Sure, it's not a necessary connection, but a contingent, historical one. Existentialism has its right wing as well as its left. I suspect Sartre would want to repudiate his FATHER.

Laing was an avowed Existentialist, and i think there was a connection with Sartre, who was also somewhat critical of the traditional family. I think Simone De Beauvoir had something to say from a feminist existentialist view. Cooper and Laing were not of one mind by any means, but then no two existentialists can ever really live on the same planet together, but although the history of critical or anti-psychiatry is complicated, it definitely owes a lot to the existentialists, and seems to be at least a major strand of thinking critical of the institution of the family.

If you listen closely you will hear — WISDOMfromPO-MO

One could start with Civilisation and its Discontents, but the beginning of an overt moral attack, not on monogamy as such, but on the institution of the nuclear family is probably David Cooper's The Death of the Family. Existentialism is the philosophy behind this, but one can also find precursors in Russell, Aldous Huxley and the like.

A quick look around did not find any non sensationalist trash advocates for the immorality of monogamy, but the negation of the unquestioned morality of all and only monogamous relationships is well considered in femminism - here, for example.

So questioning that monogamy is ideal has a history and a present, but claiming that it it is in principle immoral not so much.

But I may be missing something?

Is "to be a predicate" a predicate? I suppose so, but haven't figured out whether that's problematic. — jorndoe

I haven't figured it out either, but if it's problematic, it's logic that has a problem, not existence. If existence declares that particles are waves or whatever quantum weirdness you care to mention, logic will just have get it's act together about it. It might just be the usual problem of ordinary language being its own meta-language.

But "is a fiction" is a predicate, yet fictional things don't exist. — Michael

Fictional things don't exist, but fictions do.

If someone were to tell me that they saw me in London yesterday then I would be quite right in saying that they didn't see (and couldn't have seen) me in London yesterday because I wasn't there. — Michael

If I was that someone, I'd believe you, because my facial recognition is not great, but if it was a policeman investigating you as a suspect, they might not. But could you be mistaken about where you were yesterday? It's conceivable. But like me, you don't bother to conceive it unless there is good reason to; like me you are generally certain that you were where you think you were, and that what you see is what is there. Because to be limited by logical implication is to be unable to function at all.

That is a significant difference. "I see the cup on the table" does not imply that "The cup is on the table". Nor is "I see the cup on the table" implied by "The cup is on the table". — Banno

I read your post. Did you post though?

If you put logic before the world, then you are in trouble. Amend your logic to follow the world. Perhaps someone has hacked your account, that would explain it, or perhaps I had too much wine last night. No, I read your post, and I am quite certain you posted. What is central is that I see the cup is empty, and I'm taking it to the kitchen for a refill.

Did you answer my question, but I'm too stupid to understand it? Or was the question not clear enough? Can 'existence is not a predicate' be formalised without using existence as a predicate?

I'm not the big logician, but I know that existence is tricksy. It can be readily proved that there is no greatest prime number. One supposes that one exists, and then shows there is a bigger one. But then that feels different from the question of whether or not there exists hair on someone's head. I feel like we can put restrictions of this sort on language for certain purposes, but for other purposes I might define existence as that which is immune to argument.

How would you formalise the title?

There does not exist a predicate (x) in language (S) which has the meaning, 'exists' (φ).

I don't know, but there is a slight aroma of cutting off the branch one is standing on here... is it a rule that denies its own expression?

OK. This is a path of philosophical thought worth pursuing. Science and neurologists will not pursue this line of thinking. For them something is wrong and has to be fixed. However, a philosopher, outside of academia, can begin to inquire into new ways of looking at memory and identity that might open up completely new ways of viewing mind, body and spirituality with enormous amount of practical benefits, e.g. how do drugs affect the body's constructive and reconstructive memory mechanisms and are they creating permanent damage? — Rich

Yes, I think we are largely in agreement, about a lot of things. For myself, though I would say that it is a mistake to try and create a new science of the person, because it will inevitably end up as depersonalising as the old science. Let's just drop it entirely and talk and listen to each other and to ourselves. "So, unenlightened, what's it like being the queen of England? It must be annoying that nobody bows."

I'm not sure that narrative memory is all that identity is. It's an unusual case, and so the evidence is not that strong. Most people do not remember their birth, but apart from Agustino, few deny that they were born.

The identity of being 'man born of woman' is presumed, not remembered, and that is a process of the internalising of social circumstances. Thus one has the circumstance sometimes of discovering that who one thought was one's sister is one's biological mother, and who one thought was one's mother is one's grandmother. There are facts about oneself, about which one can be deceived, and then undeceived. Where in the holo-sphere the real and false ideas are stored is another matter.

What interests me is the process of construction of personal identity. That certainly does involve memory, and also imagination, and also social relations. To say that one cannot be deceived about one's personal identity seems both true in one sense, that I am whoever I think I am, and false in another, that I can think I am the queen of England when I am not. I am nevertheless, the man who thinks he is the queen of England.

OK, so being a bit more obvious: there is a difference between "I see the cup on the table" and "The cup is on the table".

How do you characterise that difference? — Banno

The cup, presumably is largely unaffected, so the more limited second statement is implied by the first, which provides the source. As distinct from "The bible declares that the LORD God created the table, and placed a cup thereon." But in each case, there will be a speaker and a source, whether they are mentioned or not.

I don't think it is arbitrary; it is the basis of being able to talk about "you" and 'me" in the first place. — John

I wonder how the discussion would go if posts were numbered, but not named. One might find a sequence of consistent posts that express and amplify a POV, but one would have play the ball and not the man. It would be an interesting experiment. No contributors, only contributions...

There is no right or wrong, just differences in what is remembered.
— Rich

I don't agree. When he thinks he is Johan Ek he is wrong.

That is to say, it is Michael Thomas Boatwright who thinks he is Johan Ek. It is not John Ek that others think is Michael Thomas Boatwright. — Banno

I don't find it hard to agree with both sides of this. From the outside, one is dealing with the continuity of the body, which is born and continues 'the same body' until it dies. And that can be true, at the same time as, from the inside, he is not the man he was. There is a tradition - is it Native American? - of changing one's name after a life-changing experience (like marriage, for instance?).

Here's the contention again:

An individual is not identified by a substance or a bundle of properties, but in most cases by our treating the individual in a certain way.

If you like, an individual is an individual only because we place it in that role in our language games.

"We" is used here, not "I", so as to show that this does not take place in a private language. — Banno

So as we treat you as Banno, you are not Bob, even if you think you are. I think there is a problem here with this 'we'. Because if you think you are Bob, you are not part of the 'we' that treats you as Banno, and so it is not 'we', but 'they'. I treat myself as John Ek, but they treat me as Boatwright.

If the Nazis decide to identify you as a Jew, it doesn't matter what you think you are, as long as the Nazis are in control. But when the Nazis have been defeated, it no longer matters what they think.

But either way, I think identity is a matter of thought and custom, and anyone who has a relative with dementia can understand that this person is the same and not the same person that they loved - and again the 'we' that they used to be part of, has slipped away from them along with the 'I' that is their 'personal' identity.

An insult? Is it?

To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise. — Thomas Gray

Then It seems to have no connection to me, because I was born, Mummy told me.
— unenlightened
Yes, in a common sense of speaking, since that's what people mis-identify the self to be. — Agustino

I'll stop here, as I have no idea what you are on about, but it is nothing to do with what I have been saying, and nothing that I can see to do with the topic of reincarnation.

Yes, you already said that's how you see yourself, but I am asking how it is manifested, shown to others in your relationships to them. You see to us shrinks, a lack of boundaries to the psyche can lead to grave problems.

And we've already established that when we're looking for the self, we're looking for something permanent. — Agustino

Have we? I don't remember establishing that. If reincarnation, then something survives death. But you don't mean that, because:

the self cannot be reborn, because the self is never born, for whatsoever is born must die. — Agustino

Then It seems to have no connection to me, because I was born, Mummy told me.

To be honest, talk of the LORD God seems out of place here. It's philosophy, not revealed religion. It's a question of identity, a matter of examining one's life, and the answers from books are just theories about someone else's notion of their identity.

I think it gets confusing when consciousness is thought of as some object that can be made mobile. — Rich

I agree. Let's not do it, then. Though I consciously went to Manchester the other day, on the train.

There appears to be a wave-like, cyclical nature moving of processes that move from rest-from-learning-and-creating (sleep/death) and creating/learning (awake/alive) of this process. — Rich

That's fine; if that's who you imagine yourself to be, I won't argue. How does this identity manifest itself in your life?

But consciousness isn't the self. — Agustino

the real self never reincarnates — Agustino

I'm not sure what you are pointing to here. Not body, not consciousness, not memory, but...?

What if the contents and the container are one consciousness together? — Agustino

There's a sense in which they are the same, and a sense in which they are not. It is a question of identification. So I read your post, and I am conscious of your post, but I am not your post. One could say that my consciousness is 'of your post', but that 'of' is doing more work than it can really cope with.
My consciousness is filled with any number of fleeting things from moment to moment, but I do not think of myself, or behave as if, I am a fleeting thing. Rather, I identify as some sort of thread (to use another image from container for a moment), on which these fleeting impressions and pearls of speculative wisdom are strung. And, as I mentioned, I see this thread projecting into the future, and make an identification with tomorrow's unenlightened wanting his breakfast that is strong enough to propel me to the shop for eggs and coffee. Somehow, that seems entirely natural, but the identification with another's morning hunger is not. Yet they are equally inaccessible to me in fact, though not in
imagination.

So to answer your question directly, if the contents and the container are one consciousness, then I am not the same person who started writing this reply, and the person who reads it will not be the Agustino of yore. And that is just as unbelievable as that we are one.

But, though I don't believe that we're all the same "I", I still don't want to harm other living things, and so the only change, if I were convinced of what you're saying would be that I'd have a stronger argument for vegetarianism...an argument easier to justify to everyone.

...assuming that I could convince others to it as well. It wouldn't help if I couldn't.

And of course that would apply to human-affairs too, all the depredations that are in the news.

But, in those human-affairs matters, and in every matter other than our household's lack of all-the-time vegetarianism, it wouldn't change me one bit, because I already don' t want anyone or anything harmed. — Michael Ossipoff

I think you are underestimating the effect of identification. According to 'common sense' notions of identity, I take precautions and plan for a future self, that is necessarily absent from experience. I buy food for the imagined unenlightened's breakfast tomorrow, because I identify with him - 'I will be him'. I don't take the same precautions for the homeless guy on the street, because I will not be him.

Or, if I 'know' that I am eating my own corpse, there is no need for any argument about vegetarianism.

Social morality dissolves into common prudence, one doesn't want to shoot oneself, let oneself starve, belittle oneself on philosophy forums and so on. If one come across oneself in the sad condition of not knowing that I am the other, which is the case almost everywhere at the moment, then one will see how I am hurting myself in that condition and try to help myself see more clearly. What appears to the one in that condition of limited identity as great kindness and nobility, is actually common prudence to the other, who loves his neighbour as himself.

I beg to offer a counterexample:

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
— Albert Einstein

I believe this is written in the third person. Am I wrong? — Banno

It sure is written in the third person, but I suspect it is Einstein's view. Scientists have this really silly habit of talking in a third person voice. "The test tube was dropped on the floor" rather than "I dropped the test tube." It don't fool me. Not like you to take a grammatical construction for reality. There is a third person voice, but there is no third person. Self, other, invisible friend?

Basically, you're re-defining the word "Me". — Michael Ossipoff

Well I hope I am doing something more than just playing with words. Suppose, imagine, that I have convinced you, that quite literally, another's pain is your pain even though you don't feel it; that another's harm is your harm. Do you not think it would change your prioities, change your life, if your identity was actually 'everyman'?

That finger-cut is in your tissue. That's part of you.

That's qualitatively very different from matters involving other bodies. — Michael Ossipoff

Are you saying you feel differently about your cut finger? Probably not. It can happen that one cuts a finger and yet doesn't feel it, at least not immediately. Do you want to say it is qualitatively different, and in some way the same as if it was an other body?

This is what we do; we identify ourselves with the limits of our sensations. Whatever I can feel the hurt of or the pleasure of is me, and if there are hurts and pleasures that I don't feel, that is another. It's strongly intuitive, and it's the way we go on. So I'm not surprised that there is resistance to my questioning this intuition. But I am trying to show, with a closer look, that it is a bit arbitrary.

The person is necessarily both the body and the structure and process. — La Cuentista

I agree: well not 'necessarily', but as far as we know.

It seems to me that science is just like baking a cake: the whole time that you are following the steps of a recipe you could believe that nothing is going to turn out, but in spite of that you get a cake by following the steps exactly. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I recall Dawkins or someone describing a paleontologist who was actually a young Earth creationist, but whose PhD dissertation was on the distribution of Mesozoic aquatic reptiles (which, of course, would have to be predicated on an old Earth model). The dissertation was apparently pretty good, despite the guy's not believing what he was propounding. — Arkady

Possible, then, but it is a strange reason you'd need to follow a cake recipe not believing in cake. The phrase 'going through the motions' comes to mind. I'm sure it's a grave sin if you do it in church.

From what I remember of what Eliminative Physicalists say, it's canonical that the valid point of view is the objective, 3rd-person point of view, and animals' experience is fictitious "folk-psychology". — Michael Ossipoff

Then it's rubbish. We know there are animals, and there is plenty of evidence that they have a point of view - their eyes for example, but there is no evidence that there is a third person view, and there cannot ever be evidence even in principle. That is the fiction.

But the fact that you don't perceive from my point of view, or that of anyone or anything else, is, itself, evidence that you're one individual, one person, one body. — Michael Ossipoff

It is very common to think so, but I question it. There is no end of stuff I don't perceive about my own body, how it heals a cut for instance, or my own fingerprints and DNA. Is this evidence that it is not my body after all? I think it is incontrovertible that there is much more to a person than they can perceive or know, and therefore lack of perception is not evidence of non-identity.

Is that a problem? Starch -> sugar and so on. Give or take some gluten and animal products - contents - the same processes occur. You feed your digestion, and I feed mine, because that is convenient, and the pipes don't join up. But let's not argue that one is more important or significant than the other.

I don't see how we can separate consciousness from the physical. — La Cuentista

The traditional method is to upload your consciousness to a computer. But I wouldn't recommend it personally. I don't see how we can separate you from me.

If you look, I have said nothing about the physical or its separation from consciousness; I have been considering identity. But for the ardent physicalist, let's say that software is substrate independent; there is always a medium, of polarisations on magnetic tape, or laser burns in a plastic disc, or residual charges on a silicon chip, or patterns of neural connectedness. But the patterned structure and internal relations and transformations are something different from a few pounds of grey meat. To put is crudely one can separate consciousness from the physical with one well placed bullet. Disrupt the structure, and the person becomes a corpse. Therefore the person is not the body, but the structure and process.

Yes, from his/her point of view, there is no rat's point of view. Of course. — Michael Ossipoff

There cannot possibly be a point of view from which there is no point of view. Not even solipsists are that radical. And while views differ, points are all the same.

There's no evidence for that. — Michael Ossipoff

No evidence for what? There is evidence that I don't feel your pain, and that my senses are limited.What there is no evidence of is that there is some other separation.

It is a waste of time trying to comfort the uncomfortable, but those who are merely discomforted can readily be comforted. Uncomfortable chairs in particular should be put out of their misery.

Guns should be upholstered for everyone's comfort.

Of course. the contents are particular and unique to to each being. But in talking of consciousness, one is by definition talking about something other than the contents of consciousness - that I call 'the container'. And I guess it would be reasonable to say that containers vary too as to their shape and size; perhaps a mouse has a small and somewhat cheese shaped consciousness, whereas mine is larger and wine bottle shape. But the only nature, or essence of consciousness is that it 'holds' experience. In this sense it is characterised by a radical emptiness into which experiences 'pour'.

And emptiness is everywhere the same, and so the same emptiness is incarnated in every conscious being.

No problem — Rich

We are of one mind. ;)

My post indicated no agreement. It just showed you had no place complaining about my using the phrase "our conscious." — Thanatos Sand

I use the term 'our conscious' because my thesis is that conscious is unitary and shared. You claim to disagree, and therefore you should talk about your conscious or my conscious and not a shared conscious.

Fine, you can do that as much as you like, just like people can ask what makes someone think God isn't in all of us. But those are both metaphysical notions with no foundation in the physical world. Thinking they do is a short-sighted notion. — Thanatos Sand

Conscious is a metaphysical notion? That's just silly.

Glad we agree.

Sure but you were attributing to it a metaphysical quality it doesn't inherently or conspicuously have, and our conscious cannot physically be separated from our body/brain. — Thanatos Sand

If you want to disagree, don't talk about "our conscious". I'm not attributing any quality whatsoever to it beyond that it has contents which are generally called 'experience'.

What I am doing is turning the question around, and asking what makes someone think that they are not already incarnated in every living being, and suggesting that it is merely the limitation of the senses. Because I don't feel your joy and pain, I tend to think we are separate. It seems a short-sighted notion.

I don't know. All I am saying is that the difference between you and me is in the contents of our conscious rather than the fact of consciousness.

Imagine every living body imbued with consciousness. Each living body would be conscious of itself, of its memories if it had them, of its environment through various senses, of its activity. All these things we could call the contents of consciousness in each case.

One can then ask, what is the difference between your consciousness and mine or a mouse's? And the answer would always be in the contents, not the container. In which case, one could presume that consciousness itself is, like water, everywhere the same, perhaps more or less here or there, but always self-identical, apart from its contents - what it is conscious of.

In which case every incarnation is a reincarnation of consciousness, with or without memory or awareness of this fact. And it is literally true that 'in as much as ye do it unto the least of these my brethren, ye do it unto me.' Karma rules because when one is kind or unkind to another, that other is oneself.

It becomes obvious that consciousness inherits the consequences of its own behaviour through time; if it promotes violence, it will suffer violence, and so on, unto the seventh generation.

As to whether there is any substantial evidence for consciousness, or whether it is a substance at all, I leave to the rest of me to work out between yourselves.

Like most mind altering substances, alcohol is a sacrament to be used on holydays. Thus it is subject to taboo, which is to say that it is forbidden except when it is compulsory. Hence the ambivalence with which it is regarded by philosophers and others.

Do we act in bad faith when we get drunk? Is it inauthentic to escape our anxiety and live for a time as if nothing else matters and that we will never die? If so, is there anything wrong with that?

A couple of points in favour of drinking. Drinking can reveal what I'm capable of, at least in social interaction. My quick and surprising response to a question, my ability to avert boring conversations and situations, my responsiveness to people and the environment (clearly I'm thinking here of peak tipsiness rather than the common sequel of oblivion). That feeling of being what you feel you are supposed to be--the feeling, in fact, of being authentically you: — jamalrob

Well it's not bad faith if one is being authentic: they are opposites. On Sartre's model, it is the waiter more so that he finds to be in bad faith. And indeed I doubt that there is a living saint who could serve the likes of Sartre in good faith without pouring the embrocation over the condescending prick's head.

In counselling, we talk about 'genuineness', in politics it's 'sincerity', and the paramount virtue is honesty to oneself and the other. But waiters that throw stuff at the clientele do not keep their jobs for long. Society requires us to be alienated from ourselves and perform a role as worker, as husband or whatever, and only in his shed can the philosopher remove his mask and start really wielding his hammer.

There, and in the holy state of inebriation wherein, with no hard feelings, we can batter each other to the pulp we all are behind our masks.

In other words, was/is there a black man/woman who sympathized with white folks? — TheMadFool

It was not only kings who believed in the divine right of kings. Institutionalised prejudice becomes reality, and you might as well be asking if poor people ever value money.

The term generally used if you want to investigate is 'internalised racism'. There is much written about how black and mixed folks straighten their hair, lighten their skin with bleach and other noxious substances, favour lighter skinned partners, put pegs on their children's noses to try and westernise them, and teach themselves and their children to permanently purse their lips to make them seem thinner. And that's just the beginning.

What makes you think that this is specifically is the result of a materialist worldview? — Reformed Nihilist

Like I said, I'm not going to lay out a load of evidence. It's a point of view, and I'm not the only one that has it. But we do more and more woo mates with the scientific method, perhaps you've been out of the market for a while.

[

You frame the conception to fit the job. I just don't see what job is best suited to the framing you're proposing. — Reformed Nihilist

Education, social cohesion, politics, personal relations. We turn the analytical gaze onto the material, and we come up with all this amazing stuff, transport, communication devices, new etc etc. We turn it on ourselves and we come up with what? Increasing mental illness increasing stress and unhappiness, poorer education, less stable societies, more isolation. And these latter are all fuzzy things to the extent that they can be denied, so I won't be trying to convince you if you see things differently. But I see it so - I see a crisis of developing material control, and loss of personal control, and the proliferation of self-help coaching counselling therapeutic nonsense is symptomatic of the same depersonalising scientistic view with added advertising woo. If the job is machines, precision and no fluff; if the job is people, something very different is required.

I feel like you're trying to go for a "the eye cannot see itself" idea here, but if the thing (or one of the things) that the psyche does is makes conceptual models, then why can't it make one of itself? I'm still missing a step or two here.

And also still fuzzy on how the psyche relates to the previously described spirituality. Does the other thread give insight into that? I haven't had time to dig into that yet. — Reformed Nihilist

Yes indeed, inevitably one models others and one models oneself, and understands relations in terms of those models. That is not in question, but the status of these models. So you and I have a concept of a person as a mental model-maker and self and other conceptualiser.

Just as Davidson says that truth is un-analysable, but still seems to have a theory of truth, and Moore says that good is un-analysable but still has a lot to say about ethics. These are concepts that we cannot manage without, and that are meaningful, but that cannot be decomposed into more simple concepts. As if they are the fundamental particles of thought, that the harder one tries to tie them down with neat definitions, the more fuzzy they become.

Perhaps that is where I'm finding the discussion particularly difficult, that you want me to dispel the fuzziness, and I cannot. The eye can see an image of the eye, we know we have eyes and see things, but the more one analyses vision, into wavelengths of reflected light, light-sensitive cells, electrical impulses, and computation, the more one loses any understanding that we see the world at all; either there must be a homunculus watching a screen in our heads, or there is just a buzzing of brain cells with nobody there at all. In this case it is clear that vision emerges from all this brain-science and optics, but isn't there at all in the constituents, so the analysis inevitably misses its target, which does not mean that it isn't valuable to understand the components, but does mean that one cannot resolve vision into direct, or indirect realism or idealism, or irrealism, at least, not by analysis.