his many posts about identity?

[Iwannaplato]

So,will it be the same self in a year? in seven?

I recall discussing this with him.

He told me that the Iambiguous that came back from Nam was the same guy that went to Nam.

Yet, he repeatedly says how profoundly the experience changed him.

What can one conclude?

He doesn't understand the ideas behind a non-persistent self?

He believes in a persistent true self?

He hasn't thought much about it, in spite of his many posts about identity?

While claiming that when people have issues with him, it's because they can't face what he has faced: death, lack of meaning, moral antirealism, the implications of determinism, etc. In the post of mine you quoted, he is incredulous that I wouldn't know he is fractured and fragmented on the issue of the persistent self. Actually, I don't know either way. All I can go by is what he writes, and he consistantly assumes that there is a self that will be lost at the end of life. If, in reality, he is fractured and fragmented about this issue, he has communicated poorly. But note, he doesn't actually go so far as to confirm in specific that he has concerns about the persistent self being an illusion, the kind of thing he does on his other focused-on issues.

Buddhism, which tends to consider the persistent self an illusion, has all sorts of measures and practices to help people deal with what they know is an idea that can cause a lot of fear. Perhaps when you brought this up you were touching on something he has trouble facing.

[Belinda]

The feeling of unitary self is due to memories pertaining to the same person. When that person becomes demented ('devoid of mind')their feeling of selfhood gradually goes away.