Copiae: Self

[Sweetie]

"I do have a question for you.

Recently, I have been investigating what the self is, and I am interested in hearing how other people go about defining it.

So, what would you define the self as?"

I have no idea what the self is actually. There are some things I would bring to bear on the subject for consideration, but as far as a definition I'm not sure if I have one.

My own personal theory goes like this:

God (or nature) makes our what, we make our who. It's free-will that forms the who. I think as well that there are certain personality traits that are always there and will always be there regardless of environment and personal growth just like our body changes but our scent will never change, our neurons are constantly being replaced I think, but we still remember, we can change the way we think but not who we are, so to I think our being changes but there are some things about it that will never change, our quirks perhaps, our sense of humour, our way of expressing love, our heart of hearts, whatever it is, talents, I don't know. Some will bring up multiple personalities as a response to this, and it's definately something to consider though I don't know that it negates my theory at present in any real way though I could be wrong, certainly.

So, I think personality and choice particularily is a large part of the business. Of course, the average atheist will just say "determinism" and supposedly that settles that, but, however it goes, that's what I lean towards.

Our what never changes, our who never stops changing, what is the who if there is no time or if time is so greatly altered for us that it's very different, would there still be a who in there, would these things all come together, all our choices to make a statement about who exactly we are or would the who disappear entirely?

I think many think that when considering all the things people self-identify with, as I mentioned before: gender, race, culture, sexuality, religion (or lack thereof), I think they find that when you remove all these things then we find that we have fooled ourselves into thinking that there is an "I" when in fact there is not. They say that gender is arbitrary, religion is, what would they call it, not a cult but a .....something....can't recall. Culture would probably fit into the same category as religion, race is arbitrary, sexuality, not sure what they would say exactingly.

I don't know, perhaps if we focused on these things we might have something to ponder.

[Zoot]

There is no self. People are not things; they are occurrences, complex recurring patterns performed by the universe, which is the only atom. The pattern of habitual identification with finite and changeable phenomena is the source of all suffering and much delusion. Decisions are experiences, and there is no experiencer.

Amen.

[Sweetie]

The Gospel according to Zoot.

:P

[Zoot]

Well, really, it's the gospel according to Buddha. I was about 2600 years late.

[Dingfod]

Hell, I think I'm an average atheist and I don't even know what determinism is.

[Sweetie]

Buddha, the supreme truth knower and identifier, authority because he was just so right and he beat Christians to the punch because science as you know it has only one end, it will prove the Buddha right or does it already?

Man you sound familiar. :doh:

[Zoot]

Warrenly, you may know it by its other name: common sense.


Sweetie,

If someone gets total amnesia and remembers nothing, their habits change, their tastes change, etc., are they the same person? If they can't remember committing a crime and no longer would commit the crime in the same situation, are they still guilty of it?

[Zoot]

Buddha, the supreme truth knower and identifier, authority because he was just so right and he beat Christians to the punch because science as you know it has only one end, it will prove the Buddha right or does it already?

Uhhh.

No, it just makes sense. I'm just giving credit where credit's due. Gautama worked it out before I did.

[Farren]

I'm with Zoot on this one, more or less.

[Dingfod]

Oh, I looked it up. I think I understand it to mean that everything that is, every human act or decision, is the inevitable result of everything that has occurred up until now. I'm not sure I believe that. So, maybe I'm not a determined atheist and maybe not even an average atheist.

[Sweetie]

Sweetie,

If someone gets total amnesia and remembers nothing, their habits change, their tastes change, etc., are they the same person?

I did mention that scenario in my OP, did I not? Just to say, your originality is remarkable but it's much better than spouting platitudes of a sort and showing yourself to be the exact thing that you so despise. :wink:

Anyways, first of all, I would prefer refence to a specific case of this. I haven't studied multiple personalities/amnesia enough to know how things work, if these people do retain some charachteristic traits and other things of the like.

Habits, well, habits are habits, they begin or cease, I don't think they do anything but identify something of the personality of the one who is doing them and their environment. My husband for instance, bites his nails down including the skin around them, but not to the sense that it's bloody. Anyways so, that indicates stress and insecurity or so I think, plus just the fact that he hasn't gotten over being used to doing that. In different situations and environments, yes this habit can and would change, other different environmental factors might have made it so that he would not have started doing it in the first place.

Tastes, tastes always change. I think tastes are 95% of what you're used to. I've actually just recently succeeded in convincing my nine year old daughter of this, we were discussing this just last week in fact. I told her, if you grew up in China, rice would be to them what our bread is to us, a staple, something that most people don't tire of. It's just what you're used to.

My husband is a not by choice vegan but he has always said that even were he able to eat meat and dairy products tomorrow he would never be able to consume milk without throwing up nor will he even take a taste of rare steak, and his veganism is not because of a disgust with eating animals.

If they can't remember committing a crime and no longer would commit the crime in the same situation, are they still guilty of it?

Yes.

[Zoot]

What remains the same that gets called the "person"?

[Sweetie]

What remains the same that gets called the "person"?

I'm not entirely sure, I have said that but I don't just automatically assume that it's not there either.

Amnesia, do people just forget who they are or forget everything they knew including their knowledge or having to come to have known themself? Are the memories there but not accesable? Were they to be dying and having a flashback of their life and choices, would those memories be included? Will those thing they did exist in the hereafter? Will their memories come back to them after death, all-at-once, will they exist as close to "all-at-once" as possible? Did their choices cause their amnesia? etc., etc.?

[Zoot]

I'm not entirely sure, I have said that but I don't just automatically assume that it's not there either.

Can you give an example of something which, in a hypothetical world, would satisfactorily answer the question?


Amnesia, do people just forget who they are or forget everything they knew including their knowledge or having to come to have known themself? Are the memories there but not accesable? Were they to be dying and having a flashback of their life and choices, would those memories be included? Will those thing they did exist in the hereafter? Will their memories come back to them after death, all-at-once, will they exist as close to "all-at-once" as possible? Did their choices cause their amnesia? etc., etc.?

Who knows. There are different sorts of amnesia, certainly. But the idea of a total personality change is just an accelerated version of what happens over the course of a person's life anyway. If there is any amount of change which could bring you to say that it's no longer the same person, you're forced to say where you'd draw the line. And if no amount of change could bring you to say that it's no longer the same person, you can imagine some pretty unusual positions resulting from it.

[Farren]

Sweetie. What about a more extreme situation. Forebrain, hypothalamus, et al completely screwed up or destroyed- the lizard hindbrain and a drip keeping a person alive. No memories, no abstract dreams, nothing that makes a person even human still around. But the heart beats, the lungs breath, as long as the life support remains. Is the "self" still around? Without memory, abstract or emotional, what does self mean in that context?

If some pure, nonmaterial self remains, is it, too vegetative? It seems to me that a view that simply regards the self as an emergent and fuzzy result of the substance is far less troublesome as a consistent and reasonable concept than a self that has any kind of metaphysically higher existence - which demands a vast number of extra terms and is at the same time uneconomical and lacking in any additional explanatory power.

[Sweetie]

Can you give an example of something which, in a hypothetical world, would satisfactorily answer the question?

I just simply don't know, I would at the very least need to have more knowledge of psychology, for me this is a certainty. I do not have this knowledge at present and I just don't see a direct line from we exist in time therefore we don't exist at all. Catholicism meets this with the idea that part of us exists in time and part of us exists in another plane, spirit and matter, aeveternity and flowing now.

I can echo Newman in this case when confronted with the doctrine of transubstantiation as revelation from a God and Church he had come to believe in and believe was speaking truly, "what do I know of substance and matter?" ie: How can I say it isn't so?

When do Buddhists feel free to be rationalists and then alternatively say that there is reason beyond reason and that can't be reached through reason ie: koans?

Perhaps you think that you are God in the Buddhist sense, and in my Catholicism I say:

"In Him we move and breathe and have our being."

How do I know where the line is drawn between Him and I? How do I know when the Creator created a creature that co-creates itself? I just know the possibility to me makes more sense and is more reflective of the reality of the thing in question and the reality of what things need to be practically speaking.

Who knows. There are different sorts of amnesia, certainly. But the idea of a total personality change is just an accelerated version of what happens over the course of a person's life anyway.

My question is first of all, is there indeed a total personality change? In the case of multiple personalities my understanding is that the original personality is trying to protect itself and therefore creates multiple personalities. Amnesia, the person is existing in a state which has forgotten who it was, but I'm not so certain certain personality traits are eradicated necessarily.

If there is any amount of change which could bring you to say that it's no longer the same person, you're forced to say where you'd draw the line. And if no amount of change could bring you to say that it's no longer the same person, you can imagine some pretty unusual positions resulting from it.

I just think it's more complex than what you might and I'm just not dogmatic about it in the same way you are in this case, the rationalist forcing answers.

[Sweetie]

Sweetie. What about a more extreme situation. Forebrain, hypothalamus, et al completely screwed up or destroyed- the lizard hindbrain and a drip keeping a person alive. No memories, no abstract dreams, nothing that makes a person even human still around. But the heart beats, the lungs breath, as long as the life support remains. Is the "self" still around? Without memory, abstract or emotional, what does self mean in that context?

Well, are you asking basically what is the self if a person is unconscious or brain-dead?

The possibility I would produce would be a tad too simplistic I think, but I mean, spirit and matter. I don't think that we are just matter, I don't think our consciousness is a pure product of neurological functioning so to me the self is either completely removed from the body if that is possible, it is unable to work with the body in the same way it did before, or it's sleeping.

If some pure, nonmaterial self remains, is it, too vegetative

It's a tough call and I don't necessarily know how the theologian would respond though I would guess that their answer would probably go something like that there is a spirit and a body, spirit I would guess at this point, would hold the basic personality traits, the body the heredity traits, the who is formed at the point of impact but it doesn't disappear if there later becomes a problem with the functioning of the body nor does it disappear with a dysfunction in the psyche.

[Dragar]

spirit I would guess at this point, would hold the basic personality traits...

But a person's personality is changed when the brain changes. So which are the 'real' personality traits, held in the 'spirt', and which are the personality traits which are constantly changing?

You've heard the expression 'you never walk through the same river twice'? You never talk to the same person twice, either.

[Sweetie]

But a person's personality is changed when the brain changes.

I guess I just don't know what to say to that. Give me a specific example, I know practically nothing about these things, I just have alot of questions and I have a working theory built on what I do know. Doesn't mean my theory is accurate, it's a theory, but it does mean that I need something more specifically to look at.

Are you referring to multiple personalities in this case? Does the personality go back and forth, was there indeed an original personality? When they manage to get rid of some of the other personalities, could they actually get rid of the original in process?

I heard of cases where when there was different personalities at different times in the body, it came with different effects in the body but I don't know how well that was documented but it's fascinating to think about, but in the case of ulcers or things like that, the one personality had one the other didn't and this is in the same body, but like I said, that's a tidbit I had "heard" but never researched so it could indeed be false.

So which are the 'real' personality traits, held in the 'spirt', and which are the personality traits which are constantly changing?

I don't know. Can you list some traits to discuss?

You've heard the expression 'you never walk through the same river twice'? You never talk to the same person twice, either.

I happen to agree that a large part of us is changing but I can't say for certain that there's not some of us that isn't. It is "I" who has this personality that is, I don't know what it is I just know it's very different from alot of people I interact with, I know it was perciptible in my early years, my weaknesses are still my weaknesses, my tendencies still my tendencies, my capabilities still my capabilities and I think it's I who decided to overcome weaknesses, to decide between tendencies, to do what I will with my capabilities.

If you talked to me ten years ago you would be talking to a very shy and timid person who said "sorry" to the point of irritation, but it was I who was timid and now I'm not so much. I felt timid then so I responded one way, I no longer feel timid so I respond a different way but is it really not the same person who is responding, indeed? A more mature person perhaps? A person likely to respond one way and a different way at a different time. Alot of people would not ever have been likely to respond the way I do now or did then because they're different and no I don't think determinism itself settles the matter.

[Zoot]

I guess I just don't know what to say to that. Give me a specific example, I know practically nothing about these things.

No alcohol where you live? :)

[Zoot]

I can echo Newman in this case when confronted with the doctrine of transubstantiation as revelation from a God and Church he had come to believe in and believe was speaking truly, "what do I know of substance and matter?" ie: How can I say it isn't so?

I concern myself primarily with what people mean by words and concepts, and worry about whether or not such a thing exists afterwards.


Why do Buddhists feel free to be rationalists and then alternatively say that there is reason beyond reason and that can't be reached through reason ie: koans?

I'm not a Buddhist.


My question is first of all, is there indeed a total personality change?

Over the course of a lifetime, often. There is very little about who I am now that is the same as who "I" was 20 years ago.


I just think it's more complex than what you might and I'm just not dogmatic about it in the same way you are in this case, the rationalist forcing answers.

I don't call myself a rationalist. I just make a habit of saying things that make sense, and having reasons for saying them. I think many of your preconceptions about Rationalist Bogeymen are a bit mistaken. Your posts are often scattered with little jabs at this group of people in your head - "of course, the rationalists would say this, bah! spit! fie!" What's so bad about making sense? Why so defensive?

You say it's more complex than what I might think. Simplicity's not such a bad thing. An awful lot of problems are shown to be empty when you take the attitude that the "self" or "person" is a psycho-sociologically constructed entity, something like the borders between countries. They're there, but only through a kind of agreement that is taken for granted.

Experientially, what persists from one experience to the next? We've been raised to think, "That's easy - I persist from one experience to the next." So what's this I? Some say the body, but that's in constant flux with its environment, never static. So some say the mind, but that's also in constant flux - thoughts, memories, feelings, attitudes, likes, dislikes, loves, fears are constantly changing. So some say the soul, but really that's just another name for their mind, or it's this idea of an ontological substance, an actual thing that performs or experiences all these things. But then, what makes one different from another? The problem remains.

So the mystics take a step back and say, well, the I is what remains, and the I is beyond personality. Behind my ever-changing experiences and behind everyone else's ever-changing experiences is this persisting I, the I of everyone. So deep down, we are the same I, and the experience of this is the experience of universal love and identification found in the writings of mystics of all religions.

But what is that I that persists from one moment to the next? They say, "It is the Experiencer. The great Subject." And other words with capitals at the start. But what is a subject without an object? What is a subject or object without a perception? The talk they have often gives the impression that there is this "I" that persists even when there are no experiences - it lies dormant somehow, in the same way people think they persist through total unconsciousness, just lying dormant.

But really, the experience of "I" is an aspect of an event, the event of perception. There is no I outside of the context of an experience. In other words, the "I" is impersonal, or is at least the personal aspect of a transpersonal event. The "I" no more exists independently of perceptions than the side of a cube exists without the cube itself. And to speak of bare subjects, I's, wandering occasionally bumping into things and giving rise to perceptions is like talking about 2-dimensional cubesides wandering around until occasionally six of them bump into each other and form a cube.

Nothing persists from one experience to the next. The only thing two experiences have in common is that they are experiences.

[Sweetie]

No alcohol where you live? :)

Does the lowering of inhibititions make a personality change?

My mother just gets more specifically her when she's drinking, some of her charachteristics and weaknesses are just exaggerated and not met by the things she would meet them with when she's sober.

[Crumb]

uh never mind :doh:

[Dragar]

I guess I just don't know what to say to that. Give me a specific example,

As Zoot said, alcohol. Hormones. They're good enough to make my point.

I don't know. Can you list some traits to discuss?

What changes due to alcohol consumption? Confidence, loudness, self-restraint....Or what about just due to a traumatic experience?

but is it really not the same person who is responding, indeed?

No. You've already said that you're personality is not the same. Are two people with different personalities the 'same' person? I suppose they might be, if personality was not a property of a person.

[Sweetie]

Over the course of a lifetime, often. There is very little about who I am now that is the same as who "I" was 20 years ago.

That's growth and maturity, you're just advanced within yourself. Was there anything cocky about the child you used to be? :P

I don't call myself a rationalist.

I know that, but you do a very bad job of showing yourself as not one, to me you change the name of the game as it suits you.

I just make a habit of saying things that make sense, and having reasons for saying them.

Right, you just think you're more justified and that's great.

I think many of your preconceptions about Rationalist Bogeymen are a bit mistaken. Your posts are often scattered with little jabs at this group of people in your head - "of course, the rationalists would say this, bah! spit! fie!" What's so bad about making sense? Why so defensive?

Actuallly, I called you one because I know you try very hard not to be identified as one from my previous interactions with you. I call myself a rationalist, so there's no defensive here.

You say it's more complex than what I might think.

I think it's more complex than that, yes.

Simplicity's not such a bad thing.

Right, if it's true that something is as simple as you'd like to make it sound but it that borders the region of trying to make something fit when it doesn't necessarily or trying to find answers in the Universe because you need them and not because you necessarily have them. I like to continually compare you to me because you are so against everything I am about and yet, to me, if what I am about is so wrong, then you are the same thing at the opposite end and I can't make your theory work for me, not yet, if ever. I keep going back to basic things and your concepts just end up having no meaning, almost the same thing my concepts do for you, I haven't as of yet had a good enough reason to accept the assumptions that you do.

I'm Theresa btw, been here since July but felt like coming out of the closet today. :wave:

[Dragar]

Ah-ha! Hey Theresa! :wave:

[Crumb]

I don't think there is a good way to separate the following two possibilities

(1) The personality is a result of neurons in the brain and injury, hormones, and chemicals (etc) do alter and change one's personality

or
(2) The personality is a separate immaterial spirit or soul attached to the body and injury, hormones, and chemicals (etc) don't alter the personality, but does change the ways a person can manifest their personality.

Is there data that could resolve this?

[Dragar]

Is there data that could resolve this?

Not really. But you end up wondering, how could a person possibly start believing in the second alternative anyway? It's like Carl Sagan's invisible dragon in the garage.

[Sweetie]

As Zoot said, alcohol. Hormones. They're good enough to make my point.

I completely disagree.



What changes due to alcohol consumption? Confidence, loudness, self-restraint....Or what about just due to a traumatic experience?

My mother is a different person when she's drinking? Like I said, she is just exaggerated, she's very sensitive but seemingly strong and confident on the outside, when she's drinking every time at family functions, she just makes it so that she can't or doesn't want to control those emotions, they're just on the surface whereas otherwise, she keeps them in check. Not a different person and not different emotions and different sensitivities, it's the same just exaggerated.

No. You've already said that you're personality is not the same. Are two people with different personalities the 'same' person? I suppose they might be, if personality was not a property of a person.

My personality is the same, my filter is different.

[Dragar]

My personality is the same, my filter is different.

What's a 'filter'?

My mother is a different person when she's drinking?

Yes.

[Crumb]

I suppose we need a good definition of personality then.

[Dragar]

I suppose we need a good definition of personality then.

Yeah. I'd assumed a personality was a person's behaviour. Obviously this isn't the definition we're all using.

[copiae]

I think as well that there are certain personality traits that are always there and will always be there regardless of environment and personal growth just like our body changes but our scent will never change, our neurons are constantly being replaced I think, but we still remember, we can change the way we think but not who we are, so to I think our being changes but there are some things about it that will never change, our quirks perhaps, our sense of humour, our way of expressing love, our heart of hearts, whatever it is, talents, I don't know. Some will bring up multiple personalities as a response to this, and it's definately something to consider though I don't know that it negates my theory at present in any real way though I could be wrong, certainly.


Hey sweetie... I hope this has resulted in the intellectual exercise you wanted :).


So, what you are saying is that everyone has a core personality, that is constant, unchanging, and then the rest of their personality, that can be changed? If this is the case, then how does the core personality form in the first place?

This has been discussed in kind further down, but I do have a question for you: are 'you' the same 'you' that existed a year ago, a month ago, a week ago, a day ago, or 5 minutes ago?

Also, where do you (or anyone), think that the self ends, and the rest of reality begins, if there is such a point at all?



There is no self. People are not things; they are occurrences, complex recurring patterns performed by the universe, which is the only atom. The pattern of habitual identification with finite and changeable phenomena is the source of all suffering and much delusion. Decisions are experiences, and there is no experiencer.


When you say the universe is the only atom, you are saying that the universe, including the self, is one irreducible component?

[Sweetie]

Ah-ha! Hey Theresa! :wave:

Hey Dragar! I miss many of you guys and am glad some of you made it here!

Zoot probably won't talk to me now, though. :sadcheer:

:shrug:

[Zoot]

Right, if it's true that something is as simple as you'd like to make it sound but it that borders the region of trying to make something fit when it doesn't necessarily or trying to find answers in the Universe because you need them and not because you necessarily have them. I like to continually compare you to me because you are so against everything I am about and yet, to me, if what I am about is so wrong, then you are the same thing at the opposite end and I can't make your theory work for me, not yet, if ever. I keep going back to basic things and your concepts just end up having no meaning, almost the same thing my concepts do for you, I haven't as of yet had a good enough reason to accept the assumptions that you do.

Because questions on message boards are often quite specific, threads have specific topics, and the debates get narrower and narrower, it's difficult for me to convey my worldview in a holistic sense. On individual issues, I'm defined by positions on those issues - no free will (or more, that free will is deterministic), no self, meaninglessness of spiritual concepts, atheist, anarchist, reductionist, materialist, whatever.

On each of those questions, issues, threads, my position tends to seem negative, because I'm disagreeing with people's positions, often in ways that seem counterintuitive. Do I believe in God? No. Do I believe in free will? No. Is there a persisting self? No. Do I believe in the spiritual realm? No. Do I support government? No.

With the exception of the latter, I don't believe in those things because I don't think that they are fundamentally intelligible. But to people who find them intelligible and existent, that's just another way of saying "no". So I come across sounding negative on each of these issues, and the picture it probably paints of me is a patchwork quilt of denials.

It's not. I make assertions and have values and believe in things, but they are things that are unintelligible from most people's perspectives, like they're in another language. And just as it's hard to learn a language one word at a time, it's hard to make sense of my worldview one notion at a time.

That's why I'm currently starting from the ground up on www.gonzotheology.com to present all of my views as a coherent whole. I've only just started, but hopefully when I'm done, they'll all make sense in terms of each other, rather than seeming just plain crazy individually.


I'm Theresa btw, been here since July but felt like coming out of the closet today

And there I was on the verge of thinking I could talk two Chesterton groupies into emailing each other.

[Farren]

Theresa, there's a mountain of literature that corroborates the position that almost everything we identify as personality traits are directly linked to specific bodily functions.

I strongly recommend you read The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and An Antropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks - not just because both books deal with the issues we're discussing, but because they make for fascinating reading. Sacks is a neurologist and the books are basically case studies of people who suffered specific physical brain damage and the specific and peculiar effects it had on their perception, cognition and behaviour. He narrates their stories in a conversational rather than a technical fashion, with a lot of empathy for the subjects, so its easy reading.

I could point you to a lot of other stuff but I'd have to go dig up old books and scientific journals to remember their titles and most of it is more academic and dry. Suffice to say a vast amount of study has been done on how specific damage to the brain causes specific alteration to the expressed person - because this is a very fast route to expanding our knowledge about brain functioning.

Among the very specific effects of brain damage narrated by Sacks and others:

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The strange tales of Phineas Gage (http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/phineas-gage)

This is one of the most famous cases. Phineas Gage had an iron rod propelled through his forebrain by an explosive force and, while retaining his memories, facility for speech and so on, underwent a complete personality change:

No Longer Gage

Miraculously, Gage suffered no motor or speech impairments as a result of his accident. His memory was intact, and he gradually regained his physical strength. Dr. Harlow initially concluded that Gage was fortunate because his injury involved an expendable part of the brain. But in fact something was lost to Gage that terrible afternoon. His personality underwent a dramatic shift, changing his disposition to such a degree that his friends barely recognized him. "Gage," they said, "was no longer Gage."

Once a polite and caring person, Gage became prone to selfish behavior and bursts of profanity. Dr. Harlow said it was if Gage lost the balance between "his intellectual faculty and animal propensities." He had no respect for social graces and often lied about his accomplishments. Previously energetic and focused, he was now erratic and unreliable. He had trouble forming and executing plans. There was no evidence of forethought in his actions, and he often made choices against his best interests. No amount of pleading or lecturing from Dr. Harlow made any difference to Gage. Eventually, his capricious and offensive behavior cost him his job with the railroad contractors. It was not any physical disability that prevented Gage from working; it was his character.

This was a loving, caring and hardworking man who became vulgar, offensive and selfish in a single day. I start with the example of Gage because I think it directly relates to the idea of some kind of "essential self" that simply uses the brain as a tool. If the essential self doesn't dictate whether a person is selfish and disrepectful or loving and generous, restrained or salacious, hardworking or lazy, polite or vulgar, then what role does the essential self play, exactly?

Generally, damage to the forebrain has the effect of making people more animalistic, compulsive and selfish in their behaviour. It has been seriously suggested that many criminals have smaller forebrains than their law-abiding fellow citizens.

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Agnosias:

Sacks details quite a number of forms of agnosia, each caused by damage to specific parts of the brain. IIRC Agnosia literally means "without knowledge". Afflicted people are not only ignorant of something, but more importantly are unable to know it. i.e. They have a persistent ignorance. In the cases Sacks presents, this inability to know is directly linked to specific brain damage. Often the suffrer is perfectly normal in every other respect but for their specific agnosia. A few variants:

Facial agnosia - Sufferers are unable to distinguish between one face and another. If they glance at a painted portrait, they don't even immediately recognise it as a face. They must first consider the fact that it is oval in shape, is roughyl symetrical, has a groove near the bottom and so on then arrive at the conclusion that its a face.

In the case of one man Sacks writes about, a concert pianist (IIRC), after suffering brain damage the man had to identify his wife and other loved ones from their clothes and other clues, because he could not recognise them from their faces. He was normal in all other respects.

Category agnosias - People permanently lose knowledge or have incorrect knowledge of specific categories. One man had pets and furniture permanently mixed up and would literally sit on the dog and pet the couch as a result of his brain damage.

Disability agnosias - People who have lost the use of a limb, eye or whatever, will sometimes be unable to understand that they no longer have that faculty as a result of specific brain damage. In such cases the person will continuously attempt to walk on a leg that doesn't exist, pick something up with an arm that doesn't work - or even insist that they can see everything clearly when they are blind, and grow dispirited and angry when they inexplicably keep crashing into things.

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Lobotomies are performed by cutting the Corpus Collosum which connects the two hemispheres of the brain, leaving only the older (evolution-wise) portions of the brain connected. In times gone by they were used as a in cases where people had severe and life-threatening epilepsy. I'm not sure what the current status of lobotomy is but I do know studies were done on lobotomised subjects by Roger Sperry and others.

Among the more fascinating results of these "split brain" studies was the fact that the split hemispheres may have distinct personalities to start with and certainly become more individual and idiosynchratic after they are seperated. Communication can be isolated to one side of the brain by speaking in one ear while blocking the other and requiring that the person write their response with a particular hand.

By proceeding in this manner researchers were able to determine that the two halves of the brain might like different colours, find different people attractive and have totally different ambitions. Although human brains are assymmetrical and each side has specific advantages (the left, for instance, has better "hard wired" equipment for language use), most functions can be learned by both halves and split brain experiments point to two semi-autonomous (obviously still connected by the lizard brain and body) personalities.

This capacity for the brain, when divided into parts, to have independent personalities provides compelling evidence that the "self" is not a singular essence but simply an emergent quality of the physical architecture of a human being.

-----------

I've related a tiny portion of the information that informs my position but I assure you there is a vast amount of research on the topic. Critics may deride such efforts as being cold and cynical and unable to examine that most important quintessence, the seemingly self-evident human "spirit", but invariably (IMO) such language is a mask for cognitive dissonance, the desire to cling to a cherished notion despite vast amounts of evidence to the contrary.

Earlier in this thread the concept of knowledge that cannot be spoken, only experienced, was raised. I'd like to point out that such ideas (mainly from Taoism and Buddhism) are not at all incompatible with scientific study and discourse. Scientific philosophy acknowledges the distinction between qualia, or the experience of being something - and the experience of seeing something or describing it.

Science largely concerns itself with the latter, but has no hostility to the idea that experiencing something is fundamentally different from observing someone having the experience.

[Zoot]

Yes, science does not have a monopoly on truth or knowledge, and is in fact hopelessly inadequate when it comes to phenomenological issues - issues dealing with experience as experience.

[Sweetie]

Because questions on message boards are often quite specific, threads have specific topics, and the debates get narrower and narrower, it's difficult for me to convey my worldview in a holistic sense. On individual issues, I'm defined by positions on those issues - no free will (or more, that free will is deterministic), no self, meaninglessness of spiritual concepts, atheist, anarchist, reductionist, materialist, whatever.

Really, wow, a revelation. :P

On each of those questions, issues, threads, my position tends to seem negative, because I'm disagreeing with people's positions, often in ways that seem counterintuitive.

I know how it works.

Do I believe in God? No. Do I believe in free will? No. Is there a persisting self? No. Do I believe in the spiritual realm? No. Do I support government? No.

I know this already.

With the exception of the latter, I don't believe in those things because I don't think that they are fundamentally intelligible.

And this, which I already brought up. Yes, I know you think these things are fundamentally intelligible or as you usually say, incoherent but I think you are constantly undermining your own case which leaves you in the realm of unintelligibility.

But to people who find them intelligible and existent, that's just another way of saying "no". So I come across sounding negative on each of these issues, and the picture it probably paints of me is a patchwork quilt of denials.

Well no, I think you hold a system positively, that's clear, your fundamental assumptions and the incompalibility of each of the things you hold together and their use practically speaking are what I generally have a problem with.

It's not. I make assertions and have values and believe in things, but they are things that are unintelligible from most people's perspectives, like they're in another language. And just as it's hard to learn a language one word at a time, it's hard to make sense of my worldview one notion at a time.

Well yes, I have this problem when communicating as well, however, I'm not that unfamiliar with your concepts and I unfortunately have this memory that picks up a whole bunch of little things and stores a whole bunch of crap which is mostly useless except when it serves to add a whole bunch of little things up.

That's why I'm currently starting from the ground up on www.gonzotheology.com to present all of my views as a coherent whole. I've only just started, but hopefully when I'm done, they'll all make sense in terms of each other, rather than seeming just plain crazy individually.

It's not a just plain crazy pile individually, I see why you find it coherent. I though, unfortunately think you are defined in your opposition more than the system you formed positively.



And there I was on the verge of thinking I could talk two Chesterton groupies into emailing each other.

I'm not a Chesterton groupie, I just wish people who claim to know everything could show that they have any real idea of what he had to say before they say with certainty that he is wrong or make positive claims about him.

I have more of a problem with communicating my ideas than you do but at least perhaps you can understand what it's like which is why I oftentimes make references to those who are capable of saying what I have such difficulty saying.

I don't have a system with which to lay my ideas down, I don't have the training, I don't have the format, I don't have the tools to explore them through already formed systems.

I don't claim to know everything, I have no more than a Gr. 12 education, my own theories, and alot of questions. I search for weaknesses first and focus primarily on them normally which is generally all I can do.

[Sweetie]

Theresa, there's a mountain of literature that corroborates the position that almost everything we identify as personality traits are directly linked to specific bodily functions.

I suppose I never said it wasn't possible that they weren't so I'll say that for starters. I generally don't like to set anything down anything positively for fear of it seeming like I hold such a thing positively.

Now, thank-you for references, they are always useful. I will search tomorrow to see if there are any references and studies that indicate the opposite, I will first see if there are any differences of opinion and if there is any more studies to corroborate or put things taken for granted in these studies into question then, if such a thing is possible, I will read both simultaneously if I'm up to the daunting task.

Even from a Christian perspective I'm not certain about some of these things, "there is no longer male or female". Personality traits could indeed have nothing to do with anything. It's very hard to set down something when I don't even know where I'm starting from, where to lay the bricks down but thoughts and ideas being what they are, fluent. :wink:

[Zoot]

And this, which I already brought up. Yes, I know you think these things are fundamentally intelligible or as you usually say, incoherent but I think you are constantly undermining your own case which leaves you in the realm of unintelligibility.

Example?


Well no, I think you hold a system positively, that's clear, your fundamental assumptions and the incompalibility of each of the things you hold together and their use practically speaking are what I generally have a problem with.

Example?


I'm not a Chesterton groupie, I just wish people who claim to know everything could show that they have any real idea of what he had to say before they say with certainty that he is wrong or make positive claims about him.

I don't claim to know everything, but I know Chesterton and I know why he's a hero to people who try to balance their desires for both reason and faith.


I don't claim to know everything, I have no more than a Gr. 12 education, my own theories, and alot of questions. I search for weaknesses first and focus primarily on them normally which is generally all I can do.

Some people I go easy on. I don't go easy on you. Usually that's a sign of respect, or at least affection. The day I say, "Yes, dear, that's lovely - God and faith and personal identity and all that. Well, I don't quite agree, but isn't it a lovely day?", that day you should worry and probably feel insulted.

[Sweetie]

I don't claim to know everything, but I know Chesterton and I know why he's a hero to people who try to balance their desires for both reason and faith.

Do you really think I'm someone who believes everything they read? I'm absurd, I love Frank J. Sheed and I have found myself wanting to hold something true at times even when I wasn't certain of everything that had to do with what he was saying and exactly how that piece fit into the puzzle, and you know what, I couldn't assume his thoughts in these cases. I checked the impulse, I can't hold something unless I have reason to, I can't put something down unless I have reason to, I can't claim to agree with something unless I have reason to and this is a man who I've personally never really so far disagreed with about anything so part of me says I should just trust it, I'm most likely to agree with it in the end but I can't, I simply cannot.

I can say well his thought is this, it's a starting point but it is not my thought unless it makes sense to me.

The thing about Chesterton is not that I need him, I don't. I see what he sees, I don't need him in order to see it, I need him to help me explain what I see. He is not my hero, he never saved me from anything, he hasn't given me anything but words I can use because we are both looking at the same case from the same eyes. I saw what Chesterton saw when I was 13, I came to his conclusions and I chose to be Catholic and I never heard of him until I was 25. I see positive and negative, Chesterton meets the negative, Aquinas the positive, Newman all the in between but I held all three at once without ever hearing of these men. Something overpowering caused me to go Catholic and severely so, a point when if I said I didn't see it and could find any way out, it would have been a lie.

I still see the same thing, I still can't escape. I would love to, well, I would and I wouldn't. Pros and cons Catholic, pros and cons atheist. I would love to die and have me end, I would love not to have reason for a guilty conscience, I would love to have many things I really, really want and in the scope of things, God isn't doesn't make it as a priority on my list.

When you say you understand him, that his reasonings were so useless and defective, you are saying that to me, the problem is, you haven't yet proven it to me.

[Zoot]

I still see the same thing, I still can't escape. I would love to, well, I would and I wouldn't. Pros and cons Catholic, pros and cons atheist. I would love to die and have me end, I would love not to have reason for a guilty conscience, I would love to have many things I really, really want and in the scope of things, God isn't doesn't make it as a priority on my list.

Would you love to believe something in spite of wanting to believe otherwise? That would be a pretty sacrifice.


When you say you understand him, that his reasonings were so useless and defective, you are saying that to me, the problem is, you haven't yet proven it to me.

Well, I've given you plenty of examples. But you're right. Last time I promised a full-quoted critique of The Madman and didn't follow through. I'll see if I can get around to it this week.

Now, I'm eagerly awaiting your examples of my assertions being inconsistent with each other, and examples of me undermining my own position.

[justaman]

*weighs in*

If nothing else, I think the biggest indication that the self is entirely a natural phenomenon is the fact that it clearly grows as we grow biologically. If the self was something static and mutually exclusive to our interactions with reality, then there should be no reason why it appears to learn so much about itself at such a consistent rate.

I was watching this fascinating documentary series from the BBC (they do the best documentaries in the world. If there isn't a British accent behind the commentator, I'm not going to believe it. All the cool, zany, whizzbang American productions on extreme animals I loathe.)

Anyhow this documentary was exploring intelligence and consciousness in children as they developed. Children aged between about 2 and 4 have very simple concepts of themselves. They are generally unable to understand that they will die or even what death actually means. They can only really think one dimension at a time. A clever experiment they did was to take two long glasses and fill them to the same height with juice. They then poured one glass into a short fat glass so the water-heights were much different. When asked which of the two had more juice, they all said the long tall glass. It isn't until they are about 8 or so that they are able to think in more than one dimension and realise that there is also width as well as height.

At ages 5-6 children generally experience a self-realisation and become self-conscious. Now you find children either becoming quite shy or perhaps overly exuberant. In both instances, the kids are realising that their actions are being observed by other 'selves' and are being considered.

It seems to me that since the self developes so predictably along with the body that it would seem disingenuous to try and disengage the two.

[Soubrette]

Hey sweetie :)

Another area of research that might interest you is the split brain person. Usually to control epilepsy - the two hemispheres of these people's brains have been split so they no longer communicate.

split brain website (http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/UBNRP/Split_Brain/Behavior.html)

One view of the experiments done is that these people appear to have a separate consciousness within each side of the brain.

it's interesting stuff to be sure :)

Sou

[Soubrette]

Dammit I've just Farren's reply again and see that he's mentioned split brain patients too :fuming:

Bloody good post Farren :)

Sou

[Sweetie]

Now, I'm eagerly awaiting your examples of my assertions being inconsistent with each other, and examples of me undermining my own position.

wtf is that all about? :wtf: You expect me to back up my claims? *pshaw* :wink:

Just general things mind you but we would have to take it elsewhere or we'll get this from livius :whup: :P . Never felt well-versed enough though to take you on directly and get anywhere but perhaps I'm capable. :chin: It would be fun/interesting at least, I should be free/allowed to think/concentrate from Tuesday on.

[Sweetie]

Dammit I've just Farren's reply again and see that he's mentioned split brain patients too :fuming:

Bloody good post Farren :)

Sou

You know what's interesting too? Did you know there's like a drug/hormone/chemical that can make you gamble or make you really want to gamble? That's just weird, take the drug feel compelled to gamble, quit taking it, you're fine supposedly. :chin:

[Soubrette]

You know what's interesting too? Did you know there's like a drug/hormone/chemical that can make you gamble or make you really want to gamble? That's just weird, take the drug feel compelled to gamble, quit taking it, you're fine supposedly. :chin:

Is this what you were thinking of sweetie?

BBC report on gambling laws in the UK (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4324365.stm)

In America, pheromones have reportedly been released from machines to encourage aggressive gambling

Sou