Is the mind the same as the brain, or do we have souls?

@Olivier5,

Sameness is defined functionally by the observer. The field/tree/person fulfills a memorized relationship/need with respect to the observer.

Quote:

“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.”

G. I. Gurdjieff

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@fresco,

Still, you are bound to assume an observer, who is an "I", and this "I" has to perdure in order to be an observer.

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@Olivier5,

The'observer' is evoked by context. It is 'the committee' member of 'self' which is put forward to deal with the situation. (Reference persona...the mask worn by Greek actors)
Note the change of one's voice or name one uses in different social contexts....note the internal conversations between committee members...note the self chastisement ' why did I do that ?'....note the bizarre 'I's' in dreams.....note the complete absence of 'I' in dreamless sleep or when anaesthetised...note the drug or medically induced or degenerative alterations to personality.
And yet the soulists presumably argue for continuation of 'identity' after death when it is problematic in life !!! Laughing

As far as I can see, the only way out of that lot is for the soulists is to go down the road of 'holistic consciousness', but that route involves abandonment of 'self' and consequently abandonment of 'personal God'.

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@fresco,

Quote:

And yet the soulists presumably argue for continuation of 'identity' after death when it is problematic in life !!! Laughing

Funny way to regard the gift of sleep. If you never got any down time for maintenance you'd go nuts here. It's also a great 'master clear' that gives you the chance to get out of the groove you've been stuck in, but without losing your identity.

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@Leadfoot,

I love the covert implications of the word 'gift' ! Very Happy

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@fresco,

No, meant as overt. Thought it was obvious.

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@fresco,

But there's no particular problem with the idea of a committee mind that exists / perdures over the long run. Just because the mind is made of pieces doesn't make it disappear.

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@Leadfoot,

My apologies .
But maybe you should read Gurdjieff who argues that in 'normal waking' you are still 'nuts' ! He actually goes on to argue for possible ascent to 'levels of higher consciousness' but the big mistake is to assume it is either easy or available to everybody. According to him, the majority of humanity serves as passive cog in a spiritual ecosystem.

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@Olivier5,

The argument is that it is only 'assumed' to exist /persist because of the social obligation attached to 'identity' associated with one's name(s). It is only by catching glimpses of the inconsistencies, or during meditation, that the illusion of 'self' becomes apparent. The realization is experiential rather than intellectual.

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@fresco,

Quote:

it is only \\\'assumed\\\' to exist /persist because of the social obligation attached to \\\'identity\\\' associated with one\\\'s name(s).

The argument is that, in order to have anything like an experience, you must assume the existence of something doing the experiencing. That \"something\" that you must assume is the self. No self --> no experience whatsoever.

Quote:

It is only by catching glimpses of the inconsistencies, or during meditation, that the illusion of \\\\\\\'self\\\\\\\' becomes apparent. The realization is experiential rather than intellectual.

There are also many inconsistencies that crop up when removing the self hypothesis. For instance, you would be unable to express yourself without using personal pronouns, and therefore you cannot describe the world without using the concept of \"selves\".

How do we know that meditation is a pathway to the truth, rather than to illusions and error?

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@Olivier5,

A good intellectual argument indeed! Wink

....no further comment would have been made by G to the skeptics.

NB try using the pronoun 'It' instead of 'I' as in..."It is thinking what to type on the computer". Such an apparently trivial exercise can lead the experiential mode from which G claims 'progress' can be made.

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@fresco,

Quote:

A good intellectual argument indeed!

Thank you. There are also many good aesthetic arguments for the existence of selves, such as the experience of love. When you love someone, you experience an intense fascination for that special person. It is strongly counter-intuitive then to assert the non-existence of that loved person.

The world is far easier to understand when you assume the existence of people in it. The use of "it" as a personal pronoun changes nothing. You still need an "it". There's no escape away from the self.

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@Olivier5,

You've obviously not tried 'it' !

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@fresco,

You haven't either, or you would say: "It obviously hasn't tried it"...

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@Olivier5,

Oh but It has ! It was merely speaking in standard terms. It actually has nothing to say to another in that particular experiential mode. Words are transcended. It's the 'ineffability state' well known to meditators.

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@fresco,

It may be deluding itself though.

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@Olivier5,

It has raised that issue with fellow meditators. The general consensus is that 'the experience' has a particular quality which places it beyond such a judgment. But again, the experience is paramount. The analogy is that certain experiences, like swimming on the sea say, cannot adequately be conveyed to a non-swimmer.

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@fresco,

It's an altered state, like being drunk. It doesn't mean anything other than: that state of the mind system is possible. It is not "truer" than other states. Like the state of drunkness exists, but does not prove that sobriety is impossible or inadvisable...

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"It"
https://youtu.be/WCSZfmbFJyQ

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@fresco,

Yes "it" is a better, more generalist, less loaded qualifier, then "self", "it" as an X... finally Fresco we agree. Well done.
There is no telling what the it to which we refer as self acttually is nor where it ultimatelly resides, and much less about its persistence as consistent in nature. I rather see "selfs" attached to the phenomena of experiencing, then experiencing attached to "selfs"...
Its funny...bottom line this is the distinction that leads me to speak of a "world" intead of "minds"....

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Is the mind the same as the brain, or do we have souls?

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