What ‘you’ ‘are‘!
Some of you may be interested in this…
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb...28420#p2128420
I have been having some interesting debates at ILP forums, so I thought I would link you up with what I think is becoming a fundamental description of what we actually are ~ a description of the entity of mind. I would suggest going to page 2 or even beginning the last post which reads thus;
The quotes of from another poster attempting to put forwards the materialist solution.
There is a you containing thought and that is thought, it’s a very dynamic entity [the ‘you’/mind].There is not a 'you' separate from thought.
I would think there is something of a continuation, you get a few thoughts at a time and they tend to overlap and split off on tangents.When thought is utilized to get what is wanted, the 'you' is born at that moment and continues as long as it is using thought.
Even if we take your statement as so, we still have to talk about the you that is created and what that is and how it is made. it’s a far simpler solution to presume what we know about ourselves to be true ~ that we are and we continue.
We have to use thought to ‘comprehend’ what we are, this is an act of bringing information into the conscious sphere. I don’t think it is needed to know what we are ~ without discerning what that is as an intellectual factor. Either way we are describing a non material object which acts as the sphere of mind, whereby all things are discerned within that. Information has no way of knowing what it is apart from by this.When you want to know what you are, you have to use thought to take you there.
A wave of light doesn’t know what it is, but we have no doubt that it is a wave of light because we have observed it as being such. When that hit’s the back of the eye and is turned into information ~ an electro-chemical impulse, it is still not a knowledgeable idea! The real ‘hard information’ is purely a construct of mind, and one that whilst supported by the material aspects, is itself fundamentally non material.
So far then we have to aspects of thought that are non material, the information composed in that thought and the sphere of consciousness that reads this information. To this we may add the qualia of lightness and colour, as these too are not to be found in the material [~in the em spectrum].
I would think those non material things are what life actually is, any creature without it is simply animated material.
..to maintain our persona yes, without this we are something of an actor without a script [or a theatre]. An actor can play an almost infinite amount of parts, non of which are the actor themselves.We are using the neurons, our memory, constantly to maintain our identity.
Without the knowledge of a thing we indeed have no way of knowing what that thing is. We can ’invent’ [!!!] knowledge about a thing until via others comparative observations, we draw an agreed upon idea of what that thing is. A blank mind would and to some degree does [I.e. from foetal birth] invent its world using both a set of instruments, and information that is available to it.You experience what you know. Without the knowledge you have no way of experiencing anything.
Beyond knowledge then, I feel the inner ‘you’ has also inner knowledge or gnosis, and this is not informational, but is the innate ability to invent notions concerning its surroundings. However it is not alone, it is always immersed in the fundamental universals of nature, and by these has the basic blueprint to ’see’ the world with.
I agree it is making the new old, and it is the old reading the new, though before we know a thing surely it is new. This is of course by the ordinary processes of the intellect, I do feel there are other ways the mind can draw information even utilising the infinite, such things as intuition for example. This is a whole other area though and I think we need to reach common ground upon the self before we can go further to deduce other mechanisms of mind.When you tell yourself that it is a new experience, it is the old that tells you that it is a new experience. Otherwise, you have no way of saying that it is something new. It is the old that tells you that it is new. And through that it is making it part of the old.
I will agree with all you say if you can answer my concerns above. I do feel we are always left with something that sees thinks and experiences, and that electrical impulses don’t do that, nor do chemical interactions.