What is You?

You have to understand the context a bit. I'm not really saying "What are you?" because there are multiple definition for who you are, e.g. I am a human. What I'm asking is: what is you?

What I mean is this the following. You have your arm. You have your body. You have your head. You have your brain. You have your 'soul.' But what, in essence, is you?

Umm, im honestly not sure how to answer:P

I am me.DavidianMH

[QUOTE="DavidianMH"]I am me.brandontwb

Me, Tarzan. Who you?

'You' are a constantly changing set of cognitive thoughts encased in a sort of malleable biological mass?

[QUOTE="brandontwb"][QUOTE="DavidianMH"]I am me.DavidianMH

I am me.DavidianMH

I'm the only thing I can prove exists.

[QUOTE="DavidianMH"][QUOTE="brandontwb"]Who is you?brandontwb

I'm the shell of the ultimate cyborg, THE DESTROYER OF THE WORLDS.night-dreamers

'You' are a constantly changing set of cognitive thoughts encased in a sort of malleablebiological mass?

MissLibrarian

I am Legend.

[spoiler] I am my memories and my personality. /tried [/spoiler]

I am Legend.

I am my memories and my personality. /tried

Teenaged

EDIT: Does anyone know why the movie was named I, Robot? It would be interesting if it was the answer to my question!

[QUOTE="MissLibrarian"]

'You' are a constantly changing set of cognitive thoughts encased in a sort of malleablebiological mass?

brandontwb

[QUOTE="Teenaged"]

I am Legend.

I am my memories and my personality. /tried

brandontwb

We also use the phrase "my self" (in cases other than the ones where that means "me and not someone else"). Does that mean we refer to ourselves as something extraneous from us?

No. We just have the ability to "see" ourselves as an entity, to ponder about it. At least thats what I know from Psychology and I am sure I'm not doing it justice with the way I am describing it. English isnt my first language.

EDIT: Or let me put it differently.

I could say "I am a bunch of memories and a dynamic collection of behavioric patterns". The "my" simply indicate that I am not any memories and any dynamic [...], but specific memories and dynamic [...] "seated" in a specific biological entity (my body or brain if we are to be specific).

[QUOTE="brandontwb"][QUOTE="MissLibrarian"]

'You' are a constantly changing set of cognitive thoughts encased in a sort of malleablebiological mass?

MissLibrarian

[QUOTE="brandontwb"]

[QUOTE="Teenaged"]

I am Legend.

I am my memories and my personality. /tried

Teenaged

We also use the phrase "my self" (in cases other than the ones where that means "me and not someone else"). Does that mean we refer to ourselves as something extraneous from us?

No. We just have the ability to "see" ourselves as an entity, to ponder about it. At least thats what I know from Psychology and I am sure I'm not doing it justice with the way I am describing it. English isnt my first language.

EDIT: Or let me put it differently.

I could say "I am a bunch of memories and a dynamic collection of behavioric patterns". The "my" simply indicate that I am not any memories and any dynamic [...], but specific memories and dynamic [...] "seated" in a specific biological entity (my body or brain if we are to be specific).

It's kind of confusing what you are trying to say, but I don't think thats what I'm getting at. I'm getting at the essense of 'you' meaning, what seperates us from anything else? Your hand is not alive, it is but a machine connected to 'you.' Parts of the brain are processors that we are not aware of, e.g. subconsious. Where you draw that line? At wh atpoint does the 'my' extend to?brandontwb

You mean the line between the biological processes going on in our body and our cognitive self?

I (as in my conciousness) am my memories and my base parameters, i am the software and data and my body is the hardware. I am not the neuro-transmiters but i am the meaning and reason behind them, the nerves and synapses are just hardware to support me. This doesn't mean the case and support structure don't matter just that they are not integral to what i am without the experience of them, ie if i was turned into a women but had no way of knowing it then i would be the same and just my casing would have changed.markop2003

I is a meat suit.XilePrincess

Yeah, but where does the difference lie between that and a robot calculating the rain level and processing it's need to keep itself from getting wet?brandontwb

Well I assume it would then come down to independent thought and reasoning. Although it's mostly concluded by society that a monkey's thought process is somehow more 'basic' than ours, more driven by nature than a human's thought processes being more driven by experience, it's still a sort of comfort and awareness thing for them I think - getting out of the rain. As in the monkey will 'think' 'if I stay out here I'm going to get all wet and soggy', so it chooses to find shelter, but it's not programmed by nature to either automatically find shelter or perish.

A robot, on the other hand, would be likely to be programmed to find shelter when it rains - especially if it is shoddily built and it might get it's electronics wet or whatever. A robot would be 'thinking' if it was not programmed with such an automatic safety feature, and found itself out in the rain, and somehow used it's pre-acquired knowledge to come to the conclusion that rain consisting of water and a system made of electronics probably don't mix and it then 'chose' to take shelter based on said conclusion.

I is Steven Seagal.Big_Bad_Sad

am i the only one that thought this when reading the title?

[QUOTE="brandontwb"]Yeah, but where does the difference lie between that and a robot calculating the rain level and processing it's need to keep itself from getting wet?MissLibrarian

am i the only one that thought this when reading the title?

surrealnumber5

i am me, whom is me at the point of my life at this point I am typing this,

[QUOTE="surrealnumber5"]

am i the only one that thought this when reading the title?

MissLibrarian

[QUOTE="markop2003"]I (as in my conciousness) am my memories and my base parameters, i am the software and data and my body is the hardware. I am not the neuro-transmiters but i am the meaning and reason behind them, the nerves and synapses are just hardware to support me. This doesn't mean the case and support structure don't matter just that they are not integral to what i am without the experience of them, ie if i was turned into a women but had no way of knowing it then i would be the same and just my casing would have changed.brandontwb

1. The memories are part of me though logically would be retrieved by another part. Just because my hearing routine has to call on my speach parsing routine which in turn calls on my audio memory and then my language memory does not mean any one of these components is not part of me.

2. Being stabbed is just info, there have been experiments on this kind of thing and it is all just pulses. It is no different from a computer external to the brain, this has been done and whilst primitive it shows up exactly the same to your consciousness.

"I think therefore I am." :P

I am but a part of this world, but I hereby henceforth in essence rub cake. :)

A robot, on the other hand, would be likely to be programmed to find shelter when it rains - especially if it is shoddily built and it might get it's electronics wet or whatever. A robot would be 'thinking' if it was not programmed with such an automatic safety feature, and found itself out in the rain, and somehow used it's pre-acquired knowledge to come to the conclusion that rain consisting of water and a system made of electronics probably don't mix and it then 'chose' to take shelter based on said conclusion.

MissLibrarian

"I think therefore I am." :P

Vancelvany

[QUOTE="brandontwb"][QUOTE="markop2003"]I (as in my conciousness) am my memories and my base parameters, i am the software and data and my body is the hardware. I am not the neuro-transmiters but i am the meaning and reason behind them, the nerves and synapses are just hardware to support me. This doesn't mean the case and support structure don't matter just that they are not integral to what i am without the experience of them, ie if i was turned into a women but had no way of knowing it then i would be the same and just my casing would have changed.markop2003

1. The memories are part of me though logically would be retrieved by another part. Just because my hearing routine has to call on my speach parsing routine which in turn calls on my audio memory and then my language memory does not mean any one of these components is not part of me.

2. Being stabbed is just info, there have been experiments on this kind of thing and it is all just pulses. It is no different from a computer external to the brain, this has been done and whilst primitive it shows up exactly the same to your consciousness.

Are your memories not stored in your brain, only selectively and distortedly reawoken when they are asked of your consiousness? And your "consiousness".. is it not comprised of other processors that, without them, would change you? When you feel something (e.g. being stabed), what makes it more than the information being sent to your brain, and how is that different from the information being sent to a computer from a sensor that can detect stabbings? Like I mentioned before, I think there is something else involved in the brain that is beyond processing. What it is, I'm unsure of.brandontwb

1. The memories are part of me though logically would be retrieved by another part. Just because my hearing routine has to call on my speach parsing routine which in turn calls on my audio memory and then my language memory does not mean any one of these components is not part of me.

2. Being stabbed is just info, there have been experiments on this kind of thing and it is all just pulses. It is no different from a computer external to the brain, this has been done and whilst primitive it shows up exactly the same to your consciousness.

[QUOTE="brandontwb"][QUOTE="markop2003"]

1. The memories are part of me though logically would be retrieved by another part. Just because my hearing routine has to call on my speach parsing routine which in turn calls on my audio memory and then my language memory does not mean any one of these components is not part of me.

2. Being stabbed is just info, there have been experiments on this kind of thing and it is all just pulses. It is no different from a computer external to the brain, this has been done and whilst primitive it shows up exactly the same to your consciousness.

night-dreamers

The example I provided was a simplification, and it is easy to view the simplicity of the example of a process as an argument seperating the robot from the monkey- but I'm unsure that is the case. You mentioned 'comfort', which is key to all of this. A reductionist would view it "only" as the chemical reactions taking place in the brain that would consistute comfort. It would be much like a process of the robot. This 'you' which I am talking about, is that ability to feel, to experience. Therefore, I conclude that 'you' at it's most basic and stripped form, is a seperate ability to feel. This may sound confusing, but don't worry, I am not describing it properly. This is good though, I've thought of some new questions about what life is.brandontwb

Well my examples were purposefully simplified as well, but with a subject like What is 'You' I think the simpler the examples the better, otherwise there's the potential for serious walls of text. But I wasn't exactly 100% clear with my robot example anyway. An awareness and feeling (the comfort thing) is definitely the key to 'personality' in my opinion.

Taking the robot example further: Say it was out in the rain because it was delivering a package, it did its computing or whatever and came to conclusion that although for a robot being out in the rain isn't ideal, according to its sensors and computers and calculation machines and stuff it could still complete it's primary objective without the rain causing any damage/harm. Now if it just paused, made those calculations and then continued on its way, it would not be 'thinking' but merely calculating imo. If it came to the conclusion that it could still deliver the package safely but 'thought' 'Ah, **** it, I'll have to polish myself to keep from rusting when I get home if I keep on in this', and took shelter while also delaying its objective, then it'd be 'thinking' - a 'you'.

This is what I meant in its simplest form of the Tree/Monkey example. A tree being rained on and doing nothing is the equivalent of a robot being rained on and yet still delivering its parcel or whatever. A monkey and a 'thinking' robot will both move out of the rain because, despite it not doing them any harm, they'd simply prefer to not be in it.

[QUOTE="night-dreamers"][QUOTE="brandontwb"]It's not just info though. The information maybe contains what needs to be felt, but there has to be another component to it. My computer isn't alive, it can't feel. This is incredibly complicated to think about so this example may be crude. Say I were to attempt to design a computer to be exactly like a human being. There is a critical problem that will come up when you get passed all of our processors as components of the being you are creating. You might notice that everything is only an immitation of how we react, and it is not truely like a human. The receptors might sense the stabbing and send that information to the computer mind, but then what? When creating this being, you might want it to imitate a human's reaction, but will it feel as though it has been stabbed? Will it feel pain? brandontwb

It's not just info though. The information maybe contains what needs to be felt, but there has to be another component to it. My computer isn't alive, it can't feel. This is incredibly complicated to think about so this example may be crude. Say I were to attempt to design a computer to be exactly like a human being. There is a critical problem that will come up when you get passed all of our processors as components of the being you are creating. You might notice that everything is only an immitation of how we react, and it is not truely like a human. The receptors might sense the stabbing and send that information to the computer mind, but then what? When creating this being, you might want it to imitate a human's reaction, but will it feel as though it has been stabbed? Will it feel pain? brandontwb

Humans feel stabbing as pain the same reason certain foods are bitter, because it is an evolutionary advantage to dislike these things; the cave man who dosn't try to stab himself lives to shag another day and propagates the species.

You are me and i am you and we are all together,

[QUOTE="brandontwb"]It's not just info though. The information maybe contains what needs to be felt, but there has to be another component to it. My computer isn't alive, it can't feel. This is incredibly complicated to think about so this example may be crude. Say I were to attempt to design a computer to be exactly like a human being. There is a critical problem that will come up when you get passed all of our processors as components of the being you are creating. You might notice that everything is only an immitation of how we react, and it is not truely like a human. The receptors might sense the stabbing and send that information to the computer mind, but then what? When creating this being, you might want it to imitate a human's reaction, but will it feel as though it has been stabbed? Will it feel pain? markop2003

Humans feel stabbing as pain the same reason certain foods are bitter, because it is an evolutionary advantage to dislike these things; the cave man who dosn't try to stab himself lives to shag another day and propagates the species.