Quote:
Originally Posted by Happy Days  I think I am who I am based on my experiences on one level, but on my own unique soul on another level. I started out as me, but really became me based on my life experiences. My life experiences could have sent me in one direction, but my unique personality meant that I went the other.  Deep!!! |
Yeah, that's what I said at first, too (nature and nurture, genetics and life experience, etc), but it seems they're actually talking about something else.
Not "why are you you, why do you have the personality you have and not a different one, etc", but "why can't you see out of other people's eyes? Why is your consciousness attached to your particular cage of flesh, why can't your consciousness be in somebody else's body, why can't somebody else's consciousness be inside of you, etc".
While deeper, this line of thought still doesn't interest me all that much; our "consciousness", our identity, our personality, our id, ego, super-ego, all of it... is wrapped up in that 3-pound gray walnut inside our skulls.
When there are brain transplants, then we'll see out of other people's eyes. We can swap brains (although actually, we'd merely be swapping bodies, since we
are our brains). Rich people will live forever- or at least until they die of brain tumors and strokes- by buying new bodies. Beautiful poor people from third-world countries will be selling their bodies,
literally, to rich people who prefer them to their own. There'll be a black market trade in bodies for brain transplants, much like the current black market kidney trade.
Brad Pitt will clone himself a million times and sell the clones to rich guys who want to look like him.
And sex reassignment surgery will no longer involve primitive genital reconstruction; those who desire it can merely switch bodies with someone of the opposite gender.
But I don't believe in ensoulment, nor do I believe in consciousness that survives the death of our corporeal bodies, nor do I believe in a collective unconscious, in the sense that Carl Jung meant, if I understand his theories correctly.