On 04 Aug 2014, at 21:17, meekerdb wrote:
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 agree. Glad you agree with this.
I don't wake up when my clock strikes the hour, but I wake up
instantly when my wife whispers "I heard a noise."
I use often ear-plug, as I could ear (and wake up) the pin falling in
the forest nearby (exaggeration included).
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.
Not in a salvia experience. On high dose you can forget basically
everything, which explains the quite "retarded" look of the
experiencer, which indeed can't no more talk, and forget even notion
of person and time. You might not even remember having ever had a body.
(It is of course not a good idea to take such dosage, especially for
the first time (and nobody does that except those who are interested
in making a funny youtube video).
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.
Interesting.
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?
Yes. Paying taxes, marriage, funeral, etc.
When supported by deep (long, and linear) histories person have more
and more sophisticate lives, which are like novel/movies, except "you"
are the "hero". The basic scenario is what the hero do for not being
eaten, and what he does for eating, and usually some mating problem
are involved.
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.
On the contrary, I would say that free will is in the ability of
deciding what you will do next.
Brent
Ubi dubium ibi libertas
Exactly.
Bruno
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