[video=youtube;ILDy6kYU-xQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILDy6kYU-xQ[/video]
From TED-ED.
For further existential crisis, here's a related video by the creator of TEDTalks, Chris Anderson:
[video=youtube;7SWvDHvWXok]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SWvDHvWXok[/video]
As fun as these questions are, biologically the fetal development starts with a body that the brain later develops inside of, so it'd be a body with a mind.
this seems like the sort of question that people think is existential and a great topic but has a simple solution when researched somewhat
e.g. the chicken and the egg, which came first
it's the egg, but ti came from an animal that was not a chicken
[QUOTE=Catscratch;52863668]As fun as these questions are, biologically the fetal development starts with a body that the brain later develops inside of, so it'd be a body with a mind.
this seems like the sort of question that people think is existential and a great topic but has a simple solution when researched somewhat
e.g. the chicken and the egg, which came first
it's the egg, but ti came from an animal that was not a chicken[/QUOTE]
I think that's a silly way of looking at it, it's like saying a car is a car with a person rather than a person with a car. Obviously the vehicle needs to exist for there to be a driver but that doesn't necessarily indicate which part is most important.
The body is merely a vessel for you (the mind) to explore the universe with, that's how I've always looked at it.
[editline]6th November 2017[/editline]
You'd still be [i]you[/i] if we had the ability to do body transplants for brains.
[QUOTE=Catscratch;52863668]As fun as these questions are, biologically the fetal development starts with a body that the brain later develops inside of, so it'd be a body with a mind.
this seems like the sort of question that people think is existential and a great topic but has a simple solution when researched somewhat
e.g. the chicken and the egg, which came first
it's the egg, but ti came from an animal that was not a chicken[/QUOTE]
You’re right biologically, but I think you’re wrong in a way since all multicellular organisms require a neural network to function and live. Without a mind of some-sort even a jellyfish wouldn’t know what to do.
fuck uploading my brain to a computer, i've played SOMA
[QUOTE=BANNED USER;52863701]The body is merely a vessel for you (the mind) to explore the universe with, that's how I've always looked at it.
[editline]6th November 2017[/editline]
You'd still be [i]you[/i] if we had the ability to do body transplants for brains.[/QUOTE]
I know this seem farfetched but if brain transplants become a thing then the body I am in will heavily control my personalilty. If I get transplanted into an overweight body I would be pretty depressed about it.
[QUOTE=Clive;52863748]I know this seem farfetched but if brain transplants become a thing then the body I am in will heavily control my personalilty. If I get transplanted into an overweight body I would be pretty depressed about it.[/QUOTE]
I wish I could remember where I read this but I can't, so this is just speculation.
If you swapped your mind to another person, I'm pretty sure you'd undergo some serious disassociation problems, not to mention I think that the body would simply end up rejecting the brain itself.
[QUOTE=Catscratch;52863668]As fun as these questions are, biologically the fetal development starts with a body that the brain later develops inside of, so it'd be a body with a mind.
this seems like the sort of question that people think is existential and a great topic but has a simple solution when researched somewhat
e.g. the chicken and the egg, which came first
it's the egg, but ti came from an animal that was not a chicken[/QUOTE]
This makes no sense. If I gave you a bottle of wine from 1850, would you be a human with a bottle of wine, or a bottle of wine with a human? Well the bottle of wine was made first, so you're a bottle of wine with a human.
i think the idea of a separation between "mind" and "body" is a misplaced one because for all intents and purposes they blend into one another seamlessly and are largely the same. You can't disconnect the brain from the rest of the nervous system and somehow expect it to be the same.
[QUOTE=BANNED USER;52863701]The body is merely a vessel for you (the mind) to explore the universe with, that's how I've always looked at it.
[editline]6th November 2017[/editline]
You'd still be [i]you[/i] if we had the ability to do body transplants for brains.[/QUOTE]
the body is /more/ than just a mere vessel. it IS as much you as the brain is.
for this reason i also hate gnosticism
The discussion then teeters into whether or not your consciousness is a separate entity than your brain, or if your consciousness only arises due to your brain's activity.
Are you your brain? Or is your brain actually a quantum computer (a valid scientific question being heavily researched) and your consciousness is the software running on it? (Another equally valid question)
With time these questions can hopefully be answered
Your brain is fed hormones by a complicated body. It's in large parts neither brain nor body because it necessitates both to have the human experience. What I mean by that is that because your body has its own systems that play into the brain and the brain plays into the body, effectively segmenting the two will be nearly impossible or result in something more akin to cybermen from 2005 dr who.
If we do manage to pull your "conscious" mind from the body we'll need to deal with the hormones and qualia the body provide to actually get something worth having.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52863885]Your brain is fed hormones by a complicated body. It's in large parts neither brain nor body because it necessitates both to have the human experience. What I mean by that is that because your body has its own systems that play into the brain and the brain plays into the body, effectively segmenting the two will be nearly impossible or result in something more akin to cybermen from 2005 dr who.
If we do manage to pull your "conscious" mind from the body we'll need to deal with the hormones and qualia the body provide to actually get something worth having.[/QUOTE]
So basically, we're going to need good emulators.
[QUOTE=BANNED USER;52863701]The body is merely a vessel for you (the mind) to explore the universe with, that's how I've always looked at it.
[editline]6th November 2017[/editline]
You'd still be [i]you[/i] if we had the ability to do body transplants for brains.[/QUOTE]
not necessarily. you'd still have your memories and thoughts, but a person's being is their body as a whole. your body forms a system with your mind; they're not two independent parts. if your brain was transplanted into your body, you would feel different mentally and physically. your identity would change in some way.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;52863798]i think the idea of a separation between "mind" and "body" is a misplaced one because for all intents and purposes they blend into one another seamlessly and are largely the same. You can't disconnect the brain from the rest of the nervous system and somehow expect it to be the same.
the body is /more/ than just a mere vessel. it IS as much you as the brain is.
for this reason i also hate gnosticism[/QUOTE]
Your brain intermingles with the nervous system, I can see where you're coming from, but that doesn't mean the mind and body cannot adapt to each other.
That's why limb transplants are even a possibility.
Over time consciousness has really begun to feel a lot less special and magical to me. Once you start to realize that the human mind actually behaves in predictable ways, it starts to look pretty similar to many of the other lesser minds out there. I think that your mind and your nervous system are the same thing, and are inseparable.
[QUOTE=mecaguy03;52863994]Over time consciousness has really begun to feel a lot less special and magical to me. Once you start to realize that the human mind actually behaves in predictable ways, it starts to look pretty similar to many of the other lesser minds out there. I think that your mind and your nervous system are the same thing, and are inseparable.[/QUOTE]
I think this really becomes apparent when you look at various sorts of brain damage and how pretty much every single aspect of consciousness can be affected.
[QUOTE=BANNED USER;52863701]The body is merely a vessel for you (the mind) to explore the universe with, that's how I've always looked at it.
[editline]6th November 2017[/editline]
You'd still be [i]you[/i] if we had the ability to do body transplants for brains.[/QUOTE]
not exactly, there's more to a personality than the brain behind it. hormones are a major factor on personality and with a new body comes new hormones
[editline]7th November 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;52863795]This makes no sense. If I gave you a bottle of wine from 1850, would you be a human with a bottle of wine, or a bottle of wine with a human? Well the bottle of wine was made first, so you're a bottle of wine with a human.[/QUOTE]
there's a big difference between possessing something and being something. if you took my brain and put it in a bottle of wine from 1850 it'd be either a bottle of wine with a brain or a really fucking lit party
[QUOTE=BANNED USER;52863701]The body is merely a vessel for you (the mind) to explore the universe with, that's how I've always looked at it.
[editline]6th November 2017[/editline]
You'd still be [i]you[/i] if we had the ability to do body transplants for brains.[/QUOTE]
Yes and no. Our body and mind are reliant on each other, our brain controls our body and our body provides us with the processes needed to survive (Ie things the brain needs to survive too).
I agree with the philosophical point of your statement. I agree if we have a soul, it lives in the brain.
However, if our brains are going to be transplanted (regardless if it is organic bodies or cybernetics/ cyber prosthetics) we need to have the foundation set so our brain can continue to survive. Or there needs to be some type of process that can convert a brain to a digital format and then transfer it to some other storage medium.
[QUOTE=BANNED USER;52863957]Your brain intermingles with the nervous system, I can see where you're coming from, but that doesn't mean the mind and body cannot adapt to each other.
That's why limb transplants are even a possibility.[/QUOTE]
That's true, but a brain transplant may have unforseen events like hormone mismatch leading to personality differences that are substantial.
Pure speculation, but still.
I'm no mind and no b[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su5WlYohgRs"]o[/URL]dy
What if you are neither the mind nor the body but rather the information behind it?
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;52864611]What if you are neither the mind nor the body but rather the information behind it?[/QUOTE]
I think that the information which accurately describes your body/mind complex is a notion of you but not really 'you' as I think most people think of it. Its sort of like if you have blueprints for a machine, and there is only one of this machine in existence. This information describes the object but it is not necessarily the object which is described.
For all intents and purposes I think the information describing you accurately is locked in your physical form and cannot be extracted for now. So pragmatically I think of your information and physical form as the same thing.
[QUOTE=mecaguy03;52864686]I think that the information which accurately describes your body/mind complex is a notion of you but not really 'you' as I think most people think of it. Its sort of like if you have blueprints for a machine, and there is only one of this machine in existence. This information describes the object but it is not necessarily the object which is described.
For all intents and purposes I think the information describing you accurately is locked in your physical form and cannot be extracted for now. So pragmatically I think of your information and physical form as the same thing.[/QUOTE]
Maybe you've got a point on the first part, but you've certainly got it all wrong on the second.
Your physical form can be argued to not contain within it the actual relations between the parts which give rise to emergent properties. For that you'll need some extra-physical propositions my dude.
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;52864722]Maybe you've got a point on the first part, but you've certainly got it all wrong on the second.
Your physical form can be argued to not contain within it the actual relations between the parts which give rise to emergent properties. For that you'll need some extra-physical propositions my dude.[/QUOTE]
Maybe im confused but I always thought that the relations between these parts are intrinsic to the parts themselves? Like that if you think of it on the scale of particles that all of the interactions between them result from properties that are assumed to be the same everywhere in the universe?
Im thinking that in order to completely define a person yes you technically need to define the laws of physics as well, but that this is not important because in order to describe anything in the universe you must also describe the laws of physics.
Your body and your brain are best friends going on adventures called life.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52863885]Your brain is fed hormones by a complicated body. It's in large parts neither brain nor body because it necessitates both to have the human experience.[/QUOTE]
I think a good example of this is how you digest l-tryptophan which is found in meats(and plant proteins as claimed below) I believe, which is then turned into 5-HTP, and then serotonin afterwards.
[quote]
L-tryptophan is naturally found in animal and plant proteins. L-tryptophan is considered an essential amino acid because our bodies can't make it. It is important for the development and functioning of many organs in the body. After absorbing L-tryptophan from food, our bodies convert it to 5-HTP (5-hyrdoxytryptophan), and then to serotonin. Serotonin is a hormone that transmits signals between nerve cells. It also causes blood vessels to narrow. Changes in the level of serotonin in the brain can alter mood.
[/quote]
[url]https://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-326-l-tryptophan.aspx?activeingredientid=326&activeingredientname=l-tryptophan[/url]
If I recall correctly, serotonin is one of the neurotransmitters believed to effect mood, as the last sentence in the quote stated. However, when looking into this somemore, I found an article stating that tryptophan found in food when converted into serotonin does not cross the blood-brain barrier, while purified tryptophan will. I didn't read the whole thing so I might've missed something.
[quote]
Although purified tryptophan increases brain serotonin, foods containing tryptophan do not.71 This is because tryptophan is transported into the brain by a transport system that is active toward all the large neutral amino acids and tryptophan is the least abundant amino acid in protein. There is competition between the various amino acids for the transport system, so after the ingestion of a meal containing protein, the rise in the plasma level of the other large neutral amino acids will prevent the rise in plasma tryptophan from increasing brain tryptophan. The idea, common in popular culture, that a high-protein food such as turkey will raise brain tryptophan and serotonin is, unfortunately, false. Another popular myth that is widespread on the Internet is that bananas improve mood because of their serotonin content. Although it is true that bananas contain serotonin, it does not cross the blood–brain barrier.
[/quote]
Interesting, I'll have to read more of this another day, here's the source.
[url]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2077351/[/url]
Sorry if I went a bit off topic.
Basically when somebody thinks of THEMSELVES, they're not really thinking body, or brain. My brain's doing all kinds of crap that I'm not really fully aware of, and that I wouldn't really consider part of my immediate identity, even if it's contributing to it in it's own way. What people are thinking about when they think about their identity is their conciousness. Ultimately conciousness is an emergent property of the brain, the rest of the nervous system, and the rest of the body, and it's not really something we fully understand at the moment.
I see "self" like this:
Consciousness - The only true "self".
Inner Ego - The accepted and internalized "self" or "Identity" such as personality, name, beliefs, etc.
Outer ego - Externalized "self" such as emotions or less important memories.
Body - Face, hands, the brain itself, etc.
Possessions - Clothes, glasses, etc.
All of these categories besides the first one are flexible. Some people would lose their identity if their face was scarred. Some people like myself would not lose their identity if they woke up in a different body with an entirely different personality, but retained their memories.
To the point: The inner ego determines who you are, and you have no choice but to accept that, because it is making your choices for you and you experience nothing except through it.
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