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Originally Posted by theapportioner
Look, if you change a few subatomic particles in you you are still human. If you do the same to your neurons it won't make one damn difference to your memories.
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I see a profound difference in saying that sub-atomic models (a human invention) REPRESENT ourselves and that these same representations ARE ourselves and, usually, I have more faith in science than theology. I just have a hard time accepting a scientific model's superiority over that of dynamic life ... and I'll attempt to explain this in my awkward, sub-par, amateur-philosopher type way. I'm working off-the-cuff here, so give me, if not a break, at least constructive crtiticism.
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Hume’s claim is that no one ever perceives his or herself. The self whose existence seems certain is not to be met with in experience. Hume writes:
“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I
always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.” (Hume, Treatise, Book I, Part IV, Section 6.)
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At best, our view of the sub-atomic world is based on scientific models, scientific theories that have been proven exhautively and technology that we developed. Nonetheless, not direct empiric perception. Could we be fooling ourselves with our own pride?
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Hume’s claim must be understood within the context of his strict empiricism. He is claiming that he has no idea of the self. His basis for this claim is that he has no sense impression or perception of the self. Why does it follow that he has no idea of the
self? It follows given Hume’s copy principle: every idea must be derived from a sense impression or perception.1 This principle is characteristic of Hume’s radical empiricism, his belief that all knowledge must ultimately derive from the senses and
our mental operations on sense impressions.
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I am not so naive as to accept that microscopes do not supply an enhanced view of sense perception but must admit to a lingering hesistancy in accepting all atomic theory and anything that reaches too far beyond the light of empiricism, yet I do try to keep an open mind and am, to this point, open-minded and willing to indlude the metaphisical as well as science into the fold.
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Hume’s claim must be understood within the context of his strict empiricism. He is claiming that he has no idea of the self. His basis for this claim is that he has no sense impression or perception of the self. Why does it follow that he has no idea of the
self? It follows given Hume’s copy principle: every idea must be derived from a sense impression or perception.1 This principle is characteristic of Hume’s radical empiricism, his belief that all knowledge must ultimately derive from the senses and
our mental operations on sense impressions.
Hume’s ideas influenced later ‘scientific’ thinkers, such as Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799) and Ernst Mach (1838-1916). Georg Lichtenberg is a fairly minor figure inwestern philosophy, but he is famous for his challenge to Descartes’ cogito. His challenge to the cogito may be paraphrased as follows:
‘We should not say ‘I think’, but ‘Thinking is going on now’.
1 For the term ‘copy principle’ and more details on Hume’s epistemology, see Don Garrett, Cognition
and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1997).
The justification for this dramatic claim could be Hume’s idea that one never does perceive oneself: one just perceives more and more perceptions.
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Even accepting advances in sub-atomic theory, I still see these as more and more in-depth, perceptions of ourselves, assuming these sub-atomic particles ARE "ourselves". The more in-depth we go, these perceptions are more apt to become perceptions of perceptions ... building theory upon theory but increasingly beyond the realm of empiricism.
More later as I attempt to compose a more coherent thought about what I'm trying to say with more research.
... nevermind. :/
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