I realized another way to put these nebulous thoughts. You know when your sunglasses are on your head, and you are running out the door, gathering your keys, found your wallet, and dammit, you can't find your sunglasses. And you are looking everywhere, check the car, back upstairs, until you realize they are right there on your head. Isn't that what we are doing when we ask what a mind is? We just haven't had the epiphany yet.

...what we think of as the self, mainly comprises those things and circumstances to which we are attached and that we identify with. — Wayfarer

This sounds a bit like "consciousness is consciousness of" which is Sartre. I always liked that. I am conscious of a cat, so the cat in a consciousness can also be called me being conscious of a cat, or just summed up as a particular moment of me, of self. Self is consciousness of...whatever. But why not be conscious of my own particular consciousness? Consciousness of the cat is not the same thing as the cat. I actually am conscious of my own particular consciousness, but at the same time, I have no real object in mind when my object is mind. As you said, the self may be unknowable.

It seems to me that just as an eye does not appear within its own visual field, a hand cannot grasp itself, and willing does not will what it wills ... "mind" is necessarily transparent to itself in order to mind – attend to – nonmind (which includes, among all other ideas, also the idea of "mind"); thus, "being a mind" is functionally perspectival. — 180 Proof

Mind can't see itself when it is busy minding something, like an eyeball can't see itself. And a bit like the mind is pre-occupied with it being consciousness of, and not just consciousness. All seems true. But at the same time, eyeballs can be seen. Hands can be grasped (just not by themselves). Unless we are saying that there is no such thing as mind, or there is no such thing as consciousness. We are thinking of a particular state of affairs when we point out "consciousness". Yet, in a sense, I keep finding that I am saying there is no such thing as an objective "mind" when I am minding my own mind. Or minding my own minding. Is there nothing there anymore, or was there nothing there in the first place? All that said, mind as a perspectival function seems important. I have to think about that.

What are you hoping to find and how does this nebulous introspection differ to smoking weed and postulating infinities? — Tom Storm

I might have been smoking a little weed when I wrote this. What do you mean by introspection? If we could really define what introspection is, we would have to include a firm demonstration of the being who is introspecting, and that is what I am hoping to find, or more like, interested in here.

So what in particular are you looking for an answer to? — Punshhh

It's a fair question. Goes right along with Tom's use of the word nebulous. I don't know. Am I body and soul, material mixed with the immaterial, or am I just a body? But I'm really just making the observation that, if in fact I am a soul, I am currently a soul that has no idea whether souls exist, as I use my soul to wonder about it, which is ironic, I think.

We as conscious thinking subjects, do not seem to operate in terms of the very natural law by which we understand the operation of all natural real things. — Mww

That is interesting. Our very presence is like a contradiction in the regular flow of things.

The brain operates according to natural law, but none of the terms of it are present in our direct, first-person, unmediated thinking. We can never understand how the self-conscious thinking subject arises, by the same means by which we understand all other natural events, so perhaps a better question is….why does it seem like there is such a thing at all? — Mww

Why does it seem like there is a self-conscious thinking subject arising? One answer is, this very exchange of ideas makes it seem like subjects in-themselves exist, but honestly, I don't know! Here, I'm wondering how stupid I would feel if not only does it in fact arise, but it arises right there with me when I ask if it is there, but still I don't know!

The account for the seemingly self-conscious thinking subject ... science proper is not yet sufficiently equipped for it, which is the same as saying the scientist presently has no sufficient method for how to proceed. — Mww

I noted that where I said that maybe we don't have the right tools yet to measure and weigh this "self". I just have no patience for the science on this one, because we can't even seem to get started: right now, it looks like the scientist can't identify an object to study, even though the object is that same scientist.

All that being said, I reject that the things that must be us are the hardest to see. I rather hold the view, that for which the negation, for all practical intents and purposes, is impossible, one had best figure out how to see it, in order to get the best and most out of it. — Mww

I'm with you here. That's why I posted this in the first place. Soul = that for which the negation is impossible. Now, on to the next question, what does this soul smell like.

I never really understood how anyone could pick one philosopher out as the most...anything. Most of them (us) admit the basic conclusion is that they (we) know nothing, or that they have only scratched the surface of what may be the case. If I was to say whose thoughts continue to interest me the most, they would certainly include Nietzsche. But I love metaphysics. I love Nietzschean metaphysics. I get that it is easily kindling, gathered carefully into neat formal piles only to be shown its true purpose in flames. I get that the metaphysician walks on quicksand at every step, on a tightrope. But even Nietzsche did not destroy the Apollonian; he did not banish the spirit from flesh (quite the opposite, he caged it in the flesh, but then, it is spirit to him nonetheless); he did not truly get beyond good and evil (he's basically a grumpy old monk telling us all how wrong we are), but maybe instead he redefined what is good (all-overcoming power of will) and what is bad (weakness hidden by despising). He gave us volumes to think about, but as with so many others, I am left craving. He does not account for everything in my experience.

I currently look at it all like this: all of the philosophers (and many other types of sages and wise folk, and shaman) were essentially trying to put to words the same object, the same subject, the same experience - human experience. They are all beating around the same bush. So the interesting question is "why would Plato come up with what he said, and Nietzsche come up with what he said, when they were both trying to describe the same experience?" It's like they all looked a sculpture and started arguing "it is essentially form and beauty" and "how can you say that when it is chaos and destruction" or "how can you say 'say that' without saying first what 'that' means?" Why would Berkeley say all we need are ideas, and Lucretius say all we need are atoms and void - what object produces such seemingly opposing pictures?

Can't go on without Nietzsche, but I love the pre-socratics, and we have to deal with Kant and Hegel, and Descartes goes on and on way too long imagining God, but he really did say something when he noticed that he existed. The being for whom being is an issue. So many important worldviews to consider and reconsider.

But I generally agree, prior to Nietzsche ethics was more like a fairy tale that would not admit of reality, and post Nietzsche, ethics as a branch of philosophy should be over, but lingers, like a corpse occasionally moving in place as it decomposes.

Maybe philosophy is paradigm recognition. The search for the paradigm.

Thales said to his buddy "See that tree over there?" And his buddy said "yeah, so what?" And Thales said, "It's not what you think it is. It's water." And we've been scratching our heads, asserting "paradigm shift" ever since.