The original comic page mentions the sleep thing in the alt text
Comment on Am I? Who knows
kromem@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s funny that when it’s transporter people freak out at this idea, but technically every single person goes to sleep not knowing if the ‘them’ that wakes up was the same as the one that went to sleep.
We could effectively have individual consciousnesses dying each night and new ones picking back up the next morning.
Something to think about as you lie drifting off to sleep tonight.
SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Great, I needed more existential dread. Thanks!
kromem@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I gotchu fam. Anytime - happy to help.
And009@reddthat.com 11 months ago
Moar
kromem@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Ok, here’s a fun one:
When people have their corpus callosum split, the part that connects the two brain hemispheres, there’s often different personality traits that will emerge for each hemisphere, such as one being religious and the other atheistic.
So the question is - where do the emergent personality traits come from?
When the brain is connected, do you effectively have psyches that are simply sitting there suppressed waiting to come out? Or is the you right now a mixture of personality aspects located in both sides?
What about extending this to the concept of the soul?
Is it still one soul in the body split into two, such that the one hemisphere could doom the other with its disbelief, or is there now two souls in one body - and if so where did the other one come from?
Are we actually individuals, or just a hodgepodge of different subconscious identities that’s fooled themselves into thinking they are a single mind, just an accident away from being thrust into their own isolated lobes to define themselves anew separate from the others?
And if that split were to happen, which side would the ‘you’ experiencing this moment right now end up on?
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 11 months ago
This thought has prevented my sleep for years now.
weedazz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wake up in the body of someone else with the same residue of Cheetos in my mouth as the other person ate? Seems like a lot of effort
Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The solution that clears up all of these issues and results in a fully consistent view of the self is the one people like the least. There is no “you” or “me”, the self is an illusion the brain creates to make sense of things.
abraxas@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
The Illusionist theory of Consciousness is pretty solidly refuted. The emergent theory of consciousness is vaguely similar, and argued by some to be stronger, others to be weaker, than illusionism. I think it’s the most popular view among physicalist philosophers. For the arguments against emergentism, the most common seems to be the required presupposition of physicalism plus some handwaving to make it work. It’s noted, however, there are a vast number of permutations of the emergentism argument or what emergent mental states actually mean, which each one of those permutations a bit different.
Upon analysis, neither has demonstrated being “a fully consistent view of the self” with any success. Ultimately, both are just unsubstantiated attempts to fill the gaps in our understanding.
Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s about consciousness, which is a much larger claim than the self being an illusion. You can have consciousness without a self, it’s what we call ego death.
abraxas@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
That’s about consciousness, which is a much larger claim than the self being an illusion
I don’t agree. Care you defend this claim? Your assertion that you can have consciousness without a self (ego death) seems more personal spiritualism than argument.
In theory, a conscious being could exist that’s always in a state of ego death, and have no understanding of the self and be utterly confused by why people find anything unintuitive about the teleporter paradox.
In theory like modal possibilities, or in theory like you genuinely believe such a person can exist? I’d love to hear why.
GoodbyeBlueMonday@startrek.website 11 months ago
There’s a great They Might Be Giants song about exactly this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSbEOZY7k20
spirinolas@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Well…if that’s true then I have died over 14,000 times so I must be used to it.
G’night