. . .

DEFINE “YOU”

If I put your ashes in an urn, is that you?

If I put your dead body in a casket is that you?

If I read your written words, isthat you?

whenever you use the word ‘is’ you are engaged in a self or other deception, because it means “i don’t know how this exists”. When you use the word ‘you’ as referencing the physical body, or ‘you’ as the potential interaction of mind and body, or ‘you’ as the acting interaction between mind and body…. which are you asking?

Because ‘is’ and ‘you’ questions aren’t philosophical questions, their grammatical errors positioned as a pretense of philosophical sophisms.

I consist of the consequences of the continuous operation of my body, and in particular my brain.

the written word consist only of potential experience until

a mind puts it into motion by reading it. the body consists of biomass until a brain causes it to move. A brain consists of reactive nerves, until the that experence we call mind emerges from the continuous persistence of states.

Just as we cannot observe the frames of video, we cannot observe the cycles of changes in state of the mind, and so we ‘average them’ through the persistence of stimuli across cycles.

We do have a sense of self awareness that functions pre-cognitively, and can best be understood as that moment you awake in the dark and are unaware of your circumstances.

It is this awareness of changes in state and like and dislikes that is ‘I’? Well, that is governed by genes. Is that ‘I’? Or am ‘i’ the combination of those genetic biases, that very simple state monitor, or at the other end, am ‘I’ that combination of body and memory in motion that you experience as a set of contsant relations ‘me?’.

To the mentally ill person ‘i’ consists of a body in its current state. To the observer ‘i’ consists of a set of patterns of behavior given the experiences. To others (norm, law), ‘i’ consists of the rights and obligations to the host body.

etc.