On 8/4/2014 11:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 04 Aug 2014, at 02:09, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/3/2014 4:27 PM, Kim Jones wrote:
On 4 Aug 2014, at 5:46 am, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
What about "multiple personality disorder" ? Are they the same person? (I'd
guess not)
Why? There is a weaker, culturally acceptable version of this in the concept of the
"parallel lives" we all lead. Now don't tell me you are all just one identity. You
don't necessarily have to be one of the British House of Lords to like the whips and
the leathers and the Nazi uniforms during sex, yet a paragon of moderation humility
and chastity in your day job - sorry that's just an example, I'm sure your
imaginations can do better. Nobody is "just one person". Life offers us all roles to
play. De Bono felt this was one area where human perception was at its finest. You can
have all sorts of relationships with other people. Each one of these relationships is
a kind of universe, a life, a computational stream. It has its own identity. Why limit
yourself to just one?
They are *roles* and they are *played* by one person; that's what makes them roles.
What makes the person one is consistency of memories and interactions.
OK. But you can lose your memories progressively, and staying consistent all along.
Intuitively, influenced by the night sleep, we might think that when we lose our
memories, we loose consciousness.
We don't lose consciousness when asleep. I don't wake up when my clock strikes the hour,
but I wake up instantly when my wife whispers "I heard a noise."
But there are no physiological evidences for this, on the contrary, the study of brain
deficient people accounts, willingly through drugs or unwillingly through accidents or
diseases, suggests the contrary.
Even people who are said to suffer amnesia still remember how to speak and they remember
the immediate past so that this provides continuity. Interesting research now suggests
that specific memories can be erased by giving a person a drug that prevents formation of
long term memory and having them recall the specific memory to be erased while under the
influence of the drug.
Now, when you don't loose consciousness, you survive, in the sense of staying alive.
Loosing a memory is typically a sad events, but loosing a leg or an hand are too, yet
you survive. It is not your "end" (if that exists).
And I believe that there is no consciousness without a person, as consciousness is an
attribute of a first person.
Owning memories and bodies are other different attribute of some possible
person.
Is there any other meaning to "being a person" beyond memories and
consciousness and body?
And as you say, like in a novel, our memories confer us some role; which we play, as if
it was our job or something. Usually this represent some value, as we hope, and our
identity, social or human identity, is not so much in the memories, but in what we do
with those memories, with respect to the value we believe in.
Then salvia, but also meditation or sleep technics, gives the quite platonist feeling
that those value transcend you, are universal, already known by the "higher self"
(perhaps the universal person), and that eventually, in your many
"incarnations/implementations" "you" have the choice to let those values living through
you, or not. I guess people aware of those value get "bad conscience" when they acts
against them. Bad faith might originate from that too. Free will is probably related to
that ability of betraying your own conscience.
Free will is just not knowing what you will do next.
Brent
Ubi dubium ibi libertas
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