(September 13, 2009 at 10:53 am)Retorth Wrote: Haha..Completely understandable...in any case, as you said, there isn't a proper metaphorical sense for the mind to be considered "alive".
And while I'm on the subject, I think this would be a great platform for me to have a quick rant on something me and EVF were discussing a few weeks ago on MSN. You'll soon notice I have a passion for "sense of self".
I think that discussions about the "self" are limited by our use of language. When people use phrases such as "am I my mind? Am I my body?", they're asking "am I, the possessor, one of my possessions?" When a person states "I am my mind" they're basically stating "I am something that belongs to me". It's in the use of the word "my". They're making the mind a possession of their own. But then, who is the possessor? What is the possessor? What is this "I" to which the mind belongs?
I think this little hiccup of semantics is what causes a lot of people to believe in various dualisms. It's as if the human brain is programmed with a sense of self which is ever shifting and impossible to pinpoint. A non-existant, unattached entity that is used to make sense of the world around us. The brain creates an "I" which doesn't actually exist, and judges everything against this "I". So when one says "I am the sum total of my body and my mind", their use of the words "I" and "my" imply an (unidentified) possessor and (identified) possessions, when really it's just the brain's odd hardwiring placing the value "I" outside of everything else. As such, it is easy to say "I am that which trancends my body and mind", because your own use of language implies such a thing to be true.
Perhaps I read too deep. And I don't think I made my point very clear.
