Philosophy Now Forum

OuterLimits wrote: Don't be afraid of your neighbor not having sentience. It's perfectly natural.

I am sorry but I don't think I understand. Why would anyone be afraid of something like that?

Well, the problem is that self is only a mental state if it is created with brain. That is meaningless to say that your self experience anything since a mental state, self, cannot experience another mental state, other stuff. Again, you have got it completely backwards. The self is a perpetual ment...

In which case, the atman never was the self in the first place, temporal or otherwise. The self is the sum total of one's experiences. Without feelings or memories, there can be no experiences. So even if there is an atman, the self is obliterated at death. The atman plays no role of any kind whats...

OF course there is. If you didn't know that you are distinct from the tiger, you would stand there doing nothing. Why do you escape from the tiger? because you know that it is not you. How do you know that it is not you? because you can perceive your self. The self is a preservation mechanism of th...

The interpretations are in themselves not mental states. I was with you until this sentence. What do you take interpretations to be if not mental states? I believe that observation itself is not a mental state. You see a tree and recognize it as a tree, relate it to your psyche and then have some f...

Sthitapragya, it's tempting to think that eternity is a grasping at everlastingness. But immortality is the temporal self surviving body death. It's impossible for the scientific self to survive death. Atman ,unlike self, I suppose has no attributes, memories, or feelings so there is nothing that s...

There is not really any use for sense of self/self. You see a tiger then scape. Moreover, in (4) we are discussing the fact that that is the self who experiences certain things and this is problematic since self is a mental state too. OF course there is. If you didn't know that you are distinct fro...

Sthitapragya wrote: Belinda, it just makes more sense to believe that there are no such things as the atman or Brahman. But belief in atman -Brahman can morph into belief that every person has an eternal nature as well as a temporal nature. When temporal nature seems to be hopeless this belief then...

1) Materialism is a system of belief that claims that everything is made of matter or it is matter's state 2) The self is a brain state in materialism 3) Any subject matter turns into a brain state in order to be experienced 4) This means that the self (brain state) experiences another brain state ...

1) Materialism is a system of belief that claims that everything is made of matter or it is matter's state 2) The self is a brain state in materialism 3) Any subject matter turns into a brain state in order to be experienced 4) This means that the self (brain state) experiences another brain state ...

(Copy-paste XD) Suppose there is a killer, he has been in other sites in internet, and he has proved that he is a killer. His modus operandi is this: He moves to a city, then he looks for an "easy target", he is very carefull. When he kills someone, he takes a photo or steals something fr...

I agree with both Prothero and Sthitapragya. I am still trying to find a place for the concept of atman in view of the contradiction in the concept of atman as pointed out by Sthitapragya. I tentatively suggest that atman fits with the ability of humans to conceive of eternity, of eternal truths.Th...

bahman wrote: Scientific view cannot address the problem of life after death and non-scientific view has problem with the life after death either.

That is probably because if there was life after death, death would not be death, would it?

Of course the modern scientific view of the self is there is no "soul" (immortal, eternal, changeless) no atman. The self is instead a construct of the mind which depends on an intact memory and a functioning brain. Where does the "self" go when you die; it ceases to be when the...

This is a description and positive evaluation of old-established social customs, or what social anthropologists call ascribed status. Please consider the youth aged under 25 years who is better educated, more compassionate, less bigoted, and has wider experience of ways of life than some older pers...