The Buddhist answer is that the self is not a permanently existing entity . . . — Wayfarer

I agree with the vast majority of the outlook expressed in this comment, too.

They're often very 'fuzzy' terms, used differently in different contexts. I think there is nothing the matter with ego per se, insofar as we need to have a sense of personal identity just in order to live in the world. Where it becomes a problem is when egotism becomes reflexive and self-reinforcing so that we are unaware of being self-centred. That is a sure road to unhappiness in my view (and one that a great many people are on).

Actually the Buddhist attitude is that this habit of reflexive grasping is the main problem in human existence. We automatically see life from a self-centred viewpoint, and so everything is unconsciously related to our own self-interest. You can see that being acted out on many levels, even the political and social level (especially in today's 'politics of identity'.)

The antidote to that is not consciously trying to be totally saint-like and pure - that usually doesn't work, because it becomes just another ego-trip - it is getting insight into how the mind is making those connections all the time. It has become an automatic process, something we do without being aware that we're doing it.

That is why there is an emphasis on 'insight meditation' - through insight meditation you actually learn to see the processes of 'I-making and mine-making' unfolding in real time, so to speak, in the laboratory of your own mind and body.

Then the freedom from that automatic reflexive state starts to become a spontaneous process. This is what is called 'realisation', as distinct from a contrived attempt to be something. And that is the process of liberation. And that leads to a state of 'unboundedness' - where there is no longer such a sense of self-and-other, 'me here' vs 'that there'. One can still function perfectly soundly in a day-to-day basis - it's not as if you forget who you are - but there is a much greater sense of spaciousness and ease.

http://a.co/ggDNFIK

Seems to me to begin with desire.

We don't even need continuity of self. Wanting something now is enough.

Taking that view (which I think may be close to the view of @The Great Whatever but not sure) What comes first: Desire or lack?

This brings me back to another point of Dukkha's: The idea of 'ownerless' experience. It seems to me that 'mineness' is essential (even if it's a lower karma-compromised calcification of a deeper experiential stream or storehouse ( Wayfarer ) ) because that's precisely what explains the apprehension felt at our own impending torture. If all experience is ownerless, then everyone should be well afeared of anyone's torture, past or present. — csalisbury

We could draw a distinction between ontological ownership, and experiential ownership. So an ownerless experience would have no ontological 'owner' (eg a soul, Cartesian ego, something like that), but would have the experiential felt quality of 'mineness'.

So it wouldn't be the same thing which dreads the torture and then experiences it. Because there isn't actually 'multiple' experiences, we don't actually have an experience at T1 and then another at T2. We don't actually exist at two different times. We do think about the past as if "I existed then, and had x experience at y time". Or even "I didn't exist then" in the case of the world before our births. But in reality we never leave the present, we exist here, present, in an ongoing process of experience.

This is why I think we're making some big mistake in conceiving of time as linear. We might practice some mindfulness and be aware of the contents of our experience, and then ask ourselves what is persisting from one moment to the next, and be stumped. But it could just be the case that the question is ill formed, because it assumes a linear type existence. The same type of question as say "what's infinity x 19?" Where the question seems legitimate, but we're stumped for the answer, but really that's not how maths works making the question non sensical.

We do think of ourselves as linear, as being the same 'undergoer' of experience now that underwent experience in the past, and will do so in the future. Perhaps experience is not ontologically linear, but yet it feels that way experientially. There exists the presence of experience. A past and history of this experience is in a sense mentally projected behind/before the present, and mentally projected forward, as we will experience *then*. But we never actually will get to the future, we don't exist other than now. So what I mean is that the present doesn't actually move anywhere, it doesn't go toward a future, coming from the past, ontologically. Rather, the future and past are entirely experiential, built from our mental projections ahead and behind (ok it's more complicated than it just being an 'idea in your head' especially with history, with all the things in the world seeming to have their own history, but the point is this is not ontological but rather experiential).

So we are present, and the present we might say is ontologically stationary (it doesn't move ahead like a travelling arrow), we merely project a future ahead of our presence, and project a past behind/before this present experience right now, and this builds the linearity of time and ourselves. As if we exist over a linear expanse. So if we imagine a piece of white string, and someone has got a highlighter and coloured the string in a morse code like pattern. A long dash coloured with highlighter, a short dash of just plain strain, another longer dash, a small dash of plain string, etc. And so the part of the string which has been highlighted represents our periods of consciousness, and the plain string represents periods of non consciousness (deep sleep, anaesthesia etc). The string itself represents linear time. So if we imagine the direction of time from left to right, where we exist is the point on the string which is currently being drawn on with highlighter, travelling from left to right. As we move from left to right we leave behind facts, like a record of when in time we were conscious, and we weren't. The string exists ahead of us waiting to drawn on with highlighter. Hopefully I'm making this analogy clear.

The point being, that this conception of the way we exist, I suspect, is completely wrong. In this torture scenario, we think of ourselves as being at the point on the string which is currently being highlighted, in a left to right progression. We think of the present as existing within an expanse of time which transcends it ahead and behind, and is moving from the past and into the future, leaving behind a record of itself as it travels along. From our position on the string, we think that we existed in the past, so we existed to the left of where we are on the string at an expanse of the string which represents say yesterday, and we think we existed across that expanse of string and experienced fear and dread of the torture experience which will be some time in the future which the present, where we currently are on the string is travelling towards. All parts on the string which are coloured with highlighter represent the times which we existed/experienced/were conscious.

So again the point is that this entire way of conceptualising time is not correct. We didn't actually exist in the past (there is no highlighted string which transcends *this* present experience(ing)), nor will we exist in the (ontological) future. We exist here, present, as an ownerless experiencing (verb). An aspect of how this ownerless experience exists is the (mental) creation of linear time. Which is created by a projection of 'me/myself/mineness' ahead into a linear future ahead of us, and behind us into a past where we existed up until the present. We mentally build our existence through time, making it an experiential/mental thing rather than time actually existing outside our experience (a past and future actually existing, a past which contains facts about what happened).

So he question, why do I dread tomorrow's torture, is because, all that exists is an ontologically ownerless experiencing, an aspect of which is a mental projection of a tomorrow which exists ahead of what's present (the experience) and towards which this experience is travelling. What's projected is a sense of me/myself/mineness/my experience/the same haver or undergoes of experience, both behind into a linear past and ahead into a linear future. This projection of ahead and behind creates and builds this illusion of existence across time, of existing in a yesterday, and a 'will exist still in a tomorrow'. We say that it will be the same me/subject of experience/self which felt yesterday's fear experience of future torture, and will feel tomorrow's experience of future. But ontologically there is not future or past, today nor tomorrow. These do not exist other than as aspects of an ownerless experience. Now there's still questions to answer such as, what separates one ownerless 'experiencing' from another. And how is the experience unified, or if that too is an illusion it needs to be explained.

So to sum up another rambling post :) : time is not ontologically linear, so therefore any questions about existing now and in the past, or now and in the future, and per the OP; now and in a future lifetime are conceptually wrong. Any questions which assumes an existence of ourselves anywhere other than *this* present 'experiencing' make no sense and can't be answered (much like infinity divided by twelve). We fear the future because we project a future ahead of ourselves in which we exist, we likewise project ourselves into a past behind us. This projection of a self builds/creates this notion of continued existence through time. But In reality (ontologically) neither exists. All that exists is the presence of 'experiencing'. An ownerless process/doing/verb.

Thoughts on this? I'm not fully committed to this idea but I think there's sense in it. Time not being linear dissolves all the questions like surviving gaps in consciousness, existence through time, the question of existing again after this lifetime. A lifetime is under this theory nothing more than the sum of the mental projection of a self back until a birth before and ahead up until a death. We do project a past behind our births as well, but that projection loses the sense of "I existed then", it's a more objective type of time projection. A Christian might project back objective time 6000 years, and project back his own existence/himself x number of years depending on how long he understands himself to be alive. A person who takes scientific theories to be true would project backwards 12 billion years of objective time, and then his own self in the same manner as the Christian. There would be no sense of existence through time, of the 'same self', of continuing to exist as the same 'undergoer of experience' without these projections. There would just be the presence of experiencing, which is also all there I seven with those projections, but the difference when they are taken away is it doesn't even *feel* like there's a continuing me which exists through time. So ontologically in neither case does a persisting self exist, but experientially it is built when those projections are done/experienced. All that ontologically exists is a ownerless experience, so by that I mean let's take the visual field as an example. There isn't a seer, owner or a looker, nobody nor nothing is having that sense experience, rather that sense experience - the raw qualia you could say, just exists there as a brute fact of the universe (in the same way a physicalist thinks the physical world exists - nothing holds the physical world in existence, nothing causes atoms to exist, they just sort of exist by their own will, holding their own selves in existence). And in the same way two atoms can be in existence as a brute fact/thing according to the physicalist, so too can multiple visual fields.

eg a soul, Cartesian ego, something like that), but would have the experiential felt quality of 'mineness'. — Dukkha

The difficulty there is, the soul, the 'cogito', is never an object of experience. To say that it is 'something' is precisely to reify an abstraction. Why? Because the Cartesian 'res cogitans' was an abstraction which then became reified, i.e. treated as an actual object or something that exists. There is no such thing, but that doesn't mean 'the soul doesn't exist'.

What has an experiential felt quality of 'mineness'? Actually, nothing does. It is wholly and solely a quality in consciousness. Talking about it as a 'something' projects it as 'existing', which just results in confusion, because there is no such thing 'out there somewhere'.

This is the origin of the so-called “hard problem of consciousness,” otherwise known as the “qualia problem.” From the concrete material objects of everyday life, Descartes and the moderns who have followed him derived two abstractions. First, they abstracted out those features that could be captured in exclusively quantitative terms, reified this abstraction, and called that reified abstraction “matter,” or “the physical,” or that which is “objective.” Second, they abstracted those qualitative features that would not fit the first, quantitative picture, reified that abstraction, and called it “the mental,” or that which is “subjective.” Once this move was made, there was never in principle going to be a way to get mind and matter together again, since they were in effect defined by contrast with one another. — Ed Feser

Source

I'm very happy for you, that you are exploring these ways of breaking the rigid conditioned thinking patterns we are given by society. At some point it will feel the right time to start building your own narrative, your own unique perspective and self.

I think it's important to break out of the linear narrative etc.. to quest, as I used to say. But once free of it I find that one is required to focus back on the empirical world again to find ones path And to look to how ourselves as a witness is present or enthralled in this world.

That is why there is an emphasis on 'insight meditation' - through insight meditation you actually learn to see the processes of 'I-making and mine-making' unfolding in real time, so to speak, in the laboratory of your own mind and body. — Wayfarer

I have tried for nearly forty years, admittedly somewhat sporadically (although I did meditate daily for about 15 years at my longest stretch) to see such things via meditation, but I just never could even begin to get a glimpse. I have come to the conclusion that sitting meditation is not a useful method for me personally. I find that through the arts and everyday activities and even reading I am able to enter states of absorption and release feelings of attachment far more effectively than I ever could in seated meditation, which usually makes me feel as though I am wasting time. That said, I have, while meditating (although not only when meditating) had several experiences of what I guess you would call beatitude. It is mostly these experiences which convince me that transcendence is possible. I don't believe it matters what you do so much as how you do it. No special methods are required; grace and inspiration is available to everyone who sincerely wants it. Faith is the one thing most needful. At least that's my take these days.

Curious you say that. I too often feel that meditation is a waste of time, apart from being boring and pointless. I stopped altogether at various periods for that reason - but ultimately I couldn't see any choice but to persist. I don't see it as a matter of faith so much as persistence, just staying with it. I can't say exactly what it is that has happened - but on the other hand, there has been a definite qualitative change. One of the things I have had to learn is 'expect nothing', but I have also learned that things do happen through meditation, often when you think nothing whatever has. That is the most difficult aspect in some ways - commiting yourself to something quite boring and difficult for no apparent reason. But at this point in life, I can say 'when used as directed, works as advertised'.

to quest, as I used to say — Punshhh

And a good saying it is. Note the etymological relationship between 'quest' and 'question'. Philosophical questions, you might say, are 'questions you ask with your life'.

For me meditation was what I did to force the issue. This was during a time in my late twenties and early thirties when I was engaged in a process of forcing a questing process, with some friends and one in particular, sparring, challenging, stretching, body and mind, on a grail quest, the comic version would be MontyPython's Holy Grail.

On two occasions I meditated at length in India for 4 or 5 hours a day for weeks on end. The second time in the Buddhist cave temple at the achealogical site at Ellora near Puna, 3hrs at dawn and 2hrs at dusk each day.

Both occasions were fruitful, but the results were subtle and permeated my being gradually and largely imperceptibly. The way in which it was revealed to me was not in changes I noticed in myself, but rather the way that I noticed how I differed from my piers, who had not undergone the same practice. In ways like a clarity and stability in mental focus, perception, along with an abundance of what I will describe as grace( I expect you know what I mean). Along with a freedom from the psychological states and conditioning which they were inexorably subject to.

If memory is to serve as a condition for selfhood, then it must circumscribe some region - it must draw a line and say: that which happens within this boundary will be preserved in the memory of entity x. If memory is to be the eminence grise behind selfhood, it must also be a drawer of boundaries. And that makes things difficult. Because that which draws the boundary is also that which is to be bounded. — csalisbury

I'm sure personal identity is a psycho-social construct, but such a construct requires a lower-level continuity in order to even get off the ground - The construction of a self-narrative requires some kind of spatio/temporal/experiential boundary (boundary-process?) which excludes certain experiences/elements as candidates for integration in a self-construct and includes others. — csalisbury

I don't understand your difficulty. Memory doesn't have to draw any boundaries: it's not like it can choose a different scope or perspective than that which is given by the conditions in which its bearer finds itself. To put it simply, you can't have memories of what you (your body, for lack of a better term) haven't experienced.

Of course, that's assuming we are talking about ordinary, common-sense memory. If you want to widen the notion beyond the evident, then, like I said, all bets are off - imagination is your only limit.

And in any case, I don't think the thought experiment I've posed is all that extraordinary. Throughout history, many people have awaited torture. This is a far cry from teleportation. — csalisbury

No, your thought experiment is not extraordinary. It is indeed so ordinary that it does not present a problem that you think it does.

Explain why it makes sense for someone who knows he will soon be tortured - but isn't being tortured yet - to fear the impending event.

Our prior experience of pain reminds us of its inescapability, how it obliterates the dualism between mind & body, how we become an unreflective one in it. It's the trauma we relive again and again as if we could change it. It goes against our bias towards the future. The anticipation of pain creates a discordance between our desires, which are future headed and the inescapable reality we know we will experience, as we have in the past. Its power over our consciousness invokes the a real sensation of fear. Our body, our closest ally, reacts instinctively and we seek transcendence which we are denied.

I think we are constructed by others who provide the foundation for what we shape and mold as ourself, those closest and dearest to us provide the bricks and mortar, we lay brick.

I don't understand your difficulty. Memory doesn't have to draw any boundaries: it's not like it can choose a different scope or perspective than that which is given by the conditions in which its bearer finds itself. To put it simply, you can't have memories of what you (your body, for lack of a better term) haven't experienced. — SophistiCat

I don't think this is true. Our memories are often inaccurate, especially concerning things distant in time. It's as if we tend to remember things the way we want to remember them, then when we check to corroborate with others, we find big discrepancies. The imagination may be actively involved in the memorizing process. So it's quite false to say that we can't have memories of what we haven't experienced. And I think csalisbury's point is accurate, that there is a type of selection process involved in remembering. When whatever it is which is selecting, selects from the imagination, then we have the problems I refer to.

The difficulty there is, the soul, the 'cogito', is never an object of experience. To say that it is 'something' is precisely to reify an abstraction. Why? Because the Cartesian 'res cogitans' was an abstraction which then became reified, i.e. treated as an actual object or something that exists. There is no such thing, but that doesn't mean 'the soul doesn't exist'.

What has an experiential felt quality of 'mineness'? Actually, nothing does. It is wholly and solely a quality in consciousness. — Wayfarer

I'm quite certain Descartes thought the 'thinking thing/substance' actually existed, and wasn't just some non-existent abstraction he falsely believed exists. I can't tell whether you're arguing against my understanding of Descartes, or agreeing with the post?

Talking about it as a 'something' projects it as 'existing', which just results in confusion, because there is no such thing 'out there somewhere'. —

To be fair nobody actually knows this. If the 'thinking thing' is out there beyond what we can experience and access, then we cannot know for sure whether it exists or not.

It's worth recalling the lack of arguments against the existence of a soul. The Cartesian notion of a mental substance is not at this point explanatorily satisfactory, and though I disagree that any serious empirical damage has ever been done to the thesis of interactionist dualism, it doesn't seem to be a satisfying or illuminating account.

But the classical notion of the soul as eudaimon or genius or chi, a personal guardian spirit that is simultaneously one's own character and a guardian spirit watching over one and determining one's fate, has a lot to be said for it. It is both outside of one's self, out of one's own control, and a part of oneself. Some notion of character being fate is very old in many world traditions. That is always the guiding thread of 'who I am,' personal destiny, which is never either outside of one's control or in it. This notion is one that is prior to crude numerical identity, and may be impossible to understand without it – the continuation of 'who one is,' 'the one' who will be tortured, or what have you. Only after grasping that is the notion of a future as a distinct point in time possible.

I'm quite certain Descartes thought the 'thinking thing/substance' actually existed, and wasn't just some non-existent abstraction he falsely believed exists. I can't tell whether you're arguing against my understanding of Descartes, or agreeing with the post? — Dukkha

It's a difficult point. What Descartes (and his contemporaries) meant by 'substance' is very different to how 'substance' is nowadays defined. The Greek term that 'substance' was translated from, was 'ouisia', which is nearer in meaning to 'essence' or 'being'. And in Descartes' day, the criterion for 'what is real' was 'that which is in greater proximity to its source'. So there was only one 'uncreated substance', namely, the Divine Intellect. Human subjects - souls - were created directly by the Divine Intelligence and so where of a higher degree of reality than created things.

Descartes' was on the cusp of medieval and modern - when I studied philosophy, Descartes was the very first unit, under the title 'the first modern philosopher', and aptly named. But the enormous problem with his legacy, is the consequences of the dualistic model which defined (or abstracted) 'matter' and 'mind' in opposition to one another. And that's because, even though he was self-consciously trying to break with the past, many of the assumptions that underpinned his philosophical model were still from medieval scholasticism, notably that hierarchical model of 'substance and mode'. Accordingly, his method has introduced certain assumptions into the way we think about very fundamental issues, especially this kind of issue, which we're often not conscious of having, but which have problematical consequences. That blog post I linked to, from neo-Scholastic philosopher Edward Feser, elaborates on that. (And no, I myself am not neo-scholastic or 'Aristotelean-Thomist', as he describes himself, but he's one of the few current philosophers who analyses the problem properly. Here it is again. Note the first iteration of this post linked to the wrong article, it has since been updated.)

I tend towards the view that desire is primary and is productive, and lack is secondary. Lack comes about because the object of desire has been produced, individuated, or somehow become attached to. We feel a lack upon losing said object of desire, but it is possible to abnegate the lack by abnegating the desire. This would include even very basic things, such as food or water. In the most extreme circumstances we are able to adjust because of this, and in the most pampered circumstances we are able to fret and worry because of this.

Given the function of desire I tend to think that the latter is easier than the former, at least in terms of scaling back from forward. it's easy to "give in" to desire because it produces itself, in many ways. The desire for some thing is often followed by the desire for novelty, or the confusion between the desire for the thing and the desire for novelty or the desire for extremity. In this manner desire is also productive in that it reproduces itself and feeds back into itself to hunger for more, at least if we are not attentive to these tendencies within ourselves and actively work against them (out of a desire for, say, peace and tranquility).


I say desire simply is the self because of a hypothetical, more than anything. What would a self be if it does not desire? What would it do? What characteristics could we attribute to it? A rock is the characteristic object used to contrast with persons -- and it seems to fit said hypothetical. And clearly a rock doesn't have a self. (even abnormally, because 'the self' is largely a normative concept of both ourselves and others and who or what we include in it)

Now, I will say there are difficulties in differentiating other parts of nature from this self if desire is both necessary and sufficient. Perhaps this overreaches a bit. (plants, in some respects, as Aristotle notes, follow appetitive desires, for instance). I think these difficulties could be overcome by understanding how it is that people are able to place other desires above appetitive desires (as in the case of fasting, or hunger strikes, or simply wanting to find happiness when you don't have enough to satisfy these desires).

I think it's great that you have found it works for you. That's the most important thing in life; to find things that actually work; whether it be relationships, methods of learning whatever you want to learn, making a livelihood, and of course, most important of all, spiritual life. And it aint always easy!! 8-)

It's very much a work in progress.

I think everything is a work in progress. The alternative could only be a work in stagnation! :’(

I don't understand your difficulty. Memory doesn't have to draw any boundaries: it's not like it can choose a different scope or perspective than that which is given by the conditions in which its bearer finds itself. To put it simply, you can't have memories of what you (your body, for lack of a better term) haven't experienced.

The post on memory which you've quoted was a response to John who, at that time, was tentatively suggesting an approach that would make memory the condition of (self) identity, rather than the other way around.. Responding to this line of thought (which he has since qualified and elaborated) I suggested that this would imply a kind of circularity. "You can't have memories of what you haven't experienced" sums up this circularity nicely. If we preclude the idea of a self which pre-exists memory - of any self that isn't created through memory - then memory would have to indeed create its own boundaries.

Of course if we futz with the meaning of 'you' such that it refers, unconventionally, to a body rather than a person, things change. You've gestured in this direction. Which could be a fine direction to go in. It would provide precisely the lower-level continuity that I claimed would be necessary for a psycho-social construct. Could you expand on what you mean? (again, your use of 'you' to mean 'your body' is certainly not conventional.)

No, your thought experiment is not extraordinary. It is indeed so ordinary that it does not present a problem that you think it does.

Would you be willing to sum up the problem presented as you see it? I'd like to measure my intent against the actual effect, in order to revise and tweak.

Totally with you on that. I have been participating in a thread over on Ed Feser's blog about the 'pre-existence of the soul' which is canvassing some of these issues.

I do not mean some kind of self-body identity (a la mind-brain identity). I do mean to naturalize selfhood though, which intention I thought would be obvious. Therefore, I do not start from a blank slate in Descartes's fashion, because I don't think that is possible or sensible - as illustrated by Descartes's own failure. Likewise, the silliness of the OP to which this thread was a followup was to pretend that we know nothing about the world except for the fact that something referred to as "I" came into existence at some point and persisted for some time. If we truly knew nothing else, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to suppose that such events could have occurred multiple times instead of just once. But speculating in near-total ignorance is fruitless: all we are warranted in doing is acknowledging such bare logical possibilities. We can't go any further from there. We can't even say whether one possibility is more or less plausible than another.

No, I start off as an unapologetic naturalist and I do not intend to build all of my background knowledge and assumptions from scratch. Some things I take for granted, such as the existence of an organism, a self-sustaining homeostatic system. This I presume to be the substratum upon which consciousness operates, and where the sense and understanding of "self" emerges. Memory would then be an important factor, a biological and psychological mechanism that is crucial to shaping this sense of sustained "self" collocated with the body.

Would you be willing to sum up the problem presented as you see it? I'd like to measure my intent against the actual effect, in order to revise and tweak. — csalisbury

The "problem" is that there is supposedly a question that cries out for an explanation: why do I care about something that is going to happen to me in the future?

The "problem" is that there is supposedly a question that cries out for an explanation: why do I care about something that is going to happen to me in the future?

Yeah, I wasn't as clear I ought to have been (and I lost sight myself of my initial strategy.) It's not that the fear of impending torture is a 'problem' itself - the idea is to elicit an explanation of why we should be afraid of such a thing that wouldn't apply equally to a fear of life after death.

And it looks like you have an answer (your intent to naturalize has indeed been obvious, I note neutrally) - self-identity is supervenient on bodily identity (& extrapolating: since the body loses its identity after death, there's nothing left to supervene on.) It will be my body that is tortured; there will be no body after I die.

Is that fair?

I think I am beginning to understand your question now. Another angle might be to question if we knew that after we die we will be reborn into hellish poverty or a war zone, should we not be fearful of this, as we are fearful of being caned?

My intuition is that bodily integrity plays a visceral role in such possibilities. If I know, or just fear that I will be reborn into a war zone, I am not all that concerned in this life, because my corporeality is removed, or seperate from that reality. In that reality, it might not actually be me, or not the me I am now.

Yeah, I wasn't as clear I ought to have been (and I lost sight myself of my initial strategy.) It's not that the fear of impending torture is a 'problem' itself - the idea is to elicit an explanation of why we should be afraid of such a thing that wouldn't apply equally to a fear of life after death. — csalisbury

OK, but what kind of an explanation are we looking for? If we are looking for a motivation (why ought we be afraid), that's one thing. If we are looking for a "third-person" explanation of the phenomenon - that's another thing, or rather a number of things, depending on the chosen framework for the explanation - psychology, evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, non-naturalist metaphysics.

And it looks like you have an answer (your intent to naturalize has indeed been obvious, I note neutrally) - self-identity is supervenient on bodily identity (& extrapolating: since the body loses its identity after death, there's nothing left to supervene on.) It will be my body that is tortured; there will be no body after I die.

Is that fair? — csalisbury

Not quite. I proposed earlier that self-identity is a mental construct, partly innate, partly a product of culture, personal development and even preference. As such, it doesn't have to strictly supervene on the body, the way, say, cognition presumably supervenes on the neurophysiology of the nervous system. However, the body does provide a natural preexisting "boundary" (as you put it) that most ordinary conceptions of self-identity respect at least in part. Certainly, the raw feeling of the continuity of self that we experience moment-to-waking moment goes along with the normal functioning of the body with its given boundaries. But the more abstract intellectual concept of self-identity can and often does extend beyond that boundary - in the hypothesized afterlife, for instance, or a reincarnation. Or sometimes in other directions as well: the ancestors, the tribe or the country, or even the world.

OK, but what kind of an explanation are we looking for? If we are looking for a motivation (why ought we be afraid), that's one thing. If we are looking for a "third-person" explanation of the phenomenon - that's another thing, or rather a number of things, depending on the chosen framework for the explanation - psychology, evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, non-naturalist metaphysics.

It's much simpler than all this - It's me who is going to be tortured, not someone else. Motivations come after - that it's me who will be tortured is the presupposition on which any other motivation must be founded. I'm not fishing for an account of fear (of distant events) but of that identity or mineness which must ground any such fear.

Not quite. I proposed earlier that self-identity is a mental construct, partly innate, partly a product of culture, personal development and even preference. As such, it doesn't have to strictly supervene on the body, the way, say, cognition presumably supervenes on the neurophysiology of the nervous system. However, the body does provide a natural preexisting "boundary" (as you put it) that most ordinary conceptions of self-identity respect at least in part. Certainly, the raw feeling of the continuity of self that we experience moment-to-waking moment goes along with the normal functioning of the body with its given boundaries. But the more abstract intellectual concept of self-identity can and often does extend beyond that boundary - in the hypothesized afterlife, for instance, or a reincarnation. Or sometimes in other directions as well: the ancestors, the tribe or the country, or even the world.

But you do think cognition supervenes on the neurophysiology of the nervous system and an 'abstract intellectual concept of self-identity' seems thoroughly cognitive to me. I'm going to assume that you think there would cease to be any such abstract concepts in the absence of cognition (correct me if I'm wrong). So I think the answer I've ascribed to you is still good. There's no me without my body. It's my body that's tortured. There's no body left after I die.