Yes Virginia, There Is a Universe. (Part Five--I Belong to Me)
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Originally Posted by Richard J. Hanak
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Originally Posted by Celestial Mechanic
While we're at it, how do you define yourself? How do you know that you have properly defined yourself? How do you know that you are aware of properly defining yourself? How do you know that you have a recallable memory of being aware of properly defining yourself? When did you learn or put into your memory the awareness of a proper definition of yourself?
See, I can toss word-salad as well as any philosopher-chef!
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Word salad? Not at all. The words are precisely arranged according to the rules of grammar into properly put questions. Perhaps CM will be surprised to find out that each of those questions is meaningful and answerable. However, since those questions are outside the intended scope of this thread and in the interest of brevity I will only answer the first question. |
"The words may be precisely arranged according to the rules of grammar, but more to the point they are arranged and chosen in response to an earlier comment of
RJH's not quoted here. The intent of asking the questions I did was to suggest how philosophy is one of the most wasteful of human activities, right up there with karaoke. Let's examine
RJH's answer:"
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Originally Posted by Richard J. Hanak
My self is the self that belongs to me. The self is a re-entrant neurological function of the brain. Because of that re-entrancy, the self is comparable to the type of computer programming function known as a self-recursive function. A self-recursive function can initiate multiple instances of itself.
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"I shudder to even think of
Richard J. Hanak initiating multiple instances of himself!
There is a danger to defining oneself as a neurological function of the brain: that's not how the law sees it.
RJH may not like it, but the law defines us as collections of atoms with certain inalienable rights. If something unfortunate happens to us that we no longer have re-entrant neurological functions capable of multiple initiations of ourselves then some other collection of atoms will have to exercise power of attorney over us. As the recent
Terri Schiavo case proves, this is one of the places where politics and religion collide so we will not discuss it further.
"Besides, in the next paragraph I strike paydirt!"
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Originally Posted by Richard J. Hanak
The self is the awareness one has whether awake or dreaming.
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"I'm not even going to touch that!" Virginia and I both had a good laugh over that one, and so should the reader.
To be continued...