Jim Cross wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 4:17 pm
Anyone who believes in some personal identity survival after death needs to answer the question about which of the many people they have been survives. Is it the child, the young adult graduating from college, the one who married the love of their life, the one who suffered the death of a loved one, the one celebrating the birth of a first child, the ill and infirm older self. All of those things make up what we are. You can't pick and choose or imagine some ideal form of yourself.
Regarding swapping out neurons - this is what actually is happening to us all of the time. There is actually evidence of this from brain scans. The neurons that fire over time while performing the same activity change.
How about the essential "I" which has remained? Apart from the fact that you can obviously sense the continuity from childhood to adulthood (and I agree "personal identity" in the static sense most speak of it is not real), you keep asserting "I am not the same person", "I have changed", etc. Who is this "I" you keep referring to? You may rationalize that you are just using that out of covenience, but it's not true. Try and go for awhile living without that pronoun. Not only refraining from saying it out loud, which is difficult enough, but refraining from thinking it when you formulate thoughts. It won't hapoen. The problem is we have simply stopped reflecting on this "I" who observes, thinks, feels, and does everything, so we naïvely assume it isn't real.
Last edited by AshvinP on Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:04 pm
How about the essential "I" which has remained? Apart from the fact that you can obviously sense the continuity from childhood to adulthood (and I agree "personal identity" in the static sense most speak of it is not real), you keep asserting "I am not the same person", "I have changed", etc. Who is this "I" you keep referring to? You may rationalize that you are just using that out of covenience, but it's not true. Try and go for awhile living without that pronoun. Not only refraining from saying it out loud, which is difficult enough, but refraining from thinking it when you formulate thoughts. It won't hapoen. The problem is we have simply stopped reflecting on this "I" who observes, thinks, feels, and does everything, so we naïvely assume it isn't real.
I do find it ironic when eliminativists would deny personal identity* yet would still pursue acclaims, climbing the academic hiearchy and gaining academic success etc, but if you take their position litteraly, the person that would benefit from that success would litteraly not be them, why not just drink and be merry and go for the hardest drugs inducing euphoria or just enjoy the sun for tomorrow you die, after all the future self that would be harmed isn't them, that's what their position imply. There is also no possibility of healing/learning etc, another person may heal and learn but it's not you under that position, and in the majority of cases, it's not like we're talking about some extremely altruistic people who are focusing on helping all others, they are as focused on themselves and their future selves and future projects as any other person, only in written text and written theory do they hold that position.
* By personal identity i don't mean any homunculus/cartesian theater or narrative self etc, this strawman have been beaten to death.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:04 pm
How about the essential "I" which has remained? Apart from the fact that you can obviously sense the continuity from childhood to adulthood (and I agree "personal identity" in the static sense most speak of it is not real), you keep asserting "I am not the same person", "I have changed", etc. Who is this "I" you keep referring to? You may rationalize that you are just using that out of covenience, but it's not true. Try and go for awhile living without that pronoun. Not only refraining from saying it out loud, which is difficult enough, but refraining from thinking it when you formulate thoughts. It won't hapoen. The problem is we have simply stopped reflecting on this "I" who observes, thinks, feels, and does everything, so we naïvely assume it isn't real.
I do find it ironic when eliminativists would deny personal identity* yet would still pursue acclaims, climbing the academic hiearchy and gaining academic success etc, but if you take their position litteraly, the person that would benefit from that success would litteraly not be them, why not just drink and be merry and go for the hardest drugs inducing euphoria or just enjoy the sun for tomorrow you die, after all the future self that would be harmed isn't them, that's what their position imply. There is also no possibility of healing/learning etc, another person may heal and learn but it's not you under that position, and in the majority of cases, it's not like we're talking about some extremely altruistic people who are focusing on helping all others, they are as focused on themselves and their future selves and future projects as any other person, only in written text and written theory do they hold that position.
* By personal identity i don't mean any homunculus/cartesian theater or narrative self etc, this strawman have been beaten to death.
Yeah, we really see the absurditiies pile higher and higher for physical reductionism now. Every philosophy, art, science, cultural sphere in general has been chipping away at their various dogmas for more than a century now, so they try to put all their eggs in the baskets which still seem available, but there are very few if any of those baskets left. Now some of the idealists just need to wake up and see the lessons to be learned from their tragic story.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
