From: Stathis Papaioannou (stathisp@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Apr 09 2008 - 04:54:46 MDT
On 09/04/2008, Mike Dougherty <msd001@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin@rawbw.com> wrote:
> > What is so hard, unfortunately, is that almost the first baby-thing
> > we learned in our cradles is that anything outside of what looks
> > to be our own unique piece of skin is necessarily non-self. It's
> > high time, with uploads and duplication coming, that we unlearn
> > that bit of wrongneadedness.
>
> So where does self begin and end?
>
> Despite sounding like some kind of koan, should a baby learn that its
> room is part of its self? Should the presence or absence of
> caregivers be included in the definition of self? Is the child's
> subjective awareness of all things collectively identified as its
> self?
When I was a child, I was able to switch on a feeling of
depersonalisation at will. Like the flipping of a Necker cube,
suddenly my body and mind seemed foreign, its arms, legs and thoughts
not seen by the separate abstract observing self as fundamentally
distinct from any other aspect of the environment. Then, just as
suddenly, everything would flip back into full integration. I used to
trip out like this quite often to savour the weirdness of it. Can't do
it any more.
-- Stathis Papaioannou
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