Philosophers! Tell me what concept I'm struggling with.

So basically on paper the idea of each human having their own individuality makes sense but to be one of those people experiencing life vividly and subjectivley at an arbitrary place in space and time seems to be without any obvious cause.

Why does my individual conciousness feel so vivid to the point where as far as I can tell everything else could be fake but I know at least that I am real? Its as if the universe might as well have not existed until I came along.

If there is no real reason for this is it possible that any sense of self is just an illusion or at least not really seperate from other "individual" minds?

I hope I made sense but this stuff keeps me up at night.

I have these thoughts about spiders. Perhaps we're the same after all?

Spiders , have rather strong genes . Under medical science research, it could even prevent certain illness. ycdeo

The flesh and blood of dangerous creatures has always been the cure for many problems. Witches and wizards were truly the the scientists of their time.

Welcome to existentialism!RationalAtheist

Why am I seemingly arbitrarily experiencing life through the body and mind of a random human and not an alien or an elephant?

[QUOTE="RationalAtheist"]Welcome to existentialism!RaptorPen

Why am I seemingly arbitrarily experiencing life through the body and mind of a random human and not an alien or an elephant?

You brain is wired for self preservation, Without a strong sense of individuality the base instinct of self preservation would have no meaning.

Would you prefer to be part of a collective, TC? Like a bee?

Or the Borg?

So basically on paper the idea of each human having their own individuality makes sense but to be one of those people experiencing life vividly and subjectivley at an arbitrary place in space and time seems to be without any obvious cause.

Why does my individual conciousness feel so vivid to the point where as far as I can tell everything else could be fake but I know at least that I am real? Its as if the universe might as well have not existed until I came along.

If there is no real reason for this is it possible that any sense of self is just an illusion or at least not really seperate from other "individual" minds?

I hope I made sense but this stuff keeps me up at night.

RaptorPen

This has basically been my thinking as of late. I don't experience any shift in cognition when someone dies or is born, so my thinking basically goes like individuals may die, but cognition as a whole persists and is unaffected. Of course, this could just be a coping mechanism I'm using because I can't get my conscious mind around the concept of non-cognition, gotta take it with a grain of salt. As for no obvious causes, though, I think one of the fallacies inherent in the human perspective is to infer cause because we are purposeful beings, much of hte universe seems to be without any obvious cause.

Cogito ergo sum. You can choose where to go from there. Descartes said in the same work that everyone walking on the street could be robots and there is always some degree of doubt. However, to proceed in a reasonable manner one can look at other individuals, observe that they act much like oneself, and reasonably conclude that they are, in fact, like the individual and conscious beings themselves. No way to have complete certainty, but it's a reasonable conclusion. If you really want to go on a mind-bender read Kant, he rejects Descartes conclusion of I think therefore I am. He says that since we only see the world in the context of our own consciousness we can only perceive anything as it appears to our minds. Therefore we are not thinking beings, we appear to ourselves to be thinking beings, which eventually leads into a never-ending circle of logic.

Depends on what you mean by self. I take the position that cognition, even animal cognition, is pretty unique in comparison to the way everything else in the universe works. It's cognition that gives us a sense of individuality, but you can still look at all beings as energy and matter that are still just a part of the whole of this world, therefore not individuals strictly speaking. I think even cognition is not fully individual. My favorite quote of Sartre's is "hell is other people." What he meant was that we define ourselves in part by how other people see us, which I guess can be interpreted as cognition not being a completely individualistic experience. Whether this means individual cognition doesn't exist or that we simply function better as social animals is for you to decide.

So basically on paper the idea of each human having their own individuality makes sense but to be one of those people experiencing life vividly and subjectivley at an arbitrary place in space and time seems to be without any obvious cause.

Why does my individual conciousness feel so vivid to the point where as far as I can tell everything else could be fake but I know at least that I am real? Its as if the universe might as well have not existed until I came along.

If there is no real reason for this is it possible that any sense of self is just an illusion or at least not really seperate from other "individual" minds?

I hope I made sense but this stuff keeps me up at night.

RaptorPen

[QUOTE="megagene"]Solipsism seems about right. On a side note, TC, are you Philosoraptor? :oevildead6789

Who's to say that solipsism is a psychosis and not the other way around? Why do you assume that what seems natural is sane and what doesn't insane? At any rate, I think people in this thread are misusing the term solipsism, that word is thrown around far too often. TC isn't saying that no one exists except him, he's questioning the nature of individual consciousness vs. group consciousness.

Faith is the only thing that can help you here Science cannot explain conciousness.

evildead6789

Ummmm...ever heard of neuropsychology? Even if we had no objective method of investiagating consciousness, there's a difference between investigating it with an objective mindset and just throwing up one's hands and saying "you need faith!"

Ummmm...ever heard of neuropsychology? Even if we had no objective method of investiagating consciousness, there's a difference between investigating it with an objective mindset and just throwing up one's hands and saying "you need faith!"

theone86

Eh, anything beyond the cogito, IMO, requires some level of uncertainty.

Could somebody plaese explain to me the usefulness of these reasonings?

On a side note, TC, are you Philosoraptor? :omegagene

[QUOTE="evildead6789"][QUOTE="megagene"] Be carefull with that, reality can bite you in the &ss Solipsism is nothing more than a physosis. theone86

Who's to say that solipsism is a psychosis and not the other way around? Why do you assume that what seems natural is sane and what doesn't insane? At any rate, I think people in this thread are misusing the term solipsism, that word is thrown around far too often. TC isn't saying that no one exists except him, he's questioning the nature of individual consciousness vs. group consciousness.

Faith is the only thing that can help you here Science cannot explain conciousness.

evildead6789

Ummmm...ever heard of neuropsychology? Even if we had no objective method of investiagating consciousness, there's a difference between investigating it with an objective mindset and just throwing up one's hands and saying "you need faith!"

The easiest way to prove this is to realize that there is stuff happening that you are not concoius of at that very moment.

[QUOTE="theone86"]

Ummmm...ever heard of neuropsychology? Even if we had no objective method of investiagating consciousness, there's a difference between investigating it with an objective mindset and just throwing up one's hands and saying "you need faith!"

coolbeans90

Eh, anything beyond the cogito, IMO, requires some level of uncertainty.

Yes, but if you accept that uncertainty and simply proceed on reasonable assumption then neuropsychology can explain consciousness, or at least parts of it. Really the only condition under which neuroscience could be wrong is if one's whole comprehension of the universe is faulty, and that in that case there would be much larger questions.

[QUOTE="coolbeans90"]

[QUOTE="theone86"]

Ummmm...ever heard of neuropsychology? Even if we had no objective method of investiagating consciousness, there's a difference between investigating it with an objective mindset and just throwing up one's hands and saying "you need faith!"

theone86

Eh, anything beyond the cogito, IMO, requires some level of uncertainty.

Yes, but if you accept that uncertainty and simply proceed on reasonable assumption then neuropsychology can explain consciousness, or at least parts of it. Really the only condition under which neuroscience could be wrong is if one's whole comprehension of the universe is faulty, and that in that case there would be much larger questions.

Ditto.

[QUOTE="theone86"]

[QUOTE="evildead6789"]

Who's to say that solipsism is a psychosis and not the other way around? Why do you assume that what seems natural is sane and what doesn't insane? At any rate, I think people in this thread are misusing the term solipsism, that word is thrown around far too often. TC isn't saying that no one exists except him, he's questioning the nature of individual consciousness vs. group consciousness.

[QUOTE="evildead6789"]

Faith is the only thing that can help you here Science cannot explain conciousness.

evildead6789

Ummmm...ever heard of neuropsychology? Even if we had no objective method of investiagating consciousness, there's a difference between investigating it with an objective mindset and just throwing up one's hands and saying "you need faith!"

Who's to say my arm isn't a figment of my imagination? Who's to say the pain I feel isn't a figment of my imagination? (without even getting into the ontological argument, pain is registered in the brain so it does require a cognitive aspect) You're assuming things are the way that you see them, and calling people who don't agree with that psychotic.

They know an awful lot about the brain. They've mapped many emotions, feelings, pain centers, and more; they've isolated chemical processes that affect psychology. I'd like to know where you're getting this ten percent number from, and what exactly you're referring to with it.

Prove there's a soul, then we can start talking about deciphering it.

Just because one does not understand something, or just because a certain phenomena seems complex, does not mean the explanation must be metaphysical. You can believe whatever you want, but just because the explanation seems complex or lies beyond current science does not mean the answer MUST be metaphysical.

@OP on the subject of things existing before you were conscious.

I think the mistake that you made is believing that consciousness is the epitome of existence, and thus controls the existence ofthat which isnon-conscious, the reality being that is just manipulates it.

[QUOTE="evildead6789"][QUOTE="theone86"]

Ummmm...ever heard of neuropsychology? Even if we had no objective method of investiagating consciousness, there's a difference between investigating it with an objective mindset and just throwing up one's hands and saying "you need faith!"

theone86

Who's to say my arm isn't a figment of my imagination? Who's to say the pain I feel isn't a figment of my imagination? (without even getting into the ontological argument, pain is registered in the brain so it does require a cognitive aspect) You're assuming things are the way that you see them, and calling people who don't agree with that psychotic.

They know an awful lot about the brain. They've mapped many emotions, feelings, pain centers, and more; they've isolated chemical processes that affect psychology. I'd like to know where you're getting this ten percent number from, and what exactly you're referring to with it.

Prove there's a soul, then we can start talking about deciphering it.

Just because one does not understand something, or just because a certain phenomena seems complex, does not mean the explanation must be metaphysical. You can believe whatever you want, but just because the explanation seems complex or lies beyond current science does not mean the answer MUST be metaphysical.

They may know a lot about the brain but still not a lot. We only know about ten percent and we don't fully understand that ten percent. I've read this on numerous places and saw it on numerous documentaries. I googled 'percentage of the brain know' and on the first link it's already mentioned in the article.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=people-only-use-10-percent-of-brain&page=2

look at the last sentence of the article.

About the soul, this is wat i meant with conscienceness, You know it is there , i know it is there, otherwise we wouldn't be discussing it.

You can say certain phenoma or complex or aren't fully understood but we will never understand everything. When you talk about the vastness and complexity of the universe, we may think we comprehend it but we can never know for sure, it's too big. And as we understand it know , at a given time , the universe will cease to exist. We could traverse to other universes, if this is possible and even then , what if we know everything, that we mapped the whole universe, where's the end line , where's the border, what's beyond that end line? unlimited space? we can never know for sure because we couldn't have been everywhere.

For this very reason can science, with it's mathematical viewpoint , never explain everything. So it has to be something else like metaphyscial, religion, faith or another viewpoint.