If senses perceive the world, and brain perceives the senses perceiving the world, and the mind perceives the brain perceiving the senses perceiving the world, what perceives the mind? If you don’t believe in mind, then what perceives the brain? Is it mind/brain perceiving itself and if it is, can we know anything ‘objective’ about ourselves, since we are looking at ourselves from within, and objectivity requires (I think) for one to look at something from outside.
This kinda of extends the logic of a really good argument I heard once…
“To be 100% objective requires you to become the object.”
Since we are what we are, we can be 100% subjective or 100% objective(in relation to ourselves), since for each of us, the subject is also the object.
Maybe not so much perceiving itself, but being itself perceiving. Or maybe not, but this assumes that we know ourselves…
Alas, that doesn’t move me out of my extreme Idealism phase. Argg
Through my philosophy, the soul percieves the mind, and the mind is just the interaction of the sould and the brain.
Yes…this is THE question.
Some questions in philosophy are akin to such as “how many angels can stand on the head of a pin?” Ironically, that’s precisely what philosophers must do to avoid being completely wrong. We must stand on the head of a pin betwixt a multitude of prevailing and quite blameless doctrines that contradict eachother completely. And how many of us can fit on the head of that pin?
To me, nothing points to this dilemma more excruciatingly than the materialism vs. idealism debate. This is one of those battles that seems purely for “fun,” or about as fun as a dog chasing his tail. Maybe when we unify quantum thermodynamics with general relativity, we will also unify the seemingly mutually exclusive ideas of materialism and idealism. As for me, I see them as existing side by side, like yin and yang, and I ain’t happy about it.
My PHASE for the day is that the truth recedes into darkness…like the perimeter of a movie screen. And thankfully so, or the movie wouldn’t make much sense. It almost seems necessary that we don’t know what we don’t know, so we can know what we know. And better to bottle the perennial philosophy’s supply of nectar, from Thales to Rorty, for utility and peace and better living, and not concern ourselves with the windmills and whales of Truth.
Yes…this is THE question.
Some questions in philosophy are akin to such as “how many angels can stand on the head of a pin?” Ironically, that’s precisely what philosophers must do to avoid being completely wrong. We must stand on the head of a pin betwixt a multitude of prevailing and quite blameless doctrines that contradict eachother completely. And how many of us can fit on the head of that pin?
To me, nothing points to this dilemma more excruciatingly than the materialism vs. idealism debate. This is one of those battles that seems purely for “fun,” or about as fun as a dog chasing his tail. Maybe when we unify quantum thermodynamics with general relativity, we will also unify the seemingly mutually exclusive ideas of materialism and idealism. As for me, I see them as existing side by side, like yin and yang, and I ain’t happy about it.
My PHASE for the day is that the truth recedes into darkness…like the perimeter of a movie screen. And thankfully so, or the movie wouldn’t make much sense. It almost seems necessary that we don’t know what we don’t know, so we can know what we know. And better to bottle the perennial philosophy’s supply of nectar, from Thales to Rorty, for utility and peace and better living, and not concern ourselves with the windmills and whales of Truth.
My personal take on this is that the mind perceives itself. Mind being (imho) the more scientific term of the religious term ‘soul’. But anything objective about the mind itself can’t be perceived with conceptions/language/words, since the words themselves shape the experience of the mind. So objective knowledge of the mind resides outside the conceptions, it is what the eastern mystics call the ‘void’. Anything coming from outside can’t be perceived objectively, since the information received is filtered through less than perfect senses, and again filtered through our preconceptions of what is perceived. It is possible to get closer to this objective sensing of the ‘outside’ world which would be to perceive like a child without preconceptions or a zen-master who lives in the moment.
But, if the mind is to perceive itself objectively, it should get rid of the subjective knowledge and infact all knowledge and conceptions. But if the mind perceives itself as the void as the mystics say, is then what is perceived less than all of the mind, since it no longer holds the conceptions? Here we run into some Aristotelic notions of essences. Does the mind have an ‘essence’ of sorts, which is the mind and nothing more, nothing less. That, I do not know.
yes!!!
What part of myself says the word I. The part that says, “My Brain, My Mind, My soul”. Why would I distinguish the mind or brain or soul seperate from me if I am not these things. If I am not larger than the sum of my parts.
Then again what makes you you? Is it your personality or your life force? Because simply percieving is one thing, but existing and realizing who you are is another. What are you for you to question what you are?
That is indeed a question that has past my mind on various occasions. Call me a materialist but my conception of who people are is basically surmised in the following phrase said by Marx in his German Ideology:
“Consciousness does not determine life. Life determines consciousness.”
The idea behind this being of course, that we are basically molded by the things around us: Marx would go off and say that the epochs in history are only determined by the productive forces at a given time. Thinking of that a more specific level – in other words, that of my self – I do think I am merely a collection of that which has occured to me. In other words, of all the material things around us. This is perhaps drifting from the idea behind the subject of this particular thread but I think the logic behind that is merely asking to end up in confusion. I personally view the brain and mind as basically the same thing.
Ortega said a lot of things concerning the environment forming the self. But I don’t think of taking it as far as life determining consciousness. We are talking about conciousiness, the ability to perceive oneself. That is an incredible and scary atribute for something to have. And Marx is saying that life determines that?
Yes I agree, the things that have happened to you and the things you have around you make you who you are. But to say that it determines your ability for being aware, is a completly other thing Over the Rainbow.
By the way, great to have you here in ILP! 
Smooth,
I completely agree with you, I believe I was thinking in other terms. I do not think this entails our ability to, as you said, percieve ourselves. I was speaking more of in the lines of what “ourselve” is…not as much with regards as to the actual perception process.
Interestingly enough, a physisct came over to my school and spoke about the so called Anthropic Principle. It might be worth talking about this in some simplicity for it is a theory of why we percieve in general. This theory has its basis at a Quantum Level, as a form to explain and reason through the big bang.
What seemed amazing is that he said that at a Quantum Level, nothing occurs without an observation. (You can check out Schrödinger’s cat for a cool example mtnmath.com/faq/meas-qm-3.html) And basically the Principle argues that the world purposely created humans in order to break the time wave…thus making an observation and Voila the quantum wave is broken and the world is as it is.
I guess what this is trying to say… is basically that we percieve ourselves – in that level which no other animal can do – because without it nothing would be as it is. A little irralevent, but nonetheless, a facinating idea.
I took the liberty of putting the paragraph from the German ideology, because it is amazing under whatever circumstance.
And thanks 
Smooth Its a pleasure to be here.
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Then again what makes you you? Is it your personality or your life force? Because simply percieving is one thing, but existing and realizing who you are is another. What are you for you to question what you are?
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I would have to say that life force has absolutely nothing to do with who you are. I could get into a car accident and be in a vegatative state tomorrow. Just because I physically exist and my heart beats means absolutely nothing. The essence of who I am is lost on this plane of reality. However, assuming the mind exists on a level of reality above what we know in day to day life, who is to say that the existance of the body is necessary for the mind to continue, or even has anything at all to do with “who” we are?
If we take the idea that the brain receives, processes, and transmits information received from the mind in order to make our brains function on this plane of existance, why should the mind require anything on a higher level of existance from our bodies? What if our perspection of who we are is forever doomed to be flawed simply due to the fact that our brains have no way of intrepreting data transmitted from the mind except by using our life experiences and memories as a filter? If this is true, than the “pure” form of who we are resides only in the mind, and anything that we could possibly perceive on this plane of existance is simply an illusion, because we are, at this level, incapable of processing data without that filter.
–Kissa