I am a fan of Hume's philosophies, so I want everyone to try this out.
I want everyone to try to identify yourself.
I don't mean stand up and say your name. I mean catch hold of that which is you, rather than just the things that you do or experience. To do this, focus your attention on yourself. Try to locate in your own consciousness the "I" that is you, the person who is feeling hot or cold, thinking your thoughts, and hearing the sounds around you. I NOT asking you to locate your feelings, sensations and thoughts, but the person, the self, who is having them.
It should be easy. After all, what is more certain in this world than that you exist? Even if everything around is a dream or illusion, you must exist to have the dream, to do the hallucinating. So if you turn your mind inwards and try to become aware only of yourself, it should not take long to find it. Have a go.
I think that consciousness can be reductively explained and it is, in fact, merely an illusionary by-product of a very complex organism. I'm thinking about personality still - which I still think can be reductively explained. I guess the point is that if there are these qualities like consciousness or personality, normally we would attribute them to this thing called the self. But I attach them to the brain, which creates the mind, consciousness, personality, etc.
The reasoning I came up to solve this problem and put it at the bottom of the list, is that if there is only a macine like self, then it is still a self. Even if it is part of the brain.
Whoa, those are the same ideas (ideals?) as mine, but what I'm saying is that self is just a concept and can be used without it being just an illusion. All in its function/definition, which is all part of our flawed language (as Moe said), but as I said, can still be used.
Okay, so what we have now is the functional self. This concept can go a LOT of different ways, and it's important now to pin down certain definitions (or at least definitive points). If the self is just a word we use for the illusion, that's one thing. If the brain is "the self" we've got something quite different. There is also still an option that the self is, in fact, something that exists and is not an illusion.
I think that that is the problem. We can't come up with a definition for self. That is why the question cannot be answered, nobody can understand the question... How about we define the self as a field of personal importance and and personal definite descisions?
If you break it all down, we are just one, two, or three things: matter with/and/or energy. Seeing as we are just "lucky" combinations of basic elements (not the ones from the periodic table), we cannot be a self unless you see the collective of matter as a community, all contributing to one machine. The person might need to acknowledge a sense of self, though, and that would take cognitive processes...
There's a guy whose name eludes me right now, but he wrote an article: Can Consciousness Be Reductively Explained? He's not very popular, or very accepted (he actually thinks that things like thermometers have consciousness, but that discussion can be for another day) but his biological background gives him some insight that few philosophers have. It's an interesting read if you have the time for it.
I heard of that! Just never read anything about it... What if we look to ty chi for the answer? They claim to know it. Just a thought, not a very serious one though.
Ha! One of my girlfriend's professors actually wrote a great article on zombies. I'll have to find it and get you a link to it. Hm, that was an awkward sentence I just wrote. I only have one girlfriend, but she had many professors... I don't know how to rearrange that sentence to make it make sense.
I gotcha though. But I would LOVE to read it! I wrote a short essay explaining what qualia is on my myspace page because so many people asked me. I might just post it here.
Qualia, by definition, are introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. They are the properties of our so-called mental states that is not contingent on our brain states. Still a little confused? Simply, qualia are things like the redness of an apple, the sensation of touching silk, smelling the ocean, and hearing a siren. They are the QUALITIES of your mind, not your brain. This is the center point for the mind-body problem (Do we have minds and brains, or are there just brains? Some refer to the mind as the soul.)
Why do I have a problem with qualia? Because I don't know that they are intrinsically tied to the physical object they are meant to represent. Let's say, for instance, that John Doe was locked up in a room for the duration of his life up until adulthood. John has little language skills and knows very little at all. When we let John out he is missing a number of things. One important thing is that the visual cortex of his brain has not full developed. What this means is that John can not see color because his brain did not need to develop it. So when I look at an apple, I see that it is red. When John sees the apple he sees a shade of grey. John does not know the existence of red, this proves that things like redness is not inherent of apples. Not to mention such sensations are subjective.
How does this relate to me not being convince I'm not a zombie? I know immediately the average person thinks of the walking undead being when they hear zombie. I'm speaking of the philosophical zombie. A p-zombie looks, smells, tastes, and feels like a regular human but lacks qualia. Simply, if a zombie is stabbed in the leg it will not exactly have the sensation of pain, but will have the brain state of pain and will say "ouch!" or "why the fuck did you stab me in the leg, asshole?"
Here is the basic argument for the existence of p-zombies through the argument against physicalism:
1. If physicalism is true, then it is NOT possible for there to be a world in which all the physical facts are the same as those of the actual world but in which there are additional facts. (This is because, according to physicalism, all the facts are fully determined by the physical facts; so any world that is physically indistinguishable from our world is entirely indistinguishable from our world.) 2. But there is a possible world in which all the physical facts are the same as those of our world but in which there are additional facts. (For example, it is possible that there is a world exactly like ours in every physical respect, but in it everyone lacks certain mental states, namely any phenomenal experiences or qualia.) 3. Therefore, physicalism is false.
