Who Am I?

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For well over 2,000 years, humans have questioned the how and why of anything and everything around them. We try to understand how and why everything in our universe behaves as it does. Over time, we have been able to discover answers to our questions and gain further understanding about our universe. We know why the sun will rise and set each day, for example, after many years of calculations and study. However, there are many questions that we cannot simply discover the answer to by using formulas, calculations, and basic experiments. What will happen to me when I die? Is there some sort of non-physical part of me, or essence, that will like on? Or does it all just end? Who am I? Am I, as I am thinking this now, my consciousness? Is the consciousness just an overrated name attributed to the electrical signals being sent between neurons in my brain?

Fortunately for me, these questions have been asked, discussed, and debated over many times before just now. Many great minds have asked these same questions and put great thought into the subject. There is no need to try to reinvent the wheel, so to speak; after all, “I think therefore I am” is a hard act to follow. Instead, let us pick off where some of the greatest philosophers have left off and attempt to gain a greater insight, and perhaps answer the age-old question: Who am I?

As mentioned before, philosophy is unique when compared to most other fields of science, such as chemistry or geometry. More often than not, it is very difficult to prove that a theory or idea is right or wrong. In geometry, one can test whether or not a formula or theorem is correct. On the other hand, in philosophy, how would have Socrates been able to prove that the human soul is, in fact, unext...

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Part II: Dennett, Fortinbras, Hamlet, Hubert, and Yorick

Daniel Dennett writes an amazing and intriguing, but fictional, story about his brain being removed from his body with the connections replaced with radio transmitters. This leaves his brain separated from his body, yet still connected. In the situation where his body is looking at his own brain, We would believe that he would think to himself “There is my body, standing there looking at me.” However, in Dennett’s story it is the exact opposite. Dennett goes on to explore several other situations that we will also look at.

When in the situation of his body standing in front of his brain, he is left wondering who he really is. It is when he first thinks of himself standing there looking at his brain when he asks himself if he should really be thinking that he was there being looked at by his own body.

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