On the self.

[Jack Jack]

What is "I"? Am I my body? Am I my soul ? Am I both of them? Am I something else entirely? In what way is "I" different than "You"? What is the "self" ?

Most people don't give it a second thought. They'll say "I" is whatever I'm talking about when I am using the first person and call it a day.

However, here is the problem with such a definition :

"I" is whatever I'm talking about when I am using the first person

It's not unlike saying : a cat is whatever I'm talking about whenever I am referring to a cat. You can't have a proper definition of a concept if the concept you are trying to define is in that definition. It's called a circular definition and is utterly useless. In a proper definition, we need a genus and a specie, as in Cat : feline that can breed and have fertile offspring with that thing sleeping on my couch (if it's a male) or feline that can breed and have fertile offspring with whatever is a feline and can breed and have fertile offspring with that thing sleeping on my couch (if it's a female).

The goal of this thread is to come up with a genus and a specie for the concept of "I".

Genus : The set of qualia
Specie : with a confirmed existence and a clear and distinct nature.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of a quale (qualia in plural form) a quale is the property of a sensible experience that "It does something to experience this or that". More simply, qualia are the way things seem to us. Redness, the pain of a headache, the taste of wine are all exemples of qualia.

And now is the part where I must defend my proposition for a definition.

And alternate definition would be : "Self" that applies to me. However, that tells almost nothing if we don't know what a self is. Instead of defining self, I'll list some of the properties associated with the Self.
The Self is individual/differentiable : There exist two distinct Selves A and B in which A is different from B.
The Self is Transferable : It makes sense to transfer Self A in situation X into situation Y where Self B was. The result would be Self A having P behavior in Y whereas self B would have Q behavior in Y. This means plots à la Freaky Friday (self "mother" in situation of "daughter's life" having "mother behavior" instead of "daughter behavior" and self "daughter" in situation of "mother's life" having "daughter behavior" instead of "mother behavior" makes sense.
The Self is Muable : The Self can gain and lose attributes over the course of events. This means a true idea on a self can become false, and a false idea on a self can become true, provided it is not both at the same point in time. I can change.
The Self is Experienceable : The self interract with things that are not itself.
The Self is Introspective (which includes aware) : The self has knowledge of it's own nature and existence. This knowledge is intrinsect to the self ; It does not rely on events exterior to the self. I know that I am me and what it's like to be me.
The Self is Extraspective by extrapolation of it's introspectiveness. The self can apply knowledge of it's own nature and existence to deduce non-trivial things about things which are not itself. I know you can get angry for X reason because I do get angry for X reason myself.
The Self is divisible : There exist more than one non-trivial substances which together, makes a set that is the self ; It is possible to conceive the self as the Sum of at least two distinct and non-trivial substances. This is necessary for the Self to be muable : an undivisible substance cannot lose an attribute, and once it gains an attribute, is no longer indivisible as it can be conceived without that attribute (who are properties of non-trivial substances).

Here are things which cannot be part of the self.

The Body. The body is not introspective. I do not have an intrinsect knowledge of my hand. Also, I "feel" to have a hand regardless of if I really have a hand, as amputees will tell you.
The Brain. If you define a brain as the sum of the neural cells, then it is not introspective (no cell is aware). If you define a brain as the network of neural cells, then it is undivisible, a network is a unit. If you define a brain as the sum of both, then it is untransferable because as a whole, it is shaped by past experience, which is part of the situation, which brings us to :
Personnal Experience : That is not transferable because past experience is part of a situation.

This is why I think the self that applies to me is the set of qualia with a confirmed existence and a clear and distinct nature. For the only qualia with a confirmed existence and a clear and distinct nature for any given self are those that this particular self experienced first-hand. This is because qualia are, by nature, impossible to communicate or aprehend without a first-hand experience.

I'd love to explicit how each property of the self applies to qualia, but now it's late and I have to go to sleep.


But, as said by Habermas, "Instead of imposing unto others an idea that I wish to be an universal law, I shall expose my idea to others so that we can see, by disscussion, it's claim to universality". Dicussion is good as it can mix different people's experience and intellect ^^.

 

[billymills]

First off, I don't know why you're trying to categorize a metaphysical concept in the same method we treat living organisms. I have no idea what you could accomplish by determining a genus and species for the self.

To me, the self is merely the algorithm on which I operate. Some of it I'm conscious of, some of it operates unconsciously (see: two branches of the nervous system).

The self is individual, as we each have individual DNA which allows us to function.
The self is non-transferable. Sorry Freaky Friday may have been interesting, but the self is directly related to the body. The self is built out of the nervous system meaning it can not function outside the body.

 

[Morm]

I mean this in the least trolly, most non-offensive way possible: This thread OP is completely up its own ass with pseudo-intellectualism. I say that because quite frankly I don't know how else to say it that would be more "cong appropriate".

You cannot come up with a species or genus for "I", because right off the bat species is more inclusive by a wide margin than "I" ever could be, unless of course you're a member of some sort of super-super organism which I can assure you, we are not.

Let me qualify:

A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

Even in the realm of subspecies or even breed, morph or race you cannot hope to accomplish this. Like Billymills said, you can't take this metaphyiscal concept and impose science upon it.

"I" is not separable from the body and is fully non transferable. I'd like to see the research that successfully reports to the world that I am wrong. The body and brain are the "I", insofar as the definition is used (ie the word, in our langauge, at this point has a firm meaning); I replied to this thread or I am thinking this thread is up its own ass. In the first example I is very clearly my body physically putting into motion the will of myself, as the body serves as a vessel for myself- feeding, moving and replying on Smogon. Meanwhile, the second example is simply the mind stating its opinion. The mind represents self in that that is where I reside; better yet, it is what creates and is myself. Simply put, in both examples, the body is needed (for fuel, protection, etc) and so is the mind (duh) to create and be self.

Brain function and therefore "I" or "self" is something completely biological. "I" is a function of our capacity for sentience, selfish thought and society progressing this thought as well as personality. Until we understand how personality and conciousness manifest, this concept of "I" you propose is completely metaphysical and in this case is a vain effort to try to "intellectualize up the place". "I" can also be recognized fully in a third person view, or even one separating mind and body from personality like you seem to be trying to do. It all means the same thing, but "I" is by far the least convoluted way of executing this.

 

[Firestorm]

I is a pronoun.

 

[Jack Jack]

On the genus and specie part : Maybe anglophone philosophy class use a different word for a philosophical definition. Anyway, it's far from unheard of to have concept defined this way by great authors.

Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative : (genus) Imperative (specie) that always applies
Nils Christie's punishment : (genus) Pain (specie) that is inflicted intentionnally.

Maybe Genus and specific difference would be more appropriate? Try to give me a more appropriate word instead of bashing on an idea that does not deserve it.

First off, I don't know why you're trying to categorize a metaphysical concept in the same method we treat living organisms. I have no idea what you could accomplish by determining a genus and species for the self.

To me, the self is merely the algorithm on which I operate. Some of it I'm conscious of, some of it operates unconsciously (see: two branches of the nervous system).

The self is individual, as we each have individual DNA which allows us to function.
The self is non-transferable. Sorry Freaky Friday may have been interesting, but the self is directly related to the body. The self is built out of the nervous system meaning it can not function outside the body.

The thing about Freaky Friday is that, even if it is impossible, it makes sense. If I explain the plot to you, you can understand what it is about. Of course then you can say it's impossible. The mother's and daughter's make a soul exchange and live for a day each into the body of the author. The self is transferable, not because Freaky Friday is possible, it isn't, but because it makes sense.

Suppose we have this movie : It's called Weird Wednesday or whatever. Alice and Bob are roomates, they live different lives and have different carreers. One day, Alice wake up in Bob's room, with the body of Bob, with the personality of Bob and convinced she is Bob and goes on to live Bob's life for a day. Likewise, Bob wakes up in Alice's room, with Alice's body, with the personality of Alice, etc. What I would think of this plot, and you would surely agree is : ... but nothing special even happened...

"I" is not separable from the body and is fully non transferable. I'd like to see the research that successfully reports to the world that I am wrong. The body and brain are the "I", insofar as the definition is used (ie the word, in our langauge, at this point has a firm meaning); I replied to this thread or I am thinking this thread is up its own ass. In the first example I is very clearly my body physically putting into motion the will of myself, as the body serves as a vessel for myself- feeding, moving and replying on Smogon. Meanwhile, the second example is simply the mind stating its opinion. The mind represents self in that that is where I reside; better yet, it is what creates and is myself. Simply put, in both examples, the body is needed (for fuel, protection, etc) and so is the mind (duh) to create and be self.

Brain function and therefore "I" or "self" is something completely biological. "I" is a function of our capacity for sentience, selfish thought and society progressing this thought as well as personality. Until we understand how personality and conciousness manifest, this concept of "I" you propose is completely metaphysical and in this case is a vain effort to try to "intellectualize up the place". "I" can also be recognized fully in a third person view, or even one separating mind and body from personality like you seem to be trying to do. It all means the same thing, but "I" is by far the least convoluted way of executing this.

Don't you think that if the body is but a vessel, it cannot qualify to be the substance of the self ? How about a philosophical zombie. For the purpose of this argument, a body of flesh that is behaves like a normal person but is "inhabited" by nobody? Does it not makes sense to imagine a humanshaped lump of flesh acting exactly like every a human being except for the part that no one considers this body to be "his"? The body is to the self what the skull is to the brain : without it the protection of the former, the latter dies, but the former is not the latter.

As for the brain, I have trouble seeing how the brain can be aware. I have difficulty how we can physically observe self-awareness in a brain. We can observe manifestations of it, but I don't think anything physical can be aware of it's own existence.

I'm no neurologist, but what I know about psychology and biology seems to show me that a brain is not willed. From what I know, the brain act in a certain way because the impulses, chemicals and ions are set in a certain way. If somebody with relevant expertise in neurology can say we have empirically confirmed the process of decision making, that is, brain cells takes initiatives instead of just, following the standard information treatment procedure ( I have no idea how to establish a protocol for that! ), then that person would be kind to manifest itself.

If you are still not convinced your self cannot be any physical entity, think about this. In about ten years, approximately every single atom of your body will have been replaced. Your cells die all the time and your body takes a couple of year to regenerate itself down to every single cell. And yet, after all these changes you are still the same, provided you were older than 30 YO. (Crystallising personality, by the age of 30, development psychology class told me your personality stops changing significantly.)

 

[billymills]

Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative : (genus) Imperative (specie) that always applies
Nils Christie's punishment : (genus) Pain (specie) that is inflicted intentionnally.

Maybe Genus and specific difference would be more appropriate? Try to give me a more appropriate word instead of bashing on an idea that does not deserve it.

Ok, I did not assume Genus and species simply meant a specific type of definition. I guess it's worth a shot.

The thing about Freaky Friday is that, even if it is impossible, it makes sense. If I explain the plot to you, you can understand what it is about. Of course then you can say it's impossible. The mother's and daughter's make a soul exchange and live for a day each into the body of the author. The self is transferable, not because Freaky Friday is possible, it isn't, but because it makes sense.

Suppose we have this movie : It's called Weird Wednesday or whatever. Alice and Bob are roomates, they live different lives and have different carreers. One day, Alice wake up in Bob's room, with the body of Bob, with the personality of Bob and convinced she is Bob and goes on to live Bob's life for a day. Likewise, Bob wakes up in Alice's room, with Alice's body, with the personality of Alice, etc. What I would think of this plot, and you would surely agree is : ... but nothing special even happened...

Nothing special ever happened. The movie would fail quite spectacularly as it has a completely static plot.

Are you trying to argue that a 'self' is completely separable from the body, the brain, and the personality and has no influence whatsoever on human actions? Because then we're attempting to define well, nothing.

Don't you think that if the body is but a vessel, it cannot qualify to be the substance of the self ? How about a philosophical zombie. For the purpose of this argument, a body of flesh that is behaves like a normal person but is "inhabited" by nobody? Does it not makes sense to imagine a humanshaped lump of flesh acting exactly like every a human being except for the part that no one considers this body to be "his"? The body is to the self what the skull is to the brain : without it the protection of the former, the latter dies, but the former is not the latter.

If object A is indistinguishable from object B, then there is no harm done in calling object A, B. The philosophical zombie is a human. There is absolutely no reason to consider his body not his (what, is he some sort of slave?) if he's indistinguishable from another person. If this zombie does not have a 'self' then a self is superfluous.

If we're trying to define a thing that has no tangible manifestation, produces no noticeable effect on anything, and can be transferred (removed) at any time without any consequence, then we are simply wasting our time.

 

[vonFiedler]

The thing about Freaky Friday is that, even if it is impossible, it makes sense. If I explain the plot to you, you can understand what it is about. Of course then you can say it's impossible. The mother's and daughter's make a soul exchange and live for a day each into the body of the author. The self is transferable, not because Freaky Friday is possible, it isn't, but because it makes sense.

So if something is impossible, but makes sense, that makes you correct? That doesn't make sense. Why did this thread get reopened? I think the paranormal animals thread had more credibility.

 

[cim]

I mean this in the least trolly, most non-offensive way possible: This thread OP is completely up its own ass with pseudo-intellectualism. I say that because quite frankly I don't know how else to say it that would be more "cong appropriate".

When morm is the voice of reason you know the thread is doomed!

"I" is me. I'm a person with a brain and a body. It doesn't need to be harder than that...

 

[billymills]

When morm is the voice of reason you know the thread is doomed!

"I" is me. I'm a person with a brain and a body. It doesn't need to be harder than that...

Leave it to Chris to start throwing out the insults.

By claiming that your "I" possesses a brain and a body, you've defined "I" as something other than the brain and the body. So, uhh, what exactly is it?

 

[cim]

Leave it to Chris to start throwing out the insults.

By claiming that your "I" possesses a brain and a body, you've defined "I" as something other than the brain and the body. So, uhh, what exactly is it?

I consists of (not "has", but is made of) the brain and body, because that's how I define what myself is. Everything else about me is a product or result of those two things. If you could separate the conscious mind and the body, I'd say the mind "owns" the body, but for now you can't anyway.

I don't see why the discussion is at all interesting or non obvious...

 

[vonFiedler]

I is the shortest word in the English language with one of the simplest definitions. Firestorm said it best when the thread was locked.

 

[Jack Jack]

Where do you define the border between your self and the environment?

If there is a tumor in your brain that makes your behaviour agressive, are "you" an agressive person? What if that tumor can be removed?

Your frontal lobes inhibit your actions, makes you think before you act. If that area of your brain is damaged, you start saying everything that you think, which means you are sure to deeply offend everyone around you. Were "you" an abrasive person before the damage or did the damage changed you?

Are you "yourself" when under the influence of drugs?

What bears responsibility? What if your body was forced to consume hallucenogenics, and then your behaviour had ended the life of someone, which would have never happened otherwise. Did "you" killed that person, of was it the drug, or was it the person who forced you to take the drug, assuming he'd know, assuming he'd did not know, assuming it was an accident?

About the Weird Wednesday plot, this is what non-transferability looks like. Transfering the self end up in a Freaky Friday plot.

The self, if it exist, does have an effect on sensible experience. "What it's like to be me" is different from "What it's like to be you". Perhaps my quale of redness is equivalent to your quale of greenness. Or to your quale of roundness for that matter. That, we will never know.

The self, if and only if it exist, is responsible for making human A fundamentally different from human B. Like in a freaky friday plot, If Body b has self s, it would act differently than if it had self t. The self shapes human actions independantly of the body and brain.

Now Billymills, you brought up a very interesting point :

Perhaps there is no such thing. Actions are always dependant on body and brain.

But from that, it would naturally follows that all humans, nay, all organisms would behave and feel the same way in any given situation, provided we consider the body and brain as part of the situation.

This last part is reasonable enough. If I am athletic, being in a situation where I need to get from point A to point B makes running a reasonable option, whether if I am in a wheelchair, running is impossible. We could consider having to go from point A to point B is not the same situation whether you are athletic or a cripple. The same reasonning is applied to the brain if the situation is to, say, do calculus.

And from there, I infer there is no such thing as free will, as the behavior of any organism is function of the situation, and no organism has control over with which body and which brain it was born.

The existence of the self is a sine qua non condition for the existence of free will.

 

[Brain]

Genus : The set of qualia
Specie : with a confirmed existence and a clear and distinct nature.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of a quale (qualia in plural form) a quale is the property of a sensible experience that "It does something to experience this or that". More simply, qualia are the way things seem to us. Redness, the pain of a headache, the taste of wine are all exemples of qualia.

All of these can be seen as internal representations to the brain. There are a few problems with defining the "self" as qualia anyway:

1) I see no meaningful way through which a "set of qualia" can "do". It's passive. It's unalgorithmic.
2) All qualia are stored as internal representations in the brain, which share pathways with those used by actual stimuli. How else do you think we could act on them? It's the brain that the body is wired to, not some metaphysical quantity.
3) Qualia are insufficient. It would be conceivable for two selves to have rigorously identical qualia, yet act upon them very, very differently. But I would argue that two identical selves should act, if not identically, very similarly.

The Self is individual/differentiable : There exist two distinct Selves A and B in which A is different from B.

So if B is destroyed, A is not a "self" anymore? I think that you mean to say that the set of all conceivable selves contains more than one element, regardless of which ones actually exist.

The Self is Transferable : It makes sense to transfer Self A in situation X into situation Y where Self B was. The result would be Self A having P behavior in Y whereas self B would have Q behavior in Y. This means plots à la Freaky Friday (self "mother" in situation of "daughter's life" having "mother behavior" instead of "daughter behavior" and self "daughter" in situation of "mother's life" having "daughter behavior" instead of "mother behavior" makes sense.

I do not see why a self has to subscribe to this property. That is, you can imagine a "self" in the real world and a "self" in Conway's Game of Life, but they are hardly transferable. That is, different selves could live in worlds so radically different that they would be utterly incapable of assimilating any "quale" in the other's world, much less acting upon it.

The Self is Mutable : The Self can gain and lose attributes over the course of events. This means a true idea on a self can become false, and a false idea on a self can become true, provided it is not both at the same point in time. I can change.

I'm not sure why the self has to be able to change.

The Self is Experienceable : The self interract with things that are not itself.

I don't see why it should. Imagine that all your senses are shut down. Does your self cease to exist? I don't think so. Imagine that "the world is a dream", does that mean you have no self?

The Self is Introspective (which includes aware) : The self has knowledge of it's own nature and existence. This knowledge is intrinsect to the self ; It does not rely on events exterior to the self. I know that I am me and what it's like to be me.

Yes, that seems to be the major aspect of a "self".

The Self is Extraspective by extrapolation of it's introspectiveness. The self can apply knowledge of it's own nature and existence to deduce non-trivial things about things which are not itself. I know you can get angry for X reason because I do get angry for X reason myself.

Sure.

The Self is divisible : There exist more than one non-trivial substances which together, makes a set that is the self ; It is possible to conceive the self as the Sum of at least two distinct and non-trivial substances. This is necessary for the Self to be mutable : an undivisible substance cannot lose an attribute, and once it gains an attribute, is no longer indivisible as it can be conceived without that attribute (who are properties of non-trivial substances).

Mutability does not imply divisibility at all. If it did, intelligent design might be a valid counter to evolution, yet there are countless examples of how "indivisible" designs can arise through mutation and crossing. An indivisible network can mutate through building a modified copy of some critical substructure, brutally switching the traffic to it when it is finished, and then destroying the former routes in the network.

Maybe you consider that a system that has "substructures" is divisible (into these structures), but note that there is no requirement for any of these substructures to be distinct. For instance, you could probably split the brain into thousands of meaningful substructures that overlap with each other. For instance, the brain's talking and writing substructures would share chunks of the language processing area.

And of course there's always the possibility to mutate an indivisible structure through outright replacement.


Personally, I like to define my self a bit more subtly than "my body and brain": given a brain B, the "self" of that brain is the internal representation B has of itself. That is, your self is not exactly your brain, but in fact a model, a generalization of it. Your self is the part of your brain you use to simulate your own behavior and the effects of certain possible events would have on you.

I like that definition because 1) I think it better corresponds to what people actually think about when they think about themselves (hence qualia, souls and other nonsense) and 2) explains why the self appears to have free will: the "simulator" you have of yourself is obviously built to explore several scenarios and since actions might be conditioned on its results, there is no way it can predict for sure what you will do in the end. The simulator can't be sure (well, usually) you will do X until you actually do it. This yields an inherent uncertainty in simulation which, coupled with the fact that any action that's actually carried out is credited to it, inevitably translates into a feeling of free will.

 

[vonFiedler]

Where do you define the border between your self and the environment?

Environment is the stuff my nervous system doesn't control. Seriously, why do you ask such easily answered questions as if there was something deep behind them?

 

[Jack Jack]

What is control?

How do you figure it controls something and not something else.

If your nervous system does not control "in which" body you are, nor does it control it's own existence and nature. Do you mean that, "in which" body you are is part of the environment? Is your own existence and nature part of the environment? Your DNA, is it part of the environment ?

Brain, I start to see the genius behind your definition. I think I'll adopt it. A representation IS a quale, and I think you took the most relevant of them. "I" refer to the representation of me that I know clearly and distinctly... very clever.

For transferability, I'd say it makes sense for two like selves to transfer, as in a possession. Maybe they are... dominatable?

As for experienceability, if the self is the representation Brain B has of itself, it's mere existence is an interraction which something that is not itself : the brain. If it ceased to interract with the brain, it cease to be a representation of it, and cease to exist. The existence of such a self is sufficient for experienceability

And as for mutability, well If It's a bit the only way to consider my 4-year old self and my present self one and the same. If your okay for them not to be the same self, then mutability can go.

 

[vonFiedler]

What is control?

How do you figure it controls something and not something else.

If your nervous system does not control "in which" body you are, nor does it control it's own existence and nature. Do you mean that, "in which" body you are is part of the environment? Is your own existence and nature part of the environment? Your DNA, is it part of the environment ?

Go read a book on the human anatomy. It's not hard stuff to understand.

I figure it controls something and not something else because I've had 21 good years of practice.

 

[Jack Jack]

Right. I read something, It's called retro-inhibition. It's when a humoral stimulus control the brain. Hey, it appears sometimes, it's the body that control the brain. And you have been dodging quite a lot of question by now.

 

[vonFiedler]

You ask nothing but stupid questions. I shouldn't even have answered your second one. It didn't even have a question mark.

"It appears sometimes the body controls the brain". Well, if it appears that way it's still wrong. That's not how the nervous system works. Of course, I'd love to learn more, but the only research on this subject is in French.

 

[Alan]

Cogito ergo sum.

 

[Brain]

What is control?

Somewhat tricky to define formally, but essentially X controls Y if the behavior of Y is conditioned on X, and X's behavior is conditioned on its own internal state. The more tightly X's internal state is correlated with X and Y's actions, the greater control X has over Y. For instance, if you throw a rock, you control the rock, because its trajectory depends on what is going on in your brain, not so much on the rock itself (note that you will use the rock's weight in order to correct your aim, so the weight data that determines trajectory is also found in your brain, making the correlation even greater).

Brain, I start to see the genius behind your definition. I think I'll adopt it. A representation IS a quale, and I think you took the most relevant of them. "I" refer to the representation of me that I know clearly and distinctly... very clever.

Just to clarify what I mean by representation, it's basically whatever brain pattern is activated by a concept (thus the self is the introspective part of the brain, probably large and spread out everywhere so that it can tap into as many shared resources as possible). When the brain hears "red", the sound is translated into a sort of code which serves as a gateway to several effects: for instance, it might activate part of your vision system, making you see a red image. It might trigger related concepts, such as Santa Claus. It might store a passive code in your memory so that whenever that memory is recalled, the code activates the part of your brain that understands "red", allowing you to "feel" that memory again. The internal representations of the same concept for different people might differ, but they will roughly provide the same functionality, like various implementations of the same thing.

For transferability, I'd say it makes sense for two like selves to transfer, as in a possession. Maybe they are... dominatable?

Who or what possesses the self? A self is not a self if it's yanked out of its context. I don't think that idea makes any sense.

And as for mutability, well If It's a bit the only way to consider my 4-year old self and my present self one and the same. If your okay for them not to be the same self, then mutability can go.

Well, imagine the concept of a dog. Dogs bark, right? Imagine that the next generation of dogs all bark lightly longer, on a slightly higher and strident pitch. A change so little that hardly anybody notices at all. Clearly, they are still dogs, and they still bark. But if you keep changing every generation of dogs ever so slightly, perhaps 100,000 years from now they will make the same sound as today's cats: "meow". Since the changes were always so little, nobody would have pushed to change the definition of "dog", and dogs would still "bark", even though the meaning of "bark" would actually be the meaning of "meow" today. The point is, even though nobody would have ever noticed, the definition of "dog" would have adapted to whatever dogs were at the time, shifting in meaning ever so slightly every generation. This is grounded in reality, too: evolution means that species drift and split through time. Even though they do so extremely slowly, they still do, which means that the concept of "dog" can't be expected to stay exactly the same through time. But nobody sane would maintain that dogs aren't dogs anymore because they were dogs thirty years ago, nor that dogs weren't dogs thirty years ago because they are dogs now. That is because temporal continuity is an amazing shortcut to holding unnecessarily many concepts - these concepts change so little that you can just assume they are always the same, or you can simply remember how they changed, if they did. Furthermore, people adapt their concepts at the same time from the same evidence, so there's little risk of misunderstandings.

The same goes with "self". You are so similar one second from now than you are now that you can perceive no change. This means that even though your self is indeed different every passing second, it changes slowly enough to give you a sense of continuity. That's why you will use temporal continuity to assign the same label, "myself", to a stream of technically different selves. You do the same thing to everybody else you know - you know they change, but you just adapt the conception you have of them. Note that events such as emotional trauma or brain damage might cause sufficient changes to warrant a discontinuity or break in the self, especially if they are seen as external. That can be either in your own eyes, or in the eyes of others, or both.

 

[cim]

You can't just ask rhetorical "big questions" with seemingly obvious answers and then pick them apart with overly complex explanations in order to sound smart. You don't come off as smart, you come off as trying as hard as you can to be "intellectual".

Your response to my post was one of these really, really simple questions with a bunch of other rhetorical bullshit that has nothing to do with the answer I posed. I didn't put "Yourself is defined by your mind and body, except when you're on drugs, when you have a brain tumor, and when things that you don't normally think of as 'you' are in control." It doesn't sound intelligent to go "oh, but what about these qualifiers I thought you meant?"

Any behavior inducing drug doesn't change that you are the one doing it. Just because your normal self may not have done the same thing doesn't change that you did it. Responsibility for actions and ownership of them are not synonymous (e.g. "I" murdered a guy when forced on drugs, but that doesn't mean I was responsible for it). So none of those questions really change how I defined I earlier.

The fun "What is control?" question is also irrelevant to my definition for the same reason.

The fact that you're trying to be profound by referencing the movie Freaky Friday really kinda seals the deal for me.

 

[Jack Jack]

I just wanted a definition of the self consistent with the possibility of free will. Chris is me and Vonfielder seem okay with a definition of the self that can't possibly have free will. I see no reason why this is wrong, as long as you recongnise that, if "you" are what you say you are, then "you" is not the primary cause of your actions, i.e. you can always find a physical causality for your behaviour, so you are not free.

 

[cantab]

Don't you think that if the body is but a vessel, it cannot qualify to be the substance of the self ? How about a philosophical zombie. For the purpose of this argument, a body of flesh that is behaves like a normal person but is "inhabited" by nobody?

I would contend that such an entity cannot exist. For something to be indistinguishable from a person both physically and in behaviour, it must have the brain processes of a person, and therefore must have a mind.
Essentially, the idea of the philosophical zombie assumes that the mind is not the result of the physical and chemical processes in the brain.

If you are still not convinced your self cannot be any physical entity, think about this. In about ten years, approximately every single atom of your body will have been replaced. Your cells die all the time and your body takes a couple of year to regenerate itself down to every single cell. And yet, after all these changes you are still the same

What matters is what the cells do, not the exact physical atoms involved.
And of course, the idea of "same" in this context brings to mind the Ship of Theseus.

Environment is the stuff my nervous system doesn't control. Seriously, why do you ask such easily answered questions as if there was something deep behind them?

Well that means large parts of your body are part of the "environment". Like your hair and nails.

Personally, I'd take the boundary between myself and my environment as the physical surface of my body. Also I don't feel the need to make an artificial binary division. The bacteria on my skin are less a part of me than my own skin cells, but more a part of me than the bacteria on my desk.

 

[Jack Jack]

Personally, I'd take the boundary between myself and my environment as the physical surface of my body. Also I don't feel the need to make an artificial binary division. The bacteria on my skin are less a part of me than my own skin cells, but more a part of me than the bacteria on my desk.

The artificiality of the division depends on how you define somebody's environment. I define it as the set of what exist and is not part of his self.

So to me, it's not an artificial division insomuch as tertium non datur. By the way, I use latin because I don't know how to say it in english.

 

[cantab]

To clarify: I think any attempt to define a sharp boundary between self and not-self is artificial. When it comes to anything relating to the observed world (ie, not mathematics) I in general reject the idea that everything is either unambiguously X or unambiguously not X and accept the presence of probabilities and vagueness. (This does not, however, mean that I think nothing is unambiguous.)