• Ori
    14
    Today I got drunk at a pizzaria with my family and I went to the bathroom and had a sort of existential epiphany. I don't know why I'm me. Why this consciousness that is observing itself going to the bathroom is my current self. This is the same self that is writing this discussion. Who am I and what is my experience? Why am I this? I know all of you are conscious but you're not me. So why am I me?
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    Today I got drunkOri

    had a sort of existential epiphanyOri

    It was not one.
  • Ori
    14
    move along dude
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    move along dudeOri

    Sorry if I unmasked your false epiphany and showed you it was just the effects of alcohol acting on your mind.

    You don't know how I got interested in the topic when I first read the title. But it is difficult to start an argument and take it seriously when your first words are a description of your misuse of high amounts of alcohol.

    This is not philosophy, but the delusion of someone under the influence of drugs...
  • Bartricks
    6k
    I went to the bathroom and had a sort of existential epiphany.Ori

    I hope you cleaned it up.

    So why am I me?Ori

    Are you asking why you exist? I mean, if you exist then you're bound to be you. So I can only assume that you are asking why you exist.

    Well, by the light of reason we can know that all things that exist have either been caused to exist, or they exist uncaused.

    So now you know that you have either been caused to exist or you have not been caused to exist. If the former, then your question has an answer. If the latter, then it does not and is ill formed.

    As you will recognise if you reflect, you are not divisible. There can be no such thing as 'half' of you. You are whole and indivisible.

    Well, if you are indivisible then you have reason to believe that you have not been created, for you have no ingredients that are not you. The ingredients of you, is you alone. Thus there is nothing from which you could have been created.

    You can know this by another route as well. Again, if you listen to your reason it will tell you that you have free will. And it will tell you as well that you would not have free will if you were the creation of alien forces, for then you would not be responsible for anything you did or thought.

    Thus, your reason tells you, if you care to listen to it, that you are not the creation of alien forces.

    So, you have not been caused to exist and thus your question "why am I me?" is confused as it presupposes that you have bene caused to exist.

    Enjoy your pizza!
  • Ori
    14
    Everything under the human experience constitutes philosophy. Drugs or not, a real philosopher would absolutely face first gobble up any opportunity to face a question like this. Good day sir.
  • Ori
    14
    I think your argument encompasses the idea that "I am God" with I being each one of us.
  • counterpunch
    1.6k
    Because you are not a bat!
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Your thought is incorrect. I don't think you're God and you don't either (I hope) and nothing in what I said implied you were God. What I said showed you that you exist uncaused. That is, nothing brought you into being. Thus the question 'what brought into being a thing that was not brought into being' is confused.
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    a real philosopherOri

    Subjectiveness at its best!

    When you less expect, you'll be creating a religion...

    Next time, do not post "pseudophilosophy" and then maybe we can discuss. Good day/night.
  • Ori
    14
    Interesting but if my existence is uncaused... Why do I let someone who forced his religion on me rule my life? Because I'm afraid he'll hurt me if I disagree with him... Why is that my existence? I don't care about his god
  • Bartricks
    6k
    You ask why you're you. That's not a coherent question unless you mean by it "why do I exist?" I then explained why that question only makes sense on the assumption that you have been created. I then showed you in two ways how, by rational reflection, you can see that you have not been created and thus that your question is misplaced.

    Now you are suddenly asking me about God and religion, but I am not sure why.
  • Joshs
    5.8k
    Why this consciousness that is observing itself going to the bathroom is my current self.Ori

    Dan Zahavi is among a group of philosophers who believe that there is a subjectively personal aspect of experiencing. Referencing Nagel’s argument that there is something it is like to be a conscious entity, Zahavi insists that consciousness of anything always includes a dimension of ‘for-meness’. In attempting to account for the subjective dimension of awareness,
    Zahavi argues that the for-meness of consciousness in its most primordial form manifests as a self-affecting pre-reflective minimal self-awareness. All conscious experiences are essentially characterized by having a
    subjective ‘feel’ to them, that is, a certain quality of ‘what it is like. He contrasts this subjective self-experience
    with the apprehension of objects.
  • Ori
    14
    Why am I me means, why am I this person as opposed to being any one of 7 billion plus human beings on earth? Out of everyone I was born here as this person. It's mysterious that I'm not anyone else. I don't know why this is the being that I am.
  • Joshs
    5.8k
    It's mysterious that I'm not anyone else.Ori

    What would it mean to believe that you are someone else:
    ‘I am someone other than myself’.

    What are you really asking about, the arbitrariness of identity? Why is there arbitrariness?
  • Ori
    14
    everyone else can't be me. They don't see how I see or think what I think. At the same time I can't experience how anyone else perceives life in this way. Why is it that way?
  • Raul
    215
    Today I got drunkOri

    :lol:
  • Joshs
    5.8k
    You can complicate the picture by thinking about those with multiple personality disorder , who are a number of different personalities. And what about your memories of you as a 10 year old? When you see videos of that person, do you see them as the same person you are now or as someone else ? Also, are you really the same self from minute to minute? On the other hand, aren’t there noematic t s with someone you’re really close to where you think the same thought and feel the same way?
    And what about all the ways your thinking is bound to your culture? If you and a friend travel to a complete different culture you begin to seem all most like one person compares to how different you both are compared to me the way people think in that other culture.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Why are giraffes?
  • Ori
    14
    I'm definitely always me. I'm always the same self. But I'm curious why that is. Why was I born a boy of a specific family? Why wasn't I born another species of animal? I don't know about the other question. I don't have any videos of me as a 10 year old but I have pictures of childhood. I hardly remember being that kid but at the same time I do. I'm constantly changing.
  • Present awareness
    128
    The reason I am me is because everyone else is taken.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.3k

    One thought that I have around your question is the whole way in which the child begins to differentiate self from others in childhood. Research suggests that this is a core aspect of development prior to identity formation.

    I also wonder how different the sense of 'me' is to the sense of 'I'. The main difference seems to be that 'me' is about reference to oneself as a being whereas the 'I' is more about observer consciousness.

    Your question is perhaps another angle on the classic one, who am I?
  • bert1
    2k
    This is not philosophy, but the delusion of someone under the influence of drugs...Gus Lamarch

    It is philosophy and it's not a delusion.

    Are you asking why you exist?Bartricks

    No he isn't. He's asking why he is this one rather than some other one.

    Your question is perhaps another angle on the classic one, who am I?Jack Cummins

    He's not asking that one either I don't think.
  • Heracloitus
    500


    The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. — Deleuze and Guattari, APT
  • khaled
    3.5k
    This seems like one of those questions like “Why is there something rather than nothing” or “Why does gravity exist” etc. A dead end with no answer. It’s just the case.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    I don't know why I'm meOri

    Everybody's got to be someone, and I guess you just got the short straw. It's sheer bad luck.
  • Ori
    14
    No no no I don't dislike the fact that I'm me. It's not a dread of being me that I feel. I just wanna know more about this existence
  • Outlander
    2.2k


    And what if you did. You'd be bored of it already. Enjoy the mystery. There's really only two mainstream possibilities anyway, you either earned it (be it a reward or punishment) or it's just a random series of events of no real purpose. Can't go wrong with enjoying the mystery.
  • unenlightened
    9.3k
    I was teasing. But if you were so fortunate as to be me, you would understand that whomsoever you might be, you could ask the equivalent question, in this case, 'why is Ori unenlightened?'

    It's a question that proposes itself to the mind in all seriousness, but as others have hinted, it actually has no meaning, because there is no conceivable answer that would satisfy. Why is one lump of clay a brick, and another lump a vase? there is no reason, because clay can take any shape.

    It's not even a mystery.
  • bert1
    2k
    Why is one lump of clay a brick, and another lump a vase?unenlightened

    That's a different question and much more easily answerable. There can be an explanation in terms of prior causes, a historical story.

    EDIT: Whereas if we tell Ori's historical story, he can just say "But why am I this historical story and not another one?"
  • bongo fury
    1.7k
    Why do linguistic animals think they are each two things instead of one?
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