What am I?

[deeman010]

I've been thinking a lot today and I just can't seem to get this question out of my head. I can't stop thinking about it and I can't seem to find an answer that satisfies me from my friends so I'm putting it up here.

What am I?

If your answer is "a human being" then I guess your right but that's not exactly the answer to what I'm asking for. More specifically I'm asking what my (or our) consciousness is composed of. Am I just a collection of responses tailored to react to specific stimuli? Am I the product of chemical or molecular reactions in my brain that dictate everything that I say or do? Am I just a product of electrical signals that my brain sends? Am I chemical signals that interpret other chemical signals? I don't know.(I know some of those are the same but my thought process is hard to type)

I know what our purpose in life is, well the most basic purpose at least, which is to survive (individually and collectively)but I just don't know what I am, or rather what the human consciousness is. The best simplification that I can think of is that we are the operating system of our bodies designed to make up for instances and situations that our instincts can't handle.

TLDR; I like pie, apple pie to be exact.
Btw, I'm looking for answers that are scientific, philosophical stuff is welcome too.

 

[Wraith]

We are just dust in the wind. Little parasites running around on the surface of a watery-dirt ball, that endlessly spins in an outrageously huge space, where things more powerful and gargantuan than we could ever imagine is millions of life times away.

We serve one common purpose: To live, to multiply and then to die.

What happens in between is unnecessary yet inconsequential to the cosmic balance. Nothing we do here matters. We are little beings, desperately trying to impress ourselves with societal concepts of individuality, forgetting that we are measly little microbes compares to everything else. We count or passages of time through our planet's rotation around a sun, where other points in space time is counted using the passage of dying galaxies.

We are nothing.

But while you're here you might as well enjoy existence, and the personal satisfaction that we parasites can bring one another. You are human. We are human. Let us, live and die, together, happily and without arrogant self-worth.

 

[Quaxar]

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

It's rare enough you get to use Dr. Seuss quotes for a quasi-philosophical topic so I'm enjoying this opportunity.

 

[deeman010]

We are just dust in the wind. Little parasites running around on the surface of a watery-dirt ball, that endlessly spins in an outrageously huge space, where things more powerful and gargantuan than we could ever imagine is millions of life times away.

We serve one common purpose: To live, to multiply and then to die.

What happens in between is unnecessary yet inconsequential to the cosmic balance. Nothing we do here matters. We are little beings, desperately trying to impress ourselves with societal concepts of individuality, forgetting that we are measly little microbes compares to everything else. We count or passages of time through our planet's rotation around a sun, where other points in space time is counted using the passage of dying galaxies.

We are nothing.

But while you're here you might as well enjoy existence, and the personal satisfaction that we parasites can bring one another. You are human. We are human. Let us, live and die, together, happily and without arrogant self-worth.

That seems kinda morbid....

But I've been through that line of thinking already and I can't that its wrong its just that I believe that while there are probably an infinite amount of universes where we are replaying the same stuff over and over again, I believe that my purpose is to be the best out of all of them. So what if there are countless me-s in the universe? I want and will strive to be the best of them/us all.

I do enjoy life a lot (too much in my opinion to be honest; parties every week is hurting my grades) I just can't seem to answer the question of what I am or what my consciousness is. So what if I'm dust? I'll be the dustiest particle there or I'll go help make the human race matter in the long run.

 

[deeman010]

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

It's rare enough you get to use Dr. Seuss quotes for a quasi-philosophical topic so I'm enjoying this opportunity.

Hahahahahhaha my friend just pulled that one out a while ago. Still its true though.

 

[piinyouri]

Stardust, destined to return to our mothers in the grand end scheme of things.

If people really want to worship a creator, we should all be attending Solar Mass every Sunday instead.

 

[thesilentman]

What are you? An immense system of biological processes, working autonomously to sustain themselves to the best of their ability.

That goes for everyone else, really. Bit of an open-ended question OP, and you could go anywhere with it. I prefer the definition above along with several others I have though. =P

 

[Little Woodsman]

"Are you a god?"
"No."
"Then what are you?"
"I am....awake."

 

[MiskWisk]

We are just dust in the wind. Little parasites running around on the surface of a watery-dirt ball, that endlessly spins in an outrageously huge space, where things more powerful and gargantuan than we could ever imagine is millions of life times away.

We serve one common purpose: To live, to multiply and then to die.

What happens in between is unnecessary yet inconsequential to the cosmic balance. Nothing we do here matters. We are little beings, desperately trying to impress ourselves with societal concepts of individuality, forgetting that we are measly little microbes compares to everything else. We count or passages of time through our planet's rotation around a sun, where other points in space time is counted using the passage of dying galaxies.

We are nothing.

But while you're here you might as well enjoy existence, and the personal satisfaction that we parasites can bring one another. You are human. We are human. Let us, live and die, together, happily and without arrogant self-worth.

That seems kinda morbid....

But I've been through that line of thinking already and I can't that its wrong its just that I believe that while there are probably an infinite amount of universes where we are replaying the same stuff over and over again, I believe that my purpose is to be the best out of all of them. So what if there are countless me-s in the universe? I want and will strive to be the best of them/us all.

I do enjoy life a lot (too much in my opinion to be honest; parties every week is hurting my grades) I just can't seem to answer the question of what I am or what my consciousness is. So what if I'm dust? I'll be the dustiest particle there or I'll go help make the human race matter in the long run.

Yeah, Wraith pretty much said what I tend to feel about this whole philosophical questioning lark.
And since he has done that, I'll just leave a link to this tvtropes [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheAntiNihilist] that basically sums it up as:

Life is hell, we're all gonna die and you can't fight fate... but why not make each others' lives worthwhile and enjoyable in the meantime?

 

[mad825]

What are you? Someone who needs to stay-off the teas and coffees for a bit.

An OS is the bridge between the hardware and software interaction. In general we might be OSes but we are a application running on a OS, the OS itself has higher privileges than we (applications) can access.

 

[Aramis Night]

We are just dust in the wind. Little parasites running around on the surface of a watery-dirt ball, that endlessly spins in an outrageously huge space, where things more powerful and gargantuan than we could ever imagine is millions of life times away.

We serve one common purpose: To live, to multiply and then to die.

What happens in between is unnecessary yet inconsequential to the cosmic balance. Nothing we do here matters. We are little beings, desperately trying to impress ourselves with societal concepts of individuality, forgetting that we are measly little microbes compares to everything else. We count or passages of time through our planet's rotation around a sun, where other points in space time is counted using the passage of dying galaxies.

We are nothing.

But while you're here you might as well enjoy existence, and the personal satisfaction that we parasites can bring one another. You are human. We are human. Let us, live and die, together, happily and without arrogant self-worth.

I actually found this quite beautiful. A rare thing to find in truth. The only depressing thing in this was the acknowledgement of being human.

Oh and Minionjoe, I love the article.

 

[Shinsei-J]

You're an unlikely combination.
With a consciousness made of many perceptions,
Leading no purpose but to fill the desires your combination has called for.

I kind of feel like a bit of a cheater with how vague my answer is but these are the only thing I feel are certain.

 

[MeisterKleister]

I would strongly recommend watching Daniel Dennett's lectures and reading his books on the subject. He is a philosopher who understands science and he uses it to explain consciousness, free will and the evolution of purposes. Great stuff.

"Some years ago, there was a lovely philosopher of science and journalist in Italy named Giulio Giorello, and he did an interview with me. And I don't know if he wrote it or not, but the headline in Corriere della Sera when it was published was "Sì, abbiamo un'anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot - "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots." And I thought, exactly. That's the view. Yes, we have a soul, but in what sense? In the sense that our brains, unlike the brains even of dogs and cats and chimpanzees and dolphins, our brains have functional structures that give our brains powers that no other brains have - powers of look-ahead, primarily. We can understand our position in the world, we can see the future, we can understand where we came from. We know that we're here. No buffalo knows it's a buffalo, but we jolly well know that we're members of Homo sapiens, and it's the knowledge that we have and the can-do, our capacity to think ahead and to reflect and to evaluate and to evaluate our evaluations, and evaluate the grounds for our evaluations.

It's this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what's it made of? It's made of neurons. It's made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation."
- Daniel C. Dennett

"Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares."
- Daniel C. Dennett, Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness

"Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. A mystery is a phenomenon that people don't know how to think about - yet. There have been other great mysteries: the mystery of the origin of the universe, the mystery of life and reproduction, the mystery of the design to be found in nature, the mysteries of time, space, and gravity. These were not just areas of scientific ignorance, but of utter bafflement and wonder. We do not yet have all the answers to any of the questions of cosmology and particle physics, molecular genetics and evolutionary theory, but we do know how to think about them .... With consciousness, however, we are still in a terrible muddle. Consciousness stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist -- and hope -- that there will never be a demystification of consciousness."
- Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained

Edit:

 

[doggy go 7]

?Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else?s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.? ? Oscar Wilde

You are a bunch of cells that have come together, and through millions of years of evolution, have decided that it's mutually beneficial to have conciousness. Your character is made up of influences from everything you have ever interacted with, the main ones being your parents/careers and your school. Your life is fleeting, your thoughts even more so, there is no purpose to aspire to other than the one's you have been programmed by your upbringing and the basic structure of your brain to believe are so.

So life's pointless right?

Not quite. You may be a machine, but you are also a person, and you are alive. There isn't much you can do for yourself, you won't remember it when you die. So instead, do things for others, make the world a better place, because that does live past you. Enjoy life while you can, and enjoy it with others, because if it doesn't matter, might as well like it

"What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.? ? Joseph Addison

 

[Grach]

More specifically I'm asking what my (or our) consciousness is composed of. Am I just a collection of responses tailored to react to specific stimuli? Am I the product of chemical or molecular reactions in my brain that dictate everything that I say or do? Am I just a product of electrical signals that my brain sends? Am I chemical signals that interpret other chemical signals?

Yes. Keep in mind though, your brain is you.
Think of it as if you were a calculator, you can compute and graph operations that could take hours for some, but by nature you do them in the blink of an eye. That is if you choose to calculate.

I know what our purpose in life is, well the most basic purpose at least, which is to survive (individually and collectively)but I just don't know what I am, or rather what the human consciousness is. The best simplification that I can think of is that we are the operating system of our bodies designed to make up for instances and situations that our instincts can't handle.

You are a human being, that's what you are. WHO you are, is a more relevant question I think.
Conciousness is hard to define, so I doubt you'll get an answer that'll satisfy you. I think we need a frame of reference, like a sentient alien race.

I like lemon pies myself.

 

[Blaster395]

You are exactly what you want to be, and your goal is exactly what you want to do.

The universe may be an uncaring and miserable void, but fuck the universe we can do what we want.

 

[Tanakh]

I know what our purpose in life is, well the most basic purpose at least, which is to survive (individually and collectively)but I just don't know what I am, or rather what the human consciousness is.

You are a bunch of matter which has the curious property of self awareness, rather useless but fun to have.

And like shit my propose is survive, my propose is whatever I decide bitches! Self awareness remember? We choose what we are made for.

 

[Nokturos]

You're a pointless pile of protoplasm stuck to a grain of dust in a universe so complex you will never be able to fathom it. Enjoy.

 

[The White Hunter]

A miserable pile of secrets, what else?