And who says we don't have a God? As per that definition of God, all that is required is an intelligence - doesn't have to be personal necessarily. It may be Spinoza's God. The laws of physics are the intelligent constraints governing the game we call life. They are real in the same sense that the program governing the game is real - the game can't do anything but follow it.

Like how I'm tall and have a big nose? How does that matter to who I am really? Is being 6'2'' part and parcel of my character as an individual? — Heister Eggcart

Yes, it is part and parcel of who you are. It has to be. (And some people long for a larger nose so stop bitching about it.)

Robert Reich, an economist, Council of Economic Advisors, Secretary of Labor for 4 years (in Pres. William Clinton's cabinet) professor, lauded (but maybe not liked all that well) by the Wall Street Journal, etc. is only 4'11' tall. He's abnormally short and abnormally smart, as well as being abnormally witty and abnormally insightful. I would guess that adapting to being very short (especially for a man) helped make him who he is, just like your big nose and tallness influenced yours.

Yuck — Real Gone Cat

Why "yuck"?

I also have a giant nose! Solidarity! The sad part is that the ears and nose never stop growing either...

Must we share our icky bodies on a pristine philosophy forum? Do we need to be reminded that we are gassy meat-bags? Let the anonymity of the internet leave us the illusion of perfect forms! :D

Must we share our icky bodies on a pristine philosophy forum? Do we need to be reminded that we are gassy meat-bags? Let the anonymity of the internet leave us the illusion of perfect forms! :D — Real Gone Cat

No, sorry, my little cabbage pork roll :D. The Enterprise of Truth requires that your icky, gaseous, tubular meat-body in particular be dragged onto the stage and be subjected to your frank appraisal and final acceptance. No amount of platonic forms will redeem you, meat being. Umarme das Fleisch.

To answer the question, yeah, I'm my bod, but I haven't quite attained physical mastery yet. Equal maturity, symmetry, and balance. Hopefully within a year.

Minds and bodies are not separate. Nor is your body separate from the bodies of others. Your body arose from the matter of your parents and the matter of your body will be the soil from which other bodies arise. If you join the Army Corps of Engineers, your body becomes a part of a larger body.

In a similar way, your mind is not separate from the minds of others. The ideas in your mind flow outward to other minds, and your mind is a receptacle for the ideas of others. If you believe in a religion, your mind is joined with the minds of the faithful.

Bodies are a somewhat arbitrary division of the physical universe into apparently separate parts, when the reality is that the universe is a single body.

Minds are an increasingly arbitrary division of all experience into isolated units, but the reality is that what one thinks of as 'their' mind is actually a small part of the total mind.

Mind is more fundamental than matter (though both are technically false), but the universe did not arise from a mind. Rather, Being (The Soul, That-Which-Is, I) associated with falseness, and as it was mindless, assumed that falseness was true. Thus, the universe was born. Gradually, Being recognizes that the universe cannot be True, and so it gains the mind.

Truth is singular, Falseness is infinite. So, universes and the mind are infinite with infinite experience.

Is your body YOU?
— Bitter Crank

Yes.

If only all questions were that easy to answer. — Terrapin Station

But couldn't you be a different one? Why aren't you Bitter Crank?

But couldn't you be a different one? Why aren't you Bitter Crank? — bert1

No, it wouldn't be me with a different body. I'd be Bitter Crank in that case instead. That doesn't mean that my body/me/my self, doesn't change--it's dynamic, but what makes it me is the way it's causally, developmentally connected to previous states of my body/me/my self.

The point I am interested in with physical differences, sub-par to optimal, is that whatever one is physically, it is part and parcel of who we are as persons. — Bitter Crank

What about those chemical washes though?

We are governed by all sorts of chemical washes arising from our glands, brains, and guts (from which arise, among other things, all sorts of issues about sexuality) . Our bodies have a fabulously complex Central Nervous System which sometimes (often?) makes a nuisance of us by its devious, clever, subtle and often destructive maneuvers. — Bitter Crank

Is it not true that we can substantially alter these chemicals washes by choice? And if we take those drugs we become someone else, other than the person that our body wants us to be. What's that all about?

Faerie nuff...but remember it is believed to be a resurrection of body, soul and spirit; all perfected. Personally, I have no clear idea, but just a vague intuition, of what that might mean.

Transfiguration.
One way of looking at this process is that energy* flows through the body like water down a river. For our body and soul to be transfigured is by analogy to manage a greater flow, which requires removal of the impediments, or blockages. Otherwise disorder, disease and death would result, a flood in the analogy.

*just what this energy is and how to describe and discuss it is more complicated.

Is your body YOU? Or, is your body a package which is discardable without loss of “YOU”? Is a kind of intellectual disembodiment a sin against others?
Are you your body, or are you something apart from your body?

I would say that your body is your home, for now, until you move house. Whether you are your body, or something else, I would say that you are your body, but the surface of the body, in the sense of the physical matter, is like a suit, a sheath, as in Joseph's coat of many colour's. So in a sense you are not the matter of your body, but the body minus the matter.

Who the brain makes us out to be is dependent on the body that we are. — Bitter Crank

Agreed, very good post. Silicon Marchesk will not feel the same fatigue, hunger, thirst, cravings, kinesthesia, etc. Silicon Marchesk probably won't be subjected to the same sort of moods, being devoid of chemical influence. He won't be able to get drunk or high, or have a sugar rush, etc. His body image will quite different hooked up to a robot. Uploaded minds won't be the same without a meat wrapper.

People like Ray Kurzweil are a little too eager to leave the flesh behind. We don't know to what extent an emulated mind is going to deviate from its meat twin. I kind of suspect that an uploaded human mind would end up acting insane. It's interesting, though, how much popular scifi presents scenarios where people switch bodies or get uploaded into a computer, and they still act like their old personalities, as if the body is just a container for the mind, waiting the right tech to make the switch.

I suspect this all goes back to the Greeks, who came up with the idea of an immaterial soul, separate from the body, which influenced Christianity and Western philosophy. Also, the idea that the body is inferior to the mind, something to be abstracted away from to achieve purity of thought.

I'd be Bitter Crank in that case instead. — Terrapin Station

So you could be Bitter Crank, at least logically, or perhaps grammatically. You've just said so.

I started reading this paper last night in response to your inquiry, BC:

Quine's Identity, Ostention, and Hypostasis

The indexical would refer to Bitter Crank in that case.

he indexical would refer to Bitter Crank in that case. — Terrapin Station

And what if you were Swamp Bitter Crank?

Well, one paper seems to lead to another:

http://tedsider.org/papers/temporal_parts.pdf



I suppose my initial guess is that I am not my body, but my body is a part of who I am. I am Moliere, and I have a body, rather than am my body.

I suppose my initial guess is that I am not my body, but my body is a part of who I am. I am Moliere, and I have a body, rather than am my body. — Moliere

Yeah I think this is just about right. The human person is more than just the body.