[b]Douglas Hofstadter
You can never represent yourself totally … to seek self -knowledge is to embark on a journey which … will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described. [/b]
Not totally, but, here, just enough to know the “real me”.
In fact, a sense of essence is, in essence, the essence of sense, in effect.
Not counting all that apriori stuff.
In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference.
For some of course that means [and only means] me, myself and I.
You make decisions, take actions, affect the world, receive feedback from the world, incorporate it into yourself, then the updated ‘you’ makes more decisions, and so forth, 'round and 'round.
Until death do you part.
How gullible are you? Is your gullibility located in some “gullibility center” in your brain? Could a neurosurgeon reach in and perform some delicate operation to lower your gullibility, otherwise leaving you alone? If you believe this, you are pretty gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation.
Okay, but what might that cost?
If a mosquito has a soul, it is mostly evil. So I don’t have too many qualms about putting a mosquito out of its misery. I’m a little more respectful of ants.
How close is this to being irrational?