Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

[Constance]

Why am I me?

Extract from that essay:

"But suppose, we might say, we strip away the details of my body and my life and pare me down to the essential nub of experiencing entity. What makes this nub any different from other such nubs, and why is it linked with the life of this particular human organism rather than any other?

Some would say in response that there is no such nub; it’s exactly my history and my physical constitution that make my consciousness what it is; so again it’s no surprise, properly understood, that my experiences belong to me and not to anyone else. Strip away all those supposedly inessential features, and you strip me away with them. Others would accept that it’s my history and composition that define me as me, but feel, possibly on the basis of introspection, that there still is something to me over and above all that. They might find this final ingredient in an inscrutable panpsychic quality of matter itself; others have suggested a kind of universal experiential substrate or background. Instead of individual nubs, we have a kind of Universal self; a line of thought which is highly compatible with some religious and mystical views.

However, I think both sides of this argument are missing the point. To say that my individual consciousness arises from or is constituted by my physical nature and background is not actually to dispose of the essential problem at all, because my physical nature and background are also inexplicably particular. Perhaps the underlying problem is the vexed question of why anything is anything in particular: it’s just that in the case of my own experience and my own existence the question hits me with a force it lacks when I’m merely wondering about a chair. The basic problem is haecceity or thisness (the same problem which in my view lies at the root of the qualia problem)."

I like this subsequent comment by 'Chris':

"9. Chris says:
It seems to me one of the big problems is the insistence of people on fitting all phenomena into a material/physical model of the universe, but such is the mindset of the current day. The existence of qualia and the Hard Problem are proof positive that there is another basic mode of existence/understanding aside from reductionary logic/physics. Not proof in the logical sense of the term that we are used to, but proof in an empirical sense – and when it comes down to it, the subjective mode of knowledge which is represented by qualia is really the only one we actually have direct access to, since the objective rational mode of knowledge has to be filtered through this subjective layer before it can be experienced by the human mind (as Kant has exhaustively discussed). I propose that mankind really needs another basic way of understanding things – another fundamental theory of knowledge that would be just as enormously impactful as the rise of scientific thought was during the Renaissance – a theory of the subjective. Because it is fundamentally different, it could not be discussed rationally or logically, but it COULD be discussed empirically. That way we could have two branches of the theory of knowledge, one objective and rational, the other subjective and irrational, but both based on empiricism, which is the only tool the human mind really has to systematically gather knowledge. This would be a huge development – we need to stop trying to define the one as a product of the other – the subjective and the objective are fundamentally different and irreconcilable. Of course, they could be reconcilable at a level that transcends both, which is what many of the pure philosophical and religious propositions discussed try to do, but let’s get both the branches nailed down before we move on to the trunk."

I'm still not fully understanding the problem but according to this author it is the problem of why anything is anything and is related to the HP.

"Perhaps the underlying problem is the vexed question of why anything is anything in particular: it’s just that in the case of my own experience and my own existence the question hits me with a force it lacks when I’m merely wondering about a chair. The basic problem is haecceity or thisness (the same problem which in my view lies at the root of the qualia problem)."

It is helpful to understand the phenomenological insight that a prereflective cogito forms within and out of the temporally accruing and compounding experiences of individual living organisms and animals. "Lived experience" refers to/signifies individually sensed self-referential experiences in and of the environing 'world' by virtue of which the animal develops its grip on the immediate structuring conditions of its existence. It is the prereflective cogito that grounds and enables the development of the reflective cogito in our species (and likely some other species on this planet and elsewhere in the universe).

 

[Constance]

From Blackwell's Dictionary of Philosophy:

'haecceity' -- "Metaphysics [from Latin haec , this, haecceitas , thisness, individual essence]. A term introduced by Duns Scotus , much discussed by Aquinas , and revived in contemporary metaphysics. Originally it was used for an individual essence by which a thing is the individual that it is, and by which one instance of a species is distinguished from other members of the same species. It was claimed to be the necessary property which a thing must possess and which no other thing could possibly have, for example, Socrates' soul is peculiar to Socrates who possesses it. A theory that claims the existence of haecceity is called haecceitism. According to this theory, individuals within the same species are not merely numerically different, but each has a unique inner essence after abstracting from their shared repeatable properties. A haecceity to an individual corresponds to a quiddity to a kind or a universal."

http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g97814051067959_ss1-3

 

[smcder]

@Soupie is p-consciousness, phenomenal consciousness?
One of the problems we have in our communications soupie is that our terms of reference differ quite markedly in their meaning. I can think of few terms that mean for you what they mean for me... I think that we interpret terms from very different ideological stances. When you say HCT doesn't do this or that, I'm often perplexed

Yes. Google it. "P-conciousness" will return lots of hits for "phenomenal conciousness" as used by Ned Block to contrast with "access consciousness".

 

[smcder]

A bit on Nagels paper on Split Brain patients:

Persons, brain bisection, and the unity of consciousness

I'm also reading "Can the self divide?" found here

http://john.jperry.net/cv/

 

[smcder]

QUOTE="Pharoah, post: 267963, member: 7275"]"Still not seeing why this is a problem for a monist"

That's because you don't know what Perry, Nagel or I am talking about. To talk of monism or dualism is irrelevant to the inquiry. Just a little clue... neither Perry nor Nagel mention monism or dualism.

It is true about what you say of HP grokking... I understand it as Chalmers intended and you don't.

(just kidding!!)

Pharoah HP: HP is the problem of explaining phenomenal experience, where phenomenal experience relates to the qualitative nature of conscious experience.

@Soupie HP: HP is [insert ..... ]

@smcder HP: HP is [insert .... ]

the "standard" articulation of the HP: the "standard" articulation of the HP is [someone, anyone: insert .... ]

"...establishes that it can't" ? really?![/QUOTE]

@Pharoah HP is the problem of explaining phenomenal experience, where phenomenal experience relates to the qualitative nature of conscious experience.

Intentionality & Representation | Tye's Ten Problems | Critique

Understanding the qualitative relevance of colour
There are two ways of understanding the colour of an object.

From a physical standpoint, an object might reflect light in the frequency 526–606 THz whilst a second object 400-484 THz. That these objects reflect light in these frequencies is objectively the case, whilst the identified frequencies are a correlative concept that humans have determined by associating spectral frequencies (quantified by physics laws) with particular qualitative colour phenomena.

Alternatively, colour can be understood as follows:

Let us say, that on earth, surfaces that reflect frequency 526-606 THz are ubiquitous (for complex reasons that we shall not explore here for the sake of brevity) and that these surfaces are of no material evolutionary benefit to a particular organism species. Conversely, some rare objects that reflect frequency 400-484 THz are highly prized by this particular organism species for their nutritional content. It would be qualitatively pertinent, and responsive to survival pressures, for that species to evolve mechanisms (innate mechanisms) that are hyper-alert to 400-484 THz reflecting colourations as these mechanisms would enable the organisms of that species to locate those nutritional highly prized objects more efficiently. Conversely, it would be pertinent for innate mechanisms to be indifferent to the ubiquitous 526-606 THz reflecting objects. Additionally, if those desirable 400-484 THz objects had the added characteristic of possessing the contours of a sphere, rather than jagged contours, this would supplement the role of shape in the qualitative identifications of those objects and further benefit those individuals that possessed innate mechanisms capable of making the distinction with automated efficiency. In themselves, these coloured objects have nophenomenal identity, but the organism will tend to evolve innate mechanisms that are qualitatively distinctive and relevant. Their mechanisms might remain innately acquired and therefore, appear both non-representational and “hardwired” much like computational mechanisms, but these appearances would be deceptive as the innate physiologies would be representative of the environment’s qualitative relevance to that organism species. Thus, it makes sense to interpret each of these frequencies (whose colours we experience as green and red), and each shape (spherical and jagged), as qualitatively differentiated and observer-dependent in this particular species. The organism’s innately acquired mechanisms are an observer-dependent representation whose qualitative relevancy is engaged anatomically before any associative learning, introspection, feeling, or emotion capabilities have evolved.

Critically, one can recognise an intrinsic intentionality in replicative constructs that evolve qualitatively differentiated representations of environmental characteristics in response to survival pressures.

To conclude part 3, all phenomenology is observer-dependent; and so it is with all observer-dependent physiological mechanisms be they plant or animal. Even the simplest of replicating organisms tend to evolve physicochemical mechanisms of qualitative relevancy because of the responsive impact of those mechanisms on survival pressures.

smcder HCT explains how phenomenal consciousness relates to the qualitative relevance of the environment.

But the way that I understand the hard problem, is that it is a problem for physicalists:

Nagel "“if Ψ [a mental event] really is Φ [a physical event] in this sense, and nothing else, then Φ [a physical event] by itself, once its physical properties are understood, should likewise be sufficient for the taste of sugar, the feeling of pain, or whatever it is supposed to be identical with. But it doesn’t seem to be. It seems conceivable, for any Φ [physical event], that there should be Φ [a physical event] without any experience at all” (pg 41)." Mind and Cosmos

In "The Mind Body Problem" (in the book What Does It All Mean?) Nagel writes:

"If what happens in your experience is inside your mind in a way in which what happens in your brain is not, it looks as though your experiences and other mental states can't just be physical states of your brain. There has to be more to you than your body with its humming nervous system. One possible conclusion is that there has to be a soul, attached to your body in some way which allows them to interact. If that's true, then you are made up of two very different things: a complex physical organism, and a soul which is purely mental. (This view is called dualism, for obvious reasons.)"

smcder I read "One possible conclusion..." to mean that there is no hard problem for a dualist.

• if Ψ [a mental event] really is Φ [a physical event] in this sense, and nothing else, then Φ [a physical event] by itself, once its physical properties are understood, should likewise be sufficient for the taste of sugar, the feeling of pain, or whatever it is supposed to be identical with.

Does HCT solves this problem?

HCT says there are "qualitatively relevant" aspects of the environment, organisms evolve "mechanisms" to recognize and respond to them and this is related to phenomenal experience - but this does not answer to Nagel's problem. Inversely, it doesn't show why it is inconceivable that a physical event should not be accompanied by any experience at all.

 

[smcder]

Firstly, I don't see the point of the paper. Perhaps you can enlighten me?

"It seems then that the sense of contingency that accompanies the fact that I am Tim Klaassen is really illusory. Wherever there exists the self conscious human being that is Tim Klaassen, I am necessesarily there, present to his point of view. And this gives my existence a very real and robust quality. No matter what, as long as Tim Klaassen is alive, I am here and no one else. It could not be otherwise."

I meant to expand on this a bit and I think I did in other posts ... but specifically here I think the point is to show, that despite how it feels (and that feeling can be startling) it is not contingent that "I am smcder." it couldn't be otherwise.

I've practiced evoking the sense of WAIMEANSE and then following up with the thought that anyone who asks this feels the same way - and so it could not be the case that I didn't show up to be me but that doesn't mean that smcder was necessary. At that, the feeling goes away. So there is no explanation needed for why, out of all the billions of people, one of them is me. They all have to be a me, so we all potentially can get that zing! of feeling it. We would need an explanation if we had an otherwise but that would mean something like having a repository of "mes" some of which didn't become a specific person.

 

[smcder]

But sometimes it is 'otherwise', for example in cases of amnesia. What is remarkable for me about cases of amnesia is that the person afflicted loses the memory of his/her own biographical history and 'selfhood' [personal history] and nevertheless remains able to function in the present with a persisting memory of the situated conditions/character of the world in which he/she is still existing. This suggests that there is an ongoing presence of 'mind' relative to the general and historical/cultural world of one's prior experience. Within this still-comprehensible mileau, persons afflicted with amnesia usually recover the sense of selfhood/personal past/personal 'identity'. Quoting the title of one of Damasio's books on consciousness, "Self comes to Mind", I haven't yet read that book, but the title is ramifying, suggesting that beneath consciousness of one's personal/biographical history in the world there exists an impersonal understanding of the structure of the world in which one has been living. MP, in a late work, refers to occasional experiences in which an individual attending closely to what is being experienced senses that 'it is not 'he' or 'she' that thinks, but rather that "one thinks."'

Re 'contingency', existence of the living in general and of our own personal senses of existence are shot through with contingency, and this aspect of being is a major theme of phenomenological inquiry. Despite the contingent nature of life, existence, and consciousness, however, it remains the general case that most humans maintain a continually centered sense of selfhood throughout their temporally unfolding experiences in the world.

Contingent here means that something is neither necessarily true (a tautology) nor necessarily false (a contradiction) - Klaasen argues that "why am I me?" is not contingent, it could not be otherwise. If I were not me, who would I be? Someone else who is asking "why am I me?" And if I were not at all, I wouldn't be here to ask the question ... the various papers I have seen on this take pains to show that it's not contingent, despite the feeling of it - John Perry does this by looking at the semantics, at the disjunct in trying to refer to ourselves objectively. So that is why I say there is no explanation for a particular self as being a particular self - no explanation needed for the feeling of it.

You say you have not experienced this feeling - it's kind of a Koan - the eastern version is to ask "Who were you before you were born?" You could also ask "Out of the billions of people and possible people, how could one of them be me?" When I get this funny feeling on thinking that, if I follow it with the realization that everyone else could ask this question but could only ask it if it shows up, then the feeling goes away. It's a little like the anthropomorphic universe question of why is the universe just so that we are here to observe it? Some answer that by saying because the universe is just so, you are here to ask the question.

 

[smcder]

From Blackwell's Dictionary of Philosophy:

'haecceity' -- "Metaphysics [from Latin haec , this, haecceitas , thisness, individual essence]. A term introduced by Duns Scotus , much discussed by Aquinas , and revived in contemporary metaphysics. Originally it was used for an individual essence by which a thing is the individual that it is, and by which one instance of a species is distinguished from other members of the same species. It was claimed to be the necessary property which a thing must possess and which no other thing could possibly have, for example, Socrates' soul is peculiar to Socrates who possesses it. A theory that claims the existence of haecceity is called haecceitism. According to this theory, individuals within the same species are not merely numerically different, but each has a unique inner essence after abstracting from their shared repeatable properties. A haecceity to an individual corresponds to a quiddity to a kind or a universal."

http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g97814051067959_ss1-3

• I think this is related to @Pharoah's infinitism - "but each has a unique inner essence after abstracting from their shared repeatable properties" - HCT is a physicalist theory of consciousness but I understand Pharoah to say he is not a physicalist because of the question "Why am I me and not someone else?" not having an answer in a reductive physicalist explanation of mind. But it seems to me that no such explanation is possible as its not the sort of thing that explanation applies to - because any I that asks the question is a me and because you have to show up to ask the question - so that part of it seems semantic, to ask "why am I so lucky to have existed?" is another formulation - as if relief were indicated, as if you could not have made it, might not have been - (that's the contingency the various papers have argued againt). By concluding it could not have been otherwise, we are entitled to no sense of relief - it's not even right to say "wow, I might never have been!" and that not being right does not lead to: "I was necessary, I had to exist".

 

[smcder]

From Blackwell's Dictionary of Philosophy:

'haecceity' -- "Metaphysics [from Latin haec , this, haecceitas , thisness, individual essence]. A term introduced by Duns Scotus , much discussed by Aquinas , and revived in contemporary metaphysics. Originally it was used for an individual essence by which a thing is the individual that it is, and by which one instance of a species is distinguished from other members of the same species. It was claimed to be the necessary property which a thing must possess and which no other thing could possibly have, for example, Socrates' soul is peculiar to Socrates who possesses it. A theory that claims the existence of haecceity is called haecceitism. According to this theory, individuals within the same species are not merely numerically different, but each has a unique inner essence after abstracting from their shared repeatable properties. A haecceity to an individual corresponds to a quiddity to a kind or a universal."

haecceity : The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy : Blackwell Reference Online

My own naive first go on haecceity is to note that unique inner essence is what is left after shared repeatable properties are removed (abstracted) but it is those shared repeatable properties that make us a member of that from which we could claim to be unique - so if I say, well I am human, but at bottom I am different from everyone else because of my inner essence, but how could my inner essence be that different from everyone else's (and everyone else's be different from everyone else's) and I still be human? I assume we would say in response that I have a unique human inner essence? But that is just to say that my inner essence has certain shared repeatable properties. If I am not human and there is no such thing as "human" except as a convenient category (infinitism) then perhaps we have built our science on these similarities and can no longer see that we are really, essentially different - but that seems to me two sides of a coin - recognizing and categorizing doesn't mean we don't see what is unique in each person - I think that is reflected in the everyday phrases such as "Well, you know old Tom. You know how he is!" Of course people immediately say "He's just like my uncle Merlin!" we don't mean they are identical but that they have this common trait - but still, would we really mean that Tom and Merlin are alike? And do we really mean that they are completely unique?

 

[smcder]

@Soupie - the Nagel paper on split brain is also interesting for a fiction writer, although not a hypothetical.

And here are some more interesting hypotheticals from Perry:

http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/analytic/Perry1972.pdf

http://john.jperry.net/cv/1993a.pdf

Locke's Prince and the Cobbler shows how far back "body-transfer" hypotheticals go ...

Locke on Personal Identity

 

[Pharoah]

@Soupie - the Nagel paper on split brain is also interesting for a fiction writer, although not a hypothetical.

And here are some more interesting hypotheticals from Perry:

http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/analytic/Perry1972.pdf

http://john.jperry.net/cv/1993a.pdf

Locke's Prince and the Cobbler shows how far back "body-transfer" hypotheticals go ...

Locke on Personal Identity

A couple of days ago there was a surgery documentary on tele. A man had kidney cancer that had spread into his Inferior vena cava. To operate they stopped his heart, brought his body temperature down to 18 degrees C and removed his blood. They performed the critical part of the operation against the clock.. having to finish within 30 minutes before brain damage. The surgeon said how incredible it was that when he was brought back to consciousness, he was the same man with the same memories etc.

 

[Pharoah]

@smcder, you seem to have a very good grasp of this WIAM stuff. And the links are very helpful too

 

[Constance]

I think it's important also for us to recognize that the prereflective cogito developed in our earliest years of life is not replaced or entirely shut down by the development of our reflective cogitos. Recall how Bataille describes life as lived by animals and young children as being "like water in water," with the emergence of reflective consciousness dividing us from the openness and interdependent mutuality of that earlier pre-categorical relationship with our surrounding environment. I described earlier in this thread my experience at the University of Iowa, walking down the large hill that led to the English-Philosophy Building, of suddenly recognizing my reflective cogito's presence alongside [and intruding into] my still generally prereflective communion with my environing 'world'. In the project of understanding what consciousness is, I think we have to attempt to uncover our suppressed memories of our foundational experiences in prereflective existence. We can't approach this task carrying presuppositional premises based in the objectively construed categories and concepts within which we have been schooled to think. The path back into prereflective consciousness requires a release of oneself from categorical, goal-directed thinking into states of 'reverie', concerning which Gaston Bachelard, philosopher of science and of poetry, might be our best contemporary guide.

You say you have not experienced this feeling - it's kind of a Koan - the eastern version is to ask "Who were you before you were born?" You could also ask "Out of the billions of people and possible people, how could one of them be me?" When I get this funny feeling on thinking that, if I follow it with the realization that everyone else could ask this question but could only ask it if it shows up, then the feeling goes away. It's a little like the anthropomorphic universe question of why is the universe just so that we are here to observe it? Some answer that by saying because the universe is just so, you are here to ask the question.

One could claim that, but it's an empty claim since we don't know, cannot analyze, the innumerable stages of physical complexity and biological evolution that have led from the theoretical Big Bang to our personally experienced existences: i.e., our being 'here' {<where?}. In another post, concerning haecceity, you also wrote:

"I think this is related to @Pharoah's infinitism - "but each has a unique inner essence after abstracting from their shared repeatable properties" - HCT is a physicalist theory of consciousness but I understand Pharoah to say he is not a physicalist because of the question "Why am I me and not someone else?" not having an answer in a reductive physicalist explanation of mind. But it seems to me that no such explanation is possible as its not the sort of thing that explanation applies to - because any I that asks the question is a me and because you have to show up to ask the question - so that part of it seems semantic, to ask "why am I so lucky to have existed?" is another formulation - as if relief were indicated, as if you could not have made it, might not have been - (that's the contingency the various papers have argued againt). By concluding it could not have been otherwise, we are entitled to no sense of relief - it's not even right to say "wow, I might never have been!" and that not being right does not lead to: "I was necessary, I had to exist".

I follow your thinking here. Each of us, as we currently experience our senses of selfhood/personhood, is the result of countless contingencies including the emergence of life on our planet, the evolution of species on our planet, the circumstances of our individual births, and the contingencies of the historical mileau within which we have received our 'educations', developed our ideas about ourselves and others and our relations to one another and to nature itself. This is 'contingency' as understood in existential phenomenology and most fully articulated in the works of Sartre, both philosophical and fictional. The SEP article on Sartre is essential reading for an introduction to existential contingency. Here is an extracted paragraph:

"The basis of Sartrean freedom is ontological: we are free because we are not a self (an in-itself) but a presence-to-self (the transcendence or “nihilation” of our self). This implies that we are “other” to our selves, that whatever we are or whatever others may ascribe to us, we are “in the manner of not being it,” that is, in the manner of being able to assume a perspective in its regard. This inner distance reflects not only the nonself-identity of the for-itself and the ekstatic temporality that it generates but forms the site of what Sartre calls “freedom as the definition of man.” To that freedom corresponds a coextensive responsibility. We are responsible for our “world” as the horizon of meaning in which we operate and thus for everything in it insofar as their meaning and value are assigned by virtue of our life-orienting fundamental “choice.” At this point the ontological and the psychological overlap while remaining distinct as occurs so often in phenomenology."

Jean-Paul Sartre (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Here is an extract from another of your posts today:

"so if I say, well I am human, but at bottom I am different from everyone else because of my inner essence, but how could my inner essence be that different from everyone else's (and everyone else's be different from everyone else's) and I still be human?"

Husserl did not ask 'what is the essence of each individual consciousness' but rather 'what is the essence of human conscious experience in and of the worldly mileau within which each of us -- in whatever historical/cultural mileau we inhabit -- discover our existence and interrogate its meaning. Sartre fleshed out what he learned from studying with Husserl with the core existential recognition that "existence precedes essence."

 

[smcder]

I think it's important also for us to recognize that the prereflective cogito developed in our earliest years of life is not replaced or entirely shut down by the development of our reflective cogitos. Recall how Bataille describes life as lived by animals and young children as being "like water in water," with the emergence of reflective consciousness dividing us from the openness and interdependent mutuality of that earlier pre-categorical relationship with our surrounding environment. I described earlier in this thread my experience at the University of Iowa, walking down the large hill that led to the English-Philosophy Building, of suddenly recognizing my reflective cogito's presence alongside [and intruding into] my still generally prereflective communion with my environing 'world'. In the project of understanding what consciousness is, I think we have to attempt to uncover our suppressed memories of our foundational experiences in prereflective existence. We can't approach this task carrying presuppositional premises based in the objectively construed categories and concepts within which we have been schooled to think. The path back into prereflective consciousness requires a release of oneself from categorical, goal-directed thinking into states of 'reverie', concerning which Gaston Bachelard, philosopher of science and of poetry, might be our best contemporary guide.



One could claim that, but it's an empty claim since we don't know, cannot analyze, the innumerable stages of physical complexity and biological evolution that have led from the theoretical Big Bang to our personally experienced existences: i.e., our being 'here' {<where?}. In another post, concerning haecceity, you also wrote:

"I think this is related to @Pharoah's infinitism - "but each has a unique inner essence after abstracting from their shared repeatable properties" - HCT is a physicalist theory of consciousness but I understand Pharoah to say he is not a physicalist because of the question "Why am I me and not someone else?" not having an answer in a reductive physicalist explanation of mind. But it seems to me that no such explanation is possible as its not the sort of thing that explanation applies to - because any I that asks the question is a me and because you have to show up to ask the question - so that part of it seems semantic, to ask "why am I so lucky to have existed?" is another formulation - as if relief were indicated, as if you could not have made it, might not have been - (that's the contingency the various papers have argued againt). By concluding it could not have been otherwise, we are entitled to no sense of relief - it's not even right to say "wow, I might never have been!" and that not being right does not lead to: "I was necessary, I had to exist".

I follow your thinking here. Each of us, as we currently experience our senses of selfhood/personhood, is the result of countless contingencies including the emergence of life on our planet, the evolution of species on our planet, the circumstances of our individual births, and the contingencies of the historical mileau within which we have received our 'educations', developed our ideas about ourselves and others and our relations to one another and to nature itself. This is 'contingency' as understood in existential phenomenology and most fully articulated in the works of Sartre, both philosophical and fictional. The SEP article on Sartre is essential reading for an introduction to existential contingency. Here is an extracted paragraph:

"The basis of Sartrean freedom is ontological: we are free because we are not a self (an in-itself) but a presence-to-self (the transcendence or “nihilation” of our self). This implies that we are “other” to our selves, that whatever we are or whatever others may ascribe to us, we are “in the manner of not being it,” that is, in the manner of being able to assume a perspective in its regard. This inner distance reflects not only the nonself-identity of the for-itself and the ekstatic temporality that it generates but forms the site of what Sartre calls “freedom as the definition of man.” To that freedom corresponds a coextensive responsibility. We are responsible for our “world” as the horizon of meaning in which we operate and thus for everything in it insofar as their meaning and value are assigned by virtue of our life-orienting fundamental “choice.” At this point the ontological and the psychological overlap while remaining distinct as occurs so often in phenomenology."

Jean-Paul Sartre (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Here is an extract from another of your posts today:

"so if I say, well I am human, but at bottom I am different from everyone else because of my inner essence, but how could my inner essence be that different from everyone else's (and everyone else's be different from everyone else's) and I still be human?"

Husserl did not ask 'what is the essence of each individual consciousness' but rather 'what is the essence of human conscious experience in and of the worldly mileau within which each of us -- in whatever historical/cultural mileau we inhabit -- discover our existence and interrogate its meaning. Sartre fleshed out what he learned from studying with Husserl with the core existential recognition that "existence precedes essence."

Beautifully thought and beautifully wrought.

 

[Constance]

Beautifully thought and beautifully wrought.

Thank you, Steve.

 

[smcder]

A couple of days ago there was a surgery documentary on tele. A man had kidney cancer that had spread into his Inferior vena cava. To operate they stopped his heart, brought his body temperature down to 18 degrees C and removed his blood. They performed the critical part of the operation against the clock.. having to finish within 30 minutes before brain damage. The surgeon said how incredible it was that when he was brought back to consciousness, he was the same man with the same memories etc.

Yes but what did his dog think? ;-)

Doesn't sound surprising....am I missing something?

 

[Pharoah]

Yes but what did his dog think?

Doesn't sound surprising....am I missing something?

Well.. the dog's not so enthusiastic for kidney.
and it's not surprising....
I forgot to mention, that when he came round he stood on all fours and went woof woof.... somehow he had sensed that his dog was outside waiting to come in with a bunch of flowers

 

[smcder]

A couple of days ago there was a surgery documentary on tele. A man had kidney cancer that had spread into his Inferior vena cava. To operate they stopped his heart, brought his body temperature down to 18 degrees C and removed his blood. They performed the critical part of the operation against the clock.. having to finish within 30 minutes before brain damage. The surgeon said how incredible it was that when he was brought back to consciousness, he was the same man with the same memories etc.

Still not following this ... wouldn't we expect this to be the case?

 

[Pharoah]

No surpirse. It's just that I am thinking that if 18 degrees equates to 30 minutes wothout a pulse then how far can you go with it? And what, in the brain, is it that maintains the person as themselves—how 'dead' can you get and be alive?

 

[smcder]

smcder You say you have not experienced this feeling - it's kind of a Koan - the eastern version is to ask "Who were you before you were born?" You could also ask "Out of the billions of people and possible people, how could one of them be me?" When I get this funny feeling on thinking that, if I follow it with the realization that everyone else could ask this question but could only ask it if it shows up, then the feeling goes away. It's a little like the anthropomorphic universe question of why is the universe just so that we are here to observe it? Some answer that by saying because the universe is just so, you are here to ask the question.

@Constance writes
One could claim that, but it's an empty claim since we don't know, cannot analyze, the innumerable stages of physical complexity and biological evolution that have led from the theoretical Big Bang to our personally experienced existences: i.e., our being 'here' {<where?}.

smcder I think that's a separate point, though. 'm not arguing against the complexity or the wonder that evokes-nor the complexity of who we are and how we came to be. I'm just making a narrow argument about the contingency of the particular question "why am I me?".