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Essay on individual identity
Identity and self-concept
Essay on individual identity
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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.
Not only is human connection vital to live a happy and joyful life, but it is necessary to create a legacy, and thus live on through others. But in order to do this, one must first overcome their ego and their sense of self. Once all of the “I” thoughts are gone, one can relate, but fully understand, the higher powers as well as other human beings around us. However, it is important to accept that we may never fully understand the driving force of this universe. While it can be experienced, and we can briefly get an idea of what it is, it is impossible to define these concepts in words, because we don’t have a language that transcends what we can understand. And though many recognize that these concepts could never be fully understood by the human brain, determined minds continue to ask questions that will never have an answer, “pushing their minds to the limits of what we can know” (Armstrong,
Carr mentions the affect that technology has on the neurological processes of the brain. Plasticity is described as the brains response through neurological pathways through experiences. The brain regions “change with experience, circumstance, and need” (29). Brain plasticity also responds to experiences that cause damage to the nervous system. Carr explains that injuries in accidents “reveal how extensively the brain can reorganize itself” (29).I have heard stories in which amputees are said to have a reaction to their amputated limb; it is known as a phantom limb. These types of studies are instrumental in supporting the claim that the brain can be restructured. Carr asserts that the internet is restructuring our brains while citing the brain plasticity experiments and studies done by other scientists. I have experienced this because I feel like by brain has become accustomed to activities that I do on a regular basis. For example, I rarely realize that I am driving when coming to school because I am used to driving on a specific route.
In the essay “Where am I?” by Daniel C. Dennett there are connections being made and questions that arise in nature of a ‘self’ and the relation to ‘mind’ and ‘body’. The essay starts out with information about how Daniel was approached by Pentagon officials in which they asked him if he would be inclined to volunteer to take on a very dangerous and secret mission. This mission involved Daniel to go underground in Oklahoma to retrieve a warhead that was placed down there that has become extremely radioactive in a new way. The nature of the device produced radiation that could cause severe abnormalities in certain tissues of the brain. There was no way to shield and protect the brain from these deadly radiation rays that the device put off in
Some believe that the mind must be a physical object, and others believe in dualism, or the idea that the mind is separate from the brain. I am a firm believer in dualism, and this is part of the argument that I will use in the favor of Dennett. The materialist view, however, would likely not consider Hubert to be a mind. That viewpoint believes that all objects are physical objects, so the mind is a physical part of a human brain, and thus this viewpoint doesn’t consider the mind and body as two separate things, but instead they are both parts of one object. The materialist would likely reject Hubert as a mind, even though circuit boards are a physical object, although even a materialist would likely agree that Yorick being separated from Dennett does not disqualify Yorick as a mind.
The big question. No not that, the other one. The "what happens to us after life" question. It is something that has intrigued people everywhere. It has prompted the beliefs and semantics of different cultures all around the world. It started wars, divided people, and now dictates how we are all to act. "We should do this, we should do that. If we don't, we will be punished." I, for one, am tired of it. By all means, think what you will. But this is my writing, and you will have to open your mind to my thinking if you wish to continue. If you do wish to continue, I will be brutaly honest in what I think. There will be no sugar-coating in this oppinionated essay of mine.
Rene Descartes was a philosopher credited as the “Father of Modern Philosophy.” He was given this title because of his impeccable ideas he continuously came up with. He is well-known for his many famous pieces such including his very own Descartes Mediations 1 and 2. In these pieces he discusses how he came about his ideas of “I think, therefore I am.” His way of thinking is incredible and far from a normal humans perspective.
All of the above examples such as the wax and excluding everything that exists go back to the intellect of being a thinking thing that stands alone and Cogito inference in which it registers the sufficient grounds. The ‘I’ that he finally answers is who he is in the end when he says he long held beliefs that cannot be put aside. This is the ‘I’ that he now knows and claims to be the one that can doubt and be deceived by himself and others that are powerful such as God that allows him to believe he truly exist with or without a body and only being a thinking
The brain has four major lobes. The frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the occipital lobe, and temporal lobe are responsible for all of the activities of the body, from seeing, hearing, tasting, to touching, moving, and even memory. After many years of debating, scientist presents what they called the localization issue, Garret explains how Fritsch and Hitzig studied dog with conforming observations, but the cases of Phineas Gage’s accident in 1848 and Paul Broca’s autopsy of a man brain in 1861 really grabbed the attention of an enthusiastic scientific community (Garret 2015 p.6)
Who am I? Where does the world come from? What is my stance on these questions? At first glance, these seem like simple questions with simple answers, but the truth is that it has taken me all semester to even start developing my stance. If find that the answers to these questions developed as I learned about the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, and Socrates. From these philosophers, I have come to believe that I am a relative empiricist born with innate morals who believes that God created me and the world, but above all I have come to the realization that I truly do not know anything for certain while I can search my entire life for answers.
Daniel Dennett attempts to answer where the self is located within the body in his essay “Where Am I?” Dennett is approached by the government whose intent it is to have him deactivate a nuclear warhead that was stuck underground. The procedure is mentioned to be dangerous, as the nuclear activity has severe detrimental effects on brain tissue, but appears harmless to other body tissues. The precautionary method to avoid this damage was to remove the brain entirely then remotely operate the body sent to deactivate the device a mile under Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dennett had decided he will attempt the mission once he was assured no information (past experiences, favorite things, etc.) would be lost. The Houston brain surgeons had suggested he should think of it as stretching the neural connections, all connectivity would remain intact. Dennett had consented to conduct the mission, thus multitudes of information was gathered by interviewers: a recorded autobiography, tedious lists of tastes, fears, hopes, even musical preferences. The brain removal surgery resulted in success and as Dennett awakened he was shown to his brain in a vat within the Houston lab. Methods of communication between the brain and the body were by radio link and was controlled by an on/off switch. So there Dennett stands, reasoning with himself about his position. He asserts himself as a physicalist but encounters the problem of where “here” is, as he stares from his body at his brain. To ease his self-inflicted confusion, Dennett names his brain Yorick and his body Hamlet, together they are Dennett. So the question he asks himself again is where is Dennett? Where are Dennett’s thoughts tokened? He concludes three possibilities: Dennett is wherever Haml...
Philosophy is a very important part of people’s lives. Philosophy is quite basically asking inquiries about existence, reality and nature of knowledge. To better understand philosophy we must look throughout history. Looking back through history helps better show what the philosophers thought during the time period in which they lived. The relativity of the theories, to the time period, is a very important factor in how efficient these theories they were. The first philosopher’s ideas to people today would be considered either very basic, or insane. Yet, in the time period they lived in, they were considered to be geniuses. Also, looking back through time and studying philosophers and what they believed can help create a better idea for our own philosophical creations. The first philosophers were also known as the Presocratics. They were called this because they were in a time period before Socrates was born. They mainly focused on answering what is the explanation of nature, also referred to as metaphysics. Even before the Presocratic philosophers, we need to look at the ancient Greek poets that created myths and examine how their stories came into being made and how it had an effect on their civilization. These myths are a part of Philosophy because they were the first ideas about creation. The transition between these mythic worldviews and pre-Socratic philosophers’ worldview was important because it lays down the structural work for great philosophers to learn from them and develop further theories based on their findings.
Numerous speculations have been advanced to clarify the relationship between what we call your mind and your brain. They incorporate Jackson and Nagel 's journey to oppose recognizing what we call 'mental
For simplicity, he names his original brain Yorick and the computer duplicate Hubert. According to the story, the scientists that crafted this experiment had also been sending the exact same incoming sensory signals from Dennett’s body to Hubert for the entirety of this experiment. Also, the signals that Yorick were sending to the body were checked with those of Hubert and were found to be “identical and synchronous” meaning that both Yorick and Hubert were fully capable of fulfilling the functional needs that determined Dennett’s bodily output and thus could both be justifiably identified as Dennett’s brain. Dennett also tells of a switch that determines which brain controls Dennett’s body and that Dennett could switch between Yorick and Hubert at will. Because the two systems operated in the exact same ways, Dennett would not be able to notice a switch of brains as he highlights in the following quote: "I could switch in mid-utterance, and the sentence I had begun speaking under the control of Yorick was finished without a pause or hitch of any kind under the control of Hubert." While this statement may be true, it seems as if Dennett is shying away from a subtle, yet rather critical aspect of the
The universe, and what it means to be alive is almost impossible to define; yet that does not stop humanity from trying. “Lonergan’s philosophy of the human person reveals that being human means having an unlimited number and variety of questions about life and the universe.” (Morgan, 1996). There is no limit on the number and variety of questions the human person will ask, "the most subversive people are those who ask questions” (Gaarder), as a result there are many varied and opinionated answers. This essay will explore three different theories on how one might find answers to life's ultimate questions. At one point or another, every human being has asked the question why: Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is the point? It is in our nature as human beings to reason, to think, to ask, it is what separates us from the rest of creation, and with this ability to reason, we are left with one question: Why? Throughout history many have tried to answer this question, some have come to the conclusion that meaning is found through God, and one’s faith. Others feel that life begins meaningless, and it is up to the individual to give life meaning; then there are those who believe that life has no meaning, and we are all essentially, just waiting to die, "The meaning of life is that it ends." (Kafka).
Who am I? What am I? Where did the world come from? These questions about existence just keep lingering in the mind of an intellect, a thinker who has the courage to demand for an answer that would satisfy his wonder. But how is it to exist? Who then give the gift of existence? As man has started to question, he has just given a proof as a statement of ignorance. That man has the capacity to inquiry.