Identity (Identity)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 19, 2009, 07:52 (5574 days ago) @ George Jelliss

I am trying to pinpoint "identity", and both George and BBella have gallantly attempted to come to my rescue. - The symbiotic relationship BBella describes between dark and light is a great image for vast areas of life, but it's your earlier post that asks questions relevant to what I'm trying to figure out: "how did ONE come to have thought in the first place...?" "What sparked ONE to make the choice...?" Only I'm focusing on us rather than on ONE. George is also touching on the essence of the problem when he writes: '"I", the ego, the will, acting through the frontal lobes [...] directs the course of events. The "I" in this sense is only part of the "Me", if that makes sense." - Everything you write, George, makes perfect sense, and I am the one who is struggling to convey something that language actually conceals. We simply take it for granted that we are an "I", we have a "will", an "ego", just as we take it for granted that we have consciousness, subconsciousness, emotions, memory, imagination etc. But these words denote something so complex that we can scarcely begin to understand how they function. Cells, chemicals, neurons, ions, electrical impulses may be part of a physiological process that goes on when we exercise these faculties, but they do not explain how matter becomes conscious of itself, feels emotions, remembers, imagines. Nor do they explain what is the "I" that can stop or start the physiological processes. - You say we are our experiences. But we are also our bodies. And we are our minds. If pressed to say which of these was the seat of our identity, I would say it is the mind. This will have been greatly influenced, and is continually being influenced, by the body and by experiences, but it is the mind that decides what attitude or what course of action to take. Is the mind the same as the brain? Is it nothing but a collection of cells, i.e. also part of the body? If so, we are the servants of our cells. But we don't think we are. We think we have an I/ego/will that enables us to exercise a degree of control over ourselves, to give orders to ourselves, to watch and criticize ourselves. But if the I/ego/will is not physical cells, what is it? - I obviously can't answer my own question, but no doubt a religious person would say that it's the "soul". That too is a word which explains nothing, but rather like "dark matter" and "dark energy" at least it gives us a term for an area of existence we do not understand. BBella suggests that if there is a Universal Intelligence, it might not understand either. Ah well, that would put me in good company!