(March 14, 2015 at 9:03 pm)Nestor Wrote:(March 14, 2015 at 7:02 pm)Parkers Tan Wrote: I analogize the conscious self to a river, in that both change, and yet remain selfsame.I don't think the idea of an unchanging self is compatible with the knowledge we have about the brain or its contents, especially the personal experience of growing conscious of your surroundings and the mechanics that comprise any semblance of understanding them. I look at the brain as hardware that is pliable to whatever software gets uploaded, though the hardware itself is hardly static. The self is in some sense the thought or awareness of memories that are retained in the hardware; storage is probably unconsciously filtered so that some memories are permanently forgotten, others are filed away for convenience, and still yet others are perpetually recalled due to the structure of language, one such memory being this "person" experiencing "event X" at time "Y" that the dynamic system categorizes and defines as "I."
I find the idea of an unchanging self to be frighteningly static, myself.
I agree. This is why Platonic ideals bother me, not just with human conceptions of self, but in so many other areas of life -- they ignore the fact that "changes aren't permanent, but change is."
The idea of a discrete self which inhabits the body until the body's demise, after which it goes to (heaven? hell? repository? a spiritual sperm bank? who knows?) ignores so much of what makes life beautiful -- the change, the learning, the challenge of adjusting to new parameters on the fly.
As a boy, I used to try to plan so much, like composing a piece of music to take me where I wanted to go. Now I find a deep joy in living a life that has strong elements of jazz improv, because I am more comfortable riding the wave than I am treading water, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor (But jazz is like surfing, it really is.)
