• Outlander
    2.1k


    "There are many bodies, one consciousness" - Anonymous
  • frank
    15.8k
    Everybody's got to be someone, and I guess you just got the short straw. It's sheer bad luck.unenlightened

    Grace comes from adversity though. Unless it kills you.
  • unenlightened
    9.2k
    That's a much more interesting question. I think it's something like this:

    You know those town centre maps that have a label stuck on, "you are here."? These days sat-nav on phones probably does the same job. But when you weren't looking at the static map, you weren't there, so it was always true when you saw it.

    "I'm there", says the linguistic animal; "I'm like that". A confusion of map and territory - of word and thing.
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    It is philosophy and it's not a delusion.bert1

    It is only philosophy when you're fully conscious, otherwise, is mysticism or anything other than philosophy...
  • litewave
    827
    So why am I me?Ori

    Do you also wonder why number two is number two instead of, say, number three?
  • Luke
    2.6k
    So why am I me?Ori

    Because nobody else wanted to be you.
  • bert1
    2k
    What do you mean? You're not allowed to have insights when drunk?
  • bert1
    2k
    Do you also wonder why number two is number two instead of, say, number three?litewave

    I suspect not, as that is an entirely different issue.
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    What do you mean? You're not allowed to have insights when drunk?bert1

    Philosophy is only philosophy if reflected in a conscience that is counscious and fully aware of its existence. Any kind of mental stimulation induced by toxic and hallucinogenic products is not of a philosophical character as they were not conceived of the "self" own initiative.
  • bert1
    2k
    I don't agree but in any case, the insight has stayed with Ori after he has sobered up. It's very odd to stipulate conditions which must obtain before philosophy can be done, even odder to not consider a view because of what state the person conceived it in.
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    I don't agree but in any case, the insight has stayed with Ori after he has sobered up. It's very odd to stipulate conditions which must obtain before philosophy can be done, even odder to not consider a view because of what state the person conceived it in.bert1

    I will never understand the thinking of the masses of defending the consumption of something that is toxic to their own existence. Perhaps it is an ego-suppressed suicide attempt? Or maybe you just don't get the point because you don't want to.

    In any case, continue with your debate of "pseudophilosophy". My participation in this "discussion" is over.
  • bert1
    2k
    I will never understand the thinking of the masses of defending the consumption of something that is toxic to their own existence.Gus Lamarch

    I'm not defending the consumption of anything. I'm saying its irrelevant to the merit of an idea.
  • simeonz
    310


    There is a philosophical stance called relationism, which considers time and space like relations, or in plainer terms, "sortings" of objects. In this theory, there is no preferential sense of being in the present moment, because the past is not lost and the future is not unformed, but the reason we think there is an "absolute" present is because each version of our brain in each moment in time is relationally distinct with the other slices from its chronology and believes itself as independently existing. In this same sense, space is relative, and your mind is confined to your grey matter and my mind is confined to mine, but why each of us believes to experience a life of opposition to the other is not because we are ordained fundamentally distinct consciousnesses, but because of the way in which our embodiments are separated with relation to each other. For reference, octopuses have multiple brains in their limbs, each thinking separately, yet they act as a single sentience when it comes to the action of the octopus. Think of us like an octopus who has a split personality disorder. I am not saying that we are not independent personalities and we that shouldn't clash with each other and defend our different points of view when it is necessary, but that this is just nature's game to experiment with the mix of the soup, so to speak.

    P.S. Url was leading to the wrong article
  • boagie
    385
    We are all the same at birth, meaning without identity, born into the world as simply a constitution in whatever state. What becomes of you is what happens to your constitution through your environmental contexts. First family and then world at large, meaning societal and the physical demands of climate ect.and location geographically. This becomes your storyline, this becomes your personal I, for identity. When you die what's buried is that constitution indistinct from any other constitution.
  • kudos
    407
    @Ori Your question seems to me about soul and spirit, which have very different meanings to different kinds of people. You are right to consider it as something conditioned, because you can see in all the explanations here it is somehow presupposed. Before you refer to yourself or anything else you implicitly presuppose your identity with yourself (I am ‘this’). It seems reductive to take this Cartesian individuality to be everything that is your soul and spirit; that is not what Descartes meant through it.

    Many who do philosophy have the aim of enriching ourselves, including what you might call spirit or soul, rather than accepting the belief we are already fully enriched without considering the negation of ourselves and our existence.
  • Hedge33
    2
    Why am I me? What does that even mean? Do I mean am I this person or body? How do I know I am this person, just because I experience the consciousness of this person? If I experience the consciousness of someone else, am I that other person and not me? I often wondered if I die, and my organ is transplanted into another person, do I continue life as that person? The idea that I am this person because I can control this body is not possible to confirm. My body moves around, and I just experience it. I am not me, if me is just an avatar or something. I have a body, or am I a body? It seems if I wasn't born, I'll just be somebody else. Am I a person now, but at other times I was and will be somebody or something else? Why am I me? There is one thing, everything. Can I be this everything?
  • theRiddler
    260


    It might have something to do with the fact that language creates a perceived identity within, while the truth is not only are we "in" the mind, but we are "in" the cosmos.
  • Cheshire
    1.1k
    The first person history of being you. People present with multiple identities and the difference is an unshared history.
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    "why" questions can only be asked meaningfully in the situations where answers come from either one's psychological state or motivation or physical cause of the changes of matters.

    When asked why did you do it, why did you say it or why did you go there, the meaningful answers are based on one's psychological motivation, feelings or dispositions. Because I just wanted, because I didn't understand, because I was to meet her in the cafe etc.

    For the examples of "why" questions for the causality of matters could be, "Why does it go faster, when the accelerator is pressed down?" Because more fuel is entering the engine chamber, resulting in faster and more gas explosion. Why does it make sound when the button is pressed? Because it is connected to the speaker, and when the current and voltage flows to it, the cones inside the speaker vibrates etc.

    Anything pertaining to metaphysical or ontological questions such as why were you born, why are you you, why am I I,  this type of WHY questions cannot yield meaningful answers.
  • bert1
    2k
    Anything pertaining to metaphysical or ontological questions such as why were you born, why are you you, why am I I, this type of WHY questions cannot yield meaningful answers

    What is the casual story that resulted in you being corvus and not Cheshire?
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    What is the casual story that resulted in you being corvus and not Cheshire?bert1

    I was born as "Corvus", and Cheshire was born as "Cheshire".   It is not a very meaningful answer, because it is a causal explanation of the origin of individuals in physical existence.
    As I said, if I were asked to explain any further than that, as soon as I try to come up with my answers, it will spiral into either religious mysticism, metaphysics or shamanistic stories, which might be meaningful to me, but not to you.
  • bert1
    2k
    I was born as "Corvus", and Cheshire was born as "Cheshire".Corvus

    Sure, but that's not what Cheshire would say. Cheshire would say "I was born as Cheshire, and Corvus was born as Corvus." What accounts for these different perspectives? They are different. In the first, the 'I' is Corvus, but in the second the 'I' is Cheshire. Yet there is but one reality. So are these statements in conflict? Is there a trick of language? What's going on?

    I'm happy to follow where the logic goes. If that's mysticism or Wooga Wooga-ism, so be it. What does your spirituality say?
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    Yet there is but one reality. So are these statements in conflict? Is there a trick of language? What's going on?bert1

    I think it is not one reality. Reality is on its own in a closed box of the owner's mind only free in its own imagination and thoughts like the monads of Leibniz, and there are billions and billions of different realities. When the owner of the mind dies, the reality of the owner dies too, evaporates into nothing.

    "I" is for the sayer who means the sayer itself, no one else.
  • Pantagruel
    3.4k
    Why do linguistic animals think they are each two things instead of one?bongo fury

    :up:
  • MAYAEL
    239
    Se when a mommy and daddy love each other
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