Questions: Identity - General

April 18

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Specialist290 <specialist290@hughes.net> on 2016-02-17 20:09:21 wrote:

That being said, the man on the street would probably point out that just because you can reproduce an alternator outside a car doesn’t mean that the car no longer includes the alternator… and a mind-state stripped all the way down to a logos won’t even run.

To which I can imagine another amateur philosopher will respond that just because taking the gasoline out of the car means it stops running, does that mean the fuel is also essential for the car to be a car?

(And then I see our new dynamic duo getting into a discussion that covers such things as the sorites paradox, the Ship of Theseus, Frege’s Puzzle, etc., then concluding that what both of them really agree on is that the discussion has gotten so mind-bendingly convoluted that the only way they can make sense of it is with a nice, strong, stiff drink at the local watering hole. Or maybe ten.)

Zarpaulus <zarpaulus@gmail.com> on 2016-02-17 22:53:02 wrote:

Your consciousness is only a small part of what makes you, you. How many of your decisions can you fully explain? How many actions do you perform automatically?

When you sleep your consciousness is on minimal power at many points but your subconscious is working the whole time. It’s like putting a computer on “sleep mode”, it’s still running, just with as little power as possible. Even comatose your brain is still functioning.

Maybe it might be more appropriate to say that consciousness isn’t an app, it’s the gestalt of everything your body is doing. There’s no separation of Mind and Body.

Frankly, the idea of “pattern continuity” stinks of Cartesian Dualism. And I thought Descartes’ philosophy sounded like “I can’t accept that the world would be so cruel otherwise, therefore God exists.”