No such thing as an individual?

[laptop]

I feel that my individuality is insured by the unity of my consciousness,

You may feel that.

But the whole point of - or the starting point for - this is that as soon as anyone starts examining what "the unity of my consciousness" might mean, it falls apart.

Look up "blindsight", "Benjamin Libet", "the binding problem"....

 

[118118]

How does libert decision thing disprove the unity of my conscious experience. (Goes back to articloe to keep reading).

 

[118118]

Not convinced that that shows that my last experience didn't turn into this one, or that the smell I smell isn't part of the sound that I hear. I don't see how that there are parts of my mind which are not my conscious experience makes it that my c onsious experience is any less whole. That things that I may consider part of my consious eperience are not, does not mean that things that are, are not. Or is this about ndoubt seeking into things that I consider parts of the same whole. Not convinced this would extend to everything. Edit: Reading th wrong bit again.

 

[118118]

Not sure what you mean: that it is impossible to verify, or impossible to explain, or an as yet misunderstood third option involving complicated neuroscience stuff. Edit: as far AFAIK the only other option is a "self" which is kinda begging the question for individuality: we are individuals because we are individuals.

 

[laptop]

Must pause my consciousness very soon now.

(Er, "continuity"? )

Libet: open to challenge, but just a stark example of a series of findings showing that things are happening in the wrong order. Attempts to argue round it tend to end up circular: "I feel that I have a continuous consciousness, so, er, consciousness must be that feeling that I have..."

Blindsight: people are having expeiences that they deny having. What does it mean that it's "not conscious"?

Anyway, I'd like to drag this back toward brainaddict's original question.

What sense does it make to speak of an isolated consciousness? (Speak of it to whom? ) Put a person on a deserted island, and they have no way of telling whether it's an hallucination about being on a deserted island, or what...

 

[Derian]

The brain is physically formed by this ongoing process of interaction between ‘intelligence’ and ‘extelligence’, the cultural capital available in a given context (Stewart and Cohen 1997). Cohen and Leicester suggest that the brain is best understood not in terms of areas reserved for particular sorts of processing, but rather as ‘permeable, branching and flexible moving pathways criss-crossing and recursively interacting with each other and with incoming information from the external world (imagine Spaghetti Junction “reeling and writhing” and repeatedly re-assembling).’ This vision of the brain’s networks constantly reconstructing themselves through interaction
with the world around is similar to the models drawn on by Gee (1992), who develops a model of the mind based on theories of neural networks. Constructors of artificial neural networks have found that artificial neuronal units, arranged in parallel processing networks, can ‘learn’ to perform tasks simply through a process of trial and error, beginning with a purely random
network and ‘nudging’ it in the direction of increasing accuracy. (The example he gives is of a system to distinguish between sonar signals from mines and from rocks.)

Gee suggests that our capacity for learning can be explained in terms of the brain engaging in this sort of ongoing interaction with the world, only in a much more complex way involving recursive interrelationships between many millions of neurons. Again, this is an intrinsically social model of learning, in that the interactions between the neural networks and the world beyond always take place within a socially-constructed world, with the resources drawn on being socially and historically constituted.

Source

Brainaddict, if I'm understanding you correctly, Gee's "The social mind: Language, ideology, and social practice" 1992 might add to laptop's suggestion of Stewart and Cohen?

 

[Derian]

Brainaddict - would you differentiate between the concept of self/individual and personality? And if so, how?

(have started thinking about gestalt theory/personality preferences applied to your OP - might be going off at a tangent but bear with me)

 

[stat]

Marilyn Strathern, very big person in Social Anthropology these days. Her work in Papua New Guinea and 'de-individuals' in recent years has helped propel her to new heights. Sounds exactly up the avenue you're thinking about.

Only problem is: she's a bee-atch to read.

 

[Brainaddict]

Thanks guys - some more stuff to read at work on monday there.

 

[Brainaddict]

Brainaddict - would you differentiate between the concept of self/individual and personality? And if so, how?

Well I was using the term 'personality' pretty vaguely - I don't know what the technical defn of it is actually - or even if there is one. But in my mind 'personality' would be only one aspect of the 'self' - there are other aspects to the self - some of which are more uniform across everyone. I guess I talked about it because it's an obvious thing people use to differentiate between individuals, but I wanted to be talking about the whole self really.

 

[Brainaddict]

Damn it, Gee and Strathern both look really interesting but google doesn't turn up much - this is when you need access to a university library.

 

[CJohn]

Meh bit late for this thread, but I thought I would just bash out a few ideas as I find this pretty interesting stuff.

Maybe I'm slighly missing the point with this one...but I don’t think the self exists independently of the context in which it is formed and maintained. I suppose that’s fits with the idea that there is no self independent of experience. The ‘information’ that forms the sense of self might be thought of as coming from external sources, but comes to be embodied within our minds. The embodied self must therefore be located within the individual, but the ‘information’ that creates, shapes and maintains it is primarily external in origin, i.e. within the social space. Still of course this internal – external relationship must also be reciprocal to the degree that the emerging self has, to some extents, the ability to shape its experience both physically and narratively.

That’s not really presenting a stance on the issue, but its more just my thinking on the spot.

 

[Brainaddict]

Meh bit late for this thread, but I thought I would just bash out a few ideas as I find this pretty interesting stuff.

Maybe I'm slighly missing the point with this one...but I don’t think the self exists independently of the context in which it is formed and maintained. I suppose that’s fits with the idea that there is no self independent of experience. The ‘information’ that forms the sense of self might be thought of as coming from external sources, but comes to be embodied within our minds. The embodied self must therefore be located within the individual, but the ‘information’ that creates, shapes and maintains it is primarily external in origin, i.e. within the social space. Still of course this internal – external relationship must also be reciprocal to the degree that the emerging self has, to some extents, the ability to shape its experience both physically and narratively.

That’s not really presenting a stance on the issue, but its more just my thinking on the spot.

I think you're getting what I'm talking about - do you know of any interesting reading material around this?

 

[tastebud]

yesterday evening i was thinking about something that led to me starting to think about the topic of this thread.

we are all pretty multi-faceted. for example some of my friends get to see a certain side of me that perhaps others do not get to see and other friends get to see totally different sides. my original thought was about people who say 'he/she doesn't behave like herself around them/him/her' etc. or that they have seen a whole different side to somebody when witnessing them with somebody else or a particular group. another example being 'i can't be myself with her/him'.

sometimes this *is* mistaken for not 'being oneself' in a certain situation. i was thinking that perhaps this *isn't* the case and that it is just a side of the individual that is brought out because of interaction with a particular person/group.

i then thought that this might be a good example of there being 'no such thing as an individual'. lending support to the argument that the 'individual' is just made up of various interactions with others.

but of course like so many things this is not an all or nothing issue: each individual reacts to his/her experience with his/her own interpretation.

 

[Brainaddict]

yesterday evening i was thinking about something that led to me starting to think about the topic of this thread.

we are all pretty multi-faceted. for example some of my friends get to see a certain side of me that perhaps others do not get to see and other friends get to see totally different sides. my original thought was about people who say 'he/she doesn't behave like herself around them/him/her' etc. or that they have seen a whole different side to somebody when witnessing them with somebody else or a particular group. another example being 'i can't be myself with her/him'.

sometimes this *is* mistaken for not 'being oneself' in a certain situation. i was thinking that perhaps this *isn't* the case and that it is just a side of the individual that is brought out because of interaction with a particular person/group.

i then thought that this might be a good example of there being 'no such thing as an individual'. lending support to the argument that the 'individual' is just made up of various interactions with others.

but of course like so many things this is not an all or nothing issue: each individual reacts to his/her experience with his/her own interpretation.

That's a good example of what I'm going on about with regards to personality and the differences between people that make up personality.

I wish I could think of a good way of explaining what I mean with regard to everyday/common behaviours. It might be easiest to explain by asking what would happen if you took something away. For instance what would happen if you had to go through an entire day without making eye contact with anyone? It would be really weird, and if it carried on long term you'd probably start to go a bit funny in the head. So the eye contact and what it does to you - the exchange of information that goes with it - actually forms part of who you are on an everyday basis. Once you lost it you'd start to become a different person. So who you are isn't just about what's in your head - it's about the constant exchanges of information with the world - and it really must be constant if you are to remain on an even keel.

It was quite an extreme thing to say at the beginning - that it might not make sense to talk about the individual at all. I don't really think that's true, but equally it's not true to say that an individual is located within the brain of each person - I guess I've been trying to say that the inflows and outflows from the brain are part of the person as much as the stuff set into the neurons. You could argue that the reactions to inflows and production of outflows are set in the neurons anyway so why bother treating them any differently from anything else in the brain, but when you consider what happens when the flows of information are cut off, you realise that the wiring in the brain is useless by itself - it needs constant input in order to behave as normal.

This probably is just a very complicated way of saying something fairly obvious, but there we go - I find it interesting.

 

[Fruitloop]

I think of the self as being like an inversion layer between the neural substrate and the world, i.e. between computation and perception. The inversion layer exists, despite the fact that there's nothing there but oil and water.

 

[Brainaddict]

I think of the self as being like an inversion layer between the neural substrate and the world, i.e. between computation and perception. The inversion layer exists, despite the fact that there's nothing there but oil and water.

 

[kyser_soze]

Can I get a summary - this thread is of interest but I boshed a couple of little uns @ Faithless last night and now my brain has stopped functioning...

 

[tastebud]

This probably is just a very complicated way of saying something fairly obvious

Like a lot of PhDs.

 

[Crispy]

Like a lot of PhDs.

How else are you going to keep busy all that time?

 

[Brainaddict]

Like a lot of PhDs.

Hmm, maybe I'll turn it into a PhD.

Summary for Kyser: No man is an island*


*or, for that matter, woman

 

[kyser_soze]

Hmm, maybe I'll turn it into a PhD.

Summary for Kyser: No man is an island*


*or, for that matter, woman

Bodacious, dude.

 

[Brainaddict]

Bodacious, dude.

there was a little more to it but I didn't want to tax your poor brain.

 

[118118]

So the eye contact and what it does to you - the exchange of information that goes with it - actually forms part of who you are on an everyday basis. Once you lost it you'd start to become a different person. So who you are isn't just about what's in your head - it's about the constant exchanges of information with the world

I've hyad a few lectures on this.

Parkinson has about written about emotions are develop socially between people, and what an emotion is is not entirely defined by our reaction in our heads, but also by the devloping communicative process between people, so also other people's reactions in a real time, but I don't see any reason why this means emotions are any less things that are happening to you . So emotions are socially constructed, and they have illocutionary force etc.

The idea of the self as bounded dispositional characteristics is peculiarly western, stuff about how non-western selves are more defined by social role. There's also some stuff about how we have multiple selves, a home self and a univeristy self, for example; and how personality is socially constructed by a negotaition with others and cuturally determined boundaries.

 

[Sweaty Betty]

I like to keep things simple, you can dress it up in all the fancy words and quotes and books and things you want (nowt wrog in that, just not my bag)..

Is individual the same as unique???

If so then we are, as i dont know anyone like me, im not saying im special or different, just one of a kind..

"And that concludes Haylz participation on the high and mighty thread(joke), tune in next week when Haylz astonishes us with her interpretation of all things godly"

 

[laptop]

Is individual the same as unique?

Nope.

Individual in this context is... existing, regardless of what exists around you.

If so then we are, as i dont know anyone like me, im not saying im special or different, just one of a kind..

That's all with reference to people and things about you, you see...

Where's the edge of Haylz is another way of asking it. Where does the youness of you stop?

 

[118118]

Nope.

So are you saying that if Haylz reacts in a different way to a book, than Laptop, (i.e. is unique), that does not determine that Haylz and Laptop are not the same thing?

 

[laptop]

So are you saying that if Haylz reacts in a different way to a book, than Laptop, (i.e. is unique), that does not determine that Haylz and Laptop are not the same thing?

It's a hard question, which is why it's interesting

Haylz's toe, eye and nose react differently to a book.

By convention we regard them as parts of the same thing.

Laptop's ditto (even without going into the question of how we can assign meaning to the sentence "the way it smells to me is not how it smells to Haylz" )

But the question as I understand it is more like this: my reaction to one book is intimately tied up with my reactions to other books I have read - potentially all of them. But these books are not part of me (in the sense that they are located outside my skin) and my reactions are not, in fact, stored entirely within my skin - if you want my detailed response to Woolf's Three Guineas you're going to have to let me refresh my memory...

In fact, my reactions to books are tied up with other peoples' reactions - I've just started Mason & Dixon and it's nothing like what Maggie led me to expect...

Here books stand as a convenient proxy for parts of "the culture" (because you brought them up). My emotional reaction to seeing a squashed hedgehog on the road is also tied through conversations, and particularly not-especially-conscious subtexts in conversations, with others in the culture...

All these things are part of what it's like to be laptop, and all of them depend on things outside the usual or "20th-century-common-sense" idea of laptop as a "discrete individual".

 

[118118]

(even without going into the question of how we can assign meaning to the sentence "the way it smells to me is not how it smells to Haylz" )

The way I see it, how it smells to Halyz and how it smells to Laptop are two different things. AFAIR its going to far to say that 'the way it smells' cannot have meaning... because we cannot measure it objectively... because we can't be sure that Halyz and laptop have a "way it smells"?
Maybe this has turned into a diatribe about me being unable to *read minds******. LOL.

 

[laptop]

AFAIT its going to far to say that 'the way it smells' cannot have meaning...

Don't know. After 4000 years of formal philosophy I still regard the question as open

But what we do know is that if Haylz and I attempt to discuss the question at a purely practical level, we cannot do so without reference to objects that are neither Haylz nor I. Our perceived "individuality" depends on our embeddedness in "the world".

And if we discuss it at any other level, we must do so by reference to all the relevant books we've read and all the relevant conversations we've had...