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[marigold_23]

There is a fundamental difference between myself and all other beings, just as there is between yourself and all other beings- a fundamental uniqueness that indicates something other-worldly even from an atheist perspective. Although multiples souls exist, each one isn't just unique but uniquely unique.

Do you think every ant in a colony is unique? How about every strept bacterium? Every cold virus?

You're not as unique as you think.

LuckyR,

Technically all organisms (even simple viruses) are unique by definition, occupying separate positions in space, moving in different directions at different velocities, composed of a different assortment and ammount of molecular/atomic components... actually one ant is extremely unique to another although that uniqueness is not noticed by us.
And
The observable universe of one position is not the same as in another, so any thing, no matter how simple, even as simple as a particle, may be ascribed its own unique circumstances, totally separate in that moment from the circumstances of another particle....(photons may be different, im not sure, not a physics person)

I think it's reasonable to admit that differential physical things are different and unique to that extent, particularly a physical conglomerate which is as complex as an organism...

However, I don't see any indication of anything "other worldly" in that fact. And I think it is fundamentally incorrect to describe souls (or the ephemeral "observer") as contingent or physical in itself... and certainly never plural, such that there could ever be more than one relevant observer to that observer... and even then, use of the term "soul" is pushing it... If by soul you mean your mind and memories as some fundamental being which you expect to go on as your "essense" in some afterlife... yeah that's just religion and it's made up to help us avoid the fact of death... in my opinion.

There may be something interesting beyond what we can necessarily describe in the phenomenon of being ... but we have to be cautious in describing something which we claim as fundamental, simply because description itself tends to rely on contingent reality... things which are some way to some other things, rather than things which simply are...

Your comments make complete and total sense... in a Philosophy Forum, yet almost no one actually behaves in accordance with these ideas. You have a sore throat, you take penicillin and millions of bacteria die. So what? Everyone thinks, they're barely thought of as life forms, let alone unique individuals. Ants in the kitchen, get out the bug spray, no thought required.

Yes, you're right that this uniqueness is not believed in many instances...
But I would say it should be acknowledged. For instance, if you put down some ant poison or take penicillin, you are not concerned with some specific ant or bacteria, typically... you are concerned with a colony of ants and a colony of bacteria... to your concern, it is represented as one entity.... You're not really representing the individual entities in that colony at all to the extent you represent the conglomerate entity.

However, if you focus on the ants individually (or the bacteria under a microscope), it won't take long to notice that they are separate entities with their own drives, and that you were only able to think of them as a conglomerate because they were so similar, allowing you to interpret the similarity as sameness. This interpretation of sameness was better for the efficiency of your purpose, which would have been hindered by having to devote attention to the personal execution of each ant.

This apparent fact of uniqueness at the level of a component or constituent member is not relevant to the simple purpose of destroying the total colony, only when our purpose is to better understand some individual component(s) of the colony.

[Markgrundr]

The contradiction I am suggesting rests on the definition of an experience.

Some may mean a "happening" or a "bare phenomenon" or "act" when they use the term "experience"... But in your usage, you have said "I experience myself."
So correct me if I'm wrong, but I have interpreted your usage of the word "experience" to mean:
"an interaction between two or more things"
Or, a felt effect or felt relationship by an entity from (or of) an entity

Where the happening of an experience specifically requires two interacting entities

Would you agree to that definition of experience or did you mean something else in your use of the word? How do you define "experience" if I have misunderstood you.

Birth and death are experiences that don't require two interacting entities. When I say "I experience myself." I'm satisfied with that experience being what Atla described : "Tbe the sensation of our self-awareness". Perhaps "I experience myself." wasn't the best way to describe it. But "self-awareness" is in a logical philosophical sense a contradiction also. So a better way of describing it might be as a meditative process of blocking out or objectifying one's interaction with the external (senses, thoughts, emotions, memories) with the purpose of giving one's self, whatever that is, greater purity. This process can offer some relative objectivity in trying to understand one's true nature; to isolate that which one interacts with from that which one is. So rather than "experiencing one's self", what is happening is one reaches a purer state of being.

[Markgrundr]

However, I don't see any indication of anything "other worldly" in that fact. And I think it is fundamentally incorrect to describe souls (or the ephemeral "observer") as contingent or physical in itself... and certainly never plural, such that there could ever be more than one relevant observer to that observer... and even then, use of the term "soul" is pushing it...

Totally lost you here. If you accept that selves are things and that they can have greater and lesser degrees of purity, do you believe that when selves or consciousnesses are in their purest form, they are entirely composed of the physical universe? If not, if you're going to assert the existence of something extra-physical, then it will be like walking a very thin tightrope over an abyss of nonsense.

[LuckyR]

Do you think every ant in a colony is unique? How about every strept bacterium? Every cold virus?

You're not as unique as you think.

LuckyR,

Technically all organisms (even simple viruses) are unique by definition, occupying separate positions in space, moving in different directions at different velocities, composed of a different assortment and ammount of molecular/atomic components... actually one ant is extremely unique to another although that uniqueness is not noticed by us.
And
The observable universe of one position is not the same as in another, so any thing, no matter how simple, even as simple as a particle, may be ascribed its own unique circumstances, totally separate in that moment from the circumstances of another particle....(photons may be different, im not sure, not a physics person)

I think it's reasonable to admit that differential physical things are different and unique to that extent, particularly a physical conglomerate which is as complex as an organism...

However, I don't see any indication of anything "other worldly" in that fact. And I think it is fundamentally incorrect to describe souls (or the ephemeral "observer") as contingent or physical in itself... and certainly never plural, such that there could ever be more than one relevant observer to that observer... and even then, use of the term "soul" is pushing it... If by soul you mean your mind and memories as some fundamental being which you expect to go on as your "essense" in some afterlife... yeah that's just religion and it's made up to help us avoid the fact of death... in my opinion.

There may be something interesting beyond what we can necessarily describe in the phenomenon of being ... but we have to be cautious in describing something which we claim as fundamental, simply because description itself tends to rely on contingent reality... things which are some way to some other things, rather than things which simply are...

Your comments make complete and total sense... in a Philosophy Forum, yet almost no one actually behaves in accordance with these ideas. You have a sore throat, you take penicillin and millions of bacteria die. So what? Everyone thinks, they're barely thought of as life forms, let alone unique individuals. Ants in the kitchen, get out the bug spray, no thought required.

Yes, you're right that this uniqueness is not believed in many instances...
But I would say it should be acknowledged. For instance, if you put down some ant poison or take penicillin, you are not concerned with some specific ant or bacteria, typically... you are concerned with a colony of ants and a colony of bacteria... to your concern, it is represented as one entity.... You're not really representing the individual entities in that colony at all to the extent you represent the conglomerate entity.

However, if you focus on the ants individually (or the bacteria under a microscope), it won't take long to notice that they are separate entities with their own drives, and that you were only able to think of them as a conglomerate because they were so similar, allowing you to interpret the similarity as sameness. This interpretation of sameness was better for the efficiency of your purpose, which would have been hindered by having to devote attention to the personal execution of each ant.

This apparent fact of uniqueness at the level of a component or constituent member is not relevant to the simple purpose of destroying the total colony, only when our purpose is to better understand some individual component(s) of the colony.

You are correct but a different explanation is germane here. Namely that the human mind loses the ability to appreciate differences at a certain number of individuals. If I give you 5 jelly beans and ask you to describe them, you can describe differences in flavor, minor size differences or imperfections in their manufacturing. OTOH if I have a jar of 5000 jelly beans, it's just a jar of candy.

Similarly if I ask you to describe your cousins, I could listen all day to stories of their hopes and dreams. If your cousins go to a football game and the entire crowd is photographed, and I asked you to describe the photo, "it's a sports stadium crowd".

[Markgrundr]

When I brought up uniqueness with reference to selves, what I was getting at was the rather discrepancy of being, if you like, between one's self and all other selves, and how this only adds to the problem of Dualism. So you could say that compared to all other people, I'm not just unique but uniquely unique. (Although if you accept that all others have a life experience that is fundamentally similar to yours, this becomes less of a problem).

[popeye1945]

The self beyond thought, sensation, and experience, there is then nothing. Subject and object stand or fall together. If one takes these thing away which constitutes object, consciousness ceases to be. If one took the subject/consciousness away the objective world ceases to be.

[Markgrundr]

That's untrue. There exists in reality what might be referred to as the Realm of the Known Unknowables : other selves and the universe beyond your perception- as they exist in the present moment without any of your conceptualizing. It doesn't really matter if you can't prove their existence; the fact is that they exist and don't care much about your philosophy. It is the Realm of the Known Unknowables that make Descartes look like a self absorbed idiot.

[popeye1945]

There is only cognitive knowing, unless you are referring to something supernatural. The apparent reality is the relation between subject and object and the property of knowledge belongs to the conscious subject never to the object or world as object. Self is the experience of the constitution, it and its experiences become the I of self identity.

[AmericanKestrel]

Feel free to direct me to another discussion but I couldn't find one addressing my particular view. There's something that is constantly on that lies deeper than thought and sensation. Thoughts and senses are how I interact with the world, but they are not me. They are the vessel by which I exist in the universe. They are the coat I put on to go out in the universe night.

Although my body is composed entirely of the universe, it's not certain nor even apparent that the spirit inside is. You could say it's a cloud of electricity inside the brain, but this doesn't fully explain the "I"ness or how and why my consciousness evolved to exist. If any one of my father's sperm had beat the one that made it to my mother's egg, they'd have conceived a body very similar but the I that is me would never have existed (or would it?), and from my point of view the universe would never have existed.

The I is something that voluntarily interacts in the world but whose existence is involuntary (except to end it by suicide. The constant hum began and continues involuntarily).

There is a fundamental difference between myself and all other beings, just as there is between yourself and all other beings- a fundamental uniqueness that indicates something other-worldly even from an atheist perspective. Although multiples souls exist, each one isn't just unique but uniquely unique.

You can explain its biological origins and how it interacts with the world, but its essential origin is not of the scientific or corporeal realm..

Arebyou talking about non-dualism?

[popeye1945]

We are born without the identity I, we are at birth a constitution strong or weak with preferences and tastes, etc. but anonymous, a thing which experiences the physical world. One aquires one's identity I through the experience of context/environment and the history ever growing of one's experiential journey becomes this ever changing identity I. To imagine a self beyond thought, sensation and experience is to subtract the subject from the relation of subject and object, thus leaving nothing whatsoever.

[RJG]

Feel free to direct me to another discussion but I couldn't find one addressing my particular view. There's something that is constantly on that lies deeper than thought and sensation. Thoughts and senses are how I interact with the world, but they are not me. They are the vessel by which I exist in the universe. They are the coat I put on to go out in the universe night.

Although my body is composed entirely of the universe, it's not certain nor even apparent that the spirit inside is. You could say it's a cloud of electricity inside the brain, but this doesn't fully explain the "I"ness or how and why my consciousness evolved to exist. If any one of my father's sperm had beat the one that made it to my mother's egg, they'd have conceived a body very similar but the I that is me would never have existed (or would it?), and from my point of view the universe would never have existed.

The I is something that voluntarily interacts in the world but whose existence is involuntary (except to end it by suicide. The constant hum began and continues involuntarily).

There is a fundamental difference between myself and all other beings, just as there is between yourself and all other beings- a fundamental uniqueness that indicates something other-worldly even from an atheist perspective. Although multiples souls exist, each one isn't just unique but uniquely unique.

You can explain its biological origins and how it interacts with the world, but its essential origin is not of the scientific or corporeal realm.

Mark, firstly I like how you express all this; your style of writing is very good in my opinion, but I see one technical (logical) error. You seem to have come to the conclusion that the mind or consciousness, aka the "I", is somehow an autonomous spirit that "voluntarily interacts within the world".

But if you look closer, you will see that our consciousness is nothing more than an "echo" (for lack of better word) of the happenings of our physical body.

When we are conscious, we are only conscious of our bodily experiences/reactions (e.g. thoughts, feelings, and sensory experiences), that's it! And nothing more! These bodily reactions, in turn, are supposedly caused by real objects or events out in the universe/reality (or within our physical body). So we don't actually experience the world/universe around us, we only experience physical bodily reactions/sensations, that in turn, may or may not represent the happenings out there; in reality.

In other words, consciousness is nothing more than an echo chamber within a reactive body. The "I" is not free. It cannot do anything whatsoever, for 100% of its thoughts, feelings, and sensations have been given/scripted to him. Consciousness is just another physical bodily reaction/experience. It is the experience of 'recognition', made possible by those physical objects that possess memory capability.

Logically, we cannot experience (feel, think, sense) something that is not already there for us to feel, think, or sense. The consciousness-of-X is not possible without the pre-existence of X. The consciousness-of-[nothing] is non-consciousness.

Therefore, we can't logically think our own thoughts without the pre-existing (already scripted) thoughts there for us to think (consciously experience).

The "self" ("I"; consciousness) is just the "experiencer" (physical recognition) of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations reactively created by the physical body. There is no "self" beyond these experiences.

[popeye1945]

RJG,
EXCELLENT KUDOS OUTSTANDING!

[AmericanKestrel]

The "self" ("I"; consciousness) is just the "experiencer" (physical recognition) of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations reactively created by the physical body. There is no "self" beyond these experiences.

If the Self is the experiencer of the experience, and there is no self beyond these experiences, then the experience and the experiencer are the same. Where is the self?
Define self.
Advaita defines self (Atma) as the the reflection of the one single universal existence known as Brhman (Bigness) . It is the body that experiences the world created by the mind. The Atma remains as a seer and is not affected by the experience in any way.

[popeye1945]

The "self" ("I"; consciousness) is just the "experiencer" (physical recognition) of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations reactively created by the physical body. There is no "self" beyond these experiences.

If the Self is the experiencer of the experience, and there is no self beyond these experiences, then the experience and the experiencer are the same. Where is the self?
Define self.
Advaita defines self (Atma) as the the reflection of the one single universal existence known as Brhman (Bigness) . It is the body that experiences the world created by the mind. The Atma remains as a seer and is not affected by the experience in any way.

AmericanKestrel,
"The Atman remains as seer and is not affected by the experience in any way." quote You must admit that this is a mystical statement and really just a statement of the existence of a god, where else might one find a bases for such a statement. Personally I am more comfortable with Spinoza's god, being the totality.

[popeye1945]

The self is both subject and object and the object includes the cosmos.