John Searle - How Do Persons Maintain Their Identity?
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- Look at an old photo. Then look in the mirror. Those two images are of the same person, right? How so? They don't look the same. Their memories are different. And virtually every atom in their bodies is different. We feel unity across time, but is this solidified sense of self an illusion?
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Searle repeats the general arguments of the philosopher Derek Parfit here. If anyone is interested in personal identity, that is the most famous author on that subject. He has written about this and other topics in the book "Reasons and Persons".
The continuity of one's identity is the persistent sense of self. We know we are,"I am''.
This sense of 'me' is always there.
The thing we often don't realize is that it is not personal to our individual bodies. We are not our bodies.
And the 'me' I experience is actually ME experiencing 'me'. And ME experiences all of us and everything. This is our persistent and eternal self. Thus,our persistent sense of self is real and accurate because it is the One Self experiencing all selves.
This essay in the following link describes this very condition in which we *seem* to have the same basic self, and follows it to a very important implication. However, this self is something that we'll likely never get to know conceptually - so whenever someone says something positive about this self he/she's bound to talk nonsense. medium.com/@rares_mircea_82/is-it-possible-for-us-to-become-immortal-with-the-help-of-science-3934df78ffa8
Why would Hume talk to himself in German?
Maybe he got super-drunk one night.
Because he was a Nazi with a time machine. This the more obvious answer I can give.
English, wasn't he
@@dalegolden8012 Scottish
That which we don't understand, we imagine that we do. Always.
In a sense I would say that there is fusion and cohesion of people through the different designs of personality and perspective through linguistic, idealogical, expression and communication. Thoughts are like the variables in the algorithm of cultural evolution that make up the guiding factors of where we find purpose in the times we are born.
Don't your fingerprints stay the same your whole life?
What sense does it make to worry about your future, if it’s not you who will be experiencing life in the future-but just someone similar to you? It feels like it will be “me” who experiences the future, and I can worry about the future out of my own self-interest (rather than worrying about some person who is like me but not really me, that would be altruistic).
For example, you can worry about developing Alzheimer’s. You will experience it, even if you are very different/unrecognizable when you have developed Alzheimer’s.
The point that we hold a person responsible for what they did yesterday was particularly interesting.
Also, I think Robert was going to ask “I’m going into the operating room-and which person will I come out as? Person on the left or person on the right? Or, will I just die at the moment of fission and I’ll be replaced by two people exactly like me?”
They have not find the right questions. We have to say it: There is no more than a thinking process in a body (produced in the brain in interrelation with the rest of the body) and a "mirror effect" of those same processes (the so called conscience). There is not a mind, not a self, not an identity, not a soul, nothing but a related sense of self derived from the "mirror effect". This ME seems to have the ability to argue with the thoughts (as a product of the brain) but the moment begins to argue, there is no two thougth processes, but one and the same, reflected.
Yes!!!
“I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. Even when we actively look for the self we simply can’t find it! All of our experiences are perceptions, and none of these perceptions resemble a unified and permanent self-identity that exists over time." -- David Hume (why there is no Self)
Questions: Who/what is the "I" that can not catch itself? Who/what is the perciever of the perceptions? Can this perciever be a perception? And does this perceiver change over time?
Cogito ergo sum.
Fun fact, Descartes used that justification to torture dogs as he declared they weren't conscious.
I wonder if you understand that when you use the word "we" that indicates means or points to, the user of the term that is*you*and his immediate interlocutor and since you have no immediate interlocutor that just leaves*you*.
You can no more observe yourself than a mirror can reflect itself.
When you say "my hat" You do not suppose yourself to me that - presumably but you do say "my self"; which is the possessor and which that possessed?
All I can experience in a number of different experiences arising out of a number of different functions of whatever it is that I am - which remains a mystery, but for some reason I have been conditioned to suppose that because I have a question now must necessarily be what is called "an answer"..
The father of a master once tAdvised his son as follows: "become yourself, then God and the devil matter".
That rather raises or forces the question exactly how do I become myself?
Do I wish to kill that question with an answer?
The more pertinent question is*what*am I that whoever my is trivial Relative to the fundamental question*what*am I? - How to remain awake in front of that question? -*Without*killing it, because answer is no more than the Dead body of a question
I'd like to hear him talk about panpsychism
Although my molecules have all changed since birth many times over, hasn't my genetic/DNA code remained essentially the same? In combination with the retention of memories, I am the same self.
So, genetic/DNA code in combination with the retention of memories mean you are the same self? You are somewhat inferring that a self is made up of those things. Can you point to a self, like you could point to a table? Since you cannot, how can you say what a self is other than your opinion of what a self is.
If you care about soul and god and wholiness of self, then you'd avoid these horrible brutal surgical operations that intrude into the very essence of one's being. I'd rather die of epilepsy than to be resurrected into this half-person.
Crucially we have a sense-of-self and a meta-awareness about our experiences. The self proper debate is kind of empty compared to those realities. If we call it an "inner experiencer, that which experiences" ... then we have a self. If we call the ego the self -- then the thinker, learner, witness to reality is the self and it's a thing. Philosophers tend to generalize about 20 different concepts into the word "self": self-concept, self-image, self-in-the-world, self-awareness, self-consciousness, true self, false self, disowned self, emissary self, I, me, personality, ego, mind, psyche, identity, person, character, individual, persona, and I'm sure a few more. The blanket term "self," and "Is there a self?" can be a wild goose chase.
The "Continuous Person" is Pure Consciousness, That which remains when all relative characteristics are discarded (as in the ship that sails for 10 years and comes back with none of the original parts). We can tap into That Pure Consciousness, the Self. He says some guy got a headache trying to find the true Self. Nonsense! (didn't try the correct techniques). Access "Mahamritunjaya mantra - Sacred Sounds Choir" and listen to it for 5 min per day for at least two weeks. In due time you will transcend thought itself in the state of Samadhi/Satori.
0:00: 🤔 The video discusses the concept of personal identity and the challenges in defining the self.
2:34: 🧠 The video discusses the formal notion of the self and the characteristics of personal continuity.
5:32: 🧠 The video discusses the criteria for personal identity and the concept of self, exploring the idea of continuity of memory, body, and personality.
8:10: 🧠 The video discusses the concept of personal identity and the brain's role in creating a continuous sequence of experiences.
10:48: 🤔 The video discusses the concept of personal identity and how it is affected by the assumptions about the nature of the world.
Recap by Tammy AI
Who Are You... I really wanna know.
The religious perspective would be an individualized soul. As all is flux and the aether was declared defunct the question arose what keeps everything apart and separate as entities. The aether was brought back as the L-field or Life field. The aether still exists as the aether; most acknowledge that, and have ditched it being described as the L-field.
They should not be so fast in dismissing the soul. Consciousness is still the hard problem and the mind is little understood.
Materialists posit just one dimension; the material. They do not acknowledge that there are three dimensions. The Causal; (ideas) The Astral (energy). Materialists acknowledge just the elemental, making it fundamental to all else.
That is why there are so many open questions.
Excellent, very well put. We are in a very real sense identified by how we observe the world around us. I think this cuts to the very core of the idea of consciousness as an emergent property of our mental processes which are totally entangled with our sensory perception of the world around us our memories and our knowledge that is gained by the very large information exchange channels we enjoy with other members of our species.
What if there was a Man who was born normal and healthy in Every way except none of his senses developed (couldn't hear, see, smell, taste or even touch)?!? He would have an Identity that would be wholly derived from the opinions of others!!
David Belcher I agree and would put it this way: The folks around such a being would place labels on it and identify it that way. The being itself, I think, would not be conscious nor have a sense of self.
If you split the brain you’d most likely (and importantly) have two different personalities
It would be good to hear something on how death fits in with all this
Chomsky has a great bit on continuity. Check out "Is the man who is tall, happy." I don't think he has a direct answer either, though.
“The most negative attack on the notion of self was by David Hume”. Well, if we exclude the Buddha, Nāgārjunā, Candrakīrti, Buddhaghosa, Nāgasena…
We are not essentially persons, we are essentially human animals.
I think he misses the point the interviewer is making at 11.18.
If you really let things sink, you'll experience what you are, void of all the work, education, experience, human-games and all that. There is that essence to you and it doesn't matter if you're a theist or atheist because this is about experiencing yourself. Intellectualism is limited in explaining this experience or formulating it so that everyone agrees. There is 'you'. It's a good thing to connect with that essential 'you', to bring that on top of all the other surface stuff we acquire in life. That's why vital people are said to be genuine and people who are drowned by "life-stuff" are dull or drowned without the same shine in their eyes.
How do you know?
What Louis said.
that´s like asking: how do you know that you´re conscious? You just know, because you are. The self is an illusion created by the brain. It´s a distortion of reality. You can not explain it, but if you experience it there won´t be any doubt.
He is good!
The brain may well be just a feature of complex interdependent brain states that then places brains as some other feature of reality such as society as the primordial criteria for self qua any brain state in a vat or body.
Each created person is identified by a unique frequency that builds a consciousness and senses to give that person a world to explore. Each created being is different than another because of these unique life giving frequencies that all come from a simulation program via computing technology that our Creator used to speak his simulation program into existence.
Everything about us comes from the computing language which is totally invisible to us because it's in the form of invisible vibrations. One individual wavelength of a vibration is the lowest form of information that exists in the simulation program we're involved in. Each wavelength is different than another like each snowflake is different than another. This gives our Creator the ability to create an endless amount of life experiences for his created beings.
The same materialism crap...
Hume argued that we do not have an unchanging self... That's pretty obvious, what things actually remain unchanged through time? I can't think of a single physical object.
Imagine if you’re schizophrenic. Now you’ll have to problems as if the one wasn’t enough
Self,highly edited memory constituting the current you. Rationalized over time giving continuity.
if the brain stem can be repaired with regenerative engineering and the energy that was used can be located think of the human as a puzzle when all the pieces are connected then you start to get it but the thing about humans is that each time they obtain new information a new piece of the puzzle is added to the overall picture the problem is orchestrating the energy usage that may contribute to brain activity but also you will have to resolve the problem of medical intervention on a system that is decaying at a random-ish rate if brain stem is partly responsible for being unconscious or conscious how does one maintain their identity if they are to be revived idk man seems like a really hard problem
If the operation to split the brain and transplant it into two new bodies happens whilst you're conscious , as happens with many brain operations, then what does that feel like and which body do you feel yourself being transplanted into? Searle just ducked the substance of the issue.
Locally generated memories; they don't have to be stored locally but it's the default.
Does the answer to origin of "self" rest in our intelligence or consciousness?
Are human beings conscious because of their intelligence or intelligent because of their consciousness?
john searle is way ahead of the curve in terms of asking the epistemological questions the A.I. engineers will be living through in the next decades. lucid and insightful philosopher. thanks for sharing this. 🙏
The split brain experiment just shows that the identity doesn’t seem to be preserved
transplant the hunger center of one person into another’s brain. Who feels hunger?
If that's the case (that there is no "self" outside the experience), then exactly *WHO* is having the experience?!? Do you get what I mean?? That's a problem for me regarding what he said
Human language evolved to handle human scale experience. For the convenience of thought, human language chops up our experience of the universe into bite sized chunks and gives each chunk a name. The self is just one of those chunks. It exists only as a concept. There is no "who" in the real world. Now, for people who find this hard to swallow, "Who is having the experience?" makes a very good koan. You can't lose either way (except that, either way, "you" don't really exist as an independent definable entity).
no one or everyone and everything. Nothing separates you from the world around you except the actual illusion of the self. It feels like this separation is an obvious fact, but it´s not. You are not (and never have been) a creature inside reality, you are reality. There is only reality experiencing itself thru human beings or consciousness experiencing different realities, whatever floats your boat. Not only does it make sense scientifically, it can also be experienced.
@@bobaldo2339 Neurons aren't having experiences. Something is having experiences.
@@thekingofisrael5203 Nope... Experience is just happening, nothing is having experience
Can anyone recommend a good book by Searle? Assuming, of course, that he has written some books? I've yet to research or look on Amazon, but from the few clips I've seen of him, I've been pretty intrigued. The way he explains many of these problems is a lot easier for me to understand when compared to some of the other philosophers that I've seen/read.
"The Rediscovery of Mind" and "The Mystery of Consciousness" are good if you're interested in consciousness, intentionality, AI, etc.. Yes, Searle, despite the controversial nature of many of his philosophical positions, is an excellent expositor of topics in the philosophy of mind.
ThisCannotBeTheFuture
Thanks. My interests are in consciousness, free will, language, not so much AI. Who else do you recommend with regards to contemporary philosophers?
I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, so I don't keep up with the latest research, but I suppose I would recommend...
1. David Chalmers' "The Conscious Mind", something of a modern classic and the book that arguably made (a form of) dualism respectable again and popularized the notion of philosophical zombies amongst interested non-experts.
2. Dan Dennet (arch nemesis of Searle!) for a purely physicalist/functionalist approach.
3. The Churchlands, for a "neuroscientific" approach.
4. If you're really dedicated, whatever intelligible papers you can find from Ned Block, Jerry Fodor, Hilary Putnam ,Saul Kripke, etc. Fair warning: a lot of this stuff is not easy and requires multiple readings, discussion, etc.
5. Listen to back episodes of the podcast "Space Time Mind"
P.S. You may not be interested in AI per se, but understanding and appreciating Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment is essential to any serious study of consciousness/intentionality/grounding of semantics. In fact, you might want to start with Searle's very short and readable "Mind's Brains and Science."
P.P.S. Douglas Hofstadter's "Goedel, Escher, Bach," which adorns many a bookshelf, is often viewed as some sort of mystical treatment of the commonality between the titular figures. In fact, it is a book on how consciousness can emerge from complex patterns. (Hofstadter and Searle also aren't exactly crazy about each other.)
Many thanks. I've read a few of Dennet's religious books as well as all of Sam Harris's (which is how I learned of Chalmers). I've also read some of David Deutsch's work. I will definitely check out that podcast and see which papers I can find from some of the other authors you mentioned. With regards to free will, I find it odd how confident each side is of there position.
Searle himself conisders, Intentionality :An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind as his best book.
Searle mentions Locke and Hume, but not Derek Parfit... why is that when he is the one who came up with the fantastical thought experiements of brain transplants.
is Searle intellectualy honest? There's at least one chinese room negating that...
Darcy
How do supermen maintain their superiority?
Gang
The first 8 minutes are great :D His use of the phrase "point of view" reminds me of a great turn of phrase about how we sometimes try to treat selves as literal physical points: "We explain the startling time gap between the sound and sight of distant fireworks by noting the different transmission speeds of sound and light. They arrive at the observer (*at that point*) at different times, even though they left the source at the same time. What happens, though, when we close in on the observer, and try to locate the observer’s point of view more precisely, as a point within the individual? The simple assumptions that work so well on larger scales begin to break down. There is no single point in the brain [that is the "point" of view]. The brain is Headquarters, the place where the ultimate observer is, but there is no reason to believe that the brain itself has any deeper headquarters."
Lots of people have trouble understanding this. They say: but *I‘m* seeing all the colors, tasting all the smells, hearing all the sounds, thinking all the thoughts, etc., so where is that *me* that is aware of all these things? This is the trap of the hard problem. Rather than accept that spatially and temporally speaking these things are being processed all over, they want there to be a place where all of these things come together to get directly presented to “them.” If you take this idea as your indubitable starting point then you will never understand a thing about consciousness.
@@lenn939 and that's why Dennet calls consciousness an illusion or a trick fo the brain. But Searle doesn't accept that pov, contradcting himself, apparently
Thank You👏👏👏⭐️❤️
Identity is also determined by external factors. For example, a person could be given the title of Emeritus. And then, perhaps because of a series of factors, he could be stripped of this title. Identity is a brittle spirit..
It's not a good example 'cause they're talking about a different meaning of identity.
@@pustygrob5837 that’s OK, there’s more than one way to scale a fish.
I disagree with S. that in order to be conscious, it requires human brain matter and that consciousness can not be existant in a different substrate. It seems to me the self is what an organism defines itself as...
It's also how other people see you. If I think I am really handsome and everyone else thinks I am ugly, which am I??
Yes, they're all different molecules, but arranged by the same DNA (with its little changes in time but, the same code).
Adding to your comment, various external factors and decisions have influence on the DNA expression (epigenetics).
But, I dare to ask, in your point of view what is really ours (and what is us)?
What about twins with the same dna them? One or two (sometimes even more) selfs? So can't relay on that apparently simple solution.
Entities of any sort, including the supposed "self" are mere concepts, and exist only for the convenience of language.
Yes very good question
If you care about soul and god and wholiness of self, then you'd avoid these horrible brutal surgical operations that intrude into the very essence of one's being. I'd rather die of epilepsy than to be resurrected into this half-person.
In time I was a sperm now a young man and i will be old (maybe) one day and then only a dust so who am I ?
Who is asking the question?? Who is it that wants to know the answer??
A loser. Not like me, an Immortal from Galaxy @·1903j39ds#
I personally think one key to understanding the self is to figure out how information is integrated into conscious experience, for example sound and vision is processed in different parts of the brain, but your experience of watching the opera is completely integrated, we just don't know what part of the brain is I'm charge of integration.
Excellent talk!!!
He is a genius.