Do 'I' actually exist?

[FBM]

Charlou, do you have any more info about the French movie? Year of production, director, genre or something? I'm having a hard time finding it...

imdb: Genesis

viewer reviews

Found it! It'll be a slow download, but it looks like it'll be worth the wait. Cheers!

Hi FBM, how'd that go?

I waited for two days for the download, then it was all in French (or maybe Spanish, I forgot). All I could do was watch the images and catch snippets of the content.

I'll try to find another torrent...one with Engrishee subs...

[JimC]

Consciousness.

It's all me, me, me...

[FBM]

I dabbled in nihilism for a while, but nothing ever came of it.

[mistermack]

Apologies to all the previous posters. I haven't read through it all, before posting this.

I first thought about the problem of "what am " I " when I was aged about ten.
Not because I'm predisposed to philosophy, but because I was beginning to doubt the catholic mantra that was being heaped on me daily at junior school, and weekly at church.

My problem was this "soul" that I was supposed to have, and if it existed, was it me, or someone else entirely?
I knew that my thoughts were made by my brain, that they stopped when I slept, and that I never had any thoughts before I was born.
And I decided that the only thing that I could identify as "I" was the being that was having these thoughts.

When I sleep, I don't think. I might dream a bit, but often not. I know that my thoughts are made by my brain, and when my brain dies, my thoughts will stop.
So this supposed soul is not what's having these thoughts, it's not "I" at all. And if it continues after I die, very nice, but it's not me that's continuing.

So I felt that if there was such a thing, it's no concern of mine what happens to it. If it should be "reborn" in a cat or something, fine, but it's simply not what I consider to be me. If a soul existed at all, I just saw it as some alien, who was compelled to tag along.

So that was it for me, I was atheist from about ten years old, and had equal contempt for any idea of rebirth that didn't involve my brain existing for ever, without a break. And we know that that doesn't happen.

I agree the concept of "I" is a weird one once you start thinking about it. It practically disappears at night, but it's there in the morning, as if nothing happened. It gradually appeared out of a tiny fertilised cell, over a period of nine months, and will literally stop dead, one day.
,

[zmonsterz]

We really need a smiley who's brain just suddenly explodes... it would precisely describe my brains reaction after trying to comprehend this stuff.

[Hermit]

We really need a smiley who's brain just suddenly explodes... it would precisely describe my brains reaction after trying to comprehend this stuff.

Here you go:

[charlou]

We should so add that one.

[Hermit]

We should so add that one.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111!1!!

[JimC]

We really need a smiley who's brain just suddenly explodes... it would precisely describe my brains reaction after trying to comprehend this stuff.

Here you go:

Too much red, not enough grey and white...

[zmonsterz]

We really need a smiley who's brain just suddenly explodes... it would precisely describe my brains reaction after trying to comprehend this stuff.

Here you go:

Too much red, not enough grey and white...

[Clinton Huxley]

Just reading Surface Detail by Iain Banks, which is all about minds simulated in virtual reality. It's got this neat idea of simulated "Hells" - as a civilization becomed advanced enough and if it has a religion, it can simulate that religions idea of Hell in VR and send people to it.

Maybe that's already happened....

[hiyymer]

Please - before replying in any automatic knee-jerk fashion, do reflect for at least a few seconds.

If 'I' think a thought and try to identify the 'I' that thought the thought I cannot do so. The thought exists it seems to me, however I can't identify the thing, object or entity that 'had' that thought.

Most people of course, without blinking, would assume that the thing that experiences thoughts, sensations, happenings, phenomena in general is the 'I' that I am talking about - some central thing that is fundamentally and irreducibly 'me/'I''.

I don't think it exists. Do you?

This is Buddhist stuff, but I think it is also atheist stuff.

http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/c ... l/16/4/509

(A) Athymhormia and Disorders of Motivation in Basal Ganglia Disease
Michel Habib, M.D.

(B) Descartes Error
Antonio Damasio

(C) The Grand Design
Hawking/Mlodinow

In (A) we see that it is not our thoughts which animate us, but rather the deep emotional response regulation of the brain. The thoughts are created as part of the mechanism. If you damage the right part of the limbic loop then you become an emotionally flat inert empty headed doormat. If you are externally stimulated you can think and move, and report that in the inert state there are no thoughts.

In (B) we see that the idea of a rational decision is a myth. The brain just doesn't work that way. Damasio speculatively theorizes that a mechanism he dubs somatic markers is how the brain responds and "decides". Conscious representations are processed by the limbic system resulting in the somatic emotional response.. His patients who have lost that connection can't make effective life decisions when left only to rational thought, even though they test normal cognitively. Descartes was wrong.

In (C) there is a passage where Hawking/Mladinow state it in a very interesting way. "Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is an illusion."

In other words, as in (A), the experience and thought of "I want to move my foot" is a physical mechanism created by a physical process. No one has ever found an "I" inside a head. But the thought is not an illusion or extraneous, for the brain obviously needs the mechansim of the conscious representation of what's important to it in order to respond, regardless of how mysterious the fact of it being conscious might be.

Hawking/Mlodinow have an answer. "... since we cannot solve the equations that determine our behavior, we use the effective theory that people have free will. The study of our will and the behavior that arises from it is the science of phsychology." That's not too far off, but I would say this. The effective theory that we describe as the free-willed intentional agent is not a theory of the "I thinking". It is an effective theory of the brain and we don't have an option to use it or not. There is no "I thinking" to decide to use it or not. The brain needs to respond to biological machines and life forces which are so complex that there is no practical rational model of prediction. So the brain represents the things that particular process tends to do in any given situation as an agent model of intention, and "will". The tiger across the clearing has low blood sugar and it is drooling at the mouth and it sees me. There is no actual self-caused agent inside the tiger biological machine, but our brain says that tiger agent "intends" to eat me out of it's own willed choice and it works because I get my ass out of there. Some neuroscientists think that because the self agent seems to be a late addition to the party, that it is basically just the other agent applied to one's own biological machine. We are self aware, not as some magical act of the gods, but simply because our brain creates a self agent in our conscious experience for whatever reason (usually attributed to our extreme social nature). Psychology is not a physical science.

So what does one do with this. Obviously we are stuck with our agents and can't live without them. But we should see that rationalism is a crock. There is no rational "I" making the world a better place by having good reasons for what "I" do or think. Life inside the mechanism is irrational.

[JimC]

In (A) we see that it is not our thoughts which animate us, but rather the deep emotional response regulation of the brain. The thoughts are created as part of the mechanism. If you damage the right part of the limbic loop then you become an emotionally flat inert empty headed doormat. If you are externally stimulated you can think and move, and report that in the inert state there are no thoughts.

In (B) we see that the idea of a rational decision is a myth. The brain just doesn't work that way. Damasio speculatively theorizes that a mechanism he dubs somatic markers is how the brain responds and "decides". Conscious representations are processed by the limbic system resulting in the somatic emotional response.. His patients who have lost that connection can't make effective life decisions when left only to rational thought, even though they test normal cognitively. Descartes was wrong.

In (C) there is a passage where Hawking/Mladinow state it in a very interesting way. "Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is an illusion."

In other words, as in (A), the experience and thought of "I want to move my foot" is a physical mechanism created by a physical process. No one has ever found an "I" inside a head. But the thought is not an illusion or extraneous, for the brain obviously needs the mechansim of the conscious representation of what's important to it in order to respond, regardless of how mysterious the fact of it being conscious might be.

Hawking/Mlodinow have an answer. "... since we cannot solve the equations that determine our behavior, we use the effective theory that people have free will. The study of our will and the behavior that arises from it is the science of phsychology." That's not too far off, but I would say this. The effective theory that we describe as the free-willed intentional agent is not a theory of the "I thinking". It is an effective theory of the brain and we don't have an option to use it or not. There is no "I thinking" to decide to use it or not. The brain needs to respond to biological machines and life forces which are so complex that there is no practical rational model of prediction. So the brain represents the things that particular process tends to do in any given situation as an agent model of intention, and "will". The tiger across the clearing has low blood sugar and it is drooling at the mouth and it sees me. There is no actual self-caused agent inside the tiger biological machine, but our brain says that tiger agent "intends" to eat me out of it's own willed choice and it works because I get my ass out of there. Some neuroscientists think that because the self agent seems to be a late addition to the party, that it is basically just the other agent applied to one's own biological machine. We are self aware, not as some magical act of the gods, but simply because our brain creates a self agent in our conscious experience for whatever reason (usually attributed to our extreme social nature). Psychology is not a physical science.

So what does one do with this. Obviously we are stuck with our agents and can't live without them. But we should see that rationalism is a crock. There is no rational "I" making the world a better place by having good reasons for what "I" do or think. Life inside the mechanism is irrational.

Much that is interesting, and much I agree with in this post. However, towards the end, I thought you were a little cavalier and dismissive of that very useful tool, rationality. The whole approach you were taking in your post, of analysing data, constructing a model etc was in fact rationality in action. Of course, it was not just rationality, like some disembodied robot. At the base was interest and fascination with the subject, and motivation to communicate about it, essential parts of what it is to be human. But to achieve these goals, deciding to operate as a rational agent allows us to move beyond superstition to have the best chance of having an accurate picture of how the universe works.

[epepke]

Please - before replying in any automatic knee-jerk fashion, do reflect for at least a few seconds.

If 'I' think a thought and try to identify the 'I' that thought the thought I cannot do so. The thought exists it seems to me, however I can't identify the thing, object or entity that 'had' that thought.

Most people of course, without blinking, would assume that the thing that experiences thoughts, sensations, happenings, phenomena in general is the 'I' that I am talking about - some central thing that is fundamentally and irreducibly 'me/'I''.

I don't think it exists. Do you?

This is Buddhist stuff, but I think it is also atheist stuff.

This is the problem I have with Cogito ergo sum. "Cogito," or "I think," presupposes an "I" to think, and so concluding that there is an "I" that exists from that doesn't really work.

It's not just Buddhist stuff. Nietzsche pointed out that the idea "thoughts think themselves" is, at least, safer. He was not terribly impressed with Buddhism, and I tend to agree. Jonathan Swift wrote, "The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes, and I find that applies as well to Buddhism.

It should at least be evident by now that brains are complex, and so some sort of monadic or atomistic view of consciousness is probably wrong. We also know of diseases and brain injuries that cause people to lose their sense of self. Nevertheless, the self is a useful concept at a particular level of organization.

[hiyymer]

Much that is interesting, and much I agree with in this post. However, towards the end, I thought you were a little cavalier and dismissive of that very useful tool, rationality. The whole approach you were taking in your post, of analysing data, constructing a model etc was in fact rationality in action. Of course, it was not just rationality, like some disembodied robot. At the base was interest and fascination with the subject, and motivation to communicate about it, essential parts of what it is to be human. But to achieve these goals, deciding to operate as a rational agent allows us to move beyond superstition to have the best chance of having an accurate picture of how the universe works.

I'm not saying we can't use the tool of reason. But it is just a tool. I guess the best way to say it is that we don't get to decide what we want. We can use rationality to get it, but the implicit motivations of our biological regulation is what drives the cart. We are compelled to build our rational castles in the sky, but the brain is going to dictate how they impact our responses. It's all part of the mechanism.

Damasio has a really interesting passage where he describes one of his patients after their meeting. He asks him when he want to meet again, next Tuesday or next Thursday. The patient goes on for the better part of a half hour analyzing the problem; considering every possible future event that could possible effect the decision; building a cost/benefit analysis of the alternatives. Damasio and his associates don't interrupt him. Finally Damasio says "how about Tuesday?". The patient says "fine". Damasio calls it a case of pure reason left to it's own devices. The connection of the patients cognitive processes to the subconscious emotional center of his brain is damaged. The tool is there in all it's glory, but it is only a tool. Hawking is right. When the rubber hits the road it's not what determines our actions.