I love Colin! He just says it how it is, on the basis of what we can be pretty sure of, and goes no further. The magic is that he sees with great clarity just how bizarre and mysterious the things we take for granted, such as consciousness and the self, really are, given what we know from science. But then he doesn't come out with any silly unjustified "solutions" (e.g. idealism/panpsychism/eliminative materialism/theology) to get us out of the pickle. He's just straightforward and honest about how bizarre and difficult to explain reality is. What a hero!
One important question we should ask is, do things and phenomenon exist outside our memories? Our 5 sense organs simply act as sensors for external information which then store up in our minds. We then claim these memories as what makes up our sense of self. Another important question would be, would there be a sense of self without memories?
Brilliant! Spot On! "... our imagination is liberated by our ignorance ..." Indeed. And if we have NOTHING ELSE we have our imagination. Which, of course, is completely explained as an emergent property of our mentation ... which in turn is a process that we know gives rise to many, many things not the least of which our ability to be motile organisms, and in our specific case (humans) gives rise to just the kinds of discussions presented in the conversation presented in the video. I think a good way to think about this is to consider just how mentation evolved and what properties it must have from a computational standpoint to do the job it must. Our 'big-brains' not only get us around this world but also allow us to host this fantastical extra bit that we call imagination. When we toss in the correct checks and balances on our imaginations we find that our species is capable of developing the civilization we now enjoy. Sadly all the 'evolutionary-baggage' we retain from our less evolved selves must be accounted for and kept in check lest we go straight off the tracks into places that only exist in our collective imaginations and have no foundation in the reality of the world around us.
I wonder if you Understand that you have just said or written "*my* imagination is limited by *my* ignorance. Of what do you suppose yourself to be "ignorant"? Is it not true to say that all men (human beings) are ignorant of something, but if that be true what flows from it, or so what?
well said, I couldn't agree more. Interestingly enough Krishnamurti made the bold proposition that the state of not knowing is intelligence, but I'm not sure how I would go about verifying that for myself - whatever that is In my experience words tend to obscure rather than reveal - they act as proxies or substitutes .
If a person A and later a person B are psychological continuous over time (in the sense of Locke) then A=B, i.e. it's the same person. There you have it, personal identity. There is nothing "too weak" about the continuous mental state view. (The real problem arises when persons split or fuse over time, but they didn't talk about that.)
Episodic memory, personality traits, the persistent chain of the world reflecting a distinct entity which we embody all add to the illusion of a Persistent self, yet every night we go to sleep and our self is no more, then every morning we wake up, and it is back. It is an interwoven construct. Imagine if you were cloned while you slept, when your clone awoke it would be convinced that it is you, even though it’s physical matter is different. It is the pattern of information which is the essence, and thus holds the virtual image of a self, just as I can copy a disk and Mount an image of it on my hard drive, the pattern is the same and thus the identity is the same. But the concept of distinct identity is an overlay covering awareness, which is without characteristics or personality. We “become” ourself, rather without choice, but when it’s realised that the self is illusory, what’s behind it shows itself to be the true source.
I completely agree about the two extremes (great point there) but the person being interviewed seems rather hostile to the idea of a spirit. Now I would understand his point of view if our understanding of the physical world had lead us in that direction, but I don't see any evidence of that. The more you look at matter and complex systems, the more you wonder how something as different from it as consciousness could emerge from any arrangement of its components. Now there is obviously a relation between consciousness and the brain, but we are far from understanding what it is. We can say for sure that cognition, personality and memory, for example, are linked to the brain in some form, but that is not enough to conclude that a) their basic identity is material (rather than being affected or expressed by matter), and b) there is nothing more fundamental about our self which is not physical. So I really don't get the arrogance that I see in some people of science (not the man in the video, I enjoyed his ideas) making unsubstantiated claims about the nature of our reality, often with very little actual data or valuable arguments to support them. I guess admitting ignorance doesn't get the bills payed... But the truth is, as far as I can tell, most people don't know much about these topics (to put it mildly). Yet almost everyone will voice a strong opinion if asked... I'm all for expressing ideas, but if we haven't collectively solved a problem for thousands of years, one should be a little humble when addressing it...
Colin McGinn is getting us only up to John locke's preview of the self (as a self-memory) or to the scientific assumption that the self is a product of the brain. They are both insufficient since neither memory or the brain is constant, and identity requires consistency. If the question of the self really interests you I invite you to seek youtube for the video: Who am I? the answer to the riddle of the self.
Identity needs a basic consistency and a little flexibility here or there in the brain structure or the memory itself does not disintegrate Identity. He is right that our ignorance about the consciousness and mechanism in which brain works lead some to nonsense storytelling.
it has been suggested that all self descriptions are either lies or mistaken, and is it not the case that identity is a form of self-description, which, if correct, raises the question whether or not description or a description is identical to, or directly equivalent to, what it describes. I remember a spike Milligan sketch in which someone says to spike Milligan: "who are you?!" Spike Milligan replies: "I'm me", which may or may not satisfy the questioner but it simply shifts question back one step, does it not? - In essence it is circular like everything else that goes on in the heads of men (human beings). The strange thing is that if I speak about my hat, I not suppose myself to be the hat, but nevertheless I speak of "my" self, or suppose the possessor and the possessed to be identical or equivalent to one another, which is, I suppose, one way of saying that my assertion is not borne out by my experience, but we are in the land mirrors reflecting themselves are we not?
Does the answer to origin of self concept rest in our intelligence or consciousness? Are human beings conscious because of their intelligence or intelligent because of their consciousness?
the physical features (bar aging) persist. We see a person an recognize them years later like the patterns of a cats coat. So, the traits of the personality and mind are connected to molecules the same way the visible self persists what is so difficult to understand.
This is an incorrect description of passage through time. Mental states do not exist in instants of time. Time in the first person sense cannot be split into lengthless instants, neither can mental states.
He is making a very big mistake, you cant drop from ignorance about yourself to ignorance in a literal sense. All is a big confusion and don’t explain anything. I can easely destroy his arguments, that is very strange cause I,m not a profesional in this field. I think that we have a big ignorance of what a self is, then, you cant conclude anything about that.
put the case than a man says "my" hat. Do you suppose him to be suggesting that the possessor and possessed are identical or equivalent to one another?
One of the most illustrative videos of this channel
I love Colin! He just says it how it is, on the basis of what we can be pretty sure of, and goes no further. The magic is that he sees with great clarity just how bizarre and mysterious the things we take for granted, such as consciousness and the self, really are, given what we know from science. But then he doesn't come out with any silly unjustified "solutions" (e.g. idealism/panpsychism/eliminative materialism/theology) to get us out of the pickle. He's just straightforward and honest about how bizarre and difficult to explain reality is. What a hero!
One important question we should ask is, do things and phenomenon exist outside our memories? Our 5 sense organs simply act as sensors for external information which then store up in our minds. We then claim these memories as what makes up our sense of self. Another important question would be, would there be a sense of self without memories?
Another way of putting that is: if a man says something in a forest where there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?
Brilliant! Spot On! "... our imagination is liberated by our ignorance ..." Indeed. And if we have NOTHING ELSE we have our imagination. Which, of course, is completely explained as an emergent property of our mentation ... which in turn is a process that we know gives rise to many, many things not the least of which our ability to be motile organisms, and in our specific case (humans) gives rise to just the kinds of discussions presented in the conversation presented in the video. I think a good way to think about this is to consider just how mentation evolved and what properties it must have from a computational standpoint to do the job it must. Our 'big-brains' not only get us around this world but also allow us to host this fantastical extra bit that we call imagination. When we toss in the correct checks and balances on our imaginations we find that our species is capable of developing the civilization we now enjoy. Sadly all the 'evolutionary-baggage' we retain from our less evolved selves must be accounted for and kept in check lest we go straight off the tracks into places that only exist in our collective imaginations and have no foundation in the reality of the world around us.
I wonder if you Understand that you have just said or written "*my* imagination is limited by *my* ignorance.
Of what do you suppose yourself to be "ignorant"?
Is it not true to say that all men (human beings) are ignorant of something, but if that be true what flows from it, or so what?
There's nothing wrong with not knowing. It's only a problem if you don't admit it.
well said, I couldn't agree more.
Interestingly enough Krishnamurti made the bold proposition that the state of not knowing is intelligence, but I'm not sure how I would go about verifying that for myself - whatever that is
In my experience words tend to obscure rather than reveal - they act as proxies or substitutes .
If a person A and later a person B are psychological continuous over time (in the sense of Locke) then A=B, i.e. it's the same person. There you have it, personal identity. There is nothing "too weak" about the continuous mental state view. (The real problem arises when persons split or fuse over time, but they didn't talk about that.)
Episodic memory, personality traits, the persistent chain of the world reflecting a distinct entity which we embody all add to the illusion of a
Persistent self, yet every night we go to sleep and our self is no more, then every morning we wake up, and it is back. It is an interwoven construct.
Imagine if you were cloned while you slept, when your clone awoke it would be convinced that it is you, even though it’s physical matter is different. It is the pattern of information which is the essence, and thus holds the virtual image of a self, just as I can copy a disk and Mount an image of it on my hard drive, the pattern is the same and thus the identity is the same.
But the concept of distinct identity is an overlay covering awareness, which is without characteristics or personality. We “become” ourself, rather without choice, but when it’s realised that the self is illusory, what’s behind it shows itself to be the true source.
and the beat goes on and on... the elephant in the room is always Emptiness
I completely agree about the two extremes (great point there) but the person being interviewed seems rather hostile to the idea of a spirit. Now I would understand his point of view if our understanding of the physical world had lead us in that direction, but I don't see any evidence of that.
The more you look at matter and complex systems, the more you wonder how something as different from it as consciousness could emerge from any arrangement of its components. Now there is obviously a relation between consciousness and the brain, but we are far from understanding what it is.
We can say for sure that cognition, personality and memory, for example, are linked to the brain in some form, but that is not enough to conclude that a) their basic identity is material (rather than being affected or expressed by matter), and b) there is nothing more fundamental about our self which is not physical.
So I really don't get the arrogance that I see in some people of science (not the man in the video, I enjoyed his ideas) making unsubstantiated claims about the nature of our reality, often with very little actual data or valuable arguments to support them. I guess admitting ignorance doesn't get the bills payed... But the truth is, as far as I can tell, most people don't know much about these topics (to put it mildly). Yet almost everyone will voice a strong opinion if asked...
I'm all for expressing ideas, but if we haven't collectively solved a problem for thousands of years, one should be a little humble when addressing it...
What is "a spirit"?
Colin McGinn is getting us only up to John locke's preview of the self (as a self-memory) or to the scientific assumption that the self is a product of the brain. They are both insufficient since neither memory or the brain is constant, and identity requires consistency.
If the question of the self really interests you I invite you to seek youtube for the video:
Who am I? the answer to the riddle of the self.
Thank you. Great comment.
Identity needs a basic consistency and a little flexibility here or there in the brain structure or the memory itself does not disintegrate Identity. He is right that our ignorance about the consciousness and mechanism in which brain works lead some to nonsense storytelling.
it has been suggested that all self descriptions are either lies or mistaken, and is it not the case that identity is a form of self-description, which, if correct, raises the question whether or not description or a description is identical to, or directly equivalent to, what it describes.
I remember a spike Milligan sketch in which someone says to spike Milligan: "who are you?!"
Spike Milligan replies: "I'm me", which may or may not satisfy the questioner but it simply shifts question back one step, does it not? - In essence it is circular like everything else that goes on in the heads of men (human beings).
The strange thing is that if I speak about my hat, I not suppose myself to be the hat, but nevertheless I speak of "my" self, or suppose the possessor and the possessed to be identical or equivalent to one another, which is, I suppose, one way of saying that my assertion is not borne out by my experience, but we are in the land mirrors reflecting themselves are we not?
Does the answer to origin of self concept rest in our intelligence or consciousness?
Are human beings conscious because of their intelligence or intelligent because of their consciousness?
the physical features (bar aging) persist. We see a person an recognize them years later like the patterns of a cats coat. So, the traits of the personality and mind are connected to molecules the same way the visible self persists what is so difficult to understand.
This is an incorrect description of passage through time. Mental states do not exist in instants of time. Time in the first person sense cannot be split into lengthless instants, neither can mental states.
Yes, supposedly our consciousness has a particular “refresh rate”
Pity the interviewer kept interrupting.
Disagree.
He is making a very big mistake, you cant drop from ignorance about yourself to ignorance in a literal sense. All is a big confusion and don’t explain anything. I can easely destroy his arguments, that is very strange cause I,m not a profesional in this field. I think that we have a big ignorance of what a self is, then, you cant conclude anything about that.
put the case than a man says "my" hat. Do you suppose him to be suggesting that the possessor and possessed are identical or equivalent to one another?