On Feb 23, 8:51*pm, Mahipal wrote:
On Feb 22, 5:29*pm, " wrote:

On Feb 22, 8:57*am, Immortalist wrote:

On Feb 22, 7:00 am, Dare wrote:

On 2/21/2013 7:36 PM, Immortalist wrote:

On Feb 21, 4:29 pm, Howard Brazee wrote:
On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:45:13 -0800 (PST), casey

wrote:
Something that would be good for science to answer.

If you found yourself in heaven with a heavenly body
how would you know if it was you who lived that
physical life on Earth or if you simply had the
memories of that now dead human?

If you assume that the 5 year old version of you was "you", despite
you being very, very different now - we need to determine what "you"
means.

If the self is a series of clones throughout life, then there may be
no "version" of your self but instead just a "range" of neural
activities that are a sense of your self.

* I concur on the (implied potential) range of activities meme. The
series of clones thing I disagree with- it implies that all cells (as
mentioned elsethread) in a tissue (and by implication the whole body)
get "turned over" every so many years *all at the same time* which is
unreasonable.

* We are about process, not state. A so-called state of mind is not a
photograph, it's a three-panel cartoon. Perception, "filter",
reaction. "filter" = particular set of "neural activities" in that
range.

Once those activities go
outside the range of your -selfing- you are not cloned during those
successions of neural events.

* Well, a clone is (loosely speaking) an exact replica, but me right
now is not an exact replica of me ten, twenty etc. years ago. What
continues as "I"? I think it's just a particular constellation of
"things I'm good at" and "things I'm bad at" due to brain structure/
disposition(s) from genetics modulo diet, environment, socialization,
yada yada.

* I agree with my pal Mahipal- "me" always changes.

I will cherish that sentence construct until like forever.

You are too kind Mark! Still, you turn me on... do you want to be
poet?

A poet writes poetry. Who writes doggerel?

"You see it really doesn't matter
When you're buried in disguise
By the dark glass on your eyes
Though your flesh has crystallised
Still...you turn me on"

Ergo I Mahipal am me on... me_on... meon, rhymes with neon.
If you can't laugh, then you can't grasp... so I have learned.

I ain't no poet but I knows it when I sees it.

This here is some damnfine poetry:

"Aye an' a bit of Mackeral settler rack and ruin
ran it doon by the haim, 'ma place
well I slapped me and I slapped it doon in the side
and I cried, cried, cried.

"The fear a fallen down taken never back the raize and then Craig
Marion,
get out wi' ye Claymore out mi pocket a' ran doon, doon the middin
stain
picking the fiery horde that was fallen around ma feet.
Never he cried, never shall it ye get me alive
ye rotten hound of the burnie crew. Well I snatched fer the blade O my
Claymore cut and thrust and I fell doon before him round his feet.

"Aye! A roar he cried frae the bottom of his heart that I would nay
fall
but as dead, dead as 'a can be by his feet; de ya ken?

....and the wind cried Mary."

Also, note that Umma rhymes with Gumma.

* As for "activities outside the range of [one's] -selfing-, I refer
you to Lovecraft's _At The Mountains Of Madness_.

BTW _Call Of Cthulhu_ is a better example of extra-self activities,
what with M. C. Escher the likeliest suspect for master architect of
R'lyeh.

from A Treatise of Human Nature Book I, Part 4, Section 6

SECTION VI: OF PERSONAL IDENTITY

There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately
conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its
continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a
demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The
strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of
distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and
make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or
pleasure. To attempt a further proof of this were to weaken its
evidence; since no proof can be derived from any fact of which we are
so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing of which we can be
certain if we doubt of this.

Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very
experience which is pleaded for them; nor have we any idea of self,
after the manner it is here explained. For, from what impression could
this idea be derived? This question it is impossible to answer without
a manifest contradiction and absurdity; and yet it is a question which
must necessarily be answered, if we would have the idea of self pass
for clear and intelligible. It must be some one impression that gives
rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression,
but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to
have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self,
that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole
course of our lives; since self is supposed to exist after that
manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and
pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other,
and never all exist at the same time. It cannot therefore be from any
of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is
derived; and consequently there is no such idea.

* Well yeah, self-examination on the fly is difficult.

* That's why we study other people.

Without other people, we -- especially me, myself, or I -- are
nothing.

Hm. In my experience sociability is not stereotypical all-or-
nothing- there's a continuum from Drama Queen to Rugged Individualist.

From----
http://www.wutsamada.com/alma/modern/humepid.htm

Is a feeling of identity or self related to experiencing Time?
What happens to "self" if there is no time...

* Zen adepts claim that self vanishes without time-bound experience.

The second part of your question addresses issues relating to
consciousness and continuity. Can the activities of the brain that are
the self, if stopped be started again? Would it be only a clone that
believes it is you or have we always just been a bunch of clones that
produce this feeling of being one me? But to this continuity dilemma
you raise; there are too many things and processes happening to give
some simple answer. Why would we believe that consciousness can or
cannot be stopped and then started in the first place? If the heart
stops tissues die but when we sleep consciousness seems to stop, so
simple comparisons will probably fail us. Religion and philosophy seem
to be the culprits that make us invent such ideas.

* In sleep consciousness is altered; it does not stop. Look up lucid
dreaming and sleep learning for starters.

What if consciousness is full of stops and starts? Again time seems to
be necessary if consciousness is the same thing as activities in a
brain.

* Consciousness seems to me to be more like a conversation between
different specialized wetware modules of the brain. It can be a
roaring rock party babble or a low indistinct mutter. If nobody has
anything to say to each other at a party there's a lull, but not
really a stop. Same with our "selves".

......In a sparse distributed network - memory is a type of
perception.....The act of remembering and the act of perceiving both
detect a pattern in a vary large choice of possible patterns....When
we remember we recreate the act of the original perception - that is
we relocate the pattern by a process similar to the one we used to
perceive the pattern originally.

* The stored patterns change over time as the physical substrate
they're "written" on (cerebral neurons and their interconnections)
change over time.

Could all parts of our experience and reasoning abilities be very
similar to a type of perception? If the act of remembering and the act
of perceiving both detect a pattern in a vary large choice of possible
patterns and when we remember we recreate the act of the original
perception - that is we relocate the pattern by a process similar to
the one we used to perceive the pattern originally, and trigger areas
of the brain which our senses would, in essence bypassing the senses,
then it seems possible that most of our experience works in a similar
way.

* Yes, of course. Some modules perceive sensory input, some only
perceive the output of other modules.

Benjamin Libet famously suggested it takes about half a second for the
brain to get through all the processing steps needed to settle our
view of the moment just past. But this immediately raises the question
of why don't we notice a lag? How does anyone ever manage to hit a
tennis ball or drive a car? The answer is that we anticipate. We also
have a level of preconscious habit which "intercepts" stuff before it
reaches a conscious level of awareness. And yet it really does take
something like half a second to develop a fully conscious experience
of life. You can read about the cycle of processing story and its
controversies in the following....

* The implication is that the whole brain "get(s) through all the
processing steps" at the same time. That's unreasonable since
different parts of the brain process information at different rates;
there's no computer-analogous "system clock" for organic brains.

If there is one thing that seems certain about consciousness it is
that it is immediate. We are aware of life's passing parade of
sensations — and of our own thoughts, feelings and impulses — at the
instant they happen. Yet as soon as it is accepted that the mind is
the product of processes taking place within the brain, we introduce
the possibility of delay. It must take time for nerve traffic to
travel from the sense organs to the mapping areas of the brain.

* It also takes different amounts of time for each module to process
its allotment of data.

* Worse, some data goes through more than one module, in series and or
parallel, introducing more delays.

Life and mind really cannot be about its mechanics, down deep.

You seem to think I'm claiming souls don't exist. I have never said
that, because I have no incontrovertible evidence of it. I also have
no evidence supporting them either, but absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence. I prefer to table the question until some
evidence becomes available.

See, in my version of the scientific method, no wild-assed idea is a
priori excluded unless it defies thermo 3 or conservation of momentum
or something. There is undeniably a physical layer to consciousness-
an "unphysical" layer is IMO impossible. For a thing to interact with
matter the way souls allegedly do there must be a set of rules. That's
physics, dammit. If somebody reduced prayers to partial differential
equations, would you cry "meta-heresy!" or would you celebrate?

It must then take more time for thoughts and feelings about these
messages to propagate through the brain's maze of circuitry. If the
processing is complex — as it certainly must be in humans — then these
delays ought to measurable, and even noticeable with careful
introspection.

* It's worse- the delays can be negative. There's experimental
evidence that we start to perform physical responses based on sensory
inputs *before* the parts of the brain allegedly responsible for
mediating decisions do their thing. Clearly all our attempts at
modeling the mind are flawed.

* Mark L. Fergerson

I really am still reading Immortalist's response. Wish he would IRL
name himself.

I wouldn't poke too hard; it may be a pen name he uses to avoid
losing his day job.

Per your mention elsethread of birthplacing philosophy:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opi...638797542.html


Mark L. Fergerson