From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Fri Oct 31 2003 - 19:53:11 MST
Coffee-house philosophy time...
The biggest mystery for me about the "illusion of the self" is not about just any self but about mine.
I mean, I can easily talk about selves in general, and I seem to understand how selves depend on memories and how a core self can be instantly created upon interaction with things even in the absence of memories, and what has been said about the role of self-reference, complexity, competing modules in the brain and everything. However...
The question of identity is weird. We do know that millions, trillions, and gazillions of sperm cells never get to become selves. So, our selves seem to be very lucky to be the ones they are, on this planet and in this particular century. It is luck beyond probability theory, because we haven't drawn a lottery ticket out of any repository of souls -- we have drawn it out of the infinite posibilities of forging a self.
On second thought, however, the fact that our selves were forged rather than picked out by luck seems to be a way out of the metaphysical curiosities: We just came to be. But this is not so clear any more when we get back to the question of identity -- when I think that I am talking about *my own* self.
Think of it: You are sitting over there reading this, with *your own* self forged in a complex process. The probabilities that the person who experiences this "illusion of the self" would be someone else and not "you" are overwhelming. Still, it is "you" sitting there and experiencing "the illusion of the self", on planet Earth, in the 21st century of all centuries. The lottery is back, along with Descartes' "I think therefore I am".
I think we have a long way to go and many more models to try before "the illusion of the self" is really understood well enough to be reconciled with our perception.
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