Philosophy Now Forum

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 4:11 am**

ypc wrote:
What Carl Sagan pointed out in that quote was that we, living beings, are made of matter. We're made of star stuff, he often said. That's just a basic notion from which the search for explanations of the real causes behind living processes should departure. It's not meant to be an all-encompassing explanation that deals once and for all and exhausts the possibilities of living beings. It could not be understood that way, given the complexities of development in organisms, still all made only of matter, but showing important differences among them. No scientist will confuse an amoeba with Carl Sagan. So, your so called "modern scientists' view of the self" is just the regular straw man fallacy.
the point was that He was saying that we are made of star stuff. Im saying that we are not...that star stuff is just making up the vehicle and not the self. just if you were driving in your car you would not say that you are made of metal, glass and rubber. its something you are in, but not who you are

Both the car and the driver are made of material compounds, so it would be OK to say that they are both made of "star stuff". As already explained, that is not intended to mean all that a car is, nor a driver, since their materials are organized in different ways that make them distinct entities, with different shapes, functionalities and so on. Living beings are one way in which the physical, material universe is organized and the autonomous mode of existence of some of those beings (humans) is what is commonly called "the self". What we are, our selves, are limited to the possibilities of physical reality, the only reality that exists and we can count on. Star stuff.

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 4:42 am**

Wyman wrote:
Terrapin Station wrote:The way I can perhaps help is that no matter your argument against what you're calling the "modern, scientific view of the self," I can present an argument against your stance, because I hold the "modern, scientific view of the self."

I'll just go over one point at a time:

"The cells that make up my body now didn't make up my body five years ago . . . and won't five years from now" -- correct, you are actually dynamic. You're not static. You five years ago, re personal identity, is NOT identical to you now. You five minutes ago is not identical to you now. You five seconds ago is not identical to you now, either. So that's not an argument against the view you're wanting to argue against. The mistaken view is that identities (both personal identity and the broader sense of ontological identity in general) do not change over time. They do change with time. (Which makes sense, since time IS just (processual) change or motion.) What makes you "you" over time is that you are causally, contiguously connected with the previous states of you. Again, this isn't just the case with personal identity. It's the case with everything extant, including your computer, the desk your computer is sitting on, the Earth itself, etc.
Well, I'm a materialist, but I don't think you are giving enough respect to the argument he is making. I agree that like your desk, you are just a bundle of quarks whose boundaries are delineated by any number of non-quantum meta-descriptions. The difference is, the desk does not have subjective conscious experiences which it uses to navigate through the world. We do not just identify ourselves by noticing contiguous states or quark configurations as we might a chair - those are just competing descriptions. We actually experience ourselves now as the same thing we were five minutes ago. And it does not help your argument that the subjective qualia of experience has absolutely no scientific explanation.

thats my point...the consciousness cannot be explained by materialists because consciousness is not material. consciousness, or life is a distinct element from matter...the best explanation ive seen is in this 11 minute video..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAQapJK-MPs

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 4:52 am**

Conde Lucanor wrote:
ypc wrote:
What Carl Sagan pointed out in that quote was that we, living beings, are made of matter. We're made of star stuff, he often said. That's just a basic notion from which the search for explanations of the real causes behind living processes should departure. It's not meant to be an all-encompassing explanation that deals once and for all and exhausts the possibilities of living beings. It could not be understood that way, given the complexities of development in organisms, still all made only of matter, but showing important differences among them. No scientist will confuse an amoeba with Carl Sagan. So, your so called "modern scientists' view of the self" is just the regular straw man fallacy.
the point was that He was saying that we are made of star stuff. Im saying that we are not...that star stuff is just making up the vehicle and not the self. just if you were driving in your car you would not say that you are made of metal, glass and rubber. its something you are in, but not who you are
Both the car and the driver are made of material compounds, so it would be OK to say that they are both made of "star stuff". As already explained, that is not intended to mean all that a car is, nor a driver, since their materials are organized in different ways that make them distinct entities, with different shapes, functionalities and so on. Living beings are one way in which the physical, material universe is organized and the autonomous mode of existence of some of those beings (humans) is what is commonly called "the self". What we are, our selves, are limited to the possibilities of physical reality, the only reality that exists and we can count on. Star stuff.

so if you are saying physical reality is the only reality that exists...then there esssentially is no difference between a dead body and a living body. in otherwords. I accept the conclusion that death simply means the self leaving the body. the materialist ulitmately has to conclude that the body IS the self. therefore this leads to all kinds of practical problems. for example. he may accept the conclusion in forums etc. but what happens when he turns away from the computer and sees his wife's lifeless body?. according to his philosophy nothing has changed since every single part of matter that was there before she died is there after. yet for some reason he cries "shes gone, shes gone" well if she is nothing but matter, she hasnt gone...shes still right there. Matter only theorists tend to reveal their faith in their philosophy at such times. they wouldnt feel so much pain if a computer broke or milk was spilt etc. but for some reason they put more value on bodies. even tho such bodies are not even worth very much money...you have to pay people to drag them away and bury them

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 5:17 am**

ypc wrote:
sorry i fail to see your point...my point is that the body and mind are constantly changing...but the self is the observer of these constant changes. you were the same person you were 5 years ago...but the body is completely gone...if you for example started to chop off body parts, you will experience that you exist despite missing that particular body part. for example if you cut off your arm right now...it didnt happen gradually it would happen all of a sudden...you would experience that you are still a complete person. but you just have less of a vehicle to work with...you would not feel that you are diminished...only your vehicle. you would be observing this just as you observed the gradual changes over time.

The self is a construct of the brain. There is no self other than what the brain makes of it. If the brain stops working, particularly the cerebrum, even if the vital organs keep functioning, the person will never come back. No mind outside the brain can take over and bring that person back to life. If there was a mind independent of the brain, then we would see cases where people would recover from brain death.

There is only one such case but that is also one where the doctors failed to detect extremely faint brain waves and the kid was saved by a GP who detected them.

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 5:45 am**

sthitapragya wrote:
ypc wrote:
sorry i fail to see your point...my point is that the body and mind are constantly changing...but the self is the observer of these constant changes. you were the same person you were 5 years ago...but the body is completely gone...if you for example started to chop off body parts, you will experience that you exist despite missing that particular body part. for example if you cut off your arm right now...it didnt happen gradually it would happen all of a sudden...you would experience that you are still a complete person. but you just have less of a vehicle to work with...you would not feel that you are diminished...only your vehicle. you would be observing this just as you observed the gradual changes over time.
The self is a construct of the brain. There is no self other than what the brain makes of it. If the brain stops working, particularly the cerebrum, even if the vital organs keep functioning, the person will never come back. No mind outside the brain can take over and bring that person back to life. If there was a mind independent of the brain, then we would see cases where people would recover from brain death.

There is only one such case but that is also one where the doctors failed to detect extremely faint brain waves and the kid was saved by a GP who detected them.

if you accept the self is a brain..then what part of the brain? because parts of the brain can be removed...also the matter making up the cells in the brain is not the same matter that was making it up even a week ago. but you existed more then a week ago right? so how can you consider that pink squishy stuff called the brain to be you?

also how do you explain this? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... -time.html

and living beings in insect or plant bodies devoid of brains?

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 6:03 am**

ypc wrote:
if you accept the self is a brain..then what part of the brain?

The self is not a part of the brain. The self is something that the brain creates to identify us a distinct from others. If I cannot identify myself as distinct from others, how will I protect myself from others out to harm me or align with those who want to help me? If you cannot see yourself as distinct from the tiger that wants to eat you, you die. It is an evolutionary mechanism.

ypc wrote: because parts of the brain can be removed...also the matter making up the cells in the brain is not the same matter that was making it up even a week ago. but you existed more then a week ago right? so how can you consider that pink squishy stuff called the brain to be you?

Only parts of the brain can be removed. Not the whole. Depends upon the function of that part. You cannot remove the cerebrum and expect a person to live. Also even though the matter the make up the cells of the brain are not the exact same matter as a week ago, the replacement are pretty much the same as they were a week ago. You cannot replace the grey matter with muscle and expect it to function. And I don't see the point of this argument. So what if the matter changes? That is how the body is designed. To replace old parts with new. It is not the self doing it. It is the body.

I am not saying the pink squishy stuff is me. The pink squishy stuff is telling me that I am me.

ypc wrote:also how do you explain this? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... -time.html

Not being a doctor, this is a mystery. The best guess would be that part of the brain stem has developed in such a way as to take over the job of the cerebrum. But that is just a wild guess. But one such case against millions of those who died due to a lack of cerebrum do not make a strong case for the self.

ypc wrote:and living beings in insect or plant bodies devoid of brains?

I am pretty sure, they are not contemplating the self. They are designed to function without a brain and function through chemical responses.

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 7:40 am**

Wyman wrote:
Greta wrote:Carl Sagan was a cosmologist and not in the business of defining the self, a question in which he would have surely deferred to psychologists (just as a psychologist would defer to Sagan as regards questions of space).

As eloquently put above by FlashDP, Sagan wasn't making a limiting statement "We are ONLY made from star stuff", only making the connection between star dynamics and existence.
If Sagan was a true materialist (I'm not that familiar with him), then he was making a limiting statement. And many scientists would make such statements. The party line is: we are only really made of star stuff, but psychologists and other 'soft' scientists can describe this 'stuff' in other terms if they like. When they make up objects such as 'mind' or 'self' or 'cognitive functions,' they are working in an 'effective' model. They are positing entities that do not exist in order to explain complex systems that we do not yet have the capability to analyze in terms of quantum theory.

I saw Sagan's statement as spiritual. Consider how the very atoms that make up everything and everyone in the solar system was created in the belly of a behemoth in space! Consider your connection with this magnificent, complex and powerful system of the universe! Or something like that. I agree with him that it's a beautiful situation and realisation.

It seems that equivalently transcendent psychology went out with Jung, although perhaps those involved with happiness and actualisation studies are following from his work to some extent.

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 1:21 pm**

ypc wrote:

ypc wrote:
Dear Forum readers...

i have attempted disprove the modern teaching of body being the self in this audio lecture. i was hoping that some of you can try to find some flaws in my arguments. I teach yoga philosophy classes and nobody ever challenges these points. A healthy challenge is good because it forces me to go deeper in my understanding. Actually this is not a theory to me...what i am saying i know to be true...its just that i want to communicate it in an irrefutable way, and possibly there are some angles that i have not seen that leave me open to criticism. thank you for your time

https://soundcloud.com/user-255793295-8 ... f-the-self

Is the body being the self really being taught? I have never heard it consciously taught that way, and I hope that is not the case. There is no scientific proof that the self is the body. That is just assumed to be the case, by most.

One flaw I found in your words is saying "my" body. Unless you know for sure who the 'I' is, then expect to be challenged about the "my" in "my body". I would challenge you on how much you actually know about who 'I' am.

2. you use the word 'somebody'. 'Body' in some-body is subtly saying the body is self again. Saying 'some body' is just out of habit that people have been saying for ages.

3. a human body truthfully is never living nor dying. Every physical thing comes into existence and then passes on, into some other physical thing. The human body can be pumping blood and breathing but even when that stops it decays and breaks down into some thing else. For example as fertilizer if place directly into the ground and being the energy/source for further things to then come into existence.

4 a 'person' is NOT eternal. There is A being who is eternal, but an individual person only exists because of an individual body. There is ONE Being who is eternal that lives within every body on the deepest of levels, but on a much more superficial level lives one individual person. Every person is uniquely different from every other person just like every body is uniquely different. A person comes into existence with and through the five senses the human body experiences of the "world", and then after a body stops breathing and pumping blood this person will be transferred through and into other bodies, but the One Being IS always in ALL bodies. The Being is the One and only Open Mind. The 'person' is only the unique thoughts (and emotions) within a unique human body. The Mind knows, whereas, the brain, where thoughts gather, only thinks, it knows.

What I have asked previously, but this is not to say it is an irrefutable way, is to ask, if an arm or a leg was cut off from the body, then would you be less of a person. If not, then how much of the body is actually the self? As you already know the body is NOT the self, but the body actually makes 'you', you. A 'self' is always being created from the conception of the human body and brain until that body stops breathing and pumping blood. I just call the 'self' the invisible and non-physical thoughts and emotional feelings within the body. Disregarding feelings for now 'thoughts' themselves is the person who lives within the body - the 'you'. Thoughts/the person who is continually changing within the human body is being created always through the five senses.
1. Yes i hold to the conclusion that the Body is the possession of the self and not the self. that was basically the point of my lecture which which I admit was too brief to fully explain the point. and i welcome challlenges to the viewpoint.

2. yes you are correct...thats no good use of english..i should have said "somone"

3. Yes the body is actually always dead matter. when the self inhabits the body the matter making up the body behaves against its own nature ie. does not follow 2nd law of thermodynamics. and becomes more and more complex rather then breaking down into simpler forms of matter. for example if you take a knife and carve your name into a desk... the desk will not heal itself...if you do the same thing on your arm it will but only when you are in it. When the self leaves the body one of the symptoms is that the matter goes back its natural state and breaks down the same way that any other matter breaks down.

4. IF you truly believed that there was only one being then you wouldnt feel the need to convince others of your viewpoint because you would know that you are them.. the very fact that you are trying to communicate something to someone else shows me that you dont actually accept that i am you and you are me...it shows me that you accept me as an individual distinct from yourself. further more.. if you think that you are all beings and everyone else thinks the same way...then who is it? who is the center? am i part of your dream or are you part of mine?

I could have worded this better. I meant there are just as many individual persons as there are breathing, blood pumping human bodies. AND, there is ALSO One being. There are all individual different human beings but within them all is One being, known with many different names, God, Allah, Spiritual enlightenment, etc, who is at the center. There is as many 'you' as there are human beings, 'ken' here is also a 'you'. At the center of all of us/this, watching and knowing ALL there is IS the 'I'. The One who is the answer to the question, Who am 'I'? This One Being, which is also a non-physical Being IS the One and ONLY Mind, within ALL human bodies. The numerous individual, non-physical personal being IS the individual thoughts and emotional feelings with one human body. Contrary to popular belief there is only One Mind, which is always fully OPEN to seeing and knowing ALL there is.

There is about another million words to prove this and also probably as just as many ways to explain it fully and in much greater detail as there are people existing now. Finding the right words and putting them in the right order so that every person can understand this fully is just taking me a little while. But every thing i read here is helping.

Just for future reference I neither believe nor disbelieve anything, except for the belief in Self that I can do anything that i really want to do. Everything else are just views that i have, which could be right or wrong or partly right and wrong.

ypc wrote:5. If the person is the thoughts and feelings then we must ask who is watching the thoughts and feelings? thoughts and feelings are observed by someone therefore they are not that someone. this is a long subject but thoughts and feelings are distinct from the individual self. just like a person watches a tv which is seperate from you...you watch the passing show of thoughts and emotions as they pass by.
there is a very brief explanation here...https://soundcloud.com/user-255793295-8 ... ananta-das

And thank you for the intelligent questions here Ken

That "someone" is not like a human being, i.e., not like the thoughts and feelings within one human body. That "someone" IS Thee One observing and watching EVERY thing, including ALL thoughts and feelings. Thee Eternal Self you talk about IS the One, (truly open), Mind, which is sometimes referred to as God, Enlightenment, etc., This One exists deep within every one. Within every body is an individual person, these thoughts and feelings is the personal self, i.e., some 'one'. The thoughts and feelings is only a small 's' self. This self is not necessarily able to observe its own self, i.e, thoughts and feelings with or from an objective perspective. Whereas, the One Mind can and does.

As I was saying there is so much more to all of this and to know how to explain it so it is all fully understood depends on the person and how much they want to learn and understand. The trouble with most people is if and when they believe and/or assume they already know, then they are not open enough to learn it all. People are held within a brain, as thoughts (and feelings). These people/thoughts need to understand that they only think, they know. Whereas, the Mind already knows. How this is finally known IS when ALL are in agreement.

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 1:48 pm**

sthitapragya wrote:
ypc wrote:
if you accept the self is a brain..then what part of the brain?
The self is not a part of the brain. The self is something that the brain creates to identify us a distinct from others. If I cannot identify myself as distinct from others, how will I protect myself from others out to harm me or align with those who want to help me? If you cannot see yourself as distinct from the tiger that wants to eat you, you die. It is an evolutionary mechanism.

The brain creates thoughts right? Could those thoughts be the self that you talk about here?

I am pretty sure those thoughts such as, 'I am a doctor', 'I am not a doctor', 'I am an american', 'I am hungry', 'I am a christian', 'I believe...', 'I feel...', 'I do not want to...', etc., etc., etc. are all how a brain created self/thinking identifies itself distinct from others. 'Others', just being the other individual distinct thoughts (and feelings) within other individual distinct separate bodies.

If, and when, this is understood, then so much more can also be learned and understood from this, which, I say, could be backed up scientifically, as well as not be in dispute with or by any other "religion" nor "philosophy" also. In fact this leads onto bringing absolutely everything together to form a true and clear picture of Life, Itself.

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 2:14 pm**

ypc wrote:
so if you are saying physical reality is the only reality that exists...then there esssentially is no difference between a dead body and a living body. in otherwords. I accept the conclusion that death simply means the self leaving the body. the materialist ulitmately has to conclude that the body IS the self. therefore this leads to all kinds of practical problems. for example. he may accept the conclusion in forums etc. but what happens when he turns away from the computer and sees his wife's lifeless body?. according to his philosophy nothing has changed since every single part of matter that was there before she died is there after. yet for some reason he cries "shes gone, shes gone" well if she is nothing but matter, she hasnt gone...shes still right there. Matter only theorists tend to reveal their faith in their philosophy at such times. they wouldnt feel so much pain if a computer broke or milk was spilt etc. but for some reason they put more value on bodies. even tho such bodies are not even worth very much money...you have to pay people to drag them away and bury them

Of course there is a difference between a dead body and a living body. A dead body has no brain maintaining the body, preventing it from decay. A dead body has no capacity to respond. And there is definitely a difference between a computer and a wife. A dead computer can be replaced. A dead wife ( provided you love her) cannot. The wife is someone who is a support for you. Someone who will stand by you in times of trouble. Someone who you can rely on. To survive, we need support and spouses usually are the best support for each other. A dead body cannot do anything a live body can do. You comparison is ridiculous.

Also, value is not about money alone. Value is about a lot of other things too. Emotional, mental and physical support can be of far more value than money. This is also reality. There is no faith involved here nor philosophy.

The body is not the self. The brain IS the source of the concept of the self. Big difference. The brain dies and the self dies. You can do without the body as Stephen Hawking has so spectacularly and inspiringly proved to all of us. But you lose the brain and its the end of the line.

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 2:47 pm**

Wyman wrote:Well, I'm a materialist, but I don't think you are giving enough respect to the argument he is making. I agree that like your desk, you are just a bundle of quarks whose boundaries are delineated by any number of non-quantum meta-descriptions. The difference is, the desk does not have subjective conscious experiences which it uses to navigate through the world. We do not just identify ourselves by noticing contiguous states or quark configurations as we might a chair - those are just competing descriptions. We actually experience ourselves now as the same thing we were five minutes ago. And it does not help your argument that the subjective qualia of experience has absolutely no scientific explanation

First off, the argument he was making (in the first five minutes at least--again, I'm tackling one thing at a time) wasn't the usual "Consciousness is a big mystery" nonsense. He was making an argument based on identity through time. And the problem with that argument is that whether consciousness is a big mystery or not, we're not identical at time T1 and T2.

Re the "consciousness is a big mystery" rhetoric, the first set of things that need to be tackled per the way you're stating the argument is this: just what counts as an explanation; why does the answer to our previous question count as an explanation; and what does having an explanation have to do with what's factually the case in terms of ontology--does facts-in-the-world somehow hinge on our explanations?

At any rate, if his initial argument had been about some things having mental states whereas other things do not, I would have addressed the argument however he would have made it. If he makes that argument later on, I'll deal with it after we go over this first argument. I like doing one thing at a time.

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 3:25 pm**

ypc wrote:sorry i fail to see your point...my point is that the body and mind are constantly changing...but the self is the observer of these constant changes. you were the same person you were 5 years ago...

The point, which I made quite explicit, is that in terms of (onto)logical identity, you--in terms of your self--are NOT the same person you were 5 years ago. In fact, you are NOT the same person you were 5 seconds ago. You are constantly changing, just like anything else in the world is constantly changing.

You can certainly say, "I feel or I believe that my self is the same as it was 5 years ago," and that's fine. Plenty of people feel or believe that, just like plenty of people feel or believe that Mount Everest, or their home, or whatever is (onto)logically identical at time T1 and T2. In all of those cases, the fact of the matter is that those things are not the same at T1 and T2.

"You can't step in the same river twice."

That the way we use language and think about our concepts seems to suggest otherwise doesn't change the facts, and the way we use language and think about our concepts has an easy explanation rooted in practical necessities. In a nutshell, language simply wouldn't work if we had a unique term for each unique existent at each unique temporal moment. And what concepts are in the first place is an abstraction that glosses over details of difference in order to make things easier to deal with and understand.

but the body is completely gone...if you for example started to chop off body parts, you will experience that you exist despite missing that particular body part.

Well, that depends on (a) the body part, and (b) just how a particular individual identifies their "self." One thing that's clear is that If you take out your brain, you won't feel that you're the same self, because your brain is where your "sense of self," your consciousness, etc. occur. If you remove the arms from a baseball player or a musician, they'll probably no longer feel like they're the same self, either. That's because their arms are important enough to them that they see it as an integral component of their personal identity.

for example if you cut off your arm right now...it didnt happen gradually it would happen all of a sudden...you would experience that you are still a complete person. but you just have less of a vehicle to work with...you would not feel that you are diminished...only your vehicle. you would be observing this just as you observed the gradual changes over time.

Again, this depends on how important things like arms to particular people. I'm a musician, so that would be a big problem for me. At any rate, what you'd need to argue on this end to argue against the materialist view is that you'd be no less yourself without your brain, or with a brain transplant. Otherwise, you'd be required to say why that isn't so--why would the particular brain you have in your head make a difference as to whether you're you on your view?

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 11:00 pm**

sorry but im not interested in replying anymore...too many opinions on here with out enough substance to back up claims, a straight lack of understanding of what i was stating coupled with no desire to even try to understand makes for a pretty fruitless conversation... I was wanting to know if my logic and reasoning was off to show flaws in it.

Its quite obvious to any intelligent person that the brain is used by the self but is not the self...just like a computer that is used by the self...especially when we can see the matter that was making up your brain last week is 100% new down to the last atom today..not one single molecule is there today that was there last week. But you existed last week and you exist today..so how can you claim to be that?

also not to mention all the animals that dont have brains but they are still functioning...If i held the view that the self was the brain it would be finished as soon as i heard about that. but some reason, possibly, never wanting to admit they wrong...people obstinately hold on to this view at all costs.

anyway im out of here....anyway interested in learning can visit my website www.yogaphilosophyclub.com

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 11:07 pm**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

-Imp

Posted: **Tue Aug 16, 2016 11:08 pm**

When oh when will the naughty goblins that live at PN learn to stop questioning these wise men so rudely? We are all Blind Deniers and must hang our heads in collective shame.

Seeing as that twat fucked off leaving only the link to his internet shop that was the real purpose of coming here, perhaps a mod should edit his post and remove that.

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