The most straightforward place to start, is to take Descartes literally:

"I think therefore I am.

You are an intelligence (not confined to the physical brain) that manifests the physical body. The two are one and the same.

I think the answer to that is that each mind is a special snowflake (to use a modern expression) so it can only be one place at one time.

I think Descartes got it backwards. It should be 'I am, therefore I think'. You are your brain. You are attached to your brain because the physical connections are self-contained. You have no physical connection to other brains, so how could you be attached to them?

The sense of 'I' comes from the brain. There is no 'I' until conscious awareness forms in the brain, and there is no 'I' once you pass away. I'm not sure exactly when conscious awareness develops, but I'm guessing it's some time during early infancy.

Also, think about this... Where would your sense of 'I' be without memories, especially long-term ones? The reason you don't remember being a baby or an infant is because long-term memories don't start to take hold until well past the toddler years. Our sense of 'I' becomes more complex and ingrained as we experience more of life, and start to accumulate more in our memory banks. Strangely, we start to feel like we are separate from our body and brain, that we must be something more than just another biological creature.

I also get a weird feeling sometimes when I say my first name aloud, or say I am ______. Language affects how we see and understand ourselves. Our thoughts are in our language and everything and everybody is identified by a name, so if we take away language, are we also taking away meaning? How do you ask yourself "who am I" without language? I don't know if I'm making sense or not, but anyway.

One could argue that self-awareness begins when we start learning language and attaching names to everything, including attaching names to ourselves. We are taught language by pointing at people or objects and naming them. I think the quote could easily be "I think using words/language, therefore I am."

@larkspur

I think you may be on to something there... Without being able to express concepts using language, it's hard to imagine the brain reaching a point where it would question the meaning of life. Without language, I think humans would still be capable of creating (e.g. making a fire, inventing the wheel, art), but I don't know if we would be able to think about abstract concepts without having language in order to tie advanced ideas together.

You're not "in a body" you are a body.

Thank you very much, your views are all very interesting.

@Rich

I must admit that I never understood this sentence like that... I'm French and in french "donc" has less connotation of consequence than "therefore", I think. I always translated "donc" into "in other words" in French.

So, your sentence "you are an intelligence (not confined to the physical brain) that manifests the physical body" pleased me very much but in this case why does intelligence manifest the physical body in this way and not another ? What governs intelligence ?

@CasKev, JupiterJess, larkspur and Terrapin Station

So I am a brain, my brain (or my body), I can understand that but in this case, why am I that brain in particular ? For instance (you may not see the link but for me it is important), let's suppose that during the great race of life, another spermatozoid than the one that led to me today reached the ovum first, what would have happened ? Probably, I would have been physically different but would it always have been "me" ? Would I be "born" ? Would my conscience have emerged like today ?

So, your sentence "you are an intelligence (not confined to the physical brain) that manifests the physical body" pleased me very much but in this case why does intelligence manifest the physical body in this way and not another ? What governs intelligence ? — Julian

It is certainly an interesting question to ponder.

Intelligence is exactly what what we perceive it to be. It has memory, it makes choices, it explores, it creates and it learns. That is what we do. In order to satisfy its (our) desire to do this things, it (we) creates different life forms and experiments with these different forms. Of course it is constantly evolving in its (our) understanding and concurrently so is our life forms.

So, succinctly, what we are is the result of what we have learned and created so far. The similarities in forms (and differences) can be explained using Rupert Sheldrakes theory of morphic resonance.

So I am a brain, my brain (or my body), I can understand that but in this case, why am I that brain in particular ? — Julian

I wouldn't use the expression brain. Since there are holographic theories of mind and other things where the mind is not contained just to brain. Also assuming materialism is true, then the brain is just a macroscopic term for a massive network of quantum information.

What I meant was your mind must be one of its kind. Otherwise as you type you would also be experiencing being a bird in the Amazon rainforest, or Britney Spears, or President Trump. It's isolated and singular. So I would say it's unique in some way and not easily recreated. IE: there are not new "yous" being continually created through natural processes.

Searle also commented that the big problem with panpsychism is that it does not explain where one mind ends and the other begins.

Strawson writes about the problem of what makes a particular body my body in Individuals and has this crazy thought experiment -- which someone should turn into a flash game -- in which you have three different bodies: one you see out of, one that determines which horizontal direction your visual field is facing, and one that determines which angle up and down your visual field is pointed, IIRC. I may have the details wrong. I remember that if you try to see your own face in a mirror, you end up looking at the back of your head.

let's suppose that during the great race of life, another spermatozoid than the one that led to me today reached the ovum first, what would have happened ? Probably, I would have been physically different but would it always have been "me" ? Would I be "born" ? Would my conscience have emerged like today ? — Julian

If that spermatozoid hadn't reached the ovum first, 'you' wouldn't be here. 'You' are a unique combination of that spermatozoid and that egg. It is the same as if your parents never had sex in the first place, or if you were aborted in the womb. Either way, we wouldn't be reading your post in this forum.

So I am a brain, my brain (or my body), I can understand that but in this case, why am I that brain in particular ? — Julian

I is indexical, that is, whatever you turned out to be, you found yourself among fellow-animals who say 'I' when they mean, well, 'I'. The other possibilities are other I's, imaginary or in other lives. History and genealogy are where the whys reside, and they lead only here, scattering away other possibilities as they come. Poetry is a better guide than science to such a question.

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. — T S Eliot

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…In other words : why am I in that body ?
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[…]

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…why am I attached to this brain, my brain, and not to another, another person's brain ?

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…because there isno you, other than the body that you are.
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…because you are your body. Your body is all that you are. There isn’t any “you” other than your body.
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Your question is a question only if you assume, without evidence, that you’re something other than your body.
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Difficult questions, paradoxes, etc. usually mean that the premises for the question are likely incorrect.
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Each of us is nothing other than a body, which we could also call a human or maybe a person or a being. When I say “person”, “being”, or “human”, that’s how I mean those words.
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Well, evidently there’s a human who is you. So, based on what I said above, it’s no surprise that you’re that human. That human is the only you.
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It wouldn’t make any sense at all for you to not be the person that you are, because you are defined by the person that you are. There’s no other you than that person.
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The only explanation that I found was that I was the only one who was able to think, and therefore to be, and that other people were just projection of my brain. But this way of thinking is called solipsism and though it is the most attractive and frighteningly indemonstrable and solid philosophical doctrine, it is also the one that makes me most afraid and whose veracity I cannot want...

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There’s a meaningful sense in which you aren’t the only person. For there to be you, there must be a species that you belong to, to which your parents and other ancestors belong. So, of course, in your life possibility-story, there must be the other members of your species.
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But your hypothetical life-experience possibility-story is entirely your life-experience possibility-story. You’re its Protagonist, and it is centered on, and about, you only.
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You’re primary to that story. As its Protagonist, you’re its essential component. A life-experience possibility-story isn’t one unless it has a Protagonist.
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I’ve been accused of “Solipsism” when saying that. “Solipsism” has various definitions, and, when I looked it up, some of them seemed to fit, and some didn’t. It doesn’t matter. Don’t let someone claim to discredit something just by applying a name to it.
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So, it can be fairly said that you’re the reason for your hypothetical life-experience possibility-story. …in the sense that you’re its essential component. It’s a life-experience story only because it has a Protagonist—you, in this instance.
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My explanation, above, for why you’re you instead of someone else didn’t explain why there’s a you at all. Why should there even be that physical world that produced that person?
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There infinitely many such stories, and yours is one with you as its Protagonist.
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Why are there those hypothetical possibility-stories? Each of those stories is a hypothetical system of inter-related, inter-referring hypotheticals, including hypothetical values for hypothetical quantities; hypothetical “physical laws” relating those hypothetical quantities, and hypothetical if-then statements of various kinds that refer to those other hypotheticals. These hypotheticals also include such abstract facts as mathematical theorems and abstract logical facts.
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Why are there these intricate systems of inter-related, inter-referring hypotheticals? How could there not be? No one’s saying that they have any “existence” or “reality” other than the meaning, reference and applicability of their component if-then facts, and other hypotheticals, in reference to eachother.
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Of course the if-then facts about those hypotheticals are true, in the context of the system of hypotheticals in which they refer to eachother. No one’s claiming that system is existent or real in any other context.
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So that’s why there are infinitely many hypothetical possibility-worlds, and infinitely-many hypothetical life-experience possibility-stories, set in those hypothetical possibility-worlds.
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…including your own hypothetical life-experience possibility-story.

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So will this problem remain eternally insoluble or do you have any other opinion that could move the debate forward ?

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I suggest that there’s a good explanation—the one stated above in this reply.
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You said, in reply to Rich:
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So, your sentence "you are an intelligence (not confined to the physical brain) that manifests the physical body" pleased me very much but in this case why does intelligence manifest the physical body in this way and not another ?

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Aye, there’s the rub.

Why indeed in that way instead of some other.
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That’s the problem with any unparsimonious metaphysics. And the more unparsimonious the metaphysics is, the more such “Why that way?” questions can and must be asked of it.

A metaphysics needn't be that questionable.
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I emphasize that the metaphysics that I described above makes no assumptions and posits no brute-facts.
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I realize that I answered the following question, at the beginning of this post, but let me answer it here too:
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So I am a brain, my brain (or my body), I can understand that but in this case, why am I that brain in particular ?

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Because there is no “you” other than that body that you are.
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For instance (you may not see the link but for me it is important), let's suppose that during the great race of life, another spermatozoid than the one that led to me today reached the ovum first, what would have happened ? Probably, I would have been physically different but would it always have been "me" ? Would I be "born" ? Would my conscience have emerged like today ?

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That happens in a different life-experience possibility-story—the life-experience story of that different person conceived as you described.
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Obviously this hypothetical life-experience possibility-story of yours isn’t that one.
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As I said, there are infinitely-many hypothetical life-experience possibility-stories.
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Michael Ossipoff

From Michael Ossipoff:

Regarding the post of mine to this discussion-thread, just before this one:

It was, of course, posted as an answer to the question asked by the initial poster.

However, before posting it here, I accidentally posted it to a different discussion-thread, the one titled "A cure for Nihilism". I believe that that thread is at the All Discussions forum at this website, and at the Philosophy of Mind forum at this website.

Anyway, my post here, just before this one, is intended for this discussion-thread, in answer to the original poster's question.

But it was only by accident that I posted it to "A cure for Nihilism". I mention that because it might be impermissible to post the same posting to two threads. If so, then I ask that that posting be deleted from the "A cure for Nihilism" thread, and allowed to remain at this thread, because this thread is the one at which it was intended, and answers a question.

Michael Ossipoff