behavior. Mind and Body.
You are not the same self as the moment ago, does that mean you should not be punish if you broken a law, because you were not your self?
Is the mind and body different or the same? How can you know the behavior of organism?
Ohhh you just jumped on the playground merry go round . Done that myself. It goes round and round cuz someone is always pushing it. It looks like an answer is forthcoming and then some joker points out something else.
I will try this ride again for the H of it.
Memories bind us as self, like a sock drawer. It is a sock drawer even if there is one Tshirt in it. It is still full of socks and socks are what it is supposed to hold. So it is the sock drawer. Our memories make us ourselves. you are just adding to it, like adding brown socks or black socks etc. they are still socks. Your self is just being added to, not really changed. Enhanced would be the word I would use.
So are you saying it is wrong for Heraclitus to say , " you cannot step into the same river twice" ?
Yes and no. The riverbed and the river change and fluctuate yet even though it does this it is still the river is it not? So same, yet not. His meanings were that life flows and changes and is never the same it does not to me, seem to apply to self as in whole. Our self is in an additive state not a reducive state. we add to, not reduce ourself. So While life flows around us we add bits to ourself not remove. This is growth is it not?
OH no I just saw some arguments worthy of mental chess, cool. Rough but cool
It seems to me that the question revolves around the issue of whether we are more than mind and body, which is a metaphysical question unanswerable in any sense of “knowing”. (not provable) If we accept an empiricist position, then mind and body is the only relevent issue, and while we may accumulate experience, we are nothing more than the sum of that experience. That we are in constant process of change, (the river) is a given, but in each moment we are what we are, as well as all the interactions that have brought us to that moment.
Mind/Body or not, in our case we are not more than the sum of our parts; in fact, ‘we’ arn’t even close to equal to them.
Treating consciousness as a separate or purely within a mechanistic materialism – it doesn’t matter. We have several different senses which revolve around a temporal anchor and what we get from them is ridiculously small and ever changing at first.
So let’s break it down.
Since the charged electro-magnetic spectrum came around we’ve seen that even from a purely natural point of view we are aware of, at best, about 1 one millionth of the reality used to support science. What’s more everyone reading this contains no more than 1% of their original cellular mass; that is to say that your body isn’t even the one you were born with. But I mean, for those who are spiritual just think about any given day in your life, even the one you deem to be the most spiritual. Your memory is pretty much confined to the general time in which you are existing. I mean you can recall certain things and whatnot, but for the most part it’s stationary, which means that although your natural tendencies remain, there is no constant ‘you’ anymore than those natural tendencies.
The ‘You’ is the ability to move around within this set of tendencies and data entry. It -cannot- be a constant, for then the playground would be frozen.
Tu Weiming said:
So this model of self (which I think makes a good deal of sense) would argue for a constantly changing self. Even the core self, the center of the relationships, is in a constant state of flux for the sum of our relationships is ever-changing.
Let’s look at that core self a little deeper, that thing that mistakenly thinks it is us. While there might be some similarity due to shared memories, I find it hard to argue for any sort of a consistant self. Do you look the same as time goes on? At some level yes, but the twist of the hair, the tone of your skin, the bags under your eyes, the tone of your muscle, let alone what you adorn yourself with are always different. So, you don’t look the same. When I look back over the years, I no longer think as I once did. Heck, with mood swings and dietary changes, I don’t even think as I did a few minutes ago. And how I react with people and my relationship to them? Well, that changes not only with my own personal experiences but with their personal experiences as well.
So, physically, mentally, and socially the self does not resemble the self from one time point to the next. Without some sort of Platonic idealized self there can be no constant self.
From beginning when you are born till the present you are still yourself, because that essence of soul/ living substance is there.
For say, if there was a glass vase, and it was broken, and if you glue them together piece by piece do you still have the same vase? Will your father not say it is not, and will get angry with you?
If there is a constantly changing self, then people will testified, I didn’t kill him because I was not myself I was drunk.
Kris~
The issue of Yes and no, is that we are both absoulte and constantly changing self. Like water it is absolutely and changes shape by different volume of container.
Growth is additive, So though physically our original material is no longer a part of us its descendent parts are.
If I were not still my original self constructively and descendently then I could breed with close blood relations without fear. Hah, yuchy and gross. My gene structure says different. My self says different. I am me the same me just more of me mentally.
And if we do not stay the same core physically how then do forensic artists know how to age a child or an adult and be pretty darn acurate? Does that not speak towards this discussion?
kris wrote
so mind and body is different and has different functions, and is inseparable, but not identical. It is one. Do you agree with me?
If you do, those who made the controversy is mind and body different or both, will come to an end.
One is self one is vehicle, they are not inseperable. You can seperate a seed from a fruit and you will gain another plant. Your self is the seed your body the fruit. My self will change when I lose this body or suffer severe head trauma. This body can function without self only if assisted by machines. They each carry out different functions yes, My self resides within this body for now. I am me, the same me that recalls my first memories, that demanded this body to learn to walk. I am more than what I was then, not changed but, enhanced.
This body may change outwardly in size and shape, but, my genetic structure is the same. If given a picture of me when I was a child a forensic artist could create a reasonable likeness of me as I look now. So essentially I may look different, it is obvious I am not. changes do not mean a total elimination it means enhancing what is.
So I repeat what I earlier posted whether I agree or disagree I am not sure. I do know that if I commited a crime 10 yrs ago I would still be the self that did it. For if I am the one that has memeories of doing it, how then could I be someone else. I am ultimately responsible for me. Me now Me then, me in the future. Anything else would be copping out, irresponsible and weak. if there is a constantly different me I still am responsible for myself and actions and thoughts and deeds. Therefore I am me as I was, am and will be. Responsiblity must be followed.
So are you saying the self is the soul. The self is the mind.
i hope you read your descartes because you are out of focus.
the physical/biological mind, you know that gray matter stuff, is part of the body. your soul/self resides in the mind. Since your self is pure energy it is only in this body until the body quits. then it moves or changes, Whatever one fits your belief system.
Out of focus? LOL of course I am its these orange colored lenses of mine.
Descartes gave me these things, no wait, it was that Lennon character.
How do you see it as out of focus? you chopped the whole phrase in half when you posted the quote, are you picking and choosing? or were you just abbreviating?
The soul is the self and it lives inside the mind? So much of it being identical, so you said the mind and soul is different.
I must have did if it seems for you to think it that way. but nevertheless,
all you said is true, but at the end we can say so what.
The ‘soul’ is a wonderful human invention which points to an unknown so as to explain the unknowable.
When a man looks in the mirror he prefers to believe that what lies unseen is his essence because what he sees leaves him wanting more or dissatisfies him.
Spirit is a concept which expresses the unity of becoming, not only of the individual as an experiential entity, but of his entire historical background.
The individual becomes the representation of the focus of this entire historical and experiential becoming.
His spirit is the sum of this.
The soul then becomes that which is passed on and never disappears – although here a leap of faith and an emotional hope is expressed – into the future, as a projection of everything that is past.
Descartes’ “I think therefore I am†relies on a mythological generalization and separation (negation).
The ‘I’ is a generalization with no specific meaning. There is no fixed ‘I’ as there is no #1.
It is a reference to a process which thinks itself thinking.
This general ‘I’ is detached from the ‘think’ implying that there is something which thinks besides the thinking or something the sees (seer) besides the seeing.
Since the eye cannot turn on itself it relies on seeing itself indirectly by using an intermediating otherness.
In this unseen, unknown, man places his ‘pure self’, his essence, his soul as that which connects him to the whole.
‘Energy’ is an English word coming from the Greek ενεργεια, ενεργο which means to act.
So energy is action.
It is that which is perpetual action.
Thinking is energy as it is thought in perpetual thinking or acting in time/space as movement.
=D>
wonderful. Is that what you think , or what others think?
I think…it’s what I think…….But what I think is influenced by what a select few others think……I think. 
Its a Sartre-Lacanic project of becomming our parents but under the pressure of alienation; having a sense of dissapointment with the parents and that conflict it produces during the making of one’s value system. Your brain is packed with hardwiring that determines most of your social aspects. The image of the parents are the archetypes seated deep in the psyche, and your moral development is the effect of both mimicing them and revolting against them.
What you are is a project of evolving your parents.
The perfect human being is a fine line, in that regard. There must be a balance of nurturing and oppression; there must be as much harmony as there is war, or else one does not develop diplomatically. Likewise, there must be periods of great conflict in the family, or else one becomes a stale replica and doesn’t create anything.
Exceptions, such as foster children and criminals, or illigitimate children raised unconventionally, produce the most dynamic personalities, granted that they are of good breeding and average to above intelligence.
You have not met my mother! the only thing that I want in common with her is genetics. Father? I would be proud to be his legacy, mother? Oh hell no I run screaming from that one. She needs too much evolving. She has to be the conflict you mention, 4 out of 6 of her children don’t deal with her. Only my little sister and I talk to her and love her.
Here is the interesting part, both parents are way above average intelligence. The lowest score on any of us kids IQ tests was 130, both parents have an artistic bent but! Both severely repress it and do not acknowledge it. This I believe has harmed both. My sibs also repress, and they all wish I would. What does repressing your talents and never feeding your need to learn do to a person? I see mild to severe addictions and an almost fanatic pedantic lifestyle. Anyone else see anything else?
Though I may be different with respect to exactness than I was a moment ago, I am substantively the same person.
That being said, innocent by reason of insanity makes the implication that we can come to be other than our true self … or we can even be beside ourself, in famous Sybil’s case.
I believe there are five very integrated components to one’s existence: mind and world, body and soul, and the center of our being, heart.
The mind and body are, to me, different.