Do you experience the self?

David Hume was a philosopher who took empiricism to extremes not realized by Locke or Berkeley. He recognized two relevant ways of thinking about the world:

1. Thinking about a sequence of related objects.
2. Thinking about one uninterrupted object.

The different between the two is analogous to a film: 1. would be the individual images that make up the film, and 2. would be the film itself.

Hume would say that we make a mistake when we call a series of images a film, because there is no uninterrupted object. All there is is a series of pictures shown very fast. Hume says we think about 1. as being 2. because it is easier.

Hume would say the same about the self. He would say that you are not the same person you were 1 second ago. Although, like the images making up a film, there is a relation between you in the present and you from one second ago, you are not the same. Therefore, Hume would say the self does not exist, because the self is taken to be the sum of your experiences, emotions, thoughts, and so on. We mistakenly think that, like 2., the self is one uninterrupted whole, when really we are 1., a series of related objects.

I agree with Hume, because I agree that the film analogy works. I am merely the sum of all the instances that came before, and although they are related and can influence one another, like sand going through an egg timer, they are still separate, and I am separate from those that occurred previously.

Do you experience the self? Does the self exist as a single entity? Does it exist separately from how we choose to label it? Or, as Hume said, is it merely an abstract concept created to try and describe related, consecutive versions of a person? Although Hume might be true, I still feel like there is "me." This is especially true when I am insulted or praised, because I feel a great sense of personal attachment when it occurs and I feel like it happens "to me."

 

How do you experience something that has no action? To say that we are not the same person we once were one second ago is purely subjective.

 

It isn't 10000 particles in our body change every second, we constantly change.

 

The chemicals in our body is the last thing I was talking about. I meant ones character. The way we position ourselves to others. For that to change, you have to be influenced.

 

Which happens every second, the way you interact with the environment and the way the environment interacts with you, the only constant thing is change.

 

That is subjective. Do you have proof of that happening every second?

 

''In a complex organism the challenge of order is gigantic. The human body consists of some million billion cells, far more than stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Of this cell population, 600 billion are dying and the same number regenerating every day-over 10 million cells per second. Source: Science and the Akashic field - Erwin Laszlo

 

Can you read? I just established that I was not talking about the chemicals within the body. Your character does not change because you are regenerating cells, which I already know of.

 

Source?

 

Are you trolling me? You want the source of ones character? Just end the argument right here, you are lost, and have no clue what is going on.

 

Your character does not change because you are regenerating cells, which I already know of.

Ah sorry, my bad I forgot to specify, I feel like in this forum people need to give appropriate sources to back up their claims. And I would like to see your source on this, I'm definately interested to read more about it.

 

This entire theory is only applicable in a reality where time is real. With it being a man-made concept for the measurement of a stream of seemingly uninterrupted experiences, surely anything that is theorized around it is limited, in terms of relevance, only to the intervals of measurement, not the experience in question. Analysis of a single point in 'time' can only be done in vain as that single point in time is in fact just a limited, isolated perspective on all of space/time.

 

So you are a different person every moment because your cells are constantly changing? This means if I were to take away all of your memories, thoughts, and feelings - the intangibles - you would still be your "self" in its whole?

Additionally, this thread is more asking whether or not the "self" exists at all, when from moment to moment there is no direct connection between your past and present self.

 

Do you not make decisions in the present based on actions of the past? Do the actions you take in the present not have an effect on your experiences in the future? You cannot be separate from your past if you the sum total which you now are is affected by the experiences you've had in the past. You are now the result of what you have done, just as rain is the result of condensation. You are not separate, but rather a a process of change. Just because you are now older and wiser, does not mean you an entirely different entity than the one you were 10 years ago. Your character and attributes might have changed, but they still reside within you. What you now call wisdom is the ability to know how to avoid making the mistakes that defined your former self.



Also, you wrote "Hume would say" an awful lot... Has he actually said any of the things you say he would say?

 

The film analogy was not used by Hume; it just helps to simplify his theory with an analogy most can understand.

 

The way you've written the film analogy really makes seem as if though it were Hume's...

In any case, will you respond to my other comments?

 

Hume does not say that events in your past have no effect on your present. Rather, he says that because there is no direct connection between your self in each instance, there is no continuous person, only a "bundle" of experiences that are related but not connected. Therefore, there is no continuous self. Humans perceive one because we mistakenly join the instances together, thinking it is one continuous thing, while in reality there are many things that are not connected, only related.

 

How does a direct effect between phenomena not imply a connection?

 

Try to think about it like grains of sand moving through an egg timer. The grains effect and influence each other while they move, but they are not connected.

There is no self, separate, and overlying all of those grains of sand (experiences and whatnot).

 

That logic would imply that smoking does not cause cancer, because the carcinogens that move from the cigarette to the lungs are individual entities, and no single one affects the existence of the rest.


Nonsense. The 'overlying self' that you are referring to is the net sum of a collection of individual parts or processes. In your timer analogy, while each individual grain of sand may be insignificant when isolated from the timer, their importance becomes apparent when the timer serves a useful application. Wouldn't it be pointless if the timer contained only 100 grains of sand? They would pass to the opposite chamber in no more than a few seconds. If, however, you have a timer with millions of grains of sand, you will find that the timer becomes much more useful. The timer would be useless if it did not have a certain amount of grains of sand. As that quantity is a direct result of the addition of individual grains, addition being a connecting or joining of independent integers, then each grain becomes a significant entity with respect to the end result of which it and the other grains an integral part of.