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"People who have discovered they have a brain and were frightened by it" If you are not your brain, who are you?
by guard-of-terra 11y ago
"People who have discovered they have a brain and were frightened by it"
If you are not your brain, who are you?
- noja 11y agoPart of my brain.
- johnchristopher 11y agoThe rest of the body of course. And if you are into it: The sum of all your connections to others and the traces you leave in their minds.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoProbably more the traces they leave in your mind. We have a slightly bizarre illusion of separate consciousness, but it's impossible to grow into a full adult human without being connected - in many different ways - to the wider human network.
- hellbanner 11y agoGreat point. Humans growing up without others we call "feral" Have you read Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral mind? A psychologist analyzes historical signs of "consciousness", like the transition in the Ilyad of men's motivations shifting from parts of their bodies & god puppeters to their "will". One of his interesting conclusions is that schizophrenic voices were these connections, or in hackerspeak, daemons or programs running. With so many programs competing for attention at once, the "consciousness" program was formed to "decide" how to spend its newly alloted attention. Peter Watts, marine biologist, explores this in his Firefall series (fiction) - the idea of consciousness arising out of conflict. It fits nicely with the folk wisdom that in "Flow", there is no sense of self. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618057072 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618057072? : Origins of Consciousness http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765328038 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765328038 : Sci-fi featuring Consciousness as conflict as a central theme .. why do I feel like this exact discussion has been repeated on HN before? Like different neurons of the HN-brain are running across this idea of "automatic decision making" and sending it up to the neo-cortex (front page), again, and again..
- nhaehnle 11y agoMy line of thinking when I saw the headline was very similar. If you believe that your brain decides something without you, that just means you don't have a good understanding of who/what you are.
- Zigurd 11y agoOr it could mean that what you think of as "you" can't access the parts of your brain that makes decisions. Just like it can't access how you digest food.
- laotzu 11y agoThe universe
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dualogy 11y ago~37.2 trillion cells and ~372 trillion microbes first and foremost
- criddell 11y agoMathematics maybe.
- ZeroFries 11y agoPresumably an emergent entity formed in part by the activities of the brain.