![Quote](/images/styles/dream/misc/quote_icon.png) Originally Posted by Captain Sleepalot
What it means is that there is one mind, expressed in many different forms (one of them being you). When "you" die, that particular form is erased but what was in it (the mind, consciousness) continues on and survives the death of "you".
So really, it doesn't matter if the identity that you have now survives death...the consciousness from which you were able to experience that identity while alive is what survives, and that's what matters.
This.. is problematic.
"the consciousness from which you were able to experience that identity while alive is what survives, and that's what matters."
You're acting as if somehow the mind is "consciousness" experiencing and looking at "your experiences and memories and personality", or your "identity". You're seperating an experiencer out of the mind, that is, you're creating a seat inside the mind "consciousness" which experiences the rest of the mind.
This, boiled down, is a theory based on a Homunculus argument. A homunculus argument is very simply a fallacy which relies on the assumption that there is some kind of "thing" within the mind "looking" at the experiences and memories created by the mind. Sadly this is fallacious as it creates a problem of infinite regress.
You aren't trying to explain the mind, I understand that, but you are proposing a theory which is based on a certain model of the mind. That model relies on a fallacy, that is the homunculus idea.
What you dub "consciousness" (which you have explicitly stated to in some form be "seperate" from the rest of the mind, see: "the consciousness from which you were able to experience that identity" ) is the problem here. You act as if the consciousness is a person who is experiencing the rest of the mind. Of course the problem then occurs that how exactly does the consciousness experience the rest of the mind, which in turn experiences the rest of the world?
Gotta quote Gilber Ryle here bro, in reference to this topic:
![Quote](/images/styles/dream/misc/quote_icon.png) Originally Posted by Gilbert Ryle
According to the legend, whenever an agent does anything intelligently, his act is preceded and steered by another internal act of considering a regulative proposition appropriate to his practical problem. . . . Must we then say that for the agent's . . . reflections how to act to be intelligent he must first reflect how best to reflect how to act? The endlessness of this implied regress shows that the application of the appropriateness does not entail the occurrence of a process of considering this criterion.
OK, so that isn't the easiest language to understand so I'll try and paraphrase what that quote is really about:
>The idea states that when an agent [us] does anything intelligently, his act is steered and created by another act inside our mind, which controls the exterior. You referred to this as consciousness.
>So where then do this agent's intelligent actions root from? And where do those root from in turn?
>This creates what's called an infinite regression, which is ultimately fallacious.
So consciousness should not be viewed as a 'step back' from experiences and memory of whatever else you're defining "you" as. The reason it is so easy for us to slip into this mindframe however is because we use language in a very decieving way.
That is we use words like "mind", "consciousness", "idea", "thought" in the same way we use words like "body", "driver", "book", "chair". With this model it makes it so easy to say things like, "consciousness seperate from brain" And that sentence makes perfect sense. Because it works in exactly the same way as we'd say "page seperate from book". This kind of language mix up is very very tricky and causes alot of the arguments we find.
Consciousness should not be considered a "thing". It is a massive simplification to talk as if consciousness is a thing or viewer or experiencer that somehow watches things like thoughts and memories and emotions externally. These things are not seperate. What we refer to as the mind is not a collection of things. It is a process. A process cannot be split up into seperating parts, because it is not a collection of "things". It is an entirely different animal altogether.
The stomach and surrounding organs create a process known as 'digestion'. Digestion is not a thing, like stomach or liver though. Our talk of seperating mind from brain or consciousness from identity is like saying "The digestion leaves the stomach". It is senseless, but this is hidden by language which gives it superficial sense.
You are thinking in far too a material way (believe it or not). The concept of there being "one mind" which is "split up" etc. You're using the same kind of language one would attribute to water, or beans. This cannot be done. The mind is a very unique and very special thing, and noone is fully sure how it works really. But we have ruled out over the last few hundred years in philosophy certain theories of the mind, like the cartesian model of mind and body as distinct, and by extension the model you are propogating here.
There is a mind, and that mind exists purely as a process integrated perfectly into the world around.
I'm sorry for wall of texting you, I try to avoid it, but please please read everything I've said here and try and really see where i'm coming from before responding. Let's not make this argument about "winning", rather understanding.
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