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Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity
On 06 Nov 2011, at 21:18, meekerdb wrote: On 11/6/2011 1:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Quentin, On 30 Oct 2011, at 23:51, Quentin Anciaux wrote: benjayk: On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. Quentin, Could you imagine making a dream where you are someone else? Can you imagine waking up, and remembering your life as a dream, and at the same time remembering the previous life? I don't think I can. My previous life is too detailed complete and driven decisions I've made for it to be a dream. Exactly. And that is what you remember in this thought experience. And compared to it, your current life might seem incoherent and fuzzy. I think we can dissociate from memories. I think we can identifying our identity, if I can say, with something deeper than the memories. Deeper than conscious memeories, but there's a lot more to memories than consciousness. You can ride a bicycle with remembering how to do it consciously. What strikes you as good and valuable was learned at some time. Not necessarily. Truth might be good before we learn it. And when did we learn them. Some truth has learn by humans only through their very long history. Plato intuited this in his reminiscence theory. Science has not yet decided between Plato and Aristotle's metaphysic. I think Aristotle metaphysics is hard to sustain given the facts. Bruno Brent Memories are important, if only to avoid painful loops, and to progress, which is the making of histories. But like bodies, it makes sense that we own them, we are not them, I mean, not necessarily are we them. We might be more our possible values, than the past local necessities. We might be more what we do with the memories than the memories themselves, which are very contingent and local. Perhaps we should allow ourselves thought experiences with amnesia, and dissociation. We practice dissociation and re-association all night, but usually we forget all of this. Who are we? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.454 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3999 - Release Date: 11/05/11 19:34:00 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Immortality still means what it means, what you're talking about is not immortality. If nothing is preserved (no memories) then nothing is left and I don't care. But is is not true that nothing is preserved. I already gave an example that even without explicit memory something more essential than memory can be conserved. No your example is wrong. Taking it to the limit, you never have memories, because at no point do you remember everything. The point is that you can remember your own memories. If you don't care, you are just being superficial with regards to what you are. I don't thing so, what is important to me is me in the event of dying. I don't care if a not me stays. OK, you are just insisting on the dogma that all one could be is a me. If you presuppose that, than further discussion doesn't lead anywhere. It is just that this assumption is not verified through experience. Which/what experience ? Don't say drugs... this comparison is invalid. Fundamentally, every experience. There is no ownership tag in experience that says: There has to be a me here!. The me is simply a certain mode of experience, which can be there, but doesn't have to be here. There is a lot of evidence for that. During meditation, flow, extraordinary states of consciousness induced by sleep or drugs it is quite a common experience that there is experience without a me. Enlightenment consists of realizing that there is no I (and the realization that there is only consciousness) in a way that is stable. These people report that there is no feeling of seperation, no sense of doership, no feeling of fundamental otherness (which make up the I) and still they live quite normally. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Actually there is just experience, no me that experiences that ??? What's hard to understand about that? Just look at your experience. There is experiencing, but there is no entity that has this experience. Yes, the feeling of an I having the experience appears in the experience, but since this I is just a part of the experience, it can't have it (it just imagines that it has it). Just like a window can't have a house, and a leg can't have a body. If anything, metaphorically speaking, the experience has a me. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: , apart from the feeling of me (which is just another feeling). There is no need for a self for consciousness to be there. But it exists... that's what demand explanation, that's what lead to the envy of immortality. It is no big mystery that a self seems to exist. Consciousness experiences itself through a body and a mind, which is, in terms of superficial things, the main invariant of human experience. So, as long as consciousness is not conscious enough to experience the absolute invariant of itself (which is more subtle than the body/mind), it will identify with this relative invariant. With this there comes a sense of self (as opposed to other), since what it identifies itself with is seperate from an other (my body is not your body, my mind is not your mind). But we can transcend this indentity (even though the I can't). If we directly see ourselves as consciousness itself, the appearance of being a seperate individual, a me, can dissolve. If this process is complete, it usually comes with a great sense of liberation, freedom and peace (this is also known as enlightenment, liberation, nirvana, moksha,...). If you don't believe you are a body that can be hurt and die, a mind that can be ignorant of the solutions the most important problems, a person that can lack love,etc... a great burden is lifted from you. Unfortunately this realization is rare, since it requires one to not buy into the dominant collective delusion and deeply ingrained feelings of fear towards death of self. Quentin Anciaux-2 wrote: Neither experientally, nor logically or scientifically. You say so... What's your evidence? In experience, the I is merely a mode of experience, like sleep is, and there are modes of experiences where there is no I. There is no logical contradiction between being conscious and not feeling to be a seperate individual (an I). In science, we never have found any such thing as an I. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32788734.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
meekerdb wrote: You picture consciousness as something inherently personal. But you can be conscious without there being any sense of personhood, or any experience related to a particular person (like in meditation). So that assumption doesn't seems to be true. Also you think that memory has to be conserved in order for the experience to continue consistently. This is also not true, we can experience things that are totally disconnected from all memories we have, yet still it is the I (not the I) that experiences it. For example on a drug trip, you can literally forget every trace of what your life was like, in terms of any concretely retrievable memory (you can even forget you are human or an animal). So why can't we lose any *concrete* memory after death and experience still continues consistently (and if it does you have to surive in some way - it makes no sense to have a continuous experience while you totally die). You also don't remember being an infant (probably), yet you were that infant and are still here. Saying that we are the sum of our memory is very simplistic and just isn't true in terms of how we experience (you remember almost nothing of what you have experienced). But in what sense did you experience when you were an infant? You can't really see anything until your brain organizes to process the visual signals from your eyes. So your visual experiences were different and limited as a new born that at a few months of age. Yes, this is probably true. I don't know what it is like to be an infant, and probably I won't know as long as I am alive. meekerdb wrote: Nobody remembers how they learned to see (or hear or walk) but that kind of memory is essential to having experiences. I think it is a mistake to think of a person as some core soul. The person grows and is created by interaction of the genetic provided body and the environment. We tend to overlook this because most of the growth occurs early in life before we have developed episodic memories I agree. You actually strenghten my point. meekerdb wrote: and the inner narrative we call consciousness. Consciousness is not a inner narrative. Consciousness is the sense of being. The inner narrative is the sense of personhood. We can be conscious without an inner narrative, like in meditation. meekerdb wrote: So if you say it is death, you only refer to a superficial aspect of the person, namely their body and explicit memory. Sure, we tend to indentify with that, but that doesn't mean that there isn't something much more important. The particular person may just be an expression of something deeper, which is conserved, and is the real essence of the person, and really all beings: Their ability to consciously, consistently experience. We tend to find that scary, as it makes us part of something so much greater that all our attachments, possesions, achievements, memory, beliefs and security are hardly worth anything at all, in the big picture. But if they aren't, what are we then? Since most of us have not yet looked deeper into ourselves than these things, we feel immensly treatened by the idea that this is not at all what is important about us. It (apparently) reduces us to nothing. But isn't it, when we face it from a more open perspective, tremendously liberating and exciting? By confronting that, we can free us from all these superficial baggage like things and relations and identity (freeing mentally speaking, of course), and see the true greatness of what we are which is beyond all of this. Were you beyond it all when you were a fetus? We are beyond time, so clearly we were beyond it all at this time. Yet the fetus is not beyond it all, since he is just a limited object (a quite amazing object, to be sure). Strictly speaking, I was not a fetus, I experienced myself as a fetus, which doesn't change what I am. Note that here I am using I as the absolute I (I -am-ness) not the relative I of personhood (I versus you). meekerdb wrote: How great was that? I don't know. Being a fetus might be a peaceful experience, or like sleep. But the point is that it doesn't matter how great the experience was, since what we are is beyond particular experiences (it is experiencing itself). Even when I feel absolutely terrible I still am beyond all, I just don't realize it. The very fact that the experience passes shows that I am beyond it (clearly when it is over I am beyond it). But even during very horrible circumstances it seems that it is possible to feel being untouched by it. Like the yogis that bear horrible pain without any visible sign of disturbance. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32788736.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/7/2011 9:50 AM, benjayk wrote: meekerdb wrote: How great was that? I don't know. Being a fetus might be a peaceful experience, or like sleep. But the point is that it doesn't matter how great the experience was, So what's your evidence that there is *any* experience of being a fetus. Brent since what we are is beyond particular experiences (it is experiencing itself). Even when I feel absolutely terrible I still am beyond all, I just don't realize it. The very fact that the experience passes shows that I am beyond it (clearly when it is over I am beyond it). But even during very horrible circumstances it seems that it is possible to feel being untouched by it. Like the yogis that bear horrible pain without any visible sign of disturbance. benjayk -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
Bruno Marchal wrote: But if you realize that there has never been a person to begin with, But this contradicts immediately my present consciousness feeling. I am currently in the state of wanting to drink water, so I am pretty sure that there exist right now at least one person, which is the one who wants to drink water. I might be able to conceive that such a person is deluded on the *content* of that experience (may be he really want to smoke a cigarette instead), but in that case a person still remains: the one who is deluded. Why does there have to be a person in order for there to be experience? If there is a feeling of wanting to drink water, this only shows that there is a feeling of wanting to drink water and the ability to experience that. But why would that ability to experience be equivalent to personhood? It rather seems it is something that transcends persons, as it is shared by different people, and can occur in the absence of experience of personality, like you yourself experienced during meditative states. This might just be a vocabulary issue, but why would one call something that is beyond body, rational mind, individuality, etc... a person? You might say what is most essential to a person is her experience, and here I would agree, but it seems a step to far to identify person and experience. I would rather call this consciousness. Indeed I agree with Dan that it is quite accurate to say that there is no person in the sense that experience is not personal, it doesn't belong to anyone (but it is very intimate with itself nontheless). I think we only fear the elimination of personhood because we confuse being conscious as an ego with being conscious. We somehow think that if we in the state of feeling to be a seperate individual cease to exist, we as conscious beings cease to exist, which is simply not true. Probably we are just so used to that state of consciousness, that we can't conceive of consciousness in another state than that. It is just a big change of perspective, and we fear that as we fear the unknown in general. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/QTI%2C-Cul-de-sacs-and-differentiation-tp32721336p32788744.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation
On 11/7/2011 12:02 PM, benjayk wrote: I think we only fear the elimination of personhood because we confuse being conscious as an ego with being conscious. We somehow think that if we in the state of feeling to be a seperate individual cease to exist, we as conscious beings cease to exist, which is simply not true. Have you ever been unconscious? When you were unconscious, who was experiencing unconsciousness? Brent Probably we are just so used to that state of consciousness, that we can't conceive of consciousness in another state than that. It is just a big change of perspective, and we fear that as we fear the unknown in general. benjayk -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Amnesia, dissociation and personal identity (was: QTI, Cul de sacs and differentiation)
To Qentin: DEATH an excellent vaiation for immoprtality. I always emphasize that ETERNITY is NOT a time indicator, can most likely be timeless (POOF it is over). To Bruno: we wrote already about your 2c question WHO ARE WE? and you answered something like Gods. That may be a cheap shot, but unidentifiable are both. (Philosophical Goedelism: you cannot identify yourself from within yourself). For sure we are not what WE think we are. John M On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 4:54 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Quentin, On 30 Oct 2011, at 23:51, Quentin Anciaux wrote: benjayk: On the other hand, I don't see why we would ignore immortality of consciousness, considering that the I is just a psychosocial construct/illusion anyway. We don't find an actual I anywhere. It seems very relevant to know that the actual essence of experience can indeed survive eternally. Why would I care whether an imagined I experiences it or not? How would you call this, if not immortality? Death. Quentin, Could you imagine making a dream where you are someone else? Can you imagine waking up, and remembering your life as a dream, and at the same time remembering the previous life? I think we can dissociate from memories. I think we can identifying our identity, if I can say, with something deeper than the memories. Memories are important, if only to avoid painful loops, and to progress, which is the making of histories. But like bodies, it makes sense that we own them, we are not them, I mean, not necessarily are we them. We might be more our possible values, than the past local necessities. We might be more what we do with the memories than the memories themselves, which are very contingent and local. Perhaps we should allow ourselves thought experiences with amnesia, and dissociation. We practice dissociation and re-association all night, but usually we forget all of this. Who are we? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
