back to the beginning: dasein

[finishedman]

@iambiguous

What is true [and what can we know] logically such that dasein is moot?

While you are living, the knowledge that is there does not belong to you. So, why are you concerned as to what will happen after what you call “you” is gone? The physical body is functioning from moment to moment because that is the way the sensory perceptions are. To talk of living from moment to moment, by creating a thought induced state of mind, has no meaning to me except in terms of the physical functioning of the body.

When thought is not there all the time, what is there is living from moment to moment. It’s all frames, millions and millions and millions of frames, to put it in the language of film. There is no continuity there, there is no movement there. Thought can never, never capture the movement. It is only when you invest a thought with motion, you try to capture the movement; but actually thought can never capture any movement that is there around you.

The movement of life is the movement of life out there and here. They are together always.

So, thought is essential only for the survival of this living organism. When it is necessary, it is there. When it is not necessary, the question of whether it is there or not is of no importance at all. So, you cannot talk of that state in a poetic, philosophical language.

If there is a person in that state, he won’t be hiding somewhere. He will be there shining like the star. You can’t keep such people under a bushel. To be an individual is not an easy thing. That means you are very ordinary. It’s very difficult to be ordinary when you want to be something other than what you are.

[lizbethrose]

fm, you said:

If there is a person in that state, he won’t be hiding somewhere. He will be there shining like the star. You can’t keep such people under a bushel. To be an individual is not an easy thing. That means you are very ordinary. It’s very difficult to be ordinary when you want to be something other than what you are.

Agreed–it’s only difficult to be ordinary if you want to be somehow extraordinary. But we’re all extraordinary in that we have been born when, where and as we were born with everything we carry within us that led to us.

And, if we’re supremely lucky and have somehow arrived at an acceptance of exactly how extraordinary we all are, why should we want to be otherwise? Iam knows all this, he simply hasn’t accepted it and there’s nothing anyone can say to convince him to accept. So be it.

[iambiguous]

@finishedman

If there is a person in that state, he won’t be hiding somewhere. He will be there shining like the star. You can’t keep such people under a bushel. To be an individual is not an easy thing. That means you are very ordinary. It’s very difficult to be ordinary when you want to be something other than what you are.

Not sure how your point is related to mine. My point is that knowledge imparted [from whatever source] is either true objectively for all daseins or it is merely the subjective point of view of a particular dasein.

Example:

John tells me, “your next door neighbor Jane had an abortion”. Is this true objectively? Well, there are ways to find out. And she either had an abortion or she did not. This information—this fact, this imparted knowledge—is true for all daseins. Someone might believe she did not have an abortion but if she did have one this belief is false.

John tells me, “your next door neighbor Jane had an abortion and this is immoral.” Is this true objectively? Well, there is no way in which to determine if it is or it is not. Instead, each dasein will have an opinion predicated on the particular existential vantage point from which he views himself and the world around him.

So, how does your point relate to that point?

[finishedman]

It all depends on how much truth or falsehood you give to moral and ethical values. And to what degree you are falsifying yourself should you buy into moral and ethical dictates that are imposed on you. Then what comes along to break through the mootness is, ‘ know the truth and the truth shall make us free.’ But truth is a movement. You can’t capture it, contain it, give expression to it, or use it to advance your interests. The moment you capture it, it ceases to be the truth. What is the truth for me is something that cannot, under any circumstances, be communicated to you. The certainty here cannot be transmitted to another. For this reason the whole ’truth’ business becomes irrelevant.

[lizbethrose]

Iam, is there any such thing as ‘objective truth?’ Doesn’t science propose “theories” based on the observable? (The apple falls down from the tree–and not very far. Another subject.) Newton then employed mathematics to ‘explain’ why the apple fell ‘down’ rather than up–or sideways–or in an arc–or whatever. We accept Newton’s gravitational theory because no one has any ‘proof’ that would indicate otherwise. We ‘assume’ the law of gravity to be a “law.” We may find that it’s only a law within our galaxy.

Isn’t the same true for any scientific theory?

So, aren’t those theories–or didn’t those theories start with–a ‘subjective’ thought we assume to be true since it hasn’t been ‘proven’ to be not true? Is death inevitable? Can you show otherwise?

But is death what we imagine it to be? Who knows? What we see is what we get. A body has life (what’s life other than what we see–very subjective) and then a body has no life.

What is no life? Since we can’t define life as a completely objective concept, how can we define ‘no life?’

It’s like scientific theory–we hold these ‘truths’ to be ‘self-evident,’ because we can’t disprove them–one way or another–at this point in the ever fluid concept of time–if you believe time is fluid.

That’s where we ‘accept.’ It isn’t a matter of faith, it’s a matter of not being able to say, with any kind of logic or rationality, that there’s any other explanation–as far as we know–or can imagine. Imagination is subjective, isn’t it?

[iambiguous]

@lizbethrose

Iam, is there any such thing as ‘objective truth?’ Doesn’t science propose “theories” based on the observable? (The apple falls down from the tree–and not very far. Another subject.) Newton then employed mathematics to ‘explain’ why the apple fell ‘down’ rather than up–or sideways–or in an arc–or whatever. We accept Newton’s gravitational theory because no one has any ‘proof’ that would indicate otherwise. We ‘assume’ the law of gravity to be a “law.” We may find that it’s only a law within our galaxy.

Isn’t the same true for any scientific theory?

So, aren’t those theories–or didn’t those theories start with–a ‘subjective’ thought we assume to be true since it hasn’t been ‘proven’ to be not true? Is death inevitable? Can you show otherwise?

That is one way to look at it certainly. After all, David Hume deconstructed the empirical world by pointing out that correlation is not the same thing as cause and effect. Nothing we observe “out in the world” can be demonstrated objectively to be true for all time to come.

But Hume also acknowledged that he [that we] live out our lives [for all practical purposes] acting as though the laws of science reflected reality as objective as we are ever likely to come upon.

In that context, what do we know for certain about death? Well, we know that eventually each body ceases to function. It dies. We put most of them in a box and bury it; and, then, given enough time, they devolve all the way back to star stuff. “I” then ceases to exist forevermore. And thus far, aside from various NDE anecdotes and religious narratives, we have no reason to believe that is not in fact the case. But it’s true: we can no more define “no life” objectively than we can “life” itself. Ontologically and teleologically they both remain a complete mystery.

@lizbethrose

That’s where we ‘accept.’ It isn’t a matter of faith, it’s a matter of not being able to say, with any kind of logic or rationality, that there’s any other explanation–as far as we know–or can imagine.

Yes, I imagine that’s true. I accept it. And, of course, others do not.

[finishedman]

@iambiguous

we can no more define “no life” objectively than we can “life” itself. Ontologically and teleologically they both remain a complete mystery.

Agreed … and the same goes for nature. Nature and the force behind its functioning is not known. Yet, nature is controlling what is going on.

What we erroneously do is to believe that we are the ones that are acting out what nature is all about. That is, we superimpose over nature’s control the idea of a ‘person’ who is doing the controlling. But the actions of life and nature are outside the field of the ideas and thoughts of persons.

[iambiguous]

@finishedman

Nature and the force behind its functioning is not known. Yet, nature is controlling what is going on.

For me, the most profound mystery still revolves around the manner in which “everything that exist” somehow evolved into mindful matter able to “know” these things. But not really know them at all. What does it actually mean to say nature “controls” anything? It sort of implies a volition that was not natural in nature until minds set out to control what they think they understand about it. But what are they really controlling [or understanding] at all? It’s the enigma inside the riddle inside the…what?

[iambiguous]

Who am I? The Philosophy of Personal Identity
Luke Dunn at The Collector

Personal identity is a philosophical issue which spans a whole range of disciplines within philosophy, from the philosophy of mind, to metaphysics and epistemology, to ethics and political theory.

Disciplines. And how should we rank them given there are hundreds and hundreds moral and political and spiritual proponents “out there” all claiming that they and they alone can provide us with the discipline we need to be…saved?

There is no one problem of personal identity – they are rather a kind of philosophical problem that starts to emerge whenever we ask questions about what one ‘is’ most fundamentally.

No, in my view, it’s neither the questions asked nor the answers given that reflect the fundamental focus here. Instead, that “here and now” pertains to the part where different people ask different questions precipitating any number of conflicting answers.

So, whose perception of reality here encompasses the most penetrating questions and the most comprehensive answers?

Problems of personal identity were first posed in something like the form they take today, but underlying issues of personal identity have been a feature of the Western philosophical tradition since its inception.

However, few have come to be quite as fractured and fragmented in regard to identity as “I” am. Then the distinction made by many between Western and Eastern takes on the self.

Plato, writing near the dawn of philosophical enquiry, and Descartes writing at the dawn of modern philosophy, both had a theory of what we were most fundamentally – namely, that we are souls.

The original rendition of an Intrinsic Self. Only it all comes back to God here rather than nature.

This illustrates that it is very difficult to undertake any extensive philosophical enquiry without coming up against some problems of personal identity.

Okay, but my own take on identity here is particularly discomfiting. As for the difficulties, tell that to the objectivists. Their own One True Path often being a “piece of cake”.

[iambiguous]

Who am I? The Philosophy of Personal Identity
Luke Dunn at The Collector
Personal Identity: A Variety of Questions, a Variety of Answers

Some of the usual answers to the question of personal identity – ‘I am a human being’ or ‘I am a person’ or even ‘I am a self’ – are sufficiently vague as to be worthy of further philosophical analysis.

Vague, perhaps, but who among us needs philosophy in order to confirm them given our day-to-day interactions with others?

Unless, of course, they involve interactions pertaining to value judgments. Then, in my view, philosophers are still no less stymied given the manner in which I construe human identity here: a man amidst mankind: back again to dasein

Some of the problems of personal identity involve trying to define terms like ‘human’ or ‘person’ or ‘self’. Others ask what the conditions are for the persistence of a human or a person or a self over time; in other words, what it takes for a person or a self to persist.

Of course, that’s hardly sufficient from my own frame of mind. Far more – or less – productive is the part where the definitions and deductions become intertwined in actual moral and political and spiritual conflagrations.

As for the “conditions” we find ourselves in, that will basically revolve around memory, and memory will revolve around the accumulation of our own uniquely personal experiences over the years.

This part:

If you were born and raised in a Chinese village in 500 BC, or in a 10th century Viking community or in a 19th century Yanomami village or in a 20th century city in the Soviet Union or in a 21st century American city, how might your value judgments be different?

Yes, that’s one of the reasons philosophy was invented…to delve into things like this in order to attain the “wisest” assessment. And what might that be? Or, more to the point, do any of these assessments…

List of religions and spiritual traditions

List of political ideologies

List of philosophies

…nail it?

Still, others ask what the ethical implications of these categories actually are, or whether what matters in an ethical sense has anything to do with what we are most fundamentally at all.

Well, the ethical implications for those like me “here and now” revolve around a “fractured and fragmented” self rooted existentially in dasein. Click, of course.

As for what we all are “fundamentally”, you tell me. Given a context of your own choosing.

In other words, some question whether personal identity matters. How we respond to one problem of personal identity is likely to (partly) determine how we respond to other problems of personal identity. It is therefore justified to think about personal identity in terms of general approaches to it as an issue, rather than specific responses to specific problems.

So, is that vague enough for you?

[iambiguous]

Who am I? The Philosophy of Personal Identity
Luke Dunn at The Collector

The ‘Physical’ Approach

There are three broad categories of approach to personal identity. The first is what we can call the ‘Physical’ approach: this locates what we are fundamentally in something physical.

On the other hand, this assumes we do have some measure of free will. And, in my view, if not, then both the self and any discussions about it unfold entirely given the only possible reality.

Some theories of this kind say that what we are most fundamentally is our brains, or some part of our brains – be it a specific part, or just enough of our brains.

But then for thousands of years now philosophers have gone back and forth regarding the so-call “mind-body problem”. Where does one end and the other begin? Or are they all intertwined autonomically in whatever either is or is not behind Nature itself? God, say?

The underlying thought here is generally that our minds only exist as they do because our brains are a certain way, and whilst losing (say) a finger or even an arm couldn’t possibly turn someone into a wholly different person, removing or altering their brain might.

Of course, speculation of this sort goes back to the Big Bang, to the evolution of human beings here on planet Earth and/or to an understanding of existence itself.

Though, by all means, continue to assume that your own assessment of human identity reflects the most rational account.

Other theories of this kind refer to a range of physical features, which together define us as a biological organism or a species.

More to the point, however, our physical features are, in so many ways – from the cradle to the grave – beyond our control. Arms, legs, torsos and all the other biological components [inside and out] that we all share in common. Components that biologists have accumulated considerable knowledge regrding over the years.

On the other hand, who really does come closest to grasping how the brain functions in regard to attaining and then sustaining a sense of self?

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Define dasein.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Man changes Mary.
He is not the same, in the grave, as he was in the cradle.
He changes, over his lifetime, and passes on these changes - mutations - to his offspring.

He inherits what has been determined, Mary.
Past MANIFESTING presence, interpreted, by conscious beings, as appearance.

Beings are not static things, Mary, they are dynamic processes…not beings but BECOMINGS.
Every judgement, supporting every choice, PARTICIPATES, in the determination of an organism’s fate.
No certainties, sweetie…all probabilities.
‘Participates’ means multiplies or divides probabilities of success.
All value-judgments, Mary, are in reference to an objective.
Yours is collectivism…so the means you were given - because none of this comes from your mind - is to undermine the world’s confidence in its own judgments, “reducing them” to a state that will make them submissive to your utopian collectives.
You want to make the world surrender, using psychological means, because you cannot make them accept, using rational means.
That’s why you cannot even define the terms you are using…and contradict yourself, continuously.
Oh, miss Land…what is the deformity you hide?
Why the blind girl, Mary?
You showed no interest in anything outside your regurgitations, including paganism, before the blind girl appeared.
Is it because you are a woman pretending to be a man?
Is that the secret you want to keep?
Is it your own handicap that makes you so attracted to her blindness?

You are the proponent of the one and only way, Mary.
In your womanly mind, world means absolute order…which is another way of saying ‘god’ even if you do not believe in a willful god, dear.
You, and your ilk, refuse to acknowledge chaos… CHAOS!
Not complexity… occult god…but the absence of order.

All is energy…some patterned and some not-patterend - Oder/Chaos.
Chaos is what necessitates will…its power determining the degree of tis freedom.
Chaos, miss Mary Land.
Chaos is what terrifies you and your kind.

[iambiguous]

Who am I? The Philosophy of Personal Identity
Luke Dunn at The Collector

The ‘Psychological’ Approach

A second approach to personal identity says that what we are, most fundamentally, is not any physical organ or organism, but something psychological. We can call these ‘Psychological’ approaches.

On the other hand, who among us can make a reasonably precise distinction between the psycho and the somatic?

To wit: Google Search

Not unlike the gap between the brain and the mind? As in, “where – how – does one segue into the other?”

Or the gap between being and nothingness? between free will and determinism? Between QM and cosmogony?

In other words, the gap between what you think you know about all of this and all that there is to be known going back to the existence of existence itself.

We might be understood, as Hume did, as a succession of perceptions or impressions. We might also be understood as consecutive psychological connections.

Okay, but given free will, is there a way for any of us as individuals to embody this…universally? The most philosophically correct perceptions, impressions and connections?

What differentiates these two is the view that certain kinds of mental states constitute relations which hold over a span of time. Memory is especially significant here.

Of course, I keep waiting for others to demonstrate how, given their interactions with others revolving around conflicting goods, they make their own distinctions here. The meaning, morality and metaphysical objectivists in particular.

Also, the part where our memories are, in turn, but another “manifestation of dasein rooted existentially out in a particular world understood in a particular way.”

For instance, there is a relation between my mental state as I recall agreeing to write this article, and the time at which I agreed to write this article.

On the other hand, if one or more of the afflictions above had become a part of his life, who knows what he might or might not have done. And choices like this tend to revolve more around human interactions in the either/or world.

The idea that what we are fundamentally relies on such connections is a highly intuitive one. If someone were to have their memories wiped, or switched out for someone else entirely, we could imagine calling into question whether the resultant person is the same as the one which existed before their memory was altered.

Still, that’s basically the point that some will raise. Here are the diseases/affliction/conditions that can alter or even erase memories:

• Brain tumor
• Cancer treatment, such as brain radiation, bone marrow transplant, or chemotherapy
• Concussion or head trauma
• Not enough oxygen getting to the brain when your heart or breathing is stopped for too long
• Severe brain infection or infection around brain
• Major surgery or severe illness, including brain surgery
• Transient global amnesia (sudden, temporary loss of memory) of unclear cause
• Transient ischemic attack (TIA) or stroke
• Hydrocephalus (fluid collection in the brain)
• Multiple sclerosis
• Dementia

Sometimes, memory loss occurs with mental health problems, such as:

• After a major, traumatic or stressful event
• Bipolar disorder
• Depression or other mental health disorders, such as schizophrenia

Next up: Memento?

[iambiguous]

Who am I? The Philosophy of Personal Identity
Luke Dunn at The Collector

The ‘Skeptical’ Approach

A third approach to personal identity calls into question the reality of the problems of personal identity, or is skeptical about our ability to answer them correctly. We can call these ‘Skeptical’ approaches.

Of course, I am only skeptical regarding reality – objective reality – in the is/ought world. And yet even regarding the either/or world there are any number of things that supposedly can be known objectively because they did in fact happen, but apparently no mere mortal is able to. For instance, I was watching a documentary on the disappearnamce of Amelia Earhart. All these speculative theories about what happened to her. Or how about the murder Jon Benet Ramsey. The disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Or the mysteries that revolve around the Mary Celeste or the 3 escapees from Alcatraz or J.D. Cooper or Jimmy Hoffa or Virginia Dare and the Roanoke Colony.

Again, for many, that’s where God comes in. He knows exactly what happened to all of these people. After all, there are no mysteries when you are omniscient. So, people can fall back on religion and assume that God will always be around to sustain Divine Justice.

This approach says that there is no answer to questions concerning personal identity, or that they are the wrong way of asking questions about ourselves and our mental lives, or that whatever answer we give to these questions isn’t really important.

Is this your own approach? As for myself, there are any number of answers I can provide pertaining to my own identity. Things that are in fact true because they are rooted in biology or in demographics or in the actual circumstances of my life. These objective facts are more or less important depending on the context.

There are broadly three kinds of sceptical approaches. First, that which holds we ‘are’ nothing at all, most fundamentally. There is no core to our existence, no final kernel of truth about what we are which trumps all others…

Of course, none of us can actually know unequivocally whether a “core” – the Real Me – does exist. The religious folks insist this goes back to God, the pantheists argue it’s embedded in the universe itself, and any number of moral objectivists among us claim to be in possession of an Intrinsic Self which allows them intuitively to “just know” particular things about themselves.

Second, that which holds that there is no answer to this question because it is the wrong kind of question, focusing too much on the concepts by which we understand ourselves rather than the source of our mental lives. This approach might say that what we are most fundamentally is a question best left to the natural sciences.

On the other hand, what exactly are the natural sciences telling you about the things you do? Then – click – that at times “fuzzy” interaction between the “hard sciences” and the “soft sciences”…anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science.

Third, that which holds that whatever we are fundamentally does not seriously affect how we should see the world, or morality.

You tell me. Given particular experiences from your own life.

[iambiguous]

Who am I? The Philosophy of Personal Identity
Luke Dunn at The Collector

This last view [above] is worth considering in more detail, as we move on to consider specific problems of personal identity in more detail. Before exploring it further, it is important to clarify that personal identity is often considered a species of the yet-more-numerous problems of identity simpliciter.

Simpliciter: Simply, absolutely; without any qualification or condition Wiktionary

Again, I’m not entirely sure what this means. Is it referring to aspects of our identity that follow us all the way from the cradle to the grave? Particular biological imperatives or demographic components or circumstantial facts that, while evolving [and then devolving] over time, remain a part of who we and others accept as who we are.

Perhaps the archetypal problem of identity is explained using an example, commonly called the ‘Ship of Theseus’ problem. The thought experiment is this: imagine a ship which, over time, has every plank, every mast, every patch of sail, indeed every single part of it replaced with a new component.

On the other hand:

Lena: “They say you replace every molecule in your body every seven years. I changed my name eight years ago. No more Thelma Sneeder.”

Actually…

“The body replaces cell types every seven to 10 years with the exception of neurons in the cerebral cortex, which stay with us from birth to death. The most recurring cell changes occur in the skin, bones, liver, stomach and intestines.”

Even if the shipbuilder or the captain tries very hard to make a like for like replacement, no two planks of wood are exactly alike. The questions this raises are these: is the ship with all of its component parts changed the same ship it was before a single component was removed? And, if it is not, then at what point did it become a different ship?

Of course, for those who board the ship over the years, it’s not likely that they will be aware of this. It’s the same ship to them. Even for those who man the ship it’s unlikely that this will ever occur to them. So, here something might be true but for all practical purposes what difference does it make?

Also, ships don’t have memories. And – click – as long as we do, the past the present and the future are intertwined such that our identity is seldom questioned. Instead, change here revolves around circumstances. New experiences that can trigger epiphanies that can have a profound impact on how we [and others] see ourselves. Or any number of brain afflictions can have an equally dramatic impact on who we think we are.

[iambiguous]

Personal Identity
Carsten Korfmacher at IEP

What does being the person that you are, from one day to the next, necessarily consist in?

So much more to the point [mine] “is there any way for philosophers or scientists to [someday] pin down the most rational manner in which to construe your own personal identity?” And, perhaps, even more crucial, is this even possible at all in regard to our value judgments?

I say “no” given a No God universe.

On the other hand, if you say “yes” given your own moral and political convictions, please note how this is pertinent to your interactions with others which involve conflicts.

This is the question of personal identity, and it is literally a question of life and death, as the correct answer to it determines which types of changes a person can undergo without ceasing to exist.

Here, of course, there are any number of changes in the lives we live that can result in our ceasing to exist…illness, accident, old age, suicide, murder, mass extinction events, etc.,

The top 10 causes of death

Personal identity theory is the philosophical confrontation with the most ultimate questions of our own existence: who are we, and is there a life after death?

As always, from my own frame of mind, there are any number of theoretical constructs [here, for example] that revolve basically around particular definitions given to words out of which come particular deductions “establishing” one or another One True Path. And then, of course, connecting the dots between who we think we are and how who we think we are can have a profound effect on any number of things pertaining to either life or death.

In distinguishing those changes in a person that constitute survival from those changes in a person that constitute death, a criterion of personal identity through time is given. Such a criterion specifies, insofar as that is possible, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the survival of persons.

My criterion? Your criterion? Their criterion? Pragmatism? Idealism?

Also, we’d better run this by Donald Musk to see if our own criteria actually matter at all.

[iambiguous]

Personal Identity
Carsten Korfmacher at IEP

One popular criterion, associated with Plato, Descartes and a number of world religions, is that persons are immaterial souls or pure egos.

And yet to the best of my knowledge not a single solitary soul has ever actually been shown to exist. In fact, just out of curiosity, how do you go about demonstrating [even to yourself] that you possess a soul.

As for pure egos, that seems to revolve far more around those here who insist that they and they alone have access to the optimal or [sometimes] the only rational assessment of the One True Path. Don’t believe it? Just ask them.

On this view, persons have bodies only contingently, not necessarily; so they can live after bodily death. Even though this so-called Simple View satisfies certain religious or spiritual predilections, it faces metaphysical and epistemological obstacles, as we shall see.

The Simple View:

“The simple view of personal identity, which on some variants is called the soul view, identifies persons with souls or some other immaterial mental thing. The simple view is distinct from materialist constructions and the memory/character views of human persons.”

Unless, of course, it’s called the Simple View because it reduces everything down to that which most comforts and consoles us. It’s simply one or another God. Or it’s simply one or another ideological dogma. Or it’s simply one or another deontological assessment. Or it’s simply one or another rendition of biological imperatives.

Not the least of which is my own existential assessment here. It’s what “I” believe “here and now” “in my head”. Though I flat out acknowledge that beyond this I’m simply unable to go much further.

Another intuitively appealing view, championed by John Locke, holds that personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity.

Unless, of course, psychological continuity is just another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality. And though many will insist their own continuity necessarily trumps everyone else’s, they will almost never actually take this down out of the theoretical clouds.

According to this view, in order for a person X to survive a particular adventure, it is necessary and sufficient that there exists, at a time after the adventure, a person Y who psychologically evolved out of X.

Agree with this? Okay, please note how it is applicable to your own social, political and economic value judgments. And, in turn, how your own value judgments are not derived from dasein but from deontology. Or, from God.