Sorry for the stream of posting but I just wanted to ask for some help with stuff that’s bugging me that I don’t have answers for. I know it’s been a lot but I promise I’ll take a break from all this after:
Yeah I know it’s the same guy, I’m sorry the middle one where he supposedly proves there is no you reminds me of what Susan Blackmore argues. Though there is something interesting about the free will in such supposedly deterministic stuff:
Apparently we sometimes have free will and sometimes no.
Anyone I would appreciate any help here, then I can rest for a while and not bug with my ceaseless questions.
As for the self link, I don’t think thermodynamic law means anything there, most scientists think the self or “you” is an emergent entity of many brain areas. So there is a you.
It has been shared with you from various commenters - perhaps most fundamentally consider that as hard as you seem to be trying you can’t escape your doubting Thomas self, or to find an excuse to delegitimize your existence - you fail. “You” seem to keep coming back nipping at your backside.
Perhaps try reading Descartes Meditations? I was surprised at how accessible it was. I’m suggesting that because it’s about as good a demonstration of how a really sharp mind thinks.
Yes, at time I might sound like I deride his conclusions, but that’s because he lived in a pre-scientific era and knew nothing about biology and evolution, so it’s a bit presumptuous keeping his conclusion on a pedestal.
But when it comes to the process of thinking and working with the information one has at hand to tease out conclusions - he nails it. And since you spend so much time thinking, I’m thinking you might find some benefit to experiencing how this genius does it.
It’s more like what he’s saying in the posts, especially about our understanding of reality being concepts we made up and distinctions we made up. It was in the posts about God being perfect, the meaning one, I even found other stuff:
In short it’s more like being severely challenged on my understanding of myself and reality and wondering what to think after the fact. LIke…is it really just some dream or playing pretend since these are just concepts, representations of reality and not reality itself? Am I just lying to myself when I’m living a “normal” life? If we made these associations up how can we say anything is right or wrong?
A lot of things I don’t have an answer to and it’s really troubling me. I find it hard to ignore this stuff even though I know what it does to me. It feels like I’m denying truth and living a lie if I ignore it…
It wasn’t about the answers, it was about thinking about your thought process - with Descartes being a wonderful observer of the process of thinking.
And I bring that up because it seems you get pulled into the same circle dance, where for me thoughts are about arriving at conclusions and understanding.
I didn’t but it’s not really related to what I’ve been posting and what I’m trying to explain. It’s not so much the thought process but the implications of the posts that I read.
If you read through them you’d see why I’m bothered:
… This is not to say that you don’t exist. Buddhist no self philosophy acknowledges fully that the notion of self is real—it feels incredibly real. You have a name. You have psychological continuity with your past. When you wake up tomorrow, this continuity will prevail. You exist and no one is debating that. …
… Practicing no self starts with the humble recognition that the sense of self is only one part of your existence . Since the sense of self is inextricably linked to your self-talk—to your thoughts and inner dialogue—and since we’re constantly interpreting reality through thought, it can feel like it’s everything. …
You don’t own your ego
Here’s where I think we don’t connect, I see the “self” as the holistic entirety of my body and its interactions with the world & itself.
This article is making me think that self is equated with ego.
But ego is the product of mind.
Whereas the mind is the product of the body-brain and its interactions.
There is a difference worth chewing on.
This line of thinking is not meant to foster doubt about your existence. Rather, it’s meant to show that although the sense of self feels like the most real thing in your life, it’s possible that experience is the ultimate truth .
The essence of Niebauer’s findings is that science cannot locate the sense of self.
Which seems self-evident to me because the self is a product of the entire symphony of your physical body interacting with the myriad of things it must keep track of.
It’s mostly the quora posts and how I feel like ignoring them is denying reality. Like the posts about being wrong, or the truth of everything, or how we make meaning, or if god is perfect.
Niebauer is a bit unreliable as a source and I’m not sure why they used him.
More stuff: Answer to What are the main differences between a realist and an idealist? by David Moore
Answer to What ethical dilemmas should we consider as technology evolves rapidly? by David Moore
Especially with the links the guy posts it makes it sound like an authority even though I don’t really know if it’s true or accurate.
Or lines like this:
“ One thing I have realised, though, is that there is still nothing new under the sun. By this I mean that - just as energy can neither be created nor destroyed - it may also be the case that information can only ever be Transformed. All novelty is really re-arrangement of what came beforehand.”
On the one hand he’s “philosophically” correct, I guess,
but what’s it have to do living on this planet over time?
It reminds me of the Free Will argument, everything has a precursor event, ergo, no Free Will.
But if you look at history and evolution, precursor events create emergent genuine novelty. More than simply re-arranging, there’s addition and multiplication and lights going on . . .
I dunno, looking at his page there is a lot of wonky stuff, he’s got some links to sound cloud where I found this:
“The Logic of Mathematics and the Imaginative and Creative Process by which we Make Sense by Rendering the Continuous Discretely and Producing Continuity from the Discrete”
Which makes me think of making meaning as just living in a fantasy world