I'm a mind hosted by a brain piloting a bone mecha covered in flesh armor
No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
I take the Buddhist view that what we call the self is a misconception or misunderstanding. While you do exist, there isn't a soul or some permanent entity that takes residence and jumps around before or after death.
Thus, you can ask questions like these and get a million different answers because the question is not valid. It's what the Buddha would call proliferation, or basically hot air. There isn't an answer, why ask the question?
Don't mistake this for a cynical view, though. A good Buddhist is very happy because even though the idea of a self is false, freeing yourself from all of these self-based concepts and desires leads to great peace. The obsession with self and self-based craving is what leads to any kind of unhappiness.
Intersting view! As to why I ask, I am not looking to find the definite correct answer. I want to know what people feel and hoe differently they do so, whether what they feel is real or illusory.
I just have to say I think you just stumped the Buddha. If I'm understanding, then the reason for proliferation is for the wisdom gained from outside perspective. The analysis of 1000 "wrong" answers can give insight as to the nature of reality or the "right" answer.
I feel you on that. As a Buddhist I'm also curious. 😀
You are mostly your brain, which extends to the rest of your body.
The thing about OOB cases is that the human brain is really good at faking information, or just generating it out of thin air.
In fact it never stops doing that, unless it is allowed to completely die.
If a person is resurrected, the brain generates "filler" information for the duration you were "out".
For some, that is seeing an "afterlife".
There is no universally specified "afterlife", it's based entirely on culture, and what the person has grown to believe in, even if they don't believe it anymore.
Good Dog
“If a person is resurrected” then they are Jesus, or proof that there is an after-life, and miracles do happen. On the other hand, people are resuscitated all the time by modern medicine.
Shh now, don't tell them about necromancy.
Oh man, this reminds me of a really cool PBS Nova mini series on the brain and how it’s basically very flawed at perception and how we ingest the world around us. Extremely fascinating.
That's valid and objectively sound. The area closest to the most detailed sensory input and processing ability makes sense as the center.
Though if people feel strongly that they are somewhere else, it'd be really intdresting to hear about.
Sitting on the toilet taking a shit. I'd prefer not to.
You can do it 💪
Ahh shifting your center of mass.
May the force be with you
Quite literally you are your brain, trying to account for the entire body and mind as the self simultaneously. But you may catch yourself thinking or saying things like "I can't wrap my brain around this." Isn't that odd? Your brain refers to itself as my brain. Is that a linguistic issue or is your sense of perspective off?
"Don't you have a heart?" Why do we imply that our sense of compassion is only located in an organ that just pumps blood? That clearly can't be the case.
We know cases where someone gets a brain tumor and suddenly becomes violent or unfeeling. When the brain is damaged either during life or during gestation, we know that we can lose all manner of things: cognition, motor skills, memory, emotions, etc. It's all the brain.
What confuses the issue is everything the brain is attached to. What I think all conscious humans do is try to make sense of the mind-body connection. I feel tired, that's not just my brain feeling tired. I can feel tired in every single part of my body independently or all together. "I" am the brain. If I lose an arm, I don't lose my sense of self. But losing important functions can damage the self I've constructed of myself. If I lose my eyesight I will be a very different person when I'm unable to visually enjoy video games, movies, art, nature. But clearly blind people still have a self. If it sits behind their eyes, will it move? Adapt to their ears?
All this to say, your self is self constructed. It's malleable. But make no mistake that the source of where self and consciousness are maintained is the brain.
This post illustrates well why some Buddhists, among others, regard the self to be an illusion. When called to locate it or bring it forth, we ultimately can’t do so.
My brain silently groaned "Ugh, I need more coffee to process something like this so early! Body, take me to the coffee."
I feel this is an answer to the question.
Hub. Interesting. My sense of self tends to be around my shoulder/back of head/neck area. I don't get the feeling that I'm right behind my eyeballs, my sense of self is A bit lower and further back than that. Like, if I were centered between my ears, I'd have to move a bit lower and a bit more back.
Such a strange thing to have to focus on.
I've never felt particularly connected to my body.
Have you ever felt someone else connect to your body?
No. It's just more a feeling like my body is a tool I'm using. It's not me, and has little to do with me personally any more than a hammer I use is personal.
I live in my head. My body is annoying.
There's a book called Impro by Keith Johnstone.
It's a book about improvisation, though in there there's a very interesting part on moving your center around when it comes to character work.
So long as the centre remains in the middle of your chest (pretend it's a few inches deep), you will feel that you are still yourself and in full command, only more energetically and harmoniously so, with your body approaching an "ideal type".
As soon as you try to shift the centre to some other place within or outside your body, you will feel that your whole psychological and physical attitude will change, just as it changes when you step into an imaginary body.
You will notice that the centre is able to draw and concentrate your whole being into one spot from which your activity emanates and radiates.
(Johnstone, 1987, p. 179).
You can also imagine a movable centre.
Let it sway slowly before your forehead and circle your head from time to time, and you will sense the psychology of a bewildered person.
Let it circle irregularly around your whole body, in varying tempos, now going up and now sinking down, and the effect will no doubt be one of intoxication.
(Johnstone, 1987, p. 180).
It would be interesting to know whether the location of your 'self' is tied to your dominant sense. So people blind from birth could be 'between their ears'? Which isn't that different, but would still produce slightly different answers. And how about people missing both hearing and vision? Could a person be 'in their hands'? 'Up their nose'? I'd better stop.
These are questions you should ponder after a nice healthy dose of psilocybin. You can be just about anywhere you want to be and pick what works for you.
I don't even know that, I don't particularly feel like I am either my body, head, or brain. I've never felt that I am a part of this body.
Spacetime is a lie.
The bit that thinks is in my head feels to be at the front. But it knows that my heart is equally important. So I feel that I am my head and my body.
People who have lost a limb say they feel like they’ve lost a part of themselves not just physically but in their sense of wholeness.
For me it's probably both, but I feel a lot of shit in my chest, like anger or anxiety. Id like that to fuck off though and just be behind the eyes lol.
In Japan, people point to their face to indicate themselves
I am my whole self most of the time but sometimes specific parts are more attention grabbing than others. Usually during orgasms or when something hurts.
If you are more kinesthetically aware of your body, you will feel every part of it and be able to better understand what is going on in it.
I'm probably, mostly, behind my eyes, inside my head.
In moments of adrenaline and action, I'm in my chest or gut. Sometime hands, especially when doing delicate or involved work. Sometimes legs or arms when laboring.
In times of pain, I'm often at the focus of the pain until I work and ignore the physical and go somewhere deep inside that doesn't hurt so much. Usually, a good memory or fantasy.
Personally, I can't separate the feeling of self from my vision, so "I" am directly behind my eyeballs and I can't change it.
My experience is very similar, and I tend to explain it as "I (feel I) am my frontal cortex", which it's conveniently positioned very close.
Can you move?
If I close my eyes, I don't feel I can move in the sense of "going to a different place", but I feel like I have an "internal orientation" which (almost always) aligns with where I'm looking at. But with the eyes shut I can change that orientation and point it in different directions.
I don't know if this will make sense to anyone... it's very hard to explain these sensations with words.
You have a brain in your head and a "second brain" in your gut, so thinking of yourself behind the eyes and pointing at yourself in the center of mass when you are referring to yourself both have arguably valid reasons behind them.
I am all of me
This is more of a philosophical question (touching multiple aspects) that doesn't seem fitting to no stupid questions.
You already mention the common aspects to it. We put our conscience, our awareness behind our eyes because of how visually focused we are. We put our body center to our torso and heart, because it's both central to the physical body and the heart and lungs are an noticeable and continuously active part of our physical body.
When you ask you first have to ask yourself, what are you asking for? You used the terms "you" and "self". Where do we draw the borders of those? Do people put themselves differently or is it the same for all of us? Is it objectifiable or subjective?
I'd interpret "you" as the entirety of me. Including body and mind/conscience. Placing myself in it does not make sense, because I am all of it.
"Self" on the other hand be interpreted as consciousness rather than your entirety. But not necessarily so.
Just: I am a specific process running on our brain.
This is a question the greatest minds haven't been able to answer in millennia. Don't expect an answer in a random lemmy thread. The closest answer to the truth I could give is "we don't know".
Not true. Many people have an answer to this. They are different, and I want to know what they are. :)
You are more than just a point in space. You see others perform actions and you attempt to replicate them.