I told you, man. Anytime you find yourself tumbling down into the hole of moral nihilism, ride the scree.
ride the scree, Biggs.
Nowhere Men
Nick Inman wants to know where you’re at.
In Philosophy Now magazine
Actually, the crunch question would seem to be, “why am I who the anthropologists say I am, and what the physical scientists say I am?”
That and how did existence itself come to be such that it evolved into who or what or why others speculate that I am.
Including philosophers.
Of course, we seem far, far removed from an answer that definitive. So what real choice do we have [in the interim] but to explore possibilities short of that. After all, they are no less fascinating to ponder.
Here we start getting closer to the “stuff” that fascinates me the most. The part in particular where we delve into the relationship between brain matter precipitating mind precipitating consciousness precipitating “I”. Is any of that ever really within our command as autonomous matter? Or is it intertwined in one or another manifestation of God or pantheism? The part where wherever you are there is no getting around the most fundamental fonts of all.
Again, aspects of “I” that are applicable to all of us. Given the gap between “I” and all there is to know about all there is to know. But far more fascinating to me is the part where, given some measure of autonomy, “I” and “you” and “they” are not able to pin down what seems to be true for all of us.
And, for some, this marks the end of the discussion. In other words, is this or is this not inherently and necessarily a manifestation of biological imperatives? The part about dasein is merely subsumed by the determinists in the assumption that it is.
Here on this thread though I can only start by taking an intellectual leap to autonomy. Even though I have no capacity to demonstrate that it does in fact exist.
What’s So Simple About Personal Identity?
Joshua Farris asks what you find when you find yourself.
Most here know what I propose. There are the self parts we are able to reasonably situate objectively out in the either/or world. Facts about us. Assuming some measure of autonomy. And accepting that even demonstrable facts are embedded in our ignorance regarding “I” and a complete understanding of existence itself.
Of course so far this just another general description intellectual contraption about human identity. And who among us can make clear-cut distinctions between “the body, the brain, the memory/character continuity” and all of the hundreds upon hundreds of additional variables intertwined in the genetic and the memetic “I”. “I” out in a particular world historically and culturally. To even suggest a “simple view” seems preposteroius to me.
What’s So Simple About Personal Identity?
Joshua Farris asks what you find when you find yourself.
Okay, take this body out into the world and, with it, interact with others. When they ask why you choose the things that you think, feel, say and do you tell them, “I am my body, that’s why.”
Here that makes sense [to me] only to the extent the body as a whole is in sync with the laws of matter in a determined universe. Then identity itself is merely an inherent manifestation of that.
The part where given some degree of human autonomy ascribed to the self-conscious “I”, a distinction is made between the autonomic body functions entirely embedded in the biological evolution of life on earth and that mysterious “ghost in the machine” that somehow more or less self-consciously maneuvers this body in and out of particular contexts only more or less able to be understood or controlled. The part where the genetic self stops and the memetic self begins; and then gets embedded in any number of historical and cultural narratives that each individual “I” ceaselessly constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs existentially from the cradle to the grave. The part “I” assign to my own understanding of dasein.
Again, here are the two “reductionist” explanations:
1] the body is at one with nature and all of this unfolds only as it ever could have. “I” is merely the illusion of opting for alternative twists and turns.
2] Religion. “I” is manifestation of God’s will.
Where this becomes all the more problematic is when we consider the way in which “I” can be profoundly upended by biological conditions – Alzheimer’s, dementia, schizophrenia, other major mental disorders – that seem to confirm the extent to which the body prevails.
Or the use of powerful drugs that can shape and mold the manner in which we experience “I” as a a sort of…chemistry lab?
you know you really make us feel inadequate when you do this, biggs. i’m just sayin. it’s like we’re not good enough for you so you go find some quotes online somewhere and bring them back here to argue with.
Thanks.
care to bring that intellectual contraption down out of the clouds and explain to me in a particular existential context how i should interpret that in a world awash with conflicting goods, chance, and contingency?
Sorry, I was only being ironic.
He said in jest. 
What’s So Simple About Personal Identity?
Joshua Farris asks what you find when you find yourself.
The brain view is of course necessarily embedded in the body view. In fact, unless the mind part can somehow be explained as “transcending” the argument that the brain is but more matter inherently in sync with the laws of nature there’s no real distinction at all.
And here we are: hopelessly stuck!
Or, rather, so it still seems to me. But this part will always exasperate some more than others. In that some are able to convince themselves that how they think about this relationship here and now need be as far as they go to make it true. Then the part where how what we think and feel precipitates behaviors that precipitate very real consequences whether what we think and feel is in sync with what is actually true or not. Let alone in being able to determine if all of that is moot given the assumption that the brain and the mind and “I” are all entirely at one with nature itself entirely at one with the possible existence of God.
Got that? Next up: the hand picking up the stick and using it to thrash someone soundly. That even more problematic matter able to reconfigure into a point of view. An actual vantage point out in a particular context out in a particular world in which the brain qua mind qua “I” precipitates [existentially] moral judgments from others.
The “I” is the part that speaks. Some parts of us are unknown to the “I”.
Enter: Metaphysics.
yes, stuck, and yet so many philosophers insist on scratching their heads over it. know why? it’s this whole problem about ‘what to do’ in life if there is some truth to substance dualism… and substance dualism is the underlying metaphysics to all theories of spiritualism whether religious or not. so as long as these folks aren’t absolutely certain that when they die, it’s curtains, they’ll live their entire lives in a nervous stupor over ‘omg omg what should i do?! am i doing the right thing!?’ that’s what it comes down to. no philosopher was ever interested with the question of mortality just because it’s an interesting question. it’s an invested question, and that’s why it’s so important to these guys. it’s not about ‘loving god’ or ‘doing the right thing’, either. it’s about covering one’s ass for the afterlife. niggas don’t wanna burn in hell or be reincarnated as a mushroom. that’s the real reason.
me, well, i run a two part pragmatic approach to this matter. first, i dismiss any system of existence/reality in which i am expected to guess at anything that is incredibly important. such a system is fundamentally flawed, and i will not drive myself crazy wondering if what i do now will have negative consequences for the afterlife. i do what the fuck i’m gonna do and if that pays out, good for me. if it doesn’t, good for you. this brings us to the second part. i will NOT ever regret anything i’ve done, and i will certainly feel no remorse. whatever i do, whenever i do it, is for a reason which at the time was obviously the ‘best’ thing i believed i could have done. duddint matter if the consequences of that decision turned out to be a disaster for reasons beyond my control. i don’t blame anyone or anything, i resent nothing, and i adapt to the shit storm if i find myself in one. this is because i don’t expect anything to work out when i have to deal with other people. this is my splendid quasi-misanthropy and it’s never been wrong. i say ‘quasi’ because it’s not genuine hate. there is no place for hatred where ‘they know not what they do’, as it were. if i could find a human being who was not only an asshat, but meant to be, i could move beyond mere contempt and perhaps feel some kind of hatred. but alas, human beings are so fucked up they can’t even be evil right.
and this is only a pickle if you drive yourself nuts hoping for some redemption from it all in some afterlife. you have to stop allowing yourself to be played with like a toy by [insert favorite god], and you have to understand that there will be no qualitative difference in the experiences you have now and the experiences you will have ‘in the next life’. you would simply exist in another ‘now’, phenomenologically structured by the same causal forces, affairs and events working to form your current experiences in this life.
what i’m implying here is that monistic spinozist stirnerite historical materialists do it better. fuck all that platonic/cartesian ‘guessing’ and piss on the afterlife. we make shit work here and now… because that’s all there is; the eternal here and now.
we are the ministers in the marriage of heaven and hell here on earf. morrison was wrong. you cannot break on through to the other side. there is no other side. and if there was, you’d only ask ‘what’s next’ when you got there. same shit, different dimension.
“first, i dismiss any system of existence/reality in which i am expected to guess at anything that is incredibly important.”
OK, that was pretty awesome…
“Morrison was wrong …”
You arrived at the same place as Fear And Loathing guy, wassisname. And all leftist hippies. The wiser position is “there might well be, but I got a sandwich.”
“same shit, different dimension.”
You belie the true promise and terribleness of transcendentalism: it is not only things arround you that radically are not the same.
The healthiest is Nietzsche’s: neither transcendentalism nor atheism: overcoming and self-overcoming. And transcendentalism a little bit.
leftism proper is only a pathological and eidetic expression of the paternal/maternal instinct in human beings. wanting to ‘take care’ of someone. remember heidegger’s whole thing about dasein’s possession of the world as grounded in ‘care’? that was one of his better moments. so, naturally, when you see a nigga being what you consider ‘mistreated’, you wanna jump in there and straighten shit out. pretty simple really. that’s all leftism is. the marxist is the linderman (vanguard) protecting and teaching the clifford (working class) how to beat the mikes and moodys (capitalists) of the world. this is, ad hominus simpliciter, an expression of fatherly/motherly love.
Yes, we all know that’s how leftists like to think of themselves.
indeed, and some of them are even liars. oh shit wait. i just had a eureka moment. what’s the difference between an opportunistic leftist liar who seeks office only to fatten his own pockets and doesn’t give a shit about the workin man, and a capitalist who seeks to maintain conservatism to fatten his own pockets and doesn’t give a shit about the workin man? (while also being entirely dependent on him. interesting, that. almost like biting the hand that feeds you, but that would be like comparing a capitalist to a dog… which is a very generous analogy)
yeah so did you see that? it’s like ‘hey capitalist, what are you bitchin about? these fucksticks are doing the same thing you are, right?’ ohhhh i see. suddenly it’s ‘unethical’ to get rich… especially if you’re lying while trying to do it. in that case, an honest leftist who admitted he didn’t give a shit about the workin man would garner the respect of the capitalist.
and this would work, actually, because we can’t indict the capitalist on lying here. he’d have to know what he thinks is ethical is actually not (for several epistemological reasons… and even more pragmatic reasons) in order to be ‘lying’. so far, the capitalist is only an imbecile, not a bad guy.
now we’ve reached a beautiful dilemma. the capitalist isn’t a liar (because he’s too dumb) but he does not empower the workin man… while the fake-ass leftist is a liar, but empowers the working man.
fuck. now what do we do?
Metaphysics: the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality
And, if this be the case, then everything — everything that encompasses the body, everything that encompasses the mind, and everything the encompasses the world around it/“I”, can only be entirely explained when we have an understanding – ontological? teleological? – of existence itself.
This thread however takes that gap for granted. Just as it makes the presumption that we all have some measure of free-will to actually opt for particular points of view.
Dasein then revolves around “I” in our day to day interactions and the extent to which what we believe to be true about them is able to be demonstrated as in fact true. Call it true objectively. Call it true universally. Call it true empirically. Call it true phenomenologically. Call it true historically, anthropologically, ethnically, culturally, sociologically, politically, economically, psychologically.
It is either a thing or a relationship in sync with what science calls the “laws of nature” out in the either/or world able or not able to be verified or falsified by way of the “scientific method”.
Of course science is considerably less concerned with “I” in the is/ought world. With human behaviors said to be virtuous or moral. Here instead any number of philosophers down through the ages have grappled with what in the discipline is called “ethics”.
And that’s the part I zoom in on in regard to my own understanding of dasein in this thread. That’s the part where I focus the beam at the existential juncture of identity, value judgments and political power.
Out in any particular world, in any particular context, understood from any particular point of view. And here I speculate not so much on what philosophers can tell us, but on what [perhaps] they cannot.
But it is only when we take these “intellectual contraptions” down off the scholastic scaffolding and situate the words out in a particular context, out a particular world, can the human condition be explored more substantively.
Or, rather, so it seems to me.
Liars to who?
You have yet to realize the realization of lying to one’s self.
Go, meditate on this. “Nihilism” won’t do.
What’s So Simple About Personal Identity?
Joshua Farris asks what you find when you find yourself.
In other words, as I interpret it, “I” is not reducible down to the body or to the brain, or to a particular set of memories, or to a personality, or to a character. Instead it is embodied in the manner in which they all somehow come together from day to day to produce a “perspective”. I think this, I feel that, I choose this, I do that.
Basically, the manner in which most of us think about “I” in the world around us for all practical purposes. Given some measure of autonomy.
And we can think of it this way until someday, someone actually is able to demonstrate why the whole package is reducible down to a specific factor above.
And, in the interim, it still comes down to that which we are in fact able to demonstrate to others is [existentially] the most rational way in which to think, feel, say or do…anything.
There’s no getting around circularity here because however you explain human identity, you come back to certain assumptions you make which are not able to be either verified or falsified definitively. And this must be the case or there would already be an explanation out there that accomplishes precisely that.
Though, sure, if you think there is one, link it to us.