Just like if you look at a photograph of the statue of liberty, you have not actually experienced the statue of liberty in its essence. You have only seen an image of the light reflected from it. — Yohan

I suggest you get the essence of the Republic by Plato. You don't have to read the entire danged book itself, just Google it.

You are a brilliant mind: you reinvented the wheel that was first described 2500 years ago, and constantly remindered. This is actually brilliance, to come to the same conclusion as Socrates, without prior knowledge of his teachings. Well done. (I am NOT being facetious.)

Good post, and not all that long. Much appreciated.

you say you saw a brown dog at such time and such place, and I say I saw also saw a brown dog at the same time and place, then we conclude that your dog and my dog are identical, that is, we speak of the same dog. — Samuel Lacrampe

Yes, agreed, but that presupposes we each have the antecedent experience of brown dogs enabling our perceptions to be consistent with each other. The principle works for anything for which we have a common experience. Nevertheless, all we’ve done is identify a general conception.....dog.

If you call out, “here Sparky!!” and I call out “here, Fido!!”, the dog comes to you but ignores me, we have gone further than the establishment of identifying a general conception, that is, we have given an identity to a particular instance of a general conception.

Maybe, in the interest of metaphysical reductionism, we only make the notion of identity such a big deal, is because we absolutely insist on having one for ourselves. At the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, we cannot abide being confused with something that is otherwise identical to us.
——————-

It sound to me you equate the identity of a thing with its name. — Samuel Lacrampe

Close, but a little further down the line. I agree to identifying a thing by its name, which is the same as my conception of it. Or, I identify a thing by means of its concept. But I still may have need to single out a particular thing out of a bunch of things all conceived as possessing the same name. No big deal if I need to pick out Ford from all cars, an even lesser deal if I need to pick out Mustang from all Fords, lesser still if I need to pick out convertible from all Mustangs. But these reductions are all concerned with empirical predicates, easily explained from the fact the conceptions corresponding to each reduction is itself a reduction. In this way, I can reduce to a very specific instance of just one general conception using nothing else but those properties, from which I can give an identity to what I really want to know. Maybe, in the case of a single instance, being identical to and having the identity of.....are exactly the same thing. Maybe, that’s what Aristotle wanted the rest of us to understand.
———————

The answer, as per Aristotle, lies in the distinction between essential properties and non-essential (or accidental) properties; where if you change non-essential properties, like weight, you retain your identity, but if you change essential properties, like dying, then you lose your identity. — Samuel Lacrampe

Agreed. But what is it that is lost? That is, of what is identity comprised? What is an essential property?
——————-

"Object" is the thing observed, thought about. "Subject" is the observer or thinker. — Samuel Lacrampe

Yes.

So subjectivity means abstract, rational, non-empirical ideas, and objectivity means empirical things, is that more or less correct? — Samuel Lacrampe

More or less, yes. There is objectively valid, which are not empirical things, like equations, geometric figures, notions and ideas, that we think, and, there is objectively real, which are empirical things, like equations and geometric figures we construct, plus anything whatsoever we perceive. For the objectively valid, the conscious activity of a thinker, the internal domain, is responsible for those objects of reason, which is subjectivity. For the objectively real, the world, the external domain, is responsible, for all that which occurs without any thinker.
———————

Objective claims are about reality, and can be true or false, right or wrong. Subjective claims a mere matters of opinions, and cannot be true or false, nor right or wrong. — Samuel Lacrampe

Absolutely. Which is why metaphysical investigations are so much fun. How to tell the difference, and what to do about it when the difference is told.

Took me all day to write this....ho’made chili and cornbread and the Rose Bowl and Mama’s special Eye-talian bubbly got in the way.

Sorry.

If you call out, “here Sparky!!” and I call out “here, Fido!!”, the dog comes to you but ignores me, we have gone further than the establishment of identifying a general conception, that is, we have given an identity to a particular instance of a general conception. — Mww

That's right. This would be naming a particular, for which the main cause of its individuality is the particular matter that dog is made of. That's all that is needed for an object, such as a particular soccer ball. I think in the case of a dog, we could also add its particular set of memories and habits.

At the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, we cannot abide being confused with something that is otherwise identical to us. — Mww

I think we're safe, because I hold that as long as we are made of particular sets of matter, then we are particulars. But things get ... fun, when that matter gets substituted. E.g. I heard that all the atoms in our bodies get replaced every 7 years. This recalls the puzzle of the Ship of Theseus.

Close, but a little further down the line. I agree to identifying a thing by its name, which is the same as my conception of it. Or, I identify a thing by means of its concept. [...] — Mww

I think that is correct. In addition, we name general concepts with common nouns, (e.g. a dog) and particulars with proper nouns (e.g. Fido). The identity of general concepts is their essential properties, and the identity of particulars is their essential properties plus their particular matter. E.g. Pointing to a particular set of matter when saying "Fido is that dog".

Agreed. But what is it that is lost? That is, of what is identity comprised? What is an essential property? — Mww

I think you are asking how to determine if a property is essential or not? In general, a property is essential if, should that property be lost, then the thing would lose its general identity (called "species" as per Aristotle). This can be tested in a thought experiment. Say a particular triangle is made of the following set of properties: "surface with 3 straight sides" + "yellow". If the triangle loses the first property, it is no longer a triangle, where as if it loses the second property, it remains a triangle. Therefore the first property is essential, and the second one is not.

For the objectively valid, the conscious activity of a thinker, the internal domain, is responsible for those objects of reason, which is subjectivity. For the objectively real, the world, the external domain, is responsible, for all that which occurs without any thinker. — Mww

Interesting. While I think your definition of "objectivity" matches with mine, it doesn't quite match for "subjectivity"; because the activity of a thinker is not necessarily a mere matter of opinion; neither in act (it is either true or false that I am thinking), nor in content (my thinking process could be right or wrong). I'll think about it some more and see if the definitions can be reconciled somehow.

Which is why metaphysical investigations are so much fun. How to tell the difference, and what to do about it when the difference is told. — Mww

Yeah this is could be a whole discussion in itself.

You say:

At most we could say that our experiences correspond with a world. But no amount of correspondance makes the experience of the real world itself. — Yohan

I say:
The most we could say is that our experiences are merely representations of the world. But no amount of representation makes the experience of the world as it is in itself.

Close enough.

Minor point; you’re gonna get your butt handed to you on a platter if you say “atom of light” in any
less than gracious company.

This would be naming a particular, for which the main cause of its individuality is the particular matter — Samuel Lacrampe

Yes, agreed, but reductionism mandates that for the simplest objects, or complex objects perfectly congruent, the particularity of identity reduces to the space and time of it. The irreducible identity of a thing is itself.

Which inevitably leads to an absurdity: rationally, the simplest possible thing can only be conceived as possessing a singular conception, but empirically, even a photon is conceived by at least two, its energy and its velocity. The simplest singular conception is time, and if time cannot be a property of things, then there can be absolutely no things conceivable by a singular conception.
—————

the activity of a thinker is not necessarily a mere matter of opinion; neither in act (it is either true or false that I am thinking), nor in content (my thinking process could be right or wrong). — Samuel Lacrampe

Agreed, not necessarily. I didn’t mean to intend that. The subjective conscious activity is reason in general, and opinions, beliefs and knowledge are mere matters of degree reason judges of truth. A natural condition of rational agency is determinations of certainty.
—————

Yeah this is could be a whole discussion in itself. — Samuel Lacrampe

Wonder what the opening salvo would be.

Well, physicalists claim ...correct me if I'm wrong...atoms of light reflect off of atoms in a "world" and those atoms hit our eyes. And the atoms of our eyes trigger atoms that make up "our" brain...and then what? many triggered atoms collectively have a particular atomic activity that corresponds to an "experience of an external physical world"
Did the atoms that make up "your" brain have a direct experience of a physical world? — Yohan

Light is not composed of atoms.

Regardless of the physical components of experience, there is an element that can’t be understood in physical terms, which is judgment. Whenever we say what something means - and that is a basic activity of conscious thought, is it not? - we’re engaging a faculty for which physicalism doesn’t have an account. There’s merely a presumption that this faculty must be explicable in physical terms, as everything is presumed to be, but there is a a difference in kind between physical processes which can be described in terms of interaction between bodies, and rational processes, which comprise solely the relations between ideas.

reductionism mandates that for the simplest objects, or complex objects perfectly congruent, the particularity of identity reduces to the space and time of it. — Mww

I think this reductionist idea seems correct. If the cause of individuality is the particular matter, and no two physical things (which matter belongs to) can occupy the same space at the same time, then it follows that no two particulars can occupy the same space at the same time. As such, finding the space property of things at a given time is a good way to determine if things are identical or distinct.

E.g. You saw a brown dog at such time, and I also saw a brown dog at that same time, but yours was at location A where as mine was at location B. This is sufficient to conclude we saw two different dogs.

The subjective conscious activity is reason in general, and opinions, beliefs and knowledge are mere matters of degree reason judges of truth. — Mww

Understood. So one definition of subjectivity can be something like "an act that is internal to the thinker (the subject), and is not reducible to a physical act"; and a second definition can be "a property assigned to an object, that is merely a matter of opinion from the subject".

These two definitions overlap in that they both involve an internal act from the subject, but yet seem to be different enough to remain two separate definitions. Shame...

Wonder what the opening salvo would be. — Mww

Here's a candidate.
Have you noticed that the propositions "This apple tastes good" and "Samuel thinks this apple tastes good" have the same message, and yet the first one is subjective and the second one is objective?

one definition....... — Samuel Lacrampe

I like that one....

second definition....... — Samuel Lacrampe

.....not so much that one.

Assignment of a property to an object is indeed the activity of a subject, but I don’t think it is merely a matter of opinion.
—————-

Have you noticed that the propositions “This apple tastes good" and "Samuel thinks this apple tastes good" have the same message, and yet the first one is subjective and the second one is objective? — Samuel Lacrampe

I’ve noticed it now, insofar as the message is the telling of something about the taste of apples. I’ve also noticed that seemingly the first is objective and the second is subjective. I’ll withhold my rebuttal until you’ve assured me you didn’t inadvertently misplace your qualifiers and thereby shown me the error of my ways.

I suggest you get the essence of the Republic by Plato. You don't have to read the entire danged book itself, just Google it. — god must be atheist

I must admit I've read some plato, including the Republic - Thanks though (I could perhaps read more.)

You are a brilliant mind: you reinvented the wheel that was first described 2500 years ago, and constantly remindered. This is actually brilliance, to come to the same conclusion as Socrates, without prior knowledge of his teachings. Well done. (I am NOT being facetious.) — god must be atheist

thanks. Doing philosophy is quite hard. Especially being unbiased and questioning what seems obvious. The more obvious something seems, the more I try to question it. I still feel hopelessly inadequate to understand reality, a lot or most of the time, but I try to keep going down the rabbit hole regardless. Death will come some day, and I figure if death is the end, then it wont have mattered if I wasted my life philosophizing. If there is even an miniscule possibility of immortality, I figure its worth seeking since the prize of immortality is of infinite worth. Whereas a life, no matter how great or horrible, if it leads to permanent exinction, such a life will equate to absolute meaningless in the end.

My theory is that a person's IQ is equal to the extent to which a person is capable of questioning their thinking/perceptions. I have no idea what my IQ is though, or how well the test is grounded in empiricism

Assignment of a property to an object is indeed the activity of a subject, but I don’t think it is merely a matter of opinion. — Mww

That depends on the properties; but maybe the term "property" is confusing. It could be replaced with the term "predicate". Here are examples of subjective properties/predicates:
This song is good. This joke is funny. This story is interesting. Strawberries taste better than bananas.
People could disagree with all these statements, and there would be no right or wrong.

Contrast it with the following examples of objective properties/predicates:
This song is 5 minutes long. This joke is stolen from someone else. This story is in english. This strawberry is smaller than this banana.
If someone disagrees with these statements, then one person must be right, and one must be wrong.

Have you noticed that the propositions “This apple tastes good" and "Samuel thinks this apple tastes good" have the same message, and yet the first one is subjective and the second one is objective?
— Samuel Lacrampe

I’ve noticed it now, insofar as the message is the telling of something about the taste of apples. I’ve also noticed that seemingly the first is objective and the second is subjective. — Mww

To clarify, I am using my definitions of objective/subjective here. So the first proposition is subjective because it is a mere matter of opinion - some people could claim that this apple does not taste good; and the second proposition is objective because it is a matter of facts - it is either true or false that I think this apple tastes good.

Assignment of a property to an object is indeed the activity of a subject, but I don’t think it is merely a matter of opinion.
— Mww
That depends on the properties — Samuel Lacrampe

I changed my mind; regardless of whether we call it a property or predicate, opinion can assign a property, but it might not be logical in itself, or consistent with other properties befitting the object. To further assign a property by means of mere opinion, to an object already cognized as a certain thing, may even be irrational. The denial I worked from originally is based on the notion that allowing opinion to assign properties is barely distinguishable from what we might call imagination.

A deeper investigation into speculative theory of cognition stipulates that both imagination and opinion are pre-conditions for judgement, thereby not denying that of which imagination and opinion are capable, but denying them legitimacy for their efforts.
——————-

We have agreed that opinion, belief and knowledge are just relative degrees of truth; my opinion is this is true, I believe this is true, I know this is true. Any statement of truth is a judgement, which makes explicit judgement must have a ground consistent with its degree. The ground for a knowledge judgement is obviously, experience. The ground for a belief judgement is a possible experience. The ground for an judgement of opinion has no experience or possible connected with it.

Greatest degree: I know falling out of a tree certainly can hurt because I fell out of a tree once and it hurt like hell.
Lesser degree: I believe falling out of a tree hurts, but never having fallen out of a tree....I might get lucky, fall on a pile of leaves, and suffer no hurt.
No degree at all: experience and possible experience having been accounted for, there is no other degree of truth available, so there is no opinion on falling out of trees. Nevertheless, it is my opinion these statements are true.

Assuming the lack of dishonesty, meaning a bite has actually been taken out of said apple, to say “this apple tastes good” is a knowledge claim. It is non-contradictory, thereby entirely possible, the taster of the apple and the author of the claim are the same. If a subject knows something certain about an object, which he does not then have to tell himself post hoc, it is an objective statement, because he is telling someone else a fact, or something he knows for a fact, about an object.

If I hand you an unbitten apple, tell you this apple tastes good, you would be correct to call my claim unsupported, and claims without support of truth, are opinions, and all opinions are necessarily subjective.

Now, “Sam thinks this apple tastes good” has a distinction in subjects, the one being Sam who thinks, and the other being the one who knows Sam thinks. The former, the claimant who merely thinks an object meets a certain condition, has a belief because the degree of truth to the claim relies on him alone, for he merely thinks the apple tastes good. Therefore, the claim is subjective for Sam. To the recipient of Sam’s thinking about the apple, whoever says, “Sam thinks....”, the indirect subject if you will, because Sam isn’t going to say “Sam thinks.....” knows for a fact what Sam thinks something. It is therefore an objective statement.

Thing about metaphysics.....nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong, to quote the immortal words of Stephen Stills.

Sorry for the long delay.

I do not see how anything in your opening post provides evidence in support of the thesis that I am eternal (I believe I am eternal - but I don't see how you're getting to that conclusion).

You invite me to imagine my self existing apart from my body. I can do this with ease, of course, and it is one way of establishing - as Descartes noted - that my self does not appear to be my body.

But by itself this does not imply that I exist eternally. For how does evidence that two things are distinct provide evidence that one of them exists eternally? My body does not appear to be my chair. That is not evidence that either my body or my chair exists eternally. So how does the fact my mind does not appear to be my body provide evidence that my mind is eternal?

So you claim that subjective topics, that is, matters of opinions, regard things for which we have little-to-no experience or knowledge, is that right?

I disagree with that. Sticking with the same apple example, even if we both take a bite out of the same apple, I can still make the honest claim "this apple tastes good", and you can make the honest claim "this apple tastes bad"; and this can simply be explained by the fact that I happen to like apples and you happen to dislike apples in general. Another classic example: we both look at the same piece of art, and you claim "this is beautiful" and I claim "this is ugly", and neither of us is wrong, because as the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that is, the subject.

Conversely, I can have zero knowledge and experience about angels, and yet making a claim such as "angels exist" is objective, because it is a matter of fact: they either exist or they don't.

Greatest degree: I know falling out of a tree certainly can hurt because I fell out of a tree once and it hurt like hell.
Lesser degree: I believe falling out of a tree hurts, but never having fallen out of a tree....I might get lucky, fall on a pile of leaves, and suffer no hurt.
No degree at all: experience and possible experience having been accounted for, there is no other degree of truth available, so there is no opinion on falling out of trees. Nevertheless, it is my opinion these statements are true. — Mww

Nevertheless, I mostly agree with these above statements on the degrees of knowledge. I would call the top one "certainty", the middle one "probability or reasonableness or methodical faith", and the last one "blind faith".

Hello.

So how does the fact my mind does not appear to be my body provide evidence that my mind is eternal? — Bartricks

This is not in the OP, but here is my answer. It does not claim that the mind is eternal (for I believe it begins to exist), but that it survives the event of death.

- The human body can be defined as "all the physical parts of a person".
- Thus if the mind is not the body, then it it follows that it is non-physical.
- Since death is, as far as we know, only a physical event, then it does not affect non-physical things, and thus the mind must survive death.

The human body can be defined as "all the physical parts of a person".
- Thus if the mind is not the body, then it it follows that it is non-physical.
- Since death is, as far as we know, only a physical event, then it does not affect non-physical things, and thus the mind must survive death. — Samuel Lacrampe

I think what youre referring to is a type of proprietary dualistic phenomenon.
one could claim that knowing a lot about sparrows may influence the way one visually experiences sparrows so that one can be put in phenomenal states for which no wholly sensory states suffice. One´s knowledge does not merely cause one to attend to sparrows in a particular way. Rather, one´s knowledge puts one in a phenomenal state that one could not have been put in by wholly sensory states. In such a case, cognitive states can make a constitutive contribution to one´s perceptual experience by, for example, structuring the experience, without thereby producing a phenomenal state that is non-sensory in kind (see Levine 2011, Nes 2011). However, most philosophers hold that cognitive states can cause one to be in certain sensory states by influencing attention. Carruthers and Veillet (2011) argue that it is not clear that the sparrow expert´s experience involves irreducible cognitive phenomenology, since it is possible that her knowledge simply causes her to attend to sparrows in a different way compared with a novice. She will notice certain properties of the sparrows that the novice fails to notice, but the phenomenal state she is in is a state that wholly sensory states suffice to put her in. How should we decide between these views?

If cognitive phenomenology is proprietary, it should in principle also be possible to pick it out via introspection. Holding that cognitive phenomenology is proprietary allows one to appeal to introspection in cases where there is a dispute about whether cognitive phenomenology is involved or not. This may serve as a motivation for holding that cognitive phenomenology is proprietary, and not merely irreducible.

Let me see if this correlates to the mind-body problem. We believe that each individual hurricane is nothing but a collection of physical atoms behaving in a certain way: one need have no more than the physical atoms, with their normal physical properties, following normal physical laws, for there to be a hurricane. One might say that we need more than the language of physics to describe and explain the weather, but we do not need more than its ontology. There is token identity between each individual hurricane and a mass of atoms, even if there is no type identity between hurricanes as kinds and some particular structure of atoms as a kind. Genuine property dualism occurs when, even at the individual level, the ontology of physics is not sufficient to constitute what is there. The irreducible language is not just another way of describing what there is, it requires that there be something more there than was allowed for in the initial ontology. Until the early part of the twentieth century, it was common to think that biological phenomena (‘life’) required property dualism (an irreducible ‘vital force’), but nowadays the special physical sciences other than psychology are generally thought to involve only predicate dualism. In the case of mind, property dualism is defended by those who argue that the qualitative nature of consciousness is not merely another way of categorizing states of the brain or of behaviour, but a genuinely emergent phenomenon.

Hey there.
I am not sure if your post is intended to address my quote, but if it is, I must admit I don't understand anything you are saying. Sorry bro. Perhaps it could be a bit more concise?

BrandonMcDade Hey there.
I am not sure if your post is intended to address my quote, but if it is, I must admit I don't understand anything you are saying. Sorry bro. Perhaps it could be a bit more concise? — Samuel Lacrampe

the original question was can I be eternal, im making note of the difference in how youre describing the mind, you state that the mind is non physical due to its intrinsic properties being that of abstract spatio temporal plane, where it could exist outside of the physical one. Im taking a different direction and stating that I is a perception of different cognitive events.
-The mind is over the event, and in doing so cant be classified inside the event.
-The mind is eternal due to the processes in which the mind operates- being that of a "symbolic representation" to the external/ physical plane.
-the mind is not the same as cognition and thought.
-perceptions go along with thought.
-perceptions are bias, and the human instinct is to think about ones own survival.
-the concept of I is merely a perception of ones state of progressive interpretation of their own cognition.
-if the mind cotains the essence or substances outside of the event, the brain will have to participate in said event.
-if the brain stops functioning, the body ceases to operate
-there is no representational abstract proof of the mind living on after death, only changing states or properties, which would constitute it not being an "I" or "mind" after it has stopped working, which brains do stop working.

@Yohan, I think you are posing a malformed question in that I believe you are confounding concepts of one's 'conscious self' with concepts of one's 'soul'.

re “Imagine your consciousness disassociating with your body, so that you can observe your body from a distance. …The question is, why is this body associated at all with my self?”
As such, this is not a plausible ‘imagine’ scenario b/c it requires supernatural soul-like happenings, which have no scientific or physical basis.

The only “I” that is present as you think about and pose your question is completely related to your conscious self. Under the cognitive framework that I am developing, the ‘I’ is not much more than a qualia resonant condition that takes form and flows within a cognitive architecture that requires a closed loop (potentially virtual) sensory-motor experience that grounds and shapes the metes and bounds of the cognitive agent into an embodied agent experience. Under my model the “I” starts from a random or ground state and starts extending itself into whatever has the highest degree of spaciotemporal correlation with the cognitive agent’s intentions. In this way, while the embodied experience is an illusion, it is an integral part of what you have grown to call “I”, even if embodied parts of ‘you’ become physically removed; e.g., much like the phantom limb phenomenon, or how a prosthetic limb becomes part of ‘you’. Hence, this “I” that has come to be in the integrated qualia state as an embodied agent cannot be one and the same with that soul-like concept which is thought to be in a non-physical, energy state, existing in another dimension. The only connection between the two that I can (wildly) imagine are purposeful patterns of non-random quantum fluctuations in your brain that could come from your ‘soul’ in another dimension, which may bias your embodied agent’s behavior in important yet very general, qualitative ways, but such a ‘soul’ connection cannot be part of your conscious ‘I’.

Re “It would seem I was associated in some way with this body before it came into existence. Or else it would have been born without me.”
Per my above model, your body was born w/o you, and ‘you’ only came to be as your cognitive framework became merged with your sensory-motor framework, which is likely why no-one has memories earlier than 2 years old, and certainly not before 1 yo. I would posit whatever you call ‘you’ did not exist before you could remember you existed, let alone before you were born. Whatever that was beforehand as an infant was in some quasi unconscious-disembodied state.

Everyone thinks I'm talking about the ephemeral I concept.
The concept of the world and the I concept are both constantly changing and relative.
I'm talking about what is beyond such, which is, to the relative mind, nothing, for it can't understand how something non-relative can exist.

You are you. Always have been you. Always will be you.
"You" does not point to the personal fluctuating I concept, but to the impersonal selfless awareness, that seems more in the background, watching change occue

re "You are you. Always have been you. Always will be you."
how do you prove your belief in that? It is not true just b/c you say so. e.g., all the cells in "You" as a body are replaced every 6 mo, so your body is certainly not a constant 'you'. Cognitively, what you call 'you' at any given moment in your life is well documented to be pretty much a narrative of your self image formed by your own story and/or by those of others. So, the cognitive “You” is a made up story, and it is well known that you can be programmed to remember and believe things about yourself that never happened or were never part of “you”.

Re “I'm talking about what is beyond such, which is, to the relative mind, nothing, for it can't understand how something non-relative can exist.”
Words mean something. Webster defines “I” as “someone aware of possessing a personal individuality “. So, you are simply talking about a soul concept. However, if you want to be scientific then you cannot call “I” anything beyond what you can tangibly call part of yourself when you say “I”. Anything else relates to the soul, and is religious and/or supernatural, so belongs to a Theology or Mysticism discussion, not a Philosophy of Mind discussion.

Re “"You" does not point to the personal fluctuating I concept, but to the impersonal selfless awareness”
Not according to common usage of “I” by people and Webster, see above. Mostly mentally ill or religious people think of themselves as an “impersonal selfless awareness”.

For me, this is an unproductive direction to endeavor into. good luck...

Hi I am back to this old thread. Thanks for all the good conversation before. I started reading it again and may reply to old posts as I've thought more about this stuff. If anyone is still interested in this topic, I don't know?

Here is my current argument

1. Possibilities(essences) cannot be created or destroyed.
2. I am a possibility/essence (currently an actualized one)
3. I cannot be created or destroyed (although the actualized me can)

I am consciousness, I believe, is the form of what you are looking for.

Nothing seems to be permanent, not the cells of the body, certainly not consciousness or the I.

The only thing constant seems to be that when you ask the question it will be consciousness that you use to do it with. So If the I is the consciousness, this would be constant, but the I and the consciousness you use to ask the question with would be different every time - in the absolute sense.
My I, and my consciousness, have been very different things over the course of my life, when I think back to the age of 10, 20, 40, 50, etc. Which I is the true I?


Being no one - Thomas Metzinger

Edit. On further reflection, a counter argument is possible.
DNA would contribute much of the information that goes into creating consciousness and the I.
This indeed is constant throughout a life time. And the very first instruction in DNA would relate to the essence of what keeps a biological organism going, and this very first instruction would be common to all living creatures and would be immoral - being passed along the lineage of life to perpetuity.

I am eternal. If eternal means infinite time, since any moment of time can be infinitely divided, then any moment of time is the same as infinite time, therefore since I exist in this moment, I must be eternal.