Is the self eternal?

GrimKingGrim said:

The madness I deal with in this forum is so ridiculous. What you're referring to is memory! Are you suggesting that you're not conscious or existing until 2-3 years old? Did you and your consciousness exist before you were born? No, you didn't.

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I am referring to existence not memory but you seem to think you know me better than I do as you arrogantly and somewhat rudely I might add claim to know for certain things more about the existence of my consciousness( you must read minds or be some sort of psychic to have that much knowledge of the consciousness of a complete stranger) than I do . How omniscient of you. You seem to be avoiding my question though please tell me how it felt to come into existence. As my experience is that I have always been, I am curious to hear what the experience of entering into existence from non existence would be like.

GrimKingGrim said:

I don't see why. The consciousness and personality by extension are just extensions of the brain.

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Do you have some objective proof of this? Or is it simply a blind faith belief. Remember correlation is not proof of causation.

GrimKingGrim said:

'm expecting that my birth went well enough considering my mother's not dead and the worst defect I have is asthma. And I can't tell you what it's like to not exist because I only know existing. But I know there was a time I didn't exist. November 10th, 1992, I was not alive. Then next day I was. So I can say I was not in existence at one point and know the exact range from which I wasn't, do you know why? I wasn't born yet.

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You only know existing. My point. You take on faith alone the word of others that there was some date when you were born.

GrimKingGrim said:

And I get flack for my condescension and I'm supposed to deal with this like a good little puppy eh? Pheh.

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Perhaps if you were less condescending others might be less inclined to return the favor? Not everyone takes "turn the other cheek " to heart.

GrimKingGrim said:

I'm referring to a time where I'm 100% sure you were not born. You and your "self" were not around. You are not eternal.

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I have always been. I do not know if I will always be. 1789 is only a number and is irrelevent to whether I have always been. You take the word of others
on faith alone that there was a time before you existed I choose to require proof of that in reference to my own self.

GrimKingGrim said:

Yes. Your "self" starts at birth.

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I highly doubt that. It seems highly unlikely that one suddenly acquires self consciousness the moment one emerges fro the birth canal. There is not actual proof of that being the case. There is no proof of any particular moment being universally the moment that every human becomes self aware.

GrimKingGrim said:

It takes no imagination there.

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Are you claiming to have personally experienced your own demise? If not than you cannot claim to believe you will one day cease to exist unless you use your imagination.

GrimKingGrim said:

It shows. My imagination is vast as well. But it's not well equipped for my reasoning. It's useful for my writing.

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It is not possible to reason unless one uses one's capacity to imagine a situation that is not the current situation. Either one experiences or one imagines there are no other options available.

GrimKingGrim said:

I don't use it for cold hard reasoning. I can imagine things when I need to but I don't consider them much part of reality.

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Perhaps you are conflating imagination with the idea of fantasy. When we imagine we can imagine cold hard facts that we may not ever have experienced but we have been told about or we have concluded by reasoning from things we have experienced. Like the year 1789. You do not claim to have experienced that year yet you surely claim that it was a real year. So, for you, it was not a fantasy year that you totally made up, yet you were forced to use your imagination to conceptualize it as you did not personally experience it. Your belief that such a year existed does not come from personal experience but from your ability to imagine that which you have not experienced.

grasping the after wind said:

Do you have some objective proof of this? Or is it simply a blind faith belief. Remember correlation is not proof of causation.

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Neither. I am inviting you (or anyone) to show me consciousness without a brain. In fact, I would be extremely happy to be shown such. Until then, though,...

ananda said:

You're right, it doesn't disprove a mind dependency on brain function, but I think it strongly suggests that.

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It might *if* there wasn't already so much brain science evidence for a tight mind-brain connection. One has to ignore quite a bit of research to draw your conclusion.


eudaimonia,

Mark

ananda said:

In my OP I stated: IN my understanding, my "self" consists of a combination of five constantly mutable things: matter, sensation, perception, mental objects, and consciousness. Taken together, I perceive my "self" ...

The self is not eternal in the sense that it is immutable. The self continues as long as the component parts exist together, albeit in a ever-continually changing state.

A car, in the same way, exists only when its component parts (engine, transmission, frame, accessories, etc.) exist together. The car is not eternal, nor immutable. The car is also in an ever-continually changing state.

Just as the car ceases to exist and becomes only an idea when the component parts are disassembled, so the self ceases to exist and enters (and becomes) Nibbana when its components are released through detachment. It returns to the eternal bliss of the uncreated, unformed, unoriginated, unborn.

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Sticking with your car analogy...this doesn't sound like bliss at all. Consider what the car is capable of when disassembled...why would you think of your "self" as any more capable once your body is disassembled?

Would you be able to see without eyes? Hear without ears? Touch without flesh? Etc etc etc... Why would you think that you'd be anything but a disembodied mind? Eternally in the dark, silence, emptiness...

That doesn't sound all that great to me. I'm guessing you see it as different though...and I'm curious why?

grasping the after wind said:

I am referring to existence not memory but you seem to think you know me better than I do as you arrogantly and somewhat rudely I might add claim to know for certain things more about the existence of my consciousness( you must read minds or be some sort of psychic to have that much knowledge of the consciousness of a complete stranger) than I do . How omniscient of you. You seem to be avoiding my question though please tell me how it felt to come into existence. As my experience is that I have always been, I am curious to hear what the experience of entering into existence from non existence would be like.



Do you have some objective proof of this? Or is it simply a blind faith belief. Remember correlation is not proof of causation.



You only know existing. My point. You take on faith alone the word of others that there was some date when you were born.



Perhaps if you were less condescending others might be less inclined to return the favor? Not everyone takes "turn the other cheek " to heart.



I have always been. I do not know if I will always be. 1789 is only a number and is irrelevent to whether I have always been. You take the word of others
on faith alone that there was a time before you existed I choose to require proof of that in reference to my own self.


I highly doubt that. It seems highly unlikely that one suddenly acquires self consciousness the moment one emerges fro the birth canal. There is not actual proof of that being the case. There is no proof of any particular moment being universally the moment that every human becomes self aware.



Are you claiming to have personally experienced your own demise? If not than you cannot claim to believe you will one day cease to exist unless you use your imagination.



It is not possible to reason unless one uses one's capacity to imagine a situation that is not the current situation. Either one experiences or one imagines there are no other options available.




Perhaps you are conflating imagination with the idea of fantasy. When we imagine we can imagine cold hard facts that we may not ever have experienced but we have been told about or we have concluded by reasoning from things we have experienced. Like the year 1789. You do not claim to have experienced that year yet you surely claim that it was a real year. So, for you, it was not a fantasy year that you totally made up, yet you were forced to use your imagination to conceptualize it as you did not personally experience it. Your belief that such a year existed does not come from personal experience but from your ability to imagine that which you have not experienced.

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I'm not sure what you're getting at grasping...are you saying that you think time began at the point you became self-aware? Or are you saying that you've always existed...even at the beginning of "time" as science likes to define it?

As for not knowing what it's like to not exist...haven't you ever had dreamless sleep? You know, a period of sleep where there was no experience, no conscious awareness, just a moment of waking and the realization that time had passed. It's as if for during that time, you didn't exist. I imagine that's what death and non-existence would be like...except without the waking up part of course.

ananda said:

In reaching for Nibbana, one does not become progressively more capable (in this world). Instead, it is to become progressively less capable (attached). And in that paradox, the less capable one becomes, the more capable - freedom, peace, and bliss - one experiences and becomes in the higher reality of Nibbana.

"The last shall become first"

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You have no intention of answering my post, do you?

ananda said:

I don't deny that there is plenty of mind-brain science ... which does not explain the man with virtually no brain.

IMO the mind - as consciousness - exists beyond the brain. It is the brain which supplies other traits which are oft identified as part of the mind, namely: habitual thoughts, emotions, rumination, past/future obsession, an interface with the five physical senses, etc. Even with a minimal brain, the mind-consciousness can exist apart from and is not dependant on these additional traits.

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Well here's a pretty good explanation...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain-shocks-doctors.html#.VWr8Jpjn_qA

From that page...

"If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side,"

Also that article says that it's more like the guy had 35-25% the size of a normal brain, not 5%. Ever hear the saying, "we only use about 10% of our potential brain at any given moment."? I don't know how true that is, but it would certainly make sense in this guy's case.

So there you have it, not a condition that he was born with or just had after one-day...this condition developed over decades. As the years passed, the parts of his brain that were diminished were slowly being compensated for by the remaining part of his brain.

It's not magic, it's not supernatural, and it's certainly not evidence of a separation between mind and brain. It's a rare medical occurrence that's made more interesting because it highlights just how powerful our brains really are.

ananda said:

What part(s) of your soul is eternal? If it is eternal, it is immutable, correct? If it's immutable, then it should forever retain its "original holiness", being untaintable by any deed or unbelief or sin done in this temporal existence, correct?

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Absolutely. Every tear will be "wiped away". God will cotton no sinners by His side.

ananda said:

In reaching for Nibbana, one does not become progressively more capable (in this world). Instead, it is to become progressively less capable (attached). And in that paradox, the less capable one becomes, the more capable - freedom, peace, and bliss - one experiences and becomes in the higher reality of Nibbana.

"The last shall become first"

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Honestly, it's this kind of stuff that put me off Buddhism and Hinduism. "The less capable one becomes...the more capable one becomes." It's a statement so obviously contradictory that it's automatically dismissed.

It also doesn't address my point about no longer having any sensory experiences. Does that sound desirable to you?

ananda said:

I don't deny that there is plenty of mind-brain science ... which does not explain the man with virtually no brain.

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It's not like science can have a ready explanation on hand before the issue has yet been run across, or before it is fully understood.

Having a brain with a small volume isn't the same thing as having a brain with significantly less complexity. Forget volume, how many neurons does this guy's brain have? More to the point, what is the number of neural connections in his brain as compared with a normal human brain? If the answer is dramatically less, then there might be some explaining needed. And one shouldn't jump to conclusions.


eudaimonia,

Mark

grasping the after wind said:

Do you have some objective proof of this?

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There cannot be objective proof of a negative. The burden of evidence lies with those that assert that consciousness and personality are more than emergent properties of the brain.

Or is it simply a blind faith belief.

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Or, neuroscience.

Remember correlation is not proof of causation.

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While correlation is not proof of causation, it is evidence of causation.

What testable, falsifiable evidence is there that consciousness and personality are more than emergent properties of the brain?

In the case of the young man who Lorber investigated, the thin layer of brain cells was certainly up to the task of providing the necessary brain power. The student had a high IQ of 126 and had a first class honours degree in mathematics. It seems you don’t need much of a brain to do mathematics."

He had an IQ of 126 and had a degree in mathematics. These aren't aspects of the "self" so much as they are aspects of intelligence. If someone who has that much of a deficiency in brain matter can adapt to get a degree in mathematics...why wouldn't they also be able to maintain a concept of "self"? I just don't think this example approaches anything near evidence of a mind/self that's separate from the brain.

[FONT=Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]You didn't answer in a way I could understand. If someone loses all their senses, and in turn their ability to experience the world around them, what exactly are they going to become "more capable" at? You're claiming that being capable in this reality and being capable in the next could be very different...but it's fairly incomprehensible what someone could "gain" in such a situation. What is it you imagine a disembodied self would become "more capable" of?[/FONT]

ananda said:

... either way, of course!

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Agreed.

Are you agreeing with me that you personally shouldn't be jumping to conclusions?


eudaimonia,

Mark

quatona said:

Neither. I am inviting you (or anyone) to show me consciousness without a brain. In fact, I would be extremely happy to be shown such. Until then, though,...

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Correlation does not prove causation. You cannot show me consciousness without a lung or without a heart anymore than you can without a brain. It also has been theorized that AI might have the ability to be self aware, if so, your idea that consciousness requires a brain would be disproven. It also strikes me as a leap of faith to insist that the concept of self implies anything further than an instinctual, perhaps unconscious division between an organism and that which is not the organism. From observation, rather than personal experience, I might conclude that all living things act as if they are in some way self aware.

Ana the Ist said:

I'm not sure what you're getting at grasping...are you saying that you think time began at the point you became self-aware? Or are you saying that you've always existed...even at the beginning of "time" as science likes to define it?

As for not knowing what it's like to not exist...haven't you ever had dreamless sleep? You know, a period of sleep where there was no experience, no conscious awareness, just a moment of waking and the realization that time had passed. It's as if for during that time, you didn't exist. I imagine that's what death and non-existence would be like...except without the waking up part of course.

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I thought my original point was obvious but I guess it isn't. I was simply pointing out that, in my experience, I have always been. I have no real experience of not being or of coming into being from non existence. Though I have no experience of being other than myself, I suspect that this may well be a universal condition i,e, everyone else also has no such experience. I conclude this because no one has ventured to tell me what either non existence was like or what the experience of coming into existence was like. Your analogy to sleep does not seem aptat all from my perspective I may sleep and I awake but I exist while doing both and i have no experience of time passing without my awareness. It seems to me that, for all practical purposes, self can be considered eternal i.e. as it since there was not, nor will there ever be a time when we experience anything but being , not only are we each individually , from our own subjective POV, the center of the universe, we are also eternal. We can imagine any sort of other thing about ourselves birth, death, spirit, soul, rebirth, ressurrection etc. but we do not, from what I can see, ever have an actual experience of a time when we individually do not exist, Going strictly upon our own experience we are eternal.