Inflate or destroy self?

@igm,

igm wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
It's possible for reality to construct a sentence with personal pronouns without there being a self i.e. with there only being an imaginary self. It's deep.... maybe too deep for you.

Even deeper: ask yourself -- or whatever postures as it -- who is doing the imagining...

No one it's all the play of reality... a non-dual reality.... that can appear as dualistic. Eventually the term non-dual is itself discarded as a boat is discarded once it has made its final river crossing.

More guesses.

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To the people new to this...it goes on all the time.

Fresco is pretending I have evaded or avoided his question (of sorts): "Next time it (the brain) engages in an internal dialogue, see if it can identify the participants. "

Fact is, Fresco has probably asked me that more than a dozen times over the years...and I have often responded. (Sometimes I just get tired of it...and ignore it.)

Fresco, gratuitously posits an internal DIALOGUE...so that he can ask about speculation as to the participants.

Its sorta like a Catholic asking how the "creation" can exist without a "creator."

Maybe there is no "creation"...and maybe there is no dialogue.

The dialogue may be a monologue...and the PARTICIPANT...would be me. Just me.

You learn to get a kick out of this stuff. Wink

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@Cyracuz,

Beyond the normal a2k banter, there is a plethora of literature on "self", including
1. It social acquisition via language (e.g. Dennett)
2. Its absence during much activity (e.g. Heidegger)
3. Its fragmentary and disunified nature(e.g. Ouspensky)
4. Its illusory status as an independent entity with respect to its attachments (e.g. Buddhist Texts)
5. Its existence at different levels of consciousness (e.g. Freud)

As JLN has implied, "self" can depend on what particular function that word serves in the phrase "self-destruct". We might observe for example that the phrase is used as judgement by others perhaps of an individual who is apparently oblivious to his activities. (easily explainable on the basis of 3) On the other hand, it can possibly be associated with a concept of "re-birth" as in the promotion of a "better" alternative self. (perhaps on the path to understanding 4 )

One thing seems certain certain. Unless respondents have had experience of some or all of aspects 1 to 5, they are unlikely to be making cogent comments.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

One thing seems certain certain. Unless respondents have had experience of some or all of aspects 1 to 5, they are unlikely to be making cogent comments.

One thing seems even more certain, Fresco. You are guessing that there is no "self"...and you do not have the ethical wherewithal to acknowledge that it is guesswork.

"Cogent comments" almost certainly require truth...and that is an element missing in your comments.

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@Frank Apisa,

Thankyou for illustrating my last paragraph.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Thankyou for illustrating my last paragraph.

Thanks, Fres. But I didn't illustrate it. It was a copy and paste.

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@fresco,

Quote:

Next time it (the brain) engages in an internal dialogue, see if it can identify the participants.

You must mean "the mind". The brain is a piece of flesh.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
Next time it (the brain) engages in an internal dialogue, see if it can identify the participants.

You must mean "the mind". The brain is a piece of flesh.

You shoulda asked about the "dialogue" part also.

Question, if I may: When a person starts hearing more than one person's voice in his/her head...is there a medical term for that?

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@Olivier5,

No. On a thread where the nature of "self" is under scrutiny, reference to the concept of "mind" is inappropriate because it is within the same transcendent category. The closest entity (platform) which can be identified with the "it" I refer to is indeed "the brain" because we know that interference with its functioning, by trauma, or drugs say, can result in interference with experience of "self" or "selves". Also the reticular activating system which triggers sleep, directly results in experience of those bizarre "selves" which occupy our dreams. This does not imply an ultimate isomorphism between "brain" and "mind", rather that the functioning of the former may be necessary but not sufficient to account for the integrity or otherwise of the latter.

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Got that, Olivier?

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@Frank Apisa,

The argument is quite funny...perhaps some around think there are not texts because texts are made of sentences and sentences are not texts...we are assisting to the eternal bashing against frontiers and territory marking, what belongs to what, and thus what we have here is yet one more version on the old typical attack on order and logic...but the point is, it should be, that even when "fences" and "walls" are misplaced trumping grey areas, there still are areas of dominance which are specifically distinct of each other. The universe although one is a diverse place..."fences", "walls", and "boxes" are often symbolic pre established place holders on which the precise marking of what is what is not the central point...their existence is not established out of their precision but out of the need, the function of contrasting between these areas of dominance...the only argument logically acceptable against frontiers is to pounder the contexts on when this contrasting is functional and required from when it is superfluous...I for one couldn't be any more fed up with all this tendency for all or nothing argumenting...of course there is a Self and of course those frontiers are not static, as it evolves..."Self "refers to an area of dominant perceptions and reasoning and not to the all Universe of perceiving and reasoning...

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@fresco,

Whatever. The brain does not indulge in conversation. If you mean "the self", then use that term. Nothing transcendental about it, BTW. "The self" is you.

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@Olivier5,

In fact you are scientifically wrong...even individual neurons compete for attention in a sort of "social Darwinian war" of neurons...dominant personality's don't imply exclusive personality's or modes of thought, quite the opposite...of course none of it negates the Self, rather justifies its need !
Self is some sort of majority ruling a "Government" !

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@Cyracuz,

I have to ask, what does the "inflate" part of inflate or destroy self supposed to mean for this post?

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@Olivier5,

No. That begs the question of the "unity of self" being identical to "mind". the argument for the disunity of self/mind, cannot start with that premise. All we can say is that another "self" (some would say a "higher self") observes other selves in dialogue. Such an observation is quite common but tends to be repressed by those who have invested heavily in an idea of their "self integrity",

With apologies for those who have seen this quote before:

Quote:

One of man’s important mistakes,is his illusion in regard to his I....His I changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings and moods, and he makes a profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago.
Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation, says "I" Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "I"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "I". And each time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.

Ouspensky reporting G.I Gurdjieff

This quotation "rang bells" with many 20th century intellectuals who had directly experienced such fragmentation and sought to transcend it (usually without success).

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@fresco,

Fernando Pessoa, one of top greatest 20 century writers is perhaps one of the best know examples on this fragmentation of self, we wrote under numerous heteronyms with totally different styles of writing, and yet by reading him we can tell its Fernando behind all those different styles...your argument is as usual half a truth...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

In fact you are scientifically wrong...even individual neurons compete for attention in a sort of "social Darwinian war" of neurons...

Nope I am not, because science hasn't got to the point where it understands ow the brain generates thought. Even if it was there, it would still be incorrect to say "my brain discusses", just as it is incorrect to say: "my muscles walk".

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@fresco,

Quote:

Man's name is legion.

Duuuh...

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@Olivier5,

looool...you don't get it do you...I just provided you with the lowest layer...this happens at several levels and layers in thought, it is established ! (its not something new or recent)

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@Fil Albuquerque,

You merely illustrate that "unified selves" are useful to others for social/legal purposes. It is covered by reference number 1 above. Obviously there will be aspects of stylistics which involve continuity of neurological habits. The emphasis in the quotation on the "Jekyll and Hyde" aspects of personality does not preclude the possibility of their resolution at some "higher level". On the contrary, the obsevation of fragmentation itself might imply such a level or vanyage point. And alternately, the Buddhist might argue that such a resolution involves the transcendence of "self" altogether.

1 Reply

Inflate or destroy self?

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