Who are you?

[thadman]

Who are you?

Someone might respond with "[insert name]".

Let's assume we have two individuals, Jan and Kyle, and a scenario results from their interaction.

Jan: Hi, Who are you?
Kyle: I am Kyle.
Jan: O, Cool! It's so nice to meet you, Kyle.

...but what does this statement actually mean? What conclusions can we draw from "I am Kyle"? What is Kyle? We might presume he is referring to himself, but who is he?

Is Kyle material, immaterial, or a combination thereof?

Let's start with an example.

Let us assume a Scientist exists. His name is Frank and he enjoys Prime Rib occasionally. He is also a member of the Communist party. However, these things are trivial.

Let us also assume NASA (ironic?) approaches Frank with the purpose of granting him 20 billion dollars to produce a rover capable of exploring Mars and taking objective data. Frank says what the hell...I'll do it!

Frank develops a fully coupled model (thermal, mechanical, electromagnetic, etc) of his rover design and approaches optimization through implementation of various numerical optimization algorithms within a cloud computing network. Frank, being aware of the non-intuitive nature of Physics, knows his model will only approach reality, but never reach it. Once fully optimized, experiments were conducted to confirm Frank’s predictions.

Following successful testing of the prototype, he sends that bad boy to Mars.
He installed a video camera, temperature/pressure sensors, a robotic arm that can take soil samples (and can make a pretty damn good smoothie as well), and whatever else he determined as important. These things are arbitrary. We'll also assume Frank is a pretty smart guy and the rover worked when it arrived on the Red Planet.

Upon arriving on the Red Planet, the rover took video samples, temperature/pressure readings, etc (ie objective data). The rover then relayed all of this information back to Frank.

Frank then imported the objective data back into a computer to interpret the data. A physical model (mathematics) was created, wherein each degree of freedom in the system corresponded to a particular aspect of Mars’ environment. From this model, Frank was able to make several deductions about the environment on Mars.

I believe this is analogous to the human experience.

Frank is simply awareness of the rover, he is NOT the rover.

The rover represents the material body and Frank represents our awareness. Frank was never able to directly experience Mars (and thus understand absolute reality). Only through the objective information the rover relayed to him, was he able to form a model (ie subjective reality) which he hopes approaches absolute reality.

In the same way, our body receives information within its environment through its many senses. The eye measures electromagnetic radiation (ie light), the ear measures acoustic waves (ie sound), etc. The brain then interprets these waves and creates a reality (independent of absolute reality), which we exist in. This subjective reality can be reduced to a system composed of almost an infinite degrees of freedom. 3 dimensions could refer to sight, an additional dimension component could refer to time, etc. Literally our perception is our reality.

This allows us the opportunity to differentiate ourselves (awareness) from the total system (composed of mass/energy).

One might make the argument that their brain is their own as it is the conduit through which they indirectly experience reality and is the initial source of their cognizance.

However, if one were to choose this position, they must also assume the body as their own for the brain constitutes a finite portion of the total human biological system (ie body), which is the source of their cognizance.

Herein lies the failure of this thinking. If we are to define ourselves as the mass/energy responsible for our cognizance, we must consider all systems/networks responsible which extends to the total system (ie The Universe).

The brain is part of the body, which is part of a local system, which is part of a larger macro system, which is part of the Earth, which is part of the Solar System, which is a part of…(and you get the idea)

We will come to the conclusion that we are one energy/mass, which fails our initial requirement for defining ourselves relative to other persons.

What then transcends energy/mass which composes absolute reality?

We can thus define ourselves as our specific, subjective reality we experience relative to other persons.

[Cal Weldon]

Hmm...

[SY]

I don't get it. In what way is there a "we" as distinct from our brains? Ghost in the Machine, Pinker-style?

[darkfenriz]

No idea what it was and at what dosage, but I want it too.

[wg_ski]

Originally Posted by darkfenriz

No idea what it was and at what dosage, but I want it too.

"You can go sleep at home tonight, if you can get up and walk away."

[dave_gerecke]

I think therefore I am, I think.

- Apologies to Rene Descartes

[SY]

Originally Posted by wg_ski

"You can go sleep at home tonight, if you can get up and walk away."

If you're Mr. Common Sense, you won't believe me when I tell you that I have an envelope that will wash your car as you drive at home to work!

[janneman]

Originally Posted by thadman

Who are you?[snipped to conserve bandwidth]We can thus define ourselves as our specific, subjective reality we experience relative to other persons.

Hmmm. I think I can follow your reasoning.But I wouldn't want to go as far as deciding that the boundary of my 'I' extends to the known universe and beyond.

I agree that there probably is no sharp boundary to our perceptive inputs that come from the outside world or from our internal body state. If I feel happy because I had a nice talk with a friend, it is ultimately because a certain chemical balance in my brain has shifted. But I cannot say whether this is from the sound of my friends' voice, or perhaps because I had a great strawberry shake and I might have felt happy even if my friend hadn't been there. I guess that about 95%+ of all processing in my brain goes on below my consiousness horizon anyway.

But I digress. Anyway, even if philosophically 'I' extend into infinity, our perception gives us a boundary where 'I' end and the 'outside world' starts. So what is 'reality', the philosophical reasoning, or my perception? I would vote that what I perceive as my reality IS my reality; I am the final arbiter.

Did you read this?

Jan Didden

[T in AZ]

I don’t think there is an answer to the question, to know who I am; I would have to be able to know who I am now and in the future. As long as I’m in this time space continuum I am connected to everything in this universe and thus that makes it impossible to grasp the infinite concept of who am I.

[jlsem]

In what way is there a "we" as distinct from our brains?

For me, it's the funny-looking little guy with the big nose and large sagging jowls.

John