Sure-- but why does the “I” have to be something distinguishable as a separate being? If “I’m” a bioelectrical phenomenon on rails, functioning like an eddy in the Totality and not actually distinguishable from it in any way you could draw a border around, how different is that from “me” being something indescribable that is likewise experiencing this existence on rails, with its reality hidden behind the walls of the very experience it is having?
What if the “something indescribable” that is experiencing the world through my eyes is a tiny little bit of the Totality?
When I say I don’t exist, Arrendis, do you assume I mean that there’s actually nothing here? It didn’t seem you did: your description of what that world is like is actually pretty much the one I live in, every day. Bread is indeed “that bit of stuff over there,” only I call it “bread” because I like using it to make “food” and want to be able to ask for another “loaf” of it.
I’m a figment, an illusion, a process of the Totality with a very high opinion of itself. I don’t act what you see as the part, because that’s where my actual desires come in: I don’t want to suffer and die. … even if it’s meaningless. The same’s true of our fellow creatures. People find meaning for their lives, even if the Totality gives them none, and will sweep their meanings away in the end.
People will find reasons to act like they’re real. They’ll grow attached to the world, and, probably, suffer for it. That’s how the world is.
Because the ‘I’ is the foundational element. The ‘I’ has to exist. Now demonstrate that the rest of the Totality is sharing that experience. If it’s not, then that distinguishes the first-person observer as separate.
The idea that, from your viewpoint, ‘you’—the first-person observer—is the illusion… that’s exactly the impossibility I finished on in the prior post. From your viewpoint, ‘you’ can’t be the illusion, because that’s what must exist. The only thing that can be illusory is everything else.
I … don’t understand why you think that’s such an obvious thing. Although I guess it’s a natural trick for a biological guidance system to want to play on itself.
So, here’s a curious turn for you, Arrendis: how is what you’re pointing to, distinguishable from belief in a soul?
It seems like, really, that’s what you’re arguing: that, behind all the biology, behind all the psychology and semiotics and everything, there MUST be something more. It’s an appealing idea-- that there’s something more “real” than physics, and the proof is in the observer’s perspective.
I don’t believe in souls in such a way (we do have a concept we use the word for, but it’s a little off-topic for our purposes right now). But it seems like you’re saying that the verifiable universe science tells us about can’t be all there is?
Nope. I’m not arguing that there must be anything beyond the biology. I’m perfectly happy with the idea that my mind is purely an emergent property of the electrochemical cascade that is my brain in operation. There’s no need for anything past that.
From my perspective, ‘I’ must exist in some form. That form might be just exactly the meat I perceive. But it might not be. No idea. But no, there’s no need for any kind of metaphysical or supernatural existence. The universe we observe may well be all there is, and I’m perfectly ok with that. Frankly, I don’t see where you draw the conclusion that I’m even suggesting there needs to be more.
As for why the necessity of the first-person observer is an obvious thing? If something is experiencing something, that thing must exist. Something that doesn’t exist can’t experience anything, because all anything can ‘experience’ is existence.
… how do you experience non-existence? Have you ever? Can you conceptualize non-existence?
As for ‘how would you define “real”’…
You’re the one claiming things aren’t, so… how would you? For me, if something exists, it’s real. This applies to abstracts and concepts, as well. Leprechauns might not be real, but the concept of a leprechaun is a real thing. It exists, even if the thing it describes does not. ‘2’ is a real thing, even if the real thing that it is is an abstract concept.
Well, I guess in that case I would agree that I fit your definition of a “real” person. I’m a trick my head is playing on me-- but, as a result, I’m at least as “real” as the concept of me. After all, that’s the illusion my head is spinning for me: the impression of a coherent self, the experience of making choices. … even if that’s not quite what’s actually going on.
My sense of something that isn’t “real” is based in different standards. To me, it’s founded in the question of whether I’m distinct, separate, in a way that isn’t ultimately a bunch of semiotic head games. And, I’m not. My beliefs about the basic nature of my existence are similar to yours, but, I don’t see myself as something separable from the universe I live in. Any hard line I choose to say “I” am here, and “I am not” there, will turn out to be either too broad or too narrow.
I’m part of this world. It’s not that there’s nobody and nothing here; it’s just that what is actually here, versus what we normally think of as being here, is quite a different sort of thing. My “existence” is kind of like a story the Totality is telling itself. So maybe, by your standards, I’m real after all.
As for non-existence … we’ve all got a lot of practice at it. It’s what we’ve spent most of time doing, up until the lights went on in our little baby heads. I don’t remember it, of course, but it’s not something that scares me.
What scares me is more what sort of mark my passing will leave in this world. As much as time will brush all our hopes and struggles aside, as Ms. Tsukiyo is so cheerful about reflecting, I still don’t want to be someone whose legacy in this world is a darkening of the lives of others.
Nope. Not gonna believe that one, Aria. You value kindness, you appreciate how people treat you… but you definitely draw the line on empathy when it comes to people you don’t deal with or identify with. Look at how your attitude toward Napkins’ actions—and how people addressed them—changed when he set up shop over your homeworld.
You don’t want to be mistreated, but plenty of people out that are, every day, all across the cluster. But you’re not out there crusading for them, you’re not fighting for them the way you’d oppose someone abusing you.
That’s you, drawing distinctions, holding yourself as separable from them.
You’re misunderstanding me a little, Arrendis, though that’s an interesting topic in its own right. I mean that in a narrower sense. (And you’ll generally find Caldari and Achura, Shuijing or not, construe our duties as “part of this world” a little more narrowly than you seem to want me to apply it.)
What I meant is more, where are the borders around “me” as a person?
What is “me?” It’s not like “Aria Jenneth” is a True Name that can be chanted around a magic circle, and whatever gets summoned inside it is “me.”
What would that include? Clone? Clothes? Implants? Or just whatever central nervous system I happen to be inhabiting at the time? JUST the infomorph, irrespective of whether there’s anything for it to run on? Or, going way off in the other direction, would that include all the clones I’ve worn? All the matter that’s been part of them? The impression of me in people’s minds? Absolutely everything and everyone I’ve ever influenced and changed in some way? Everybody who’s ever influenced me??
My ships? Including the drifting shrapnel that used to be some of my ships? At times those have been easier to identify myself with than my own skin.
My presence in this world is a little more vague than just my active clone. For most purposes, though, I’m willing to treat it as my current clone and whatever it’s carrying or wearing. That’s not some kind of hard and unchanging border, though. One of the gifts of the pod is to illustrate how subject to context and perspective that line can be.
You’re the one who doesn’t want to play a bunch of semiotic head games. Who keeps shifting the context when you say that the concept of the individual is illusory, and then I demonstrate that even you don’t practice what you preach in that regard.
By your own measurements, I’ve demonstrated that you draw distinctions between yourself and the Totality. If you didn’t, you’d have to include all other people in that, because they’re part of that Totality. You, demonstrably, put stock in your personal identity as a distinct and separate entity, distinguishable from the Totality, even as you claim you don’t.
You can obfuscate and obscure the criteria you’ve established, but it doesn’t change that fact.
Or the fact that you haven’t murdered my grandfather, for that matter.
