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Originally Posted by Og  Cool. I also don't mean to say that the chair doesn't have identity. I don't mean that you and I don't have identity. I just mean to say that there is nothing INTRINSICALLY "me." I am entirely defined by extrinsic factors. The chair and I are both expressions of the entire realm of nature. I could not exist if it did not exist... etc. |
Nope, don't get it. Can you expand on this thought please?
It SEEMS you are saying you don't really exist apart from your "external" physical body and that without the body, there is no you? Am I correct or did I misinterpret?
Genuine curiosty
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Just because the energy transfer between your ear and your mouth (through your brain) is more complex and more correlated with inputs (to the ear) doesn't mean that it's any more "living" or cosmically relevant than the wind on a rock on the beach.
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So do you define life as something that replicates itself? Or something with awareness of itself? I think I kind of understand what you are saying, I'm just not sure I can reconcile that with...well simply put..the image I see in the mirror every day
I struggle with the concept of the "living" or the "animate" and the inanimate.
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Life is not something fundamentally different than non-life. All boundaries are arbitrary and can also be useful for a computational entity to interact with its surroundings (i.e. to correlate its behaviors with its environment), but again, it's not a difference of kind. Boundaries only exist when useful to relate some entity to another. But that's the trick of consciousness. The boundary between those entities is an illusion. You are defined by those boundaries that you create in your mind and that others see.
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Again, I think I understand what you are saying. I've been reading up on Brain plasticity lately, and it appears that it is possible to use completely different sensory input devices(Skin as opposed to the ear/eardrum) to actually generate ultimately the same(sound) concept in the brain. Amazing stuff, and what I believe the choclear implant is based on.
The question is, what is observing it? It's incredibly spooky to be aware that all this 'stuff' is going on behind the scenes, knowing you are observing it, knowing you live and die, but that you are no different than anything else ultimately...made of the same particles.
Do you think there is an "I" , or is the "I" an illusion. If there is no "I" then what is there?
Again curious, interesting throughts you have