What Is "Me," Exactly?
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Here:Kimdeal said:
http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp -Only read the start and around the mid-end section. They explain religion etc which is pretty irrelavent.
ALSO
http://www.lostmag.com/issue1/soulsweight.php -Same guy, different article.
Well, as far as we can tell, the soul apparently weighs 21 grams.
And now for my catchphrase: "Most importantly, why should I care?"
Existential philosophy can sometimes seem so pointless, yet serves as a cornerstone for what makes us human.
Existential philosophy can sometimes seem so pointless, yet serves as a cornerstone for what makes us human.
You are, in theory, a composition of elements such as dna, IQ, personality among other that basicly makes you who you are.
you picked "you", refering to me.
that is incorrect for only YOU can prevent forest fires.
OT:
Ive always thought of your body as merely a vessal for your brain, and your mind is the chemical process that goes on inside your brain.
that is incorrect for only YOU can prevent forest fires.
OT:
Ive always thought of your body as merely a vessal for your brain, and your mind is the chemical process that goes on inside your brain.
I'd say that ME is a old windows operating system, but that's just me. ;p
But joking aside, I am my personality in my opinion. That means my method of thinking and the way I act make up who I am. If I was to switch bodies and lose my memories, I'd still be me for the most part. If I kept everything but my personality changed completely, then I'd be someone else.
But joking aside, I am my personality in my opinion. That means my method of thinking and the way I act make up who I am. If I was to switch bodies and lose my memories, I'd still be me for the most part. If I kept everything but my personality changed completely, then I'd be someone else.
I'm not sure how to explain that. A person is defined by their personality. Personality isn't a tangable thing and is fragile and ever changing with every new experience, and they're personality is the sum of thier thoughts and reactions to certain environments and/or situations. Other than that I don't know.
But I also have a question: How do you describe a thought? Because chemical reactions in your brains can lead to a thought, but the thought itself isn't a tangable thing. it was just there one second and gone the next.
But I also have a question: How do you describe a thought? Because chemical reactions in your brains can lead to a thought, but the thought itself isn't a tangable thing. it was just there one second and gone the next.
This is stupid, do you not include your all the parts of your computer as "your computer", even when not all of them are responsible for doing the "thinking" ? You are you, the brain might do the thinking, but it's all part of you, at least until we're just brains in jars.
This is actually a question that is far, far more difficult to answer than it seems.
I'm going to be boring and suggest some reading that, while hard going, you'll probably find interesting (don't worry, it's not religious).
Douglas Hofstadter [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter] is a guy who has spent a lot of time working on this stuff. He's written two books which can be seen as attempts to explain one possible answer to what consciousness is. The first is called Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach], the second is called I Am a Strange Loop [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop].
I really can't recommend these books highly enough. GEB in particular will quite literally change the way you think. If you're seriously interested in this subject, read it.
To attempt to give an idea of what he's thinking, here's a quote: "In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference." Essentially his argument is that the nature of consciousness arises as a product from the ability to think about thoughts.
In the same way that Godel's Incompleteness Theorem ensures that once a mathematical system is complex enough, it can loop back and refer it itself and in so doing prevent complete knowledge of truth (seriously - he explains how and why), so too the ability to think about what we think about generates what he terms a 'strange loop' which he believes is essentially consciousness.
(Note: I don't agree with all his views, especially in 'I Am a Strange Loop', but his main ideas are pretty compelling.)
I'm going to be boring and suggest some reading that, while hard going, you'll probably find interesting (don't worry, it's not religious).
Douglas Hofstadter [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter] is a guy who has spent a lot of time working on this stuff. He's written two books which can be seen as attempts to explain one possible answer to what consciousness is. The first is called Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach], the second is called I Am a Strange Loop [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop].
I really can't recommend these books highly enough. GEB in particular will quite literally change the way you think. If you're seriously interested in this subject, read it.
To attempt to give an idea of what he's thinking, here's a quote: "In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference." Essentially his argument is that the nature of consciousness arises as a product from the ability to think about thoughts.
In the same way that Godel's Incompleteness Theorem ensures that once a mathematical system is complex enough, it can loop back and refer it itself and in so doing prevent complete knowledge of truth (seriously - he explains how and why), so too the ability to think about what we think about generates what he terms a 'strange loop' which he believes is essentially consciousness.
(Note: I don't agree with all his views, especially in 'I Am a Strange Loop', but his main ideas are pretty compelling.)
Thanks for the link. I did not, however, follow your advice and read only the start and mid end. I read the whole thing. And, at the bottom of the page, you will see that the good people at snopes.com have backed up my point really well. It was a very VERY small study (4 usable data points) that was criticised even when it was first made for being low grade. Its pretty well just what i thought it would be, something done a long time ago by someone with a preconsieved notion of how things were going to turn out. Its kind of interesting, sure, but your already making a huge leap of faith to assume that his results were really an accurate reflection of the way things are, let alone any speculation done on the implications of this.AllLagNoFrag said:
Thanks again though for sending me the link. More often than not when i ask for a source the person just dissapears into the tubes.
Im not saying that the soul can be just defined that easily let alone, be reduced to an object. Its just that people have done studies.Kimdeal said:
Anyway, congrats on finishing the whole thing.
Also, I made the mistake on mentioning "Well, as far as we can tell, the soul apparently weighs 21 grams" - whoopsies.
Anyway, glad to find something that was interesting to read for someone.
see your brain as a magical house. it has halls and corridors with windows and trapdoors and ropes to swing from in all kinds of directions
that, or your brain is still a house, but more centralised, more straigt. think the backdoors sequence in the matrix movie.
these are 2 ways to describe 2 kinds of strong noticeable things in people,
the first one, is chaotic and creative, the other, ordered, logics, and probably better then me at maths XD
yet, not all persons chaotic are the same, nor are the persons who are logical.
what's the difference? magnetism. YOU are a magnetic fluctuation, in my idea that is, that at the time of your birth got trapped in your brain.
if and when you die, the entire, well imagine a blob of magnetism brain-sized?
blob that is you will be released.
and if your lucky the entire you will get stuck in a new brain. this is reincarnation, it doesn't happen very often human/human
but think of it this way, an ants brain is a lot smaller. your big puddle of you is more then big enough to fill it a hundredfold. you can easily be you, inside an ant. so the damn Buddhists are right again XD
although, its quite possible that a hundred thousand little pieces of you land everywhere and are just recycled without memory. think static noise on your tv.
well that's just my mad idea about it. emplanes the random stuff that happennd globally as best I can XD
EDIT. now actually readable without too much grammar errors and spell-less-checks XD
that, or your brain is still a house, but more centralised, more straigt. think the backdoors sequence in the matrix movie.
these are 2 ways to describe 2 kinds of strong noticeable things in people,
the first one, is chaotic and creative, the other, ordered, logics, and probably better then me at maths XD
yet, not all persons chaotic are the same, nor are the persons who are logical.
what's the difference? magnetism. YOU are a magnetic fluctuation, in my idea that is, that at the time of your birth got trapped in your brain.
if and when you die, the entire, well imagine a blob of magnetism brain-sized?
blob that is you will be released.
and if your lucky the entire you will get stuck in a new brain. this is reincarnation, it doesn't happen very often human/human
but think of it this way, an ants brain is a lot smaller. your big puddle of you is more then big enough to fill it a hundredfold. you can easily be you, inside an ant. so the damn Buddhists are right again XD
although, its quite possible that a hundred thousand little pieces of you land everywhere and are just recycled without memory. think static noise on your tv.
well that's just my mad idea about it. emplanes the random stuff that happennd globally as best I can XD
EDIT. now actually readable without too much grammar errors and spell-less-checks XD
