As you can probably tell from the majority of my blog entries, I love science, but even science with all its evidence, experiments and equipment can't compare with the kinds of questions that philosophy investigates and seeks to answer. Here is a taste: Can you be conscious, but not have a sense of self? Do you have a self? What kind of thing is it? If you do have one, what is the you that has this self? Does it persist through time? Can you lose it? And if you lose it, what is the you that has lost it? Are you identical with or different from your self? Are you a unity or a conglomeration of multiple identities? Why do you even think there is a 'you'? Where does that feeling come from, and why? And what exactly are you? Are you your soul, your brain, your body, your consciousness? How do you know?
In this last episode of the excellent and ethereal Brainspotting series, Ken Campbell discusses these and related questions, as well as some of their weird implications, with eminent authorities in the fields of philosophy of mind and consciousness such as Derek Parfit, Marvin Minsky and John Searle, as well as neuroscientist Susan Greenfield (who, in my opinion, doesn't quite get the grip of the philosophical question). In any case, you're about to disappear :)
If you don't buy the idea that you, a 'normal' person, can be divided into multiple selves, just think about what happens when you confront a moral dilemma.
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