Russell's teapot

Myles said:
Well, so much for what you call transcendental knowledge. The sense of continuity to which you refer can be perfectly explained in terms of memory and our personal history. It all happens in the brain. Brain damage and disease can lead to a loss of sense of self. So, the putative soul must also be damaged, showing that it is not necessary to invent a soul to explain anything. You are conflating it with consciousness such that it explains nothing.
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.... once again ....

I am not talking about the conceived self
I am talking about the self as context

For instance if you robbed a bank ten years ago and subsequently suffered from brain damage or a memory loss, you would still be held accountable for your crimes because the self as context (who you actually are) cannot change.
 
lightgigantic said:
.... once again ....

I am not talking about the conceived self
I am talking about the self as context

For instance if you robbed a bank ten years ago and subsequently suffered from brain damage or a memory loss, you would still be held accountable for your crimes because the self as context (who you actually are) cannot change.
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If change is not possible why bother telling others about your views. ? What is your agenda ?

Chgange is not only possible; it's inevitable. For an extreme case consider people who undergo personality changes for various reasons, a common one being that following brain trauma. Our attitudes (selves) change with th passage of time as experience will attest.

In any event, we were discussing your notion of the soul, whose existence I deny. How do you reconcile an immutable soul with a personality disorder ? I claim that invoikng a soul in the first instance explains nothing.


As for your example of the legal situation, you would be held accountable for what you were, not for who you are now. Again, an immutable self or soul, explains nothing.

Prisoners are paroled because they are considered to have changed so, whether you accept it or not, most of us accept that change can take place.
 
I agree, brain trauma can lead to very peculiar traits and these tell us something about consciousness and about what we perceive as "I".

Read up on people who have had brain corpus callosum severed. Some people are born with out a corpus callosum. Does it make sense to say a person now has two souls? No. But, it does make sense to suggest a human body with a cut brain may have two individual consciousnesses. Two "I".

Read up on people who have lost the ability to determine what is their body and what isn't their body.

Everything comes back to the brain. The "consciousness" (whatever it is) resides in the brain. The sense of "I" resides in the brain. It's all located in the brain. THAT much we do know.

Michael
 
Michael said:
I agree, brain trauma can lead to very peculiar traits and these tell us something about consciousness and about what we perceive as "I".

Read up on people who have had brain corpus callosum severed. Some people are born with out a corpus callosum. Does it make sense to say a person now has two souls? No. But, it does make sense to suggest a human body with a cut brain may have two individual consciousnesses. Two "I".

Read up on people who have lost the ability to determine what is their body and what isn't their body.

Everything comes back to the brain. The "consciousness" (whatever it is) resides in the brain. The sense of "I" resides in the brain. It's all located in the brain. THAT much we do know.

Michael
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regardless of the complex issues that can surround the conceived self, the self as context remains the same.
For instance its not as if a person who suddenly develops the absolute conviction that they are Adolph Hitler is prosecuted by a war claims tribunal
 
Myles said:
If change is not possible why bother telling others about your views. ? What is your agenda ?
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its not clear why you would expect the self as context to change - I mean its not like even two cockroaches that bump into each other in the night get confused who is who

Chgange is not only possible; it's inevitable. For an extreme case consider people who undergo personality changes for various reasons, a common one being that following brain trauma. Our attitudes (selves) change with th passage of time as experience will attest.
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yes
change is an undeniable aspect of the conceived self
the self as context is something a little different

In any event, we were discussing your notion of the soul, whose existence I deny. How do you reconcile an immutable soul with a personality disorder ?
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easy
by coming under the influence of a potency greater than themselves - namely illusion
I claim that invoikng a soul in the first instance explains nothing.
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thats because you adopt the (empirically unfounded) theory that life arises out of material complexity


As for your example of the legal situation, you would be held accountable for what you were, not for who you are now. Again, an immutable self or soul, explains nothing.
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it does however indicate that one cannot change the self as context

Prisoners are paroled because they are considered to have changed so, whether you accept it or not, most of us accept that change can take place.
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Whatever changes take place, it is the offender that is held accountable for their actions, not anyone else.
The same is true of issues of reward also.
 
lightgigantic said:
regardless of the complex issues that can surround the conceived self, the self as context remains the same.
For instance its not as if a person who suddenly develops the absolute conviction that they are Adolph Hitler is prosecuted by a war claims tribunal
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I'm not sure why you say the self-as-context remains the same. The "I" is in a constant flux because the brain is in a constant state of change.

Define "self as context"
 
Michael said:
I'm not sure why you say the self-as-context remains the same. The "I" is in a constant flux because the brain is in a constant state of change.

Define "self as context"
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the conceived self is what undergoes constant flux .... the fact that we can reflect on our different conceived selves indicates a self as context

IOW the fact that we can say "I used to like mickey mouse when I was a kid but then I grew out of it" indicates that there is something consistent that is undergoing all these changes.

If it wasn't the case, reflecting on our childhood would be just as relevant as reflecting on the childhood of the next door neighbor's kid.
 
I'll talk in the third person:

"Michael likes tomatoes, but when Michael were a child, Michael didn't think they tasted all that good"

The "Michael" is a concept used to describe the animal that grew from a child into an adult. In this sense yes there is a connection with the physical person that was and the person that is. There is no need to postulate a soul to think about this. I could say the same of my car. Let's say my car's name is Herby. "Herby was shinny and new, Herby was fast, Herby eventually got old and used up, Herby was sent to the bone yard where Herby sits to this day". See, there is both a concept of "Herby" as well as the idea that Herby is always changing.

"Michael" as a conscious entity was and is in constant flux.
There is nothing that is constant in the consciousness that is "Michael".
Just thinking about anything changes Michael's consciousness.

Again, the understanding that our brain is liquid (lipid, dissolved molecules and water) and must by its very nature be in flux means there is no real "I" as in self-as-context that is a constant. It's an illusion to think so.

Michael
 
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actually "michael" also hinges on conceived self issues. Self as context cannot be pinned down by issues of birth, gender etc or any other bodily designation

Once again, if you didn't have a self as context, there would be no relevance in reflecting over issues of change in your life

as for herby, the car never even had a conceived self, what to speak of a self as context.
 
Do you agree that "self as context" also changes? The Here and Now "I" is in flux?

There are two different concepts you are talking about.
(i) the past I - third person past perfect.
(ii) Here and Now "I" - first person present perfect.

Is this correct?

I still do not see a place for a soul in talking about these two concepts of "I"? It seems perfectly reasonable to discuss these topics of "I" without invoking a soul.
 
Ok, I'll stay for this one.

Enmos said:
Do you two believe in evolution ? Do you believe the hominids have a common ancestor ?
If so, can you tell me when hominids first had a soul ?
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lightgigantic said:
assuming that they have consciousness, I don't see how we haven't
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You mean all hominids have souls ?
What about the common ancestor and the ones before that.. leading right back to the rise of life on earth.

Do bacteria have a soul ?
 
Michael said:
Do you agree that "self as context" also changes? The Here and Now "I" is in flux?
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Not sure what you mean by the "here and now"
If you mean here and now I don't like tomatoes like I used to, that is a conceived self issue.
If you mean here and now I have a sense of self that acts as a frame work for all my different expressions, that is a self as context issue
There are two different concepts you are talking about.
(i) the past I - third person past perfect.
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but once again, we talk of our past as relevant to our self (as opposed to say the past of the next door neighbor).
Maybe it is helpful to consider the self as context as something like a blank canvas that we are constantly coloring and erasing images on in the way of conceived selves

(ii) Here and Now "I" - first person present perfect.

Is this correct?
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I'm not sure we are on the same page completely

I still do not see a place for a soul in talking about these two concepts of "I"? It seems perfectly reasonable to discuss these topics of "I" without invoking a soul.
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as soon as one can understand the importance of the self as context one can then determine the need to isolate that unchanging aspect of the self - before then, one is simply traversing the practical unlimited options of the conceived self (the moment you say "this is me" in reference to the material body or mind, you are wrong because the body/mind has shifted on to some other form/designation)
 
lightgigantic said:
I wasn't aware that protein, methane or H[sub]2[/sub]O can be observed in states of being alive or dead
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At which point does something become alive ?
There is already discussion about whether or not viruses can be considered life.
Prions, AKA Virons, are proteins.
I'm sure we reached an impasse..
 
Enmos said:
At which point does something become alive ?
There is already discussion about whether or not viruses can be considered life.
Prions, AKA Virons, are proteins.
I'm sure we reached an impasse..
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don't they commonly use a dead virus to make a vaccine eg. hep. A?
 
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