Identification of self

[livingproof]

Does "identifiying" the self mean describing it or locating it within an organism?

 

There is a cluster of cells buried in the brain that when stimulated produces what is uniformly described as a profound sense of self, and well-being. It vanishes without stimulation. It hasn't been fully researched, this cluster. When inhibited in experiments, the individual experienced a profound sense of loss of self and described being "dead" or "hollow", and "not knowing who they were". Memory was not affected, but the individual experienced a kind of psychiatric aphasia, walking around with someone else's memories and identity. It was horrifically disturbing to the individuals, and experiments ceased, as far as I know. Whatever else it means, the brain has constructs embedded within it that support a sense of self in a human. We're born to be self-aware, apparently, a condition or quality peculiar to human beings, if only in the degree of its development and sophistication.

If you pulled out the brain housing that cluster, you'd pull out the sense of self that individual maintained previously. If you cloned it precisely, and "reinstalled" a mechanical clone brain, you'd reinstall that sense of self harbored in those clusters.

It's interesting that full self-awareness only comes when the self becomes fully aware of others as separate entities. To be aware of how others perceive you is the full scope of awareness: to see yourself through someone else's eyes completes the equation, if you will, for sense of self, which starts with a sense of yourself, needs, desires, image, etc., in a narcissistic fashion.

There is an idea that self is a social construct, and that sense of self and identity are comprised by four overlapping manifolds: time, space, social relations and obligations, and history. Where you are, how you are, where you're going, and how you got there, in other words. These things combined, and then perceived on a metalevel (greater than the sum of the parts), constitute the sense of self, whether expressed to others or not. A single cluster of cells may be the focal point where all these aspects are compiled (the metacomplex of identity, if you will, or perhaps the CPU of the self), but a sense of self is a synopsis of a composite of a multiplicity of synchronous phenomena. It takes the entirety of a human being's experiences and organic history and condition to arrive at any point in time at a sense of self and identity in an individual. To compartmentalize the self as soul-apart-from-body or extractable neuron clusters is a method far from being capable of producing any significant revelations regarding self. Identity is deictic, and requires a contextual system to have meaning. It's part of a holistic integrated process that was never designed to be defined, only experienced and measured. A sense of self and identity is a higher cognitive function keyed for survival of the organism. If there is a soul and it is housed in the brain, way down in your hypocampus and limbic system, it's more likely to be your sense of self that you take with you if you die, not your soul.

[coberst]

What is the self?

 

What is the nation?

 

What is patriotism?

 

What is the enemy?

 

What is the soul?

 

All are abstract ideas and all provide meaning in our life. Being abstract ideas they all are very subjective; but there is some universality to each because our culture, that we all share, makes up important aspects of each abstract idea.

 

We live by these abstract ideas. We create these abstract ideas in an effort to give meaning to our life.

[livingproof]

fine...

set theory

{sense of self...a,b,c,...}U{culture a,b,c,....}

 

describe the relationship between the construction of self identity and the forces of cultures that shape it

 

endgame {culture, society, sense of self...}

[coberst]

fine...

set theory

{sense of self...a,b,c,...}U{culture a,b,c,....}

 

describe the relationship between the construction of self identity and the forces of cultures that shape it

 

endgame {culture, society, sense of self...}

 

You are looking for a simple logical algorythym as an answer but I cannot give you such a thing. However, I can give you some idea about this connection between the individual and the culture.

 

What is real and how can we know it?

 

Aristotle gave us classical metaphysical realism. Aristotle concluded that we can know reality because our mind grasped directly the essences of things in the world.

 

Descartes gave us representational realism. Ideas in the mind were representational of things in the world. Ideas correspond to things in the world.

 

Analytic Philosophy gave us symbol-based realism. I will not even try to say what this means because I do not know and it appears to me that there are multiple variations on this concept.

 

Cognitive science has given us evolution-based realism. This is also called embodied-realism because it has abandoned the mind/body dichotomy that characterizes other forms of realism and is convinced that natural selection is the process by which the human species has developed.

 

There are two major world views of cognitive scientists; Artificial Intelligence and embodied-realism. AI is a symbol based realism and embodied-realism is an evolution-based realism.

 

The ‘bible’ for embodied-realism is “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson. The paradigm of this cognitive science is ‘conceptual metaphor’. The fundamental findings from which all principles flow are:

• The mind is inherently embodied.

• Thought is mostly unconscious.

• Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

 

The ‘bible’ states that “What we take to be true [real] in a situation depends on our embodied understanding of the situation, which is in turn shaped by all these factors.”

 

It seems to me that all of Western traditional philosophy and thus almost everyone’s comprehension is based upon classical metaphysical reality or some aspect of that philosophy. If so, I would expect all of these forces to find error in this Book. That does not mean that there is not error but only time will tell. Darwin is still being attacked as misguided constantly by many if not most citizens in the US.

 

 

 

 

 

CS (cognitive science) is about the fundamental aspects of knowing. It brings illumination upon the assumptions that philosophy took 2500 years ago. CS has utilized technology to gain a comprehension of what our Greek thinkers based their assumptions on, which then became the foundation of Western traditional philosophy.

 

Do not make the mistake of accepting or rejecting this new paradigm of CS until you have studied the matter. Hold your judgment until you are inclined to take the time to study the matter. It is a completely new concept and will take a good deal of effort to comprehend.

 

CS is not focused upon examples of knowing ‘how to’ but is focused upon understanding the relationship between what we know and how we know it. We will not find ready examples of knowing in the study of CS but if we try we can begin to grasp how we know and how this knowing becomes understanding, and how this understanding is grounded by our biological nature.

 

CS is not about knowing, CS is about understanding. “Where Mathematics Comes From” is one book in a series of books and research documents relating to cognition and the power of understanding.

 

We all learned how to ‘do math’ in our schooling. How to do math is about knowing; CS is about how to understand the nature of how it is possible for humans to create a domain of knowledge such as math.

 

Infants at an early age of a few months display the capacity for subitizing, an ability we humans share with many other animals. This is the ability to instantly recognize small numbers (by number here we mean a cardinal number, a number that specifies how many objects there are in a collection,) of items, and a capacity for the simplest forms of addition and subtraction of small quantities in a collection.

 

Arithmetic requires in addition to this subitizing an ability to count. Counting requires the additional capacities of:

Grouping capacity is the ability to group discrete elements; ordering capacity is the ability to place objects in a sequence; paring capacity entails paring a number with an object etc.

 

Subitizing ability is limited to 4 or less objects. To go beyond this limit the child often learns to count fingers and with the following additional capacities can go beyond 4:

Combinatorial-grouping capacity is the ability to put groups together, and symbolizing capacity is the ability to associate symbols (words) with numbers (conceptual entities).

 

Thus subitizing and counting experience allows the child to move to greater quantities and with metaphorizing and conceptual-blending capacity the child is prepared to learn arithmetic and higher forms of mathematics.

 

“What we have found is that there are two types of conceptual metaphor used in projecting from subitizing, counting, and the simplest arithmetic of newborns to an arithmetic of natural numbers…The first are what we call grounding metaphors—metaphors that allow you to project from everyday experiences (like putting things into piles) onto abstract concepts (like addition). The second are what we call linking metaphors, which link arithmetic to other branches of mathematics—for example, metaphors that allow you to conceptualize arithmetic in spatial terms, linking say, geometry to arithmetic, as when you conceive of numbers as points on a line.”

 

Quotes are from “Where Mathematics Comes From”. A large number of book reviews are located at:

George Lakoff - Rafael Núñez - Rafael Nunez - Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being