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OfflineGiftofdeprivation
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How is identity related to consciousness?
    #21906111 - 07/06/15 05:07 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

I think I'm am asking two questions here: what is consciousness (this has been covered to death. Is there any consensus here?)? and what is identity?

Imagine the movie Momento. Only you have no advanced structures for memory whatsoever (long term memory and working memory (but still have sustained attention re:WM) are gone. Only memory in your everyday established neural pathways as directed through past experiences. ie I have arms, I must be human. I know how to juggle, I must be a juggler). Would you still have identity? Would you still be conscious?

Without any sort of narrative to guide us, we lose any sort of continuity of self, right? But we don't really need to be conscious of the past to be conscious in the now...

Help me out here, folks.


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Edited by Giftofdeprivation (07/06/15 05:09 PM)


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InvisibleSun King
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: Giftofdeprivation]
    #21906121 - 07/06/15 05:11 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

tattoos and post-it notes


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OfflineGiftofdeprivation
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: Sun King]
    #21906135 - 07/06/15 05:14 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

Haha, actually... Correct! :lol:


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InvisibleRahz
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: Giftofdeprivation]
    #21906151 - 07/06/15 05:18 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

I have arms, I must be human. I know how to juggle, I must be a juggler). Would you still have identity? Would you still be conscious?




At that point in the experience the person would identify as a human juggler. How much karma is hinged on those identifying factors is a different matter.


--------------------
rahz

comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace


"You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi


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InvisibleDividedQuantumM
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: Giftofdeprivation]
    #21906611 - 07/06/15 07:01 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

Well I think there is a conceptual and a non-conceptual self.  What you describe would be a loss, or at least a marked attenuation, of the conceptual self.  What's left is still a kind of self, but since I have never suffered the sort of condition depicted in Memento, it's quite hard to say how an experience of that would manifest in practical terms.  But I think it's important to draw this distinction.


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici


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OfflineGiftofdeprivation
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: DividedQuantum]
    #21906720 - 07/06/15 07:25 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

I like that distinction a lot better than where I went, lol. Those are great distinctions, thank you!


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Offlinesecondorder
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: Giftofdeprivation]
    #21907755 - 07/06/15 11:14 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

As for consciousness, I think the following quote sums it up almost perfectly:

Quote:

"In one of the most influential essays on consciousness ever written, the philosopher Thomas Nagel asks us to consider what it is like to be a bat. His interest isn't in bats but in how we define the concept of "consciousness." Nagel argues that an organism is conscious "if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism - something that it is like for the organism." ..... He is simply asking you to imagine trading places with a bat. If you would be left with any experience, however indescribable - some spectrum of sights, sounds, sensations, feelings - that is what consciousness is in the case of a bat. If being transformed into a bat were tantamount to annihilation, however, then bats are not conscious. Nagel's point is that whatever else consciousness may or may not entail in physical terms, the difference between it and unconsciousness is a matter of subjective experience. Either the lights are on, or they are not."


- Sam Harris






As for identity, that's a bit more difficult, but here's my take: Identity does not depend on the existence of memory. When asked "Who are you?" or "What/who do you identify as?" nobody is going to respond with "A number of atoms assembled into a particular configuration via a series of physical events," simply because a body can exist without consciousness. A dead body is also an assembly of atoms, but is not able to identify itself.

We identify as a combination of a) Our consciousness and b) The contents of our consciousness. The contents of one's consciousness are in a constant state of change, as we look, hear and feel different things from moment to moment. We are able to make sense of each item of consciousness with our memories.

Most people, when asked to identify themselves, will respond with essentially a summation of their most formative moments or achievements, which they draw from their memory e.g. "I'm a banker, with a loving wife, who I met in college twenty years ago. I have two beautiful children who attend the local high-school. I like fishing and having barbecues with family and friends etc. etc." They draw each of these identifiers from their memory, and assemble them into one 'cohesive' identity. The assembly of these memories, however, is occurring in the present moment. They are identifying themselves right here and now, bringing old memories into their current and present consciousness, changing the contents of their consciousness in the present moment.

A memory is simply the re-experiencing of a past experience in the present moment. Identification, therefore, is a phenomenon that occurs in the present moment.

This imaginary memento guy you speak of, is limited in his cognitive function. He has access only to the present moment. But if you've been paying attention, that's all that any of us ever have access to. We are just able to assemble an identity with more detail and complexity than he is, because we can draw information from memories, whereas he is able to identify himself from only immediate observations of his consciousness. His identity won't be as complex or as rich as those of us with a functioning memory, by which I mean that his 'identity' won't contain as much information as ours will, but he will definitely still have one.

As DivideQuantum pointed out; his conceptual memory will not be very complex, and may not even exist, but the only accurate identity we will ever have is that of our consciousness. If our consciousness exists, then we exist and if our consciousness remains, then we remain. To bring this point home I need to bring in a bit of cliche Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum"... "I am thinking, therefore I exist". This realization does not require a functioning memory. What 'I' is Descartes referring to if not the existence of consciousness in the present moment?


So to answer your questions:

Would you still have identity? Yes, it wouldn't be very complex, but it would be just as real as the identities of those of us with a functioning memory. Without a narrative to guide us, we merely can't attribute as much information to the story that brought our consciousness to where it is in the present moment. But our consciousness, and therefore our existence would still be as complete as anyone with a perfectly functioning memory.

Would you still be conscious? Yes, of course, consciousness is merely the fact of subjective experience, which your imaginary memento guy would definitely be having.


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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: Giftofdeprivation]
    #21908157 - 07/07/15 02:38 AM (8 years, 6 months ago)

Responding from the most profound experience of my life in 1974, my answer is that Ultimately, pure consciousness IS identity - the "I AM" of the Bible. It is what human consciousness is, but mistakenly becomes identified with our mind-body. At the end of life, I sincerely believe that all fear and pain will dissolve away yielding the most familiar recognition of Reality as our very self. We will Realize the Clear Light of Unmitigated Reality, the Beatific Vision, and understand that this has all been a dream. We, the eternal, self-efulgent, "unbearable compassion," is what we were all along. Jesus said he was the "I AM" and we misunderstood the Truth for blasphemous egotism, but what he said about himself is true for each and every one of us. Eternity is an ecstatic moment, yet the moment and its freshness does not pass. It is not time and only time passes. Eternity is not duration, it is intensity, but it is beauty and harmony and perfection. This is true even in this life, "obscured by clouds" as Pink Floyd put it, but the resplendent Sun is ever-present, here and now, behind the obscurations of senses and thoughts.




Fear not!


--------------------
γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself


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InvisibleJokeshopbeard
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: MarkostheGnostic] * 1
    #21911255 - 07/07/15 07:09 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

MarkostheGnostic said:
Responding from the most profound experience of my life in 1974, my answer is that Ultimately, pure consciousness IS identity - the "I AM" of the Bible. It is what human consciousness is, but mistakenly becomes identified with our mind-body. At the end of life, I sincerely believe that all fear and pain will dissolve away yielding the most familiar recognition of Reality as our very self. We will Realize the Clear Light of Unmitigated Reality, the Beatific Vision, and understand that this has all been a dream. We, the eternal, self-efulgent, "unbearable compassion," is what we were all along. Jesus said he was the "I AM" and we misunderstood the Truth for blasphemous egotism, but what he said about himself is true for each and every one of us. Eternity is an ecstatic moment, yet the moment and its freshness does not pass. It is not time and only time passes. Eternity is not duration, it is intensity, but it is beauty and harmony and perfection. This is true even in this life, "obscured by clouds" as Pink Floyd put it, but the resplendent Sun is ever-present, here and now, behind the obscurations of senses and thoughts.
Fear not!





As per usual Markos, a truly stunning sharing of your experience - it resonates deeply within me. I thank you greatly for that, as I do for so much of the wisdom you share here. I'm real glad there are people like yourself on this planet, it gives me hope.


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Let it be seen that you are nothing. And in knowing that you are nothing... there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain. What can happen to you? Something can happen to the body, but it will either heal or it won't. What's the big deal? Let life knock you to bits. Let life take you apart. Let life destroy you. It will only destroy what you are not.
--Jac O'keeffe


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OfflineHippocampus
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: Giftofdeprivation]
    #21911961 - 07/07/15 09:20 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

I look at consciousness literally as levels of awareness.  So it is related to identity in the way that animals that can recognize that they have their own identity have a higher level of consciousness than animals that apparently can't.


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Invisiblelaughingdog
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Re: identity-consciousness?- enjoy the dream ! [Re: Giftofdeprivation]
    #21912412 - 07/07/15 10:51 PM (8 years, 6 months ago)

Buddhism points out, from 2500 years before quantum physics ideas, that all is interconnected

but words divide reality up, (as in the 1st verse of the "Tao de Ching"

"consciousness", and "self" are both only concepts momentarily taken to be real
by a 'conscious' (as opposed to an unconscious)  mind that believes itself to be both separate and in charge of "it's" fate.

the human nervous system has a time lag, our eyes move in jerks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade), 2 upside down images are fused in the brain and 'projected' into the 'outside' world, and we are mostly unaware of the edge of the visual field and forget how weird it is we can't see our own heads and think we see reality. Yet we already know some of this stuff ! ! Amazing !

so called human consciousness is most likely, more like an artifact or side effect of a nervous system / and animal brain at a certain level of evolutionary sophistication, where an online model of the unit (aka 'self') projected into a virtual world become an adaptive survival advantage.

There is now much research of this sort.



so enjoy the dream !


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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: Jokeshopbeard]
    #21913066 - 07/08/15 01:19 AM (8 years, 6 months ago)

Thanks for the vote of confidence Jokeshopbeard. I have been encouraged by these minor miracles (major for me), and if story-telling encourages you and others, know that the stories are truthful and as accurate as I can convey them. I seek to help as I have been helped by others. Virtual community is a weird new thing in history, and it is a bitter-sweet thing communicating without spacio-temporal presence, without appearance and tone of voice, but through linguistic symbols. I want to communicate through fiber-optics but it often seems like I'm using a string and two tin cans. :shrug:


--------------------
γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself


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OfflineGiftofdeprivation
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Re: How is identity related to consciousness? [Re: Giftofdeprivation]
    #21917623 - 07/09/15 12:16 AM (8 years, 6 months ago)

About halfway through your guy's posts and been a work week from hell! So far, these have been some great reads and there are many more to go! Seriously, thank you, shroomerites!

I have some responses and some cool articles I found already, but time and consolidation are issues.

TL;DR thank you! Have responses soon!


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