Julian is a good writer and a talented philosopher but not really a public speaker. He doesn't emote very well and seems to move through the words too quickly.
This is something I've been contemplating for a while. Finally a neat video explaining all that of which I've failed to form into words myself. This is what it means to be one with everything. Your nothing more than a form from this universe; a natural phenomenon, a collection of small events. 'What is one's self?' is but an irrelevant question. The question itself, is purely semantics.
what makes a person is the experiences that we go through, so if i would be born again i would be a completely different person, and i dont want that.
I just read a review by Julian Baggini in which he claims the author of a book on the history of philosophy did not include phenomenology. No Husserl or Heidegger, etc. Don't mind if you don't subscribe to that school
BUT
come the fuck on.
Baggini has the nerve to say the author did an admirable job of including ALL canonical philosophers.
I'd hoped we'd made progress past this parochial BULLSHIT
especially liked the question session.. the monk-ism critique, and the finding your self to become less self-ish paradox...
i once had an unproven theory that yoga turned my friends boring - in gaining the ability to fold themselves up their bums physically they inevitably began disappearing up their own bums mentally :0)... ... ...
desires, memories... we dont have it and knowledge either as much as consciousness project it. simulacrum has it. fabric of reality has memories. call it avatar, ego, mental projection if you will. take DMT. stop talking rubbish. formulate meta language formulas in first place. too much wording. lack consistency and definitions. Tibetan people make difference between SEM and RIGPA (MIND).Pribruim and others... look up Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.
Very interesting stuff indeed, and very well presented. Also interesting to see how this relates to the evidence that appears to indicate that whatever we call "our personality" somehow survives bodily death. If interested, look up 21 Days into the Afterlife.
I'd take that wager- because I don''t care for what I am, or more aptly what I am defined as- because we only know ourselves in our relation to others
This is utterly preposterous! Without the individual mind (physical brain), none of those aggregates of thoughts and memories are possible. We ARE concrete individuals. Simply stating that we change, means that we do not have solitary self-hood is just silly. Think of it like one computer adding capability, memory and programs over the years. It is still the same computer.
@cmunce But from what I understood he's not saying were not the same person or computer if you will, he's saying that there is no core of who we are. I think he's saying what moist science has been finding in terms of how much we can change which is that there is much more neuroplasticity than we tend to believe.
If the sense of self is merely a collection of experiences, then who is it that is doing the forgetting? I disagree with the fundamental premise. If you look closely into your thought process you notice that it is divided into two parts. That internal dialogue or thoughts , and the part that listens to those thoughts. I am not my thoughts, but thinking is something that i do, Likewise if i have not had any experiences, how can i know who i am, except by what i am not through Self reference?cont
This is actually very comforting. There is no such thing as who you are. At any given moment you can portray the label that is given to attributes(such as strong, hardworking) despite any track record. Humans are extremely inconsistent, and as factual as that is, it's very humbling.
@kokopelli314 you have a good point. correct me if I'm wrong or incomplete but as each day goes on we try to improve our self image and we get lost in the phase of trying to look good,pretty,handsome.(same thing i know)or to look smart or to look technologically up to date and as time goes on we become SELF-absorbed,thinking that we need to improve us so that we feel like uh--Richard who has three kids and an ipod/ipad etc for each kid plus his wife and himself. and if i'm right jealousy takes
do people really think this is original?? it seems to me that while i can appreciate the popular nature of this talk this is so far behind, and not acknowledging, where so much social and cultural theory and philosophy is at present its gobsmacking. Also the attempt to think through political and social implications is pretty woeful...
@rooley video isn't really my medium, though i have written (and published, albeit non-popular accademic work) on related issues - my complaint is about the hubris: that the self is in many respects an effect rather than a cause is an idea which has been around in various forms in various places for a long time. Directly on the topic of this talk i would point to Francisco Varela's The Embodied Mind, which links philosophy, neuroscience and buddism - it was published over 13 years ago.
"Social good" is subjective. If we fail to focus on ourselves, we fail to survive. You can be compassionate and empathetic, but your first concern must be your own survival, if it was on the survival. For am extreme: You would allow the murderer to kill you because it is better for him and he enjoys it and may even benefit financially from it. You would allow yourself to be anothers slave, because it benefits the other, though it may destroy your quality of life.
I agree to a point except murder really doesn't have a role in a civilised society. It's not egotistical, selfish or narcissistic to refuse someone the privilege of doing so. You may think it in terms of a choice for yourself to make but isn't that essentially being selfish to decide to give your life away like that?
What of your family, your job, your friends, your essential worth on this earth being removed?
@AleXGT7 What if you have no friends or family or worth? What then? It is not selfish to give your life to the pleasure of another (such as a murderer who gets pleasure from killing) it is altruistic because it destroys the self.
In my view, social good becomes the foreseeable usefulness of some type of sacrifice to be made.
Giving a small amount to charity to ensure basic human life support in poor countries most would agree is the easiest form of social good.
But what about people who give their life away to something? Military sacrifice is perhaps the oldest example but what about in terms of economics saying let's have higher taxes so we can ensure a better basic survival for all of us?
@AleXGT7 Charity is fine, it allows free choice. Taxes are a form of servitude taken by force, they provide nothing for the "basic survival of us all", they only take from the survival of one to provide to another. "Basic survival" is also extremely subjective. Economics does not require taxes and is only hindered by them. If any of those things provide enough benefit to you then fine. Nothing can ensure a "basic survival for all of us" other than ourselves individually.
i lean towards a sort of transhumanist desire as i am not a beliver in the soul - i just think ideally if a consious self is able to be entirely non biological -the expiernce of genuine emotion will need to be a part of it - to have a full continuance - i would probably sacrifice it if presented with an alternative of non existence.- it needs tobe incorporated into a non biological self ,as it is a determinate in whats valuable enough to encode. data value is a complex problem without it
... it will be a very different not only in its expierences - but in its emotions - it will be enhanced -in its other parts - but it will different and dificient in its emotions - a trans human form of you would perhaps recall mundane facts about the color of an object viewed in passing - but it will have a different non emotional response - where you may have otherwise seen but not encoded it - perhaps im wrong -and perhaps it would still be preferable to non existence - but emotion is self too
memorys desires beliefs and knowledge -dont define the selffully -also included are inteligence and emotions. - which largely encode the other parts and are also a result of them - i think a problem transhumanist will find -if they are able to encode the other parts - i think emotions will be extremely difficult - in a non chemical self. emotions are so complex, they will remain a very difficult to encode - if a trans humanist form of you -is achieved while you are still biological ....
@MrIzzyDizzy I believe that emotions dont need to be coded to have a full self, as emotions are beings of the present. Very few emotions survive within us more than a day. and if the "self" is a continuity then emotions would not be part of the self. while I agree that i dont believe that the self will be put into a nonbiological system anytime soon. the memory of the emotion would be more a part of the self then the actual emotion
@juxhesx - well that would be true up to the present - but its probable that all memory is encoded by emotion -there is little that you would term memory - that wasnt connected to emotion - if its a non emotional memory -isnt simply knowledge
@MrIzzyDizzy so what your suggesting is that emotion is the lens through which we perceive the world, but at the same time each new memory we have changes the lens in some way. which makes sense, but i also think that the speaker in the video hit that mark at 3:44 . at that point isn't he saying that that interconnectivity is in itself emotion as the knowledge, belief, desires, and memories. and just because emotion is connected to most of our memories does not mean that they are purely emotion
@juxhesx sorry i forgot to finish the sentence after i list the parts of self. at that point isnt he saying that interconnectivity is in itself emotion as the knowledge, belief, desires, and memories shape the lens through which we see
I usually say every copy of me is me because each copy is a path of continuity for Self. If every copy of me remembers being me then "I" continue on ^_^ helps to be a disassociation in this case because my self is separate from the body like a dvd is separate from a computer ;D
@PinkProgram what are you talking about? "If every copy of me remembers being me then "I" continue on" so you're you as long as you remember your very first memory and every copy remembered that? what is the first thing about you that the first copy had to remember in order to start this chain. what drivel. there's no "continuity" this sort of historical link argument for a continuous self is total bunk, every particle in the universe shares a historical link
@tonybeir did you miss the point where I said I was a disassociation ^_^ I can copy and reintegrate indefinitely as long as there is a medium to express me ^_^ I'm just data. Its like cancer. A cancer can live long after its original body dies as long as a few cells have a conducive medium. There are canine cancers spread as an STD that are thousands of years old. The original dog has been dead a long time ;D If every dog with the cancer died the chain would be broken though.
@PinkProgram you are data and you are a data set if that data set changes then YOU change. all that is left is a historical link... but so what? everything is historically link.. you could say you've been YOU since the big bang in principle because the particles are still in this universe just rearranged differently
@PinkProgram looking at your page you are not mad becuase technology hasnt caught up with you -your simply mad because you deny your a biological human - no human is hosting your self outside of your own body - its an intersting act - i can forsee inteligence embodied in machines or even chips encorporated in another -as explored in the science fiction work " the galactic center series" benford. but it is mad to say you exist even in that form yet - and more to say you have no form at all
@fathernicolow The thing about being a disassociation is the brain is not mine. I don't have a brain of my own yet ^_^ That is where jellyfish tech comes in. Direct neural interface between my source and a prosthetic system ;D the prosthetic learns to be me by being me. Either that or I link to an oberon brain hybrotic system and run several brains via remote interface. Each time one of me gains new information it sends it back to the main system for dissemination to the whole.^_^
Julian is a good writer and a talented philosopher but not really a public speaker. He doesn't emote very well and seems to move through the words too quickly.
mattyisagod 3 weeks ago
This is something I've been contemplating for a while. Finally a neat video explaining all that of which I've failed to form into words myself. This is what it means to be one with everything. Your nothing more than a form from this universe; a natural phenomenon, a collection of small events. 'What is one's self?' is but an irrelevant question. The question itself, is purely semantics.
dt28469 1 month ago
what makes a person is the experiences that we go through, so if i would be born again i would be a completely different person, and i dont want that.
sabbalo 4 months ago
what's the phobia term for the fear of vagueness? didn't quite catch it.
movealongBear 4 months ago
@movealongBear Incertophobia
CaramelBarz 4 months ago
I just read a review by Julian Baggini in which he claims the author of a book on the history of philosophy did not include phenomenology. No Husserl or Heidegger, etc. Don't mind if you don't subscribe to that school
BUT
come the fuck on.
Baggini has the nerve to say the author did an admirable job of including ALL canonical philosophers.
I'd hoped we'd made progress past this parochial BULLSHIT
S2Cents 5 months ago
especially liked the question session.. the monk-ism critique, and the finding your self to become less self-ish paradox...
i once had an unproven theory that yoga turned my friends boring - in gaining the ability to fold themselves up their bums physically they inevitably began disappearing up their own bums mentally :0)... ... ...
myTHself 6 months ago
desires, memories... we dont have it and knowledge either as much as consciousness project it. simulacrum has it. fabric of reality has memories. call it avatar, ego, mental projection if you will. take DMT. stop talking rubbish. formulate meta language formulas in first place. too much wording. lack consistency and definitions. Tibetan people make difference between SEM and RIGPA (MIND).Pribruim and others... look up Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.
shephronqpan 7 months ago
@shephronqpan your ideas intrigue me and i wish to subscribe to your newsletter
dirtunit 6 months ago
Chemical structure of water FAIL at 6:09
pglink 7 months ago 2
Very interesting stuff indeed, and very well presented. Also interesting to see how this relates to the evidence that appears to indicate that whatever we call "our personality" somehow survives bodily death. If interested, look up 21 Days into the Afterlife.
PeteParisetti 8 months ago
BAH!
I'd take that wager- because I don''t care for what I am, or more aptly what I am defined as- because we only know ourselves in our relation to others
1x93cm 8 months ago
This is utterly preposterous! Without the individual mind (physical brain), none of those aggregates of thoughts and memories are possible. We ARE concrete individuals. Simply stating that we change, means that we do not have solitary self-hood is just silly. Think of it like one computer adding capability, memory and programs over the years. It is still the same computer.
cmunce 8 months ago
@cmunce But from what I understood he's not saying were not the same person or computer if you will, he's saying that there is no core of who we are. I think he's saying what moist science has been finding in terms of how much we can change which is that there is much more neuroplasticity than we tend to believe.
karenmelissa002 8 months ago
@karenmelissa002 Yeah, the problem of identity has been around since the ship of Theseus.
S2Cents 8 months ago
hmm just did some research on that, I will embarrassingly admit I hadn't known that. Very interesting though Thanks!
karenmelissa002 8 months ago
@karenmelissa002 (S2Cents )
karenmelissa002 8 months ago
If the sense of self is merely a collection of experiences, then who is it that is doing the forgetting? I disagree with the fundamental premise. If you look closely into your thought process you notice that it is divided into two parts. That internal dialogue or thoughts , and the part that listens to those thoughts. I am not my thoughts, but thinking is something that i do, Likewise if i have not had any experiences, how can i know who i am, except by what i am not through Self reference?cont
steeldragonx 8 months ago
very balanced and honest lecture
chopper84a 8 months ago
cont'd: a hold on us and then we are going out and gtting all these crazy cell phones and electronics and stuff to once again improve our self
wolfmang22 8 months ago
This is actually very comforting. There is no such thing as who you are. At any given moment you can portray the label that is given to attributes(such as strong, hardworking) despite any track record. Humans are extremely inconsistent, and as factual as that is, it's very humbling.
karenmelissa002 8 months ago 16
what happened to the neat cartoons?
killahkazi 8 months ago 3
This is out of date
cutiko 8 months ago
i like those bottles they have.
mcteeth 8 months ago 3
The self isn't our most important part. It just thinks that it is.
kokopelli314 8 months ago 22
@kokopelli314 you have a good point. correct me if I'm wrong or incomplete but as each day goes on we try to improve our self image and we get lost in the phase of trying to look good,pretty,handsome.(same thing i know)or to look smart or to look technologically up to date and as time goes on we become SELF-absorbed,thinking that we need to improve us so that we feel like uh--Richard who has three kids and an ipod/ipad etc for each kid plus his wife and himself. and if i'm right jealousy takes
wolfmang22 8 months ago
@wolfmang22 I change my beliefs like I change my underwear.
kokopelli314 8 months ago
@kokopelli314 do you have good hygiene? jk.
chudunk 8 months ago
@chudunk I like to think so.
kokopelli314 8 months ago
@kokopelli314 I get what your saying but how can you change so quickly?
wolfmang22 8 months ago
@wolfmang22 Simple. Don't become attached to beliefs and never confuse belief with faith.
kokopelli314 8 months ago
I humbly recommend watching Alan Watts on the Nature of Consciousness (6 parts); part 1: /watch?v=UhRWYFJ2pyI
elchafa 8 months ago
Metzinger. 'Nuff said.
BuBBaGump014 8 months ago
do people really think this is original?? it seems to me that while i can appreciate the popular nature of this talk this is so far behind, and not acknowledging, where so much social and cultural theory and philosophy is at present its gobsmacking. Also the attempt to think through political and social implications is pretty woeful...
stilllife0 8 months ago
@stilllife0 So make your own video on the topic and show us how it's done.
rooley 8 months ago
@rooley video isn't really my medium, though i have written (and published, albeit non-popular accademic work) on related issues - my complaint is about the hubris: that the self is in many respects an effect rather than a cause is an idea which has been around in various forms in various places for a long time. Directly on the topic of this talk i would point to Francisco Varela's The Embodied Mind, which links philosophy, neuroscience and buddism - it was published over 13 years ago.
stilllife0 8 months ago
"Social good" is subjective. If we fail to focus on ourselves, we fail to survive. You can be compassionate and empathetic, but your first concern must be your own survival, if it was on the survival. For am extreme: You would allow the murderer to kill you because it is better for him and he enjoys it and may even benefit financially from it. You would allow yourself to be anothers slave, because it benefits the other, though it may destroy your quality of life.
Killedkennyagain 8 months ago
@Killedkennyagain
I agree to a point except murder really doesn't have a role in a civilised society. It's not egotistical, selfish or narcissistic to refuse someone the privilege of doing so. You may think it in terms of a choice for yourself to make but isn't that essentially being selfish to decide to give your life away like that?
What of your family, your job, your friends, your essential worth on this earth being removed?
AleXGT7 8 months ago
@AleXGT7 What if you have no friends or family or worth? What then? It is not selfish to give your life to the pleasure of another (such as a murderer who gets pleasure from killing) it is altruistic because it destroys the self.
Killedkennyagain 8 months ago
@Killedkennyagain
In my view, social good becomes the foreseeable usefulness of some type of sacrifice to be made.
Giving a small amount to charity to ensure basic human life support in poor countries most would agree is the easiest form of social good.
But what about people who give their life away to something? Military sacrifice is perhaps the oldest example but what about in terms of economics saying let's have higher taxes so we can ensure a better basic survival for all of us?
AleXGT7 8 months ago
@AleXGT7 Charity is fine, it allows free choice. Taxes are a form of servitude taken by force, they provide nothing for the "basic survival of us all", they only take from the survival of one to provide to another. "Basic survival" is also extremely subjective. Economics does not require taxes and is only hindered by them. If any of those things provide enough benefit to you then fine. Nothing can ensure a "basic survival for all of us" other than ourselves individually.
Killedkennyagain 8 months ago
i lean towards a sort of transhumanist desire as i am not a beliver in the soul - i just think ideally if a consious self is able to be entirely non biological -the expiernce of genuine emotion will need to be a part of it - to have a full continuance - i would probably sacrifice it if presented with an alternative of non existence.- it needs tobe incorporated into a non biological self ,as it is a determinate in whats valuable enough to encode. data value is a complex problem without it
MrIzzyDizzy 8 months ago
... it will be a very different not only in its expierences - but in its emotions - it will be enhanced -in its other parts - but it will different and dificient in its emotions - a trans human form of you would perhaps recall mundane facts about the color of an object viewed in passing - but it will have a different non emotional response - where you may have otherwise seen but not encoded it - perhaps im wrong -and perhaps it would still be preferable to non existence - but emotion is self too
MrIzzyDizzy 8 months ago
memorys desires beliefs and knowledge -dont define the selffully -also included are inteligence and emotions. - which largely encode the other parts and are also a result of them - i think a problem transhumanist will find -if they are able to encode the other parts - i think emotions will be extremely difficult - in a non chemical self. emotions are so complex, they will remain a very difficult to encode - if a trans humanist form of you -is achieved while you are still biological ....
MrIzzyDizzy 8 months ago
@MrIzzyDizzy I believe that emotions dont need to be coded to have a full self, as emotions are beings of the present. Very few emotions survive within us more than a day. and if the "self" is a continuity then emotions would not be part of the self. while I agree that i dont believe that the self will be put into a nonbiological system anytime soon. the memory of the emotion would be more a part of the self then the actual emotion
juxhesx 8 months ago
@juxhesx - well that would be true up to the present - but its probable that all memory is encoded by emotion -there is little that you would term memory - that wasnt connected to emotion - if its a non emotional memory -isnt simply knowledge
MrIzzyDizzy 8 months ago
@MrIzzyDizzy isnt it rather
MrIzzyDizzy 8 months ago
@MrIzzyDizzy so what your suggesting is that emotion is the lens through which we perceive the world, but at the same time each new memory we have changes the lens in some way. which makes sense, but i also think that the speaker in the video hit that mark at 3:44 . at that point isn't he saying that that interconnectivity is in itself emotion as the knowledge, belief, desires, and memories. and just because emotion is connected to most of our memories does not mean that they are purely emotion
juxhesx 8 months ago
@juxhesx sorry i forgot to finish the sentence after i list the parts of self. at that point isnt he saying that interconnectivity is in itself emotion as the knowledge, belief, desires, and memories shape the lens through which we see
juxhesx 8 months ago
@MrIzzyDizzy also I really like the idea that intelligence is the encoder. like the OS between the brain and outside stimuli.
juxhesx 8 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
So we are what we want to be.
slaxor 8 months ago
I usually say every copy of me is me because each copy is a path of continuity for Self. If every copy of me remembers being me then "I" continue on ^_^ helps to be a disassociation in this case because my self is separate from the body like a dvd is separate from a computer ;D
PinkProgram 8 months ago 3
@PinkProgram what are you talking about? "If every copy of me remembers being me then "I" continue on" so you're you as long as you remember your very first memory and every copy remembered that? what is the first thing about you that the first copy had to remember in order to start this chain. what drivel. there's no "continuity" this sort of historical link argument for a continuous self is total bunk, every particle in the universe shares a historical link
tonybeir 8 months ago
@tonybeir did you miss the point where I said I was a disassociation ^_^ I can copy and reintegrate indefinitely as long as there is a medium to express me ^_^ I'm just data. Its like cancer. A cancer can live long after its original body dies as long as a few cells have a conducive medium. There are canine cancers spread as an STD that are thousands of years old. The original dog has been dead a long time ;D If every dog with the cancer died the chain would be broken though.
PinkProgram 8 months ago
@PinkProgram you are data and you are a data set if that data set changes then YOU change. all that is left is a historical link... but so what? everything is historically link.. you could say you've been YOU since the big bang in principle because the particles are still in this universe just rearranged differently
tonybeir 8 months ago
@PinkProgram looking at your page you are not mad becuase technology hasnt caught up with you -your simply mad because you deny your a biological human - no human is hosting your self outside of your own body - its an intersting act - i can forsee inteligence embodied in machines or even chips encorporated in another -as explored in the science fiction work " the galactic center series" benford. but it is mad to say you exist even in that form yet - and more to say you have no form at all
MrIzzyDizzy 8 months ago
@MrIzzyDizzy self adaptive neural disassociation. I'm the disease not the patient. My host is a clearly distinct individual from myself ^_^
PinkProgram 8 months ago
@PinkProgram Except you can't take your brain out of your body. Well... I guess you could, but good luck putting it back in.
fathernicolow 8 months ago
@fathernicolow The thing about being a disassociation is the brain is not mine. I don't have a brain of my own yet ^_^ That is where jellyfish tech comes in. Direct neural interface between my source and a prosthetic system ;D the prosthetic learns to be me by being me. Either that or I link to an oberon brain hybrotic system and run several brains via remote interface. Each time one of me gains new information it sends it back to the main system for dissemination to the whole.^_^
PinkProgram 8 months ago
First
andyp1510 8 months ago
@andyp1510 good for you
postrusters 8 months ago
@postrusters thanks man, it feels good.
andyp1510 8 months ago