Dasein/dasein

[attofishpi]

NARCISSISTS - - they that never allow their own threads to die

[iambiguous]

NARCISSISTS - - they that never allow their own threads to die

Just out of curiosity, can you teach me to be as clever as you are here? If, for no other reason, to impress Maia?

[attofishpi]

..another trait, they're so terribly sad.

[iambiguous]

..another trait, they're so terribly sad.

Wait. That doesn't strike me as being clever at all!

[Iwannaplato]

OK, but you seem to assume, yourself, that at death something that persisted, stops persisting THEN. Have I misunderstood you?

I didn't write that. But...

Yes, you didn't write that, but you do fear death as the loss of self. That there is something that gets lost and at that time. This implies strongly that there is something that persists up to the point of death, but stops there. I don't for example see the concern that there is no persistent self. If you don't think there is a persistent self, just let me know. I am not sure why, then, you focus on death, since it won't be you who dies, you will have been replaced already by an copy, and a copy with changes.

Don't we all assume that?

Sure but everyone used to assume there was a god or gods. It's an assumption. Everyone generally assume morals are objective.

Which is why, over and again, I champion the distinction between what we assume/believe to be true "in our heads"

And I am pointing out that you seem to be doing this in relation to the persistent self.

Again, in my view, unless it's just a sim world or a dream world that "we" are interacting in then, of course -- click -- all of us have physical bodies that persist from the cradle to the grave.

But that's an illusion. The matter in the body is replaced regularly. Most cells in the body copy themselves in this process. Brain neurons do not do this, but the matter in them is replaced. You're a copy. Or?

All the atoms in most of the body are fully replaced within 1-2 years, including in DNA. In neurons, 6-10 years, including DNA.

Yes, that was Lena's point above:

So, if you assume there is a persistent self, despite this, why do you? If you don't think there is a persistent self, could you say that?

Lena: They say you replace every molecule in your body every seven years. I changed my name eight years ago. No more Thelma Sneeder.

My own reaction to that was this:

Sure, if you want to think of it like that, even the biological components of our lives may over time completely reconfigure. But, come on, whose kidding whom? There are still many, many, many aspects of our identity that sustain a particular "self" out in a particular world understood in a particular way. Thelma may have reconfigured into Lena "in her head" in regard to how she views herself and others, but that doesn't make all those other varaibles that come together to create a "sense of identity" in her over time go away.

But that means you are basing your sense of identity on non-physical things or are confused about identity. I can copy the information from my computer to a USB, it has the same patterns but it is nto the same thing. I specifically wrote about you being a copy. In physical terms, and science is physicalist, you are a copy, not the original. The trick is the process of copying is not all at once.

Back to the conundrum embedded in the Ship of Theseus paradox?

Yes, it is a Ship of Thebes issue. It's not really a paradox, but a thought experiment regaring identity.

And then there are the changes in organization, thoughts, values, memories that you go on an on about related to dasein on top of the completely replacement of all the matter.

]Ah, the actual real world!

And my own rendition of dasein here revolves around the points I raised in these three threads:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-man ... sein/31641
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/moral ... live/45989
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639

Finally, the part where, given a particular context, members here explain how and why my points here are not applicable to them.

So, do you believe that you have a persistent self, one that lasts from birth to death and what is that? It can't be the matter in you since that changes. So what is this self made of?

[Iwannaplato]

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?

Don't we all assume that?

No, many people, using arguments based on Ship of Thebes - so, some physicalists - or based on Buddhism, for example, or beliefs that are very similar to Buddhism or observations similar to Buddhist meditation, do not believe there is a persistent self. There are other groups and of course individuals who deny that there is a persistent self. It seems you do believe in one, though when I reacted as if you do, you said, you hadn't said that. Fine. It seemed implicit in your focus on death when this self gets lost. So, let me know.

[iambiguous]

OK, but you seem to assume, yourself, that at death something that persisted, stops persisting THEN. Have I misunderstood you?

I didn't write that. But...

Yes, you didn't write that, but you do fear death as the loss of self.

I fear death because in whatever manner "I" construe my "self" "here and now", death dissolves forever and ever all of the things that I love and cherish. It really need not be more complicated than that. Though, for any number of folks here, nothing could be simpler than a leap of faith to one or another God. Presto! You live forever and ever in Paradise itself!!

That there is something that gets lost and at that time. This implies strongly that there is something that persists up to the point of death, but stops there.

Now, going all the way back to an explanation for the existence of existence itself, where do you suppose the human condition fits into that? And given the astounding complexities built right into the history of human interactions, is there anyone here who has no doubt at all regarding their own Self/self/"self".

Cue the objectivists, right?

I don't for example see the concern that there is no persistent self. If you don't think there is a persistent self, just let me know. I am not sure why, then, you focus on death, since it won't be you who dies, you will have been replaced already by an copy, and a copy with changes.

Don't we all assume that?

Sure but everyone used to assume there was a god or gods. It's an assumption. Everyone generally assume morals are objective.

Which is why, over and again, I champion the distinction between what we assume/believe to be true "in our heads" regarding meaning, morality and identity and what we are able to demonstrate that all reasonable men and women are obligated to assume/believe as well. Then the part where this becomes entangled in politics. The "or else" frame of mind whereby some simply refuse to tolerate any point of view that is not their own. The Satyr Syndrome as it were.

Or in moral prejudices stuffed into our heads as children and [for some] sustained all the way to the grave.

And I am pointing out that you seem to be doing this in relation to the persistent self.

The persistent self as I construe it is embedded in the either/or world from the cradle to the grave.

On the other hand, biology, physics, chemistry...meet objective morality, meet the Real me in sync always with the right thing to do?

I don't think so. But I am no less fractured and fragmented here as well.

Again, in my view, unless it's just a sim world or a dream world that "we" are interacting in then, of course -- click -- all of us have physical bodies that persist from the cradle to the grave.

But that's an illusion. The matter in the body is replaced regularly. Most cells in the body copy themselves in this process. Brain neurons do not do this, but the matter in them is replaced. You're a copy. Or?

All the atoms in most of the body are fully replaced within 1-2 years, including in DNA. In neurons, 6-10 years, including DNA.

Yes, that was Lena's point above:

So, if you assume there is a persistent self, despite this, why do you? If you don't think there is a persistent self, could you say that?

Over and again, in my view, you want me to pin down something that "here and now" cannot be pinned down in a No God world. Some aspects of "I" just seem to be considerably more persistant than others.

Lena: They say you replace every molecule in your body every seven years. I changed my name eight years ago. No more Thelma Sneeder.

My own reaction to that was this:

Sure, if you want to think of it like that, even the biological components of our lives may over time completely reconfigure. But, come on, whose kidding whom? There are still many, many, many aspects of our identity that sustain a particular "self" out in a particular world understood in a particular way. Thelma may have reconfigured into Lena "in her head" in regard to how she views herself and others, but that doesn't make all those other varaibles that come together to create a "sense of identity" in her over time go away.

But that means you are basing your sense of identity on non-physical things or are confused about identity.

I'm fractured and fragmented in regard to identity and morality for all the reasons I've noted before. I'm just waiting for others to explain to me why the points I raise in my signature threads are not applicable to them given an issue and a context of their own choice.

I can copy the information from my computer to a USB, it has the same patterns but it is nto the same thing. I specifically wrote about you being a copy. In physical terms, and science is physicalist, you are a copy, not the original. The trick is the process of copying is not all at once.

Again, I have no idea what any of this has to do with my own understanding of dasein.

A little help from others please.

Back to the conundrum embedded in the Ship of Theseus paradox?

Yes, it is a Ship of Thebes issue. It's not really a paradox, but a thought experiment regaring identity.

The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a paradox and a common thought experiment about whether an object is the same object after having all of its original components replaced over time, typically one after the other. wiki

How do we wrap our heads around the fact that over time even our biological self is not exempt from changes that seemingly whisk us into, at times, an imponderable future.

And then there are the changes in organization, thoughts, values, memories that you go on an on about related to dasein on top of the completely replacement of all the matter.

Ah, the actual real world!

And my own rendition of dasein here revolves around the points I raised in these three threads:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-man ... sein/31641
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/moral ... live/45989
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639

Finally, the part where, given a particular context, members here explain how and why my points here are not applicable to them.

So, do you believe that you have a persistent self, one that lasts from birth to death and what is that? It can't be the matter in you since that changes. So what is this self made of?

Let's focus on this:

...the part where, given a particular context, members here explain how and why my points [in the signature threads] are not applicable to them.

[Iwannaplato]

It's pretty simple.
Generally you see yourself as challenging people to justify their 'in the head' beliefs: God, objective morals, the authentic self, etc.
You see them as resisting this and often presenting their in the head, in the clouds, assertions about how these things exist and on can know them.

Here with the persistent self, you are the one with an in the head hypothesis, and one that doesn't match science.

That there is a persistent self, one that, yes, gets lost, at the time of death. When in fact that's just an inaccurate copy of who you are now, all the matter having been replaced before that time.

When I first pointed this out, in this recent interaction, you told me that everyone knows this/thinks this way. That there is a persistent self that ends at death.

Well, everyone used to believe in God. Nearly everyone believes in objective moral. Etc. Ad populum arguments generally don't persuade you, but here you used one.

On top of the 'all the matter is replaced' science angle, you have your own dasein beliefs, where all sorts of part of the self can change radically over time. So even the patterns that the new matter has and goes through change.

And yet this in the head story of the persistent self continues, with some vague abstract justifications, ones you wouldn't accept or buy on one of the other topics you focus on. You'd label it 'in the head' and an attempt to 'self'-comfort.

[iambiguous]

It's pretty simple.
Generally you see yourself as challenging people to justify their 'in the head' beliefs: God, objective morals, the authentic self, etc.
You see them as resisting this and often presenting their in the head, in the clouds, assertions about how these things exist and on can know them.

It all comes back around -- click -- to the win/win agenda I pursue here. On the one hand, I might come upon someone who is able to convince me that my conclusions here...

1] that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] that human morality in a No God world revolves largely around a fractured and fragmented assessment of right and wrong rooted existentially in dasein.
3] that oblivion is awaiting all of us when we die

...are actually not the case at all. They convince me that their own assessments of meaning and morality are more reasonable. I'm finally able to scramble up out of this ghastly hole I've dug myself down into.

Or, on the other hand, my arguments begin to sink in deeper and deeper and before you know it, they are down in the hole with me. The hole is still there, sure, but at least I have someone around I can empathize with.

As for all this...

Here with the persistent self, you are the one with an in the head hypothesis, and one that doesn't match science.

That there is a persistent self, one that, yes, gets lost, at the time of death. When in fact that's just an inaccurate copy of who you are now, all the matter having been replaced before that time.

When I first pointed this out, in this recent interaction, you told me that everyone knows this/thinks this way. That there is a persistent self that ends at death.

Well, everyone used to believe in God. Nearly everyone believes in objective moral. Etc. Ad populum arguments generally don't persuade you, but here you used one.

On top of the 'all the matter is replaced' science angle, you have your own dasein beliefs, where all sorts of part of the self can change radically over time. So even the patterns that the new matter has and goes through change.

And yet this in the head story of the persistent self continues, with some vague abstract justifications, ones you wouldn't accept or buy on one of the other topics you focus on. You'd label it 'in the head' and an attempt to 'self'-comfort.

...I've already given you my assessment of these issues above.

Or, rather, here and now, it certainly seems that way to me.

Now, back to this:

...the part where, given a particular context, members here explain how and why my points [in the signature threads] are not applicable to them.

You're a member, right?

[Iwannaplato]

It's pretty simple.
Generally you see yourself as challenging people to justify their 'in the head' beliefs: God, objective morals, the authentic self, etc.
You see them as resisting this and often presenting their in the head, in the clouds, assertions about how these things exist and on can know them.

It all comes back around -- click -- to the win/win agenda I pursue here. On the one hand, I might come upon someone who is able to convince me that my conclusions here...

1] that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] that human morality in a No God world revolves largely around a fractured and fragmented assessment of right and wrong rooted existentially in dasein.
3] that oblivion is awaiting all of us when we die

...are actually not the case at all. They convince me that their own assessments of meaning and morality are more reasonable. I'm finally able to scramble up out of this ghastly hole I've dug myself down into.

Or, on the other hand, my arguments begin to sink in deeper and deeper and before you know it, they are down in the hole with me. The hole is still there, sure, but at least I have someone around I can empathize with.

As for all this...

Yes, it seems like you are comfortable when other people have explanations in their heads that you think soothe them, but not when you might be in that category. Someone with an explanation, in your head, about a persistent self, that soothes you.

Here with the persistent self, you are the one with an in the head hypothesis, and one that doesn't match science.

That there is a persistent self, one that, yes, gets lost, at the time of death. When in fact that's just an inaccurate copy of who you are now, all the matter having been replaced before that time.

When I first pointed this out, in this recent interaction, you told me that everyone knows this/thinks this way. That there is a persistent self that ends at death.

Well, everyone used to believe in God. Nearly everyone believes in objective moral. Etc. Ad populum arguments generally don't persuade you, but here you used one.

On top of the 'all the matter is replaced' science angle, you have your own dasein beliefs, where all sorts of part of the self can change radically over time. So even the patterns that the new matter has and goes through change.

And yet this in the head story of the persistent self continues, with some vague abstract justifications, ones you wouldn't accept or buy on one of the other topics you focus on. You'd label it 'in the head' and an attempt to 'self'-comfort.

...I've already given you my assessment of these issues above.

Well, you appealed to popularity. When I pointed out the problem with this you dropped it. Then you appealed to patterns that carry identity, and I pointed out that there was no scientific basis for identity being carried when all the matter changes. No response to that. You stopped. Perhaps in a parallel way to when other stop when faced with your questions and challenges on other issues.

Or, rather, here and now, it certainly seems that way to me.

Now, back to this:

...the part where, given a particular context, members here explain how and why my points [in the signature threads] are not applicable to them.

You're a member, right?

As are you. Are you willing to look at what you have made up in your head to avoid a different kind of terror than the ones you focus on in others?

[iambiguous]

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

Examining Locke’s views on personal identity, it becomes obvious that the only way to know where personal identity resides is to know what a person is. For Locke, a person is an intelligent being who has reason and reflection and can consider themself as themself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places. One can do this only through consciousness.

To know what a person is? And how is that not but another manifestation of dasein? In particular, given conflicting goods? And those all up and down the moral, political and religious spectrums consider themselves intelligent enough to have created any number of One True Paths.

In Locke’s view, without consciousness, there is no person, whatever substances there are. The identity of a person reaches as far as consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought. At the end of this memory, for Locke, the self ceases.

Okay, what have you yourself become conscious of over the course of your life? And doesn't that revolve around your own uniquely personal experiences? And when you bump into others who insist that what you claim to be conscious of is not really the correct way in which to be conscious of it. What then if not for most of us, objectivism.

This reductive account of the self has been among the main drivers for various objections to Locke’s account, both at ethical and practical levels. Moreover, I contend that Locke reduces the self not only to memory, but to internal memory, and by doing so, he runs a risk of putting his own empiricist approach to philosophy on shaky grounds.

So, who or what do you reduce your own Self/Soul down to? As for the rest of it, you tell me. How, for all practical purposes, is it applicable to you?

[iambiguous]

It's pretty simple.
Generally you see yourself as challenging people to justify their 'in the head' beliefs: God, objective morals, the authentic self, etc.
You see them as resisting this and often presenting their in the head, in the clouds, assertions about how these things exist and on can know them.

Challenging them in turn to challenge my own beliefs. And all the while I recognize how, for many, many years, I was myself either a God or a No God objectivst. So, for all practical purposes, I know what it's like to be comforted and consoled anchoring "I" in the One True Path from the cradle to the grave. And millions manage this around the globe.

Me? Well, a half a dozen times I was able to convince myself there was indeed a path to enlightenment and salvation. And there may well be. But it's beyond my grasp here and now. All I can do is to probe the paths that others are still on to see if they have in fact found, say, demonstrable proof that it really is the One True Path?

Anyone here know of one? Go ahead, link me to it.

It all comes back around -- click -- to the win/win agenda I pursue here. On the one hand, I might come upon someone who is able to convince me that my conclusions here...

1] that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] that human morality in a No God world revolves largely around a fractured and fragmented assessment of right and wrong rooted existentially in dasein.
3] that oblivion is awaiting all of us when we die

...are actually not the case at all. They convince me that their own assessments of meaning and morality are more reasonable. I'm finally able to scramble up out of this ghastly hole I've dug myself down into.

Or, on the other hand, my arguments begin to sink in deeper and deeper and before you know it, they are down in the hole with me. The hole is still there, sure, but at least I have someone around I can empathize with.

Yes, it seems like you are comfortable when other people have explanations in their heads that you think soothe them, but not when you might be in that category. Someone with an explanation, in your head, about a persistent self, that soothes you.

Me in what category...the soothed ones? As for this persistent self, the components involved in the creation of any particular individual's identity -- biological, anthrological, historical, cultural, experiential, uniquely personal -- are going to be, in my view, far beyond the grasp of any one. Then the Benjamin Button Syndrome which depicts just how far removed we often are from understanding all the variables in our life...variables that are beyond either wholly grasping or controlling.

Here with the persistent self, you are the one with an in the head hypothesis, and one that doesn't match science.

That there is a persistent self, one that, yes, gets lost, at the time of death. When in fact that's just an inaccurate copy of who you are now, all the matter having been replaced before that time.

When I first pointed this out, in this recent interaction, you told me that everyone knows this/thinks this way. That there is a persistent self that ends at death.

Well, everyone used to believe in God. Nearly everyone believes in objective moral. Etc. Ad populum arguments generally don't persuade you, but here you used one.

On top of the 'all the matter is replaced' science angle, you have your own dasein beliefs, where all sorts of part of the self can change radically over time. So even the patterns that the new matter has and goes through change.

And yet this in the head story of the persistent self continues, with some vague abstract justifications, ones you wouldn't accept or buy on one of the other topics you focus on. You'd label it 'in the head' and an attempt to 'self'-comfort.

...I've already given you my assessment of these issues above.

Well, you appealed to popularity. When I pointed out the problem with this you dropped it. Then you appealed to patterns that carry identity, and I pointed out that there was no scientific basis for identity being carried when all the matter changes. No response to that. You stopped. Perhaps in a parallel way to when other stop when faced with your questions and challenges on other issues.

You note these things about me. You believe things like this about me. In the interim, I have no clue regarding how they relate to the points I have made.

Now, back to this:

...the part where, given a particular context, members here explain how and why my points [in the signature threads] are not applicable to them.

You're a member, right?

As are you. Are you willing to look at what you have made up in your head to avoid a different kind of terror than the ones you focus on in others?

This is just "wiggle wiggle wiggle" to me.

Again...

...the part where, given a particular context, members here explain how and why my points [in the signature threads] are not applicable to them.

Also, why, in your view, given a particular context, these factors...

1] that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] that human morality in a No God world revolves largely around a fractured and fragmented assessment of right and wrong rooted existentially in dasein.
3] that oblivion is awaiting all of us when we die

...are not applicable to you either.

[iambiguous]

Who am I? The Philosophy of Personal Identity
Luke Dunn at The Collector

Personal identity is a philosophical issue which spans a whole range of disciplines within philosophy, from the philosophy of mind, to metaphysics and epistemology, to ethics and political theory.

Disciplines. And how should we rank them given there are hundreds and hundreds moral and political and spiritual proponents "out there" all claiming that they and they alone can provide us with the discipline we need to be...saved?

There is no one problem of personal identity – they are rather a kind of philosophical problem that starts to emerge whenever we ask questions about what one ‘is’ most fundamentally.

No, in my view, it's neither the questions asked nor the answers given that reflect the fundamental focus here. Instead, that "here and now" pertains to the part where different people ask different questions precipitating any number of conflicting answers.

So, whose perception of reality here encompasses the most penetrating questions and the most comprehensive answers?

Problems of personal identity were first posed in something like the form they take today, but underlying issues of personal identity have been a feature of the Western philosophical tradition since its inception.

However, few have come to be quite as fractured and fragmented in regard to identity as "I" am. Then the distinction made by many between Western and Eastern takes on the self.

Plato, writing near the dawn of philosophical enquiry, and Descartes writing at the dawn of modern philosophy, both had a theory of what we were most fundamentally – namely, that we are souls.

The original rendition of an Intrinsic Self. Only it all comes back to God here rather than nature.

This illustrates that it is very difficult to undertake any extensive philosophical enquiry without coming up against some problems of personal identity.

Okay, but my own take on identity here is particularly discomfiting. As for the difficulties, tell that to the objectivists. Their own One True Path often being a "piece of cake".

[iambiguous]

Who am I? The Philosophy of Personal Identity
Luke Dunn at The Collector
Personal Identity: A Variety of Questions, a Variety of Answers

Some of the usual answers to the question of personal identity – ‘I am a human being’ or ‘I am a person’ or even ‘I am a self’ – are sufficiently vague as to be worthy of further philosophical analysis.

Vague, perhaps, but who among us needs philosophy in order to confirm them given our day-to-day interactions with others?

Unless, of course, they involve interactions pertaining to value judgments. Then, in my view, philosophers are still no less stymied given the manner in which I construe human identity here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-man ... sein/31641

Some of the problems of personal identity involve trying to define terms like ‘human’ or ‘person’ or ‘self’. Others ask what the conditions are for the persistence of a human or a person or a self over time; in other words, what it takes for a person or a self to persist.

Of course, that's hardly sufficient from my own frame of mind. Far more -- or less -- productive is the part where the definitions and deductions become intertwined in actual moral and political and spiritual conflagrations.

As for the "conditions" we find ourselves in, that will basically revolve around memory, and memory will revolve around the accumulation of our own uniquely personal experiences over the years.

This part:

If you were born and raised in a Chinese village in 500 BC, or in a 10th century Viking community or in a 19th century Yanomami village or in a 20th century city in the Soviet Union or in a 21st century American city, how might your value judgments be different?

Yes, that's one of the reasons philosophy was invented...to delve into things like this in order to attain the "wisest" assessment. And what might that be? Or, more to the point, do any of these assessments...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...nail it?

Still, others ask what the ethical implications of these categories actually are, or whether what matters in an ethical sense has anything to do with what we are most fundamentally at all.

Well, the ethical implications for those like me "here and now" revolve around a "fractured and fragmented" self rooted existentially in dasein. Click, of course.

As for what we all are "fundamentally", you tell me. Given a context of your own choosing.

In other words, some question whether personal identity matters. How we respond to one problem of personal identity is likely to (partly) determine how we respond to other problems of personal identity. It is therefore justified to think about personal identity in terms of general approaches to it as an issue, rather than specific responses to specific problems.

So, is that vague enough for you?

[camus666]

Who am I? The Philosophy of Personal Identity
Luke Dunn at The Collector

The 'Physical' Approach

There are three broad categories of approach to personal identity. The first is what we can call the ‘Physical’ approach: this locates what we are fundamentally in something physical.

On the other hand, this assumes we do have some measure of free will. And, in my view, if not, then both the self and any discussions about it unfold entirely given the only possible reality.

Some theories of this kind say that what we are most fundamentally is our brains, or some part of our brains – be it a specific part, or just enough of our brains.

But then for thousands of years now philosophers have gone back and forth regarding the so-call "mind-body problem". Where does one end and the other begin? Or are they all intertwined autonomically in whatever either is or is not behind Nature itself? God, say?

The underlying thought here is generally that our minds only exist as they do because our brains are a certain way, and whilst losing (say) a finger or even an arm couldn’t possibly turn someone into a wholly different person, removing or altering their brain might.

Of course, speculation of this sort goes back to the Big Bang, to the evolution of human beings here on planet Earth and/or to an understanding of existence itself.

Though, by all means, continue to assume that your own assessment of human identity reflects the most rational account.

Other theories of this kind refer to a range of physical features, which together define us as a biological organism or a species.

More to the point, however, our physical features are, in so many ways -- from the cradle to the grave -- beyond our control. Arms, legs, torsos and all the other biological components [inside and out] that we all share in common. Components that biologists have accumulated considerable knowledge regarding over the years.

On the other hand, who really does come closest to grasping how the brain functions in regard to attaining and then sustaining a sense of self?


biggie