Existence must exist at all times.

[bennyboy]

1) Happy to look at it as a subject (i.e. the sense of self). But I'd also like to consider the self as an object.

If the self is then to examine itself, then what does this mean? I'd say the self is that which considers, and cannot really BE an object. The actual object being considered is ideas about the self, or at least it seems so to me.

2) Yes, exactly what I'd like to consider. How do you consider such people as objects? Are they people who have suffered a personality altering trauma (the same human-being who has suffered a change) -OR- Are they people who have been cleaved into two different people due to a trauma (one human-being ends and a new human-being begins)? Can the same be said for any other object that exists, conscious or not?

This is a problem with the physical world view. A table under physical examination turns out to be a collection of wave functions-- it's "tableness" disappears under the microscope.

I find it much easier to deal with humans as collections of ideas than as inviolable entities. "Mom" is a collection of various types of tissue, memories stored in the brain and so on, in a physical sense. But this is very far from what we think of when we talk about "Mom:" associations of warmth and safety (for most), a pat on the head and a look in the eye.

So in the case of brain damage, we must prune and repair our ideas about the reality of the person. "Bob" may be the same only in his rough physical attributes and his government identification numbers.

In the end, we must remember that "Bob" is a label for whatever-Bob-is, and there's no guarantee that won't change. Ideas about permanence (via the mechanism of the soul or otherwise) are really about the way we symbolize and use linguistic semantics. We don't like it when words mean different things all the time: "Bob" should be associated with "Bob-ness," and for that to mean anything, we'd like it to be as unambiguous as possible.

If the latter is the case (discontinuity), I'm not sure I understand how anything can be continually itself from one moment to the next. Is a tree the same tree at day 3 of growth as it is at year 50, or is there no actual "tree" to speak of at any given moment? Either it is some THING that undergoes change in some aspect while remaining the same identity, or it is nothing but change.

Again, the physical reality challenges us philosophically. If all the atoms in my body are recycled and replaced over time, am I still the same me that I was when I was say 20 years old?

My answer will start to sound a bit parroted now: I think the idea persists, and evolves slowly over time for the most part. "Benjamin" has a certain physical shape, my ideas about "Benjamin" slowly adjust to a little more girth or a few more white hairs. You can always find discontinuity in reality, but the narrative remains fairly coherent nonetheless.

3) See above. How does this apply to speaking about other things like this rock, or that tree or this atom?

This or that rock is known by its location and general properties as we perceive them. Whatever is happening in the rock as it disappears and reappears through moments of time, the label "this rock" still applies to the same virtual object in my world view.

That's what objects are to us-- not really things, but our virtual representations of things as symbolized ideas. I'm not so sure it really matters what lies under the hood, because it really wouldn't change how we interact with our experiences.

4) I agree it's not the answer. It seems to me that there should be something in the formulation that can account for both the continuous identity of a human-being and any other sort of "being" or "existence".

I wonder if, when I sleep, I cease to exist. Certainly, if I had to choose between being a disembodied spirit, still conscious, or an unconscious body, I'd say that in the former I still exist, and in the latter that I do not. Therefore it is by consciousness that I define being.

It seems to me that if you accept a material universe, that panpsychism might allow for that commonality you are looking for, and that would probably be compatible with pantheism.

If you do not accept a material universe, then experientialism/idealism might work, and again I think it would be reasonable enough to describe a reality made up purely of experience and ideas as a kind of Mind of God.


However, the idea of a soul really doesn't mean much to me, because I associate more with my ability to experience sights, sounds and feelings than I do with any abstract entity at my "core." If I die, and my soul may no longer enjoy life, then it doesn't matter much if "soul" is a semantic/symbolic trick or a real thing.