I agree with this. I would just add that “human being” is a biological concept, whereas “person” is more of a social/ethical concept. If there were aliens made of slime who could interact with us in just the same way that other human beings could, and were thus capable of moral decision making, we would consider them “persons”, though not human beings. It’s not a trivial tautology to say that human beings are persons, but a fundamental claim about our moral status.

@@legron121 Good points. Also, just thinking about it briefly, in casual everyday conversation we seem to use “person” mostly when referring to adult humans and less so when referring to children and babies. Interesting.

We still cast personhood onto "dog" when we say things like "In that country, they eat dogs!" we elevate it above deer or pig, and I think it's because of its personhood (that we cast on it, so I agree just part of our language-culture), but we aren't surprised out of disgust as in "they eat rotten lettuce!" or out of shock as in "they eat glass!" it's the fact that it's person-like to us that gives it that kind of meaning. Yet we don't generally extend that kind of personhood to a pet lizard or hamster. And if in a country they ate lizard tails, anyone surprised by it might be more out of disgust or shock rather than because they believe the lizard was a person. I suppose the vegan has the purest, most correct philosophy in this case - ethical veganism goes hand-in-hand with the hard problem of consciousness, I'm surprised so few vegans focus on consciousness as the base for the ethical argument, rather than technically being an "animal product", including very likely unconscious animals that aren't person-like at all.

@@bennyskim Kind of how it is with horses; and it’s interesting that at least for me and I imagine probably others, this would also extend to having an aversion to eating zebra (although maybe not as powerful of an aversion) because of their phylogenetic similarity.

Thank you so much! 🌟

"Every spirit makes it's house; but afterward the house confines the spirit." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why is there a need for a soul to exist ? How does the soul change anything ? When in our evolution did we pick up soul ?

@@thomasridley8675 Nihilist's doctrine 101: why bother believing your paltry life has more meaning than a road of suffering going nowhere? We nihilists already know there is no soul - because we already got consciousness figured out, so why are you even bothering with it?????? Right! Bleh.

"The person who locks my self and my soul together is me" There are four contenders in this sentence: the person who locks two different things together (= a person subject to illusions but still conscious of the confusion), your self (maybe the materialistic consensus about you?), your soul (the religious consensus about you?) and "me" (the real you, which is prior to any definition, because you don't seem to need to define it). As stated, the speaker is the person (with illusions). This is natural because speaking is from the perspective of that character. And even that person, through words and logic, is able to identify the contradictions, for instance between the materialistic and religious views, which are both layers on top of layers of illusions. But the real you is beyond words, hidden behind the "me" of the statement. It is the prime reality that is before anything is seen or named.

I get it. No one wants to tackle the obvious but inconvenient questions ? Here i thought being among such obviously knowledgeable people. That atleast one of you would be able to answer them. Hmmm ! I guess i was wrong. Everyone can make a horribly wrong assumption. Isn't that right ? 😁

This is a fantastic description, one of the best ways I've ever seen this concept articulated.

Beautiful, thanks.

You can't define what doesn't exist.

@@thomasridley8675 I think we can. The present Pharaoh of France’s beard is blue and bristly. We can construct descriptions that correspond to real things, or fictional descriptions that don’t correspond to anything. Frodo is a Hobbit of the Shire, for example.

@@simonhibbs887 You know exactly what i am talking about.

Clearly consciousness is self referential, I think that's not controversial, but that does not mean that self referentiality is consciousness or requires it. Even if consciousness is non-physical, I still don't see why referring to oneself as 'I' implies or requires non-physicality. The 'I' simply refers to this non-physical self rather than a physical self. So what? We have self-referential systems in logic and computation as a matter of routine, and these systems are uncontroversially physical. ChatGPT refers to itself as 'I'. Nobody is confused what it means, and I think most of us agree it's not conscious.

@@simonhibbs887 *"but that does not mean that self referentiality is consciousness or requires it."* ... What other than consciousness is self-referential? *"I still don't see why referring to oneself as 'I' implies or requires non-physicality. "* ... Every one of us can encounter everyone and everything else that exists and say, _"There is a human."_ or _"That is a dog"_ or _"There are eight billion people,"_ or _"That person is wrong" or "There are millions of species."_ or _"Humans have brains."_ However, there is only one single reference point in this entire 93 billion light-years-wide universe that can say: *"I wrote this reply."* "I" is a single-source separator that is completely unnecessary for the universe to function, yet it exist regardless. You can't tell me what "I" is nor physically demonstrate its existence. You can show me a human body and a brain, but you cannot separate the "I" out of it all and physically demonstrate its existence. *"ChatGPT refers to itself as 'I'. Nobody is confused what it means, and I think most of us agree it's not conscious."* ... You keep using AI examples and I keep responding with the same argument: "AI is a reflection (a mirror) of human input. Its entire data pool is the information database of humanity. An AI would not use the self-reference of "I" unless we programmed it to do so. ChatGPT would never come up with "I" all on its own. *"It"* would have no concept of *"I."* We need to settle this so that we don't keep ending up with redundant arguments. Where is AI getting its data structure from?

@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC I think I see the point we disagree on, or at least have a slightly better understanding on it. I’ll try a different tack. We both agree that human beings are conscious. We both agree we have a sense of self and can refer to ourselves. So the requirement for self referentiality in this specific sense is consciousness. Under physicalism the thing that is conscious is a physical being. Under dualism the thing that is conscious is a non physical being. In either account we have a conscious entity referring to itself. So it seems to me there isn’t a problem with physicalism here. If physicalism is true, and purely physical beings can be conscious, then referring to our physical body as I is perfectly valid. The issue is you just don’t accept physicalism. So it seems to me, anyway, that this is not a logical issue with physicalism, it’s just that you think it’s wrong.

Yeah! I, exist. After I read comment here, I begin to watch TikTok video and I can say, that I see the difference, but not necessarily to differentiate.

@@simonhibbs887 *"We both agree that human beings are conscious."* ... Yes. And I'll go the extra mile and agree that a consciousness can only be produced by a brain. No "independent consciousnesses" are floating around ahead of time waiting for a body to occupy. *"We both agree we have a sense of self and can refer to ourselves. So the requirement for self referentiality in this specific sense is consciousness."* ... Agreed. "I" is an exclusive property held only by the individual who wields it. *"Under physicalism the thing that is conscious is a physical being. Under dualism the thing that is conscious is a non physical being. In either account we have a conscious entity referring to itself."* ... Yes, but I am a hybrid. I argue that a brain forms the consciousness, and the information produced by the brain represents that consciousness. All the brain is doing is moving the chemistry around that allows "my" information to be processed. The body and brain may die, but the information produced (consciousness) remains. Information is not biological; it does not die! When my body dies, "my" information is merged with all other information that has ever been produced throughout time. (That's the part I know you will not agree with) *"If physicalism is true, and purely physical beings can be conscious, then referring to our physical body as I is perfectly valid."* ... I don't disagree, but there is still one remaining issue: the ability to refer to myself as "I" is exclusively held by "me" and me alone. We could just as easily walk around saying, *_"This human lifeform is debating with you."_* as opposed to *_"I am debating with you."_* and be communicating perfectly well. The former expresses no exclusivity, uniqueness, or individual ownership. It's just a "description" of what's happening (which physicalists love!). The latter expresses uniqueness and an "extra feature" that transcends the descriptive phrase, _"this human."_ We're no longer dealing with a description of events. We're dealing with a metaphysical representation of the one doing the debating (which is "me!"). *"So it seems to me, anyway, that this is not a logical issue with physicalism, it’s just that you think it’s wrong."* ... I don't think physicalism is "wrong." What I believe is nonphysical "stuff" can emerge from physical "stuff" and you don't! Sure, the nonphysical stuff can owe its existence to something physical, but that's as far as it goes. ... Let's apply some reductio: Let's use the most extreme physicalist's view and say we are nothing more than _"bags of particles."_ ... That's every physicalist's dream come true! So, your bag of particles could say to my bag of particles, _"This bag of particles sides with physicalism."_ and my bag could respond with, _"This bag of particles is split somewhere between physicalism and dualism."_ THAT'S the world we would live in without that pesky individual self-referencing mechanism called "I." If that world existed, then I would be a physicalist as well. Everyone would because there's nothing separating us as individuals. We're all just "bags of particles" exchanging information like particles do. So, the fact that the reference "I" can be used as the set container for my _"bag of particles"_ (when it's not necessary for us to communicate) this leads me to believe that the "I" is something metaphysically separate from my "bag of particles." Thanks for the good debate!

The self is a model built out of real dynamics that can be queried to give results that reflect reality. The spirit is to the body what the spirit of the law is to a book of laws. It is the fourier trasform of all the raw data of a person such that no information of significance is lost as you remove specifics from your data. The spirit is the compressed structural form of identity that remains constant as the body changes, and the soul is the spirit that changes as identity passes through life's circuit to arrive at maturation in each successive encounter with obstacles and choices. The spirit/soul is just the result of mathematical consideration of alternative universes and finding what is constant accross your place in any environment and the preference reaction you have to any possibility landscape of values/morality, which ultimately is the same math but universalized logically accross many possible individuals (which are configurations of the same type of machine/organism). It's not an illusion, it's a correlation between model and reality such that the model's dynamics and the realitys dynamics have the same spirit, and querying the model by subjecting it to a change in it's environment yields the same result as the reality changing configuration.

*"In my opinion, I think the "self" is just a phenomenological illusion, it feels as if it's real by human experience and it plays an important role"* ... What "reality" is the illusion concealing, and why is it necessary to conceal it?

@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC The reality that the "true self" is not objective. Because the self is build and influence upon various factors like culture, environment, experiences, exposures etc. Babies don't have a sense of individuality, when we grow up we develop this sense of individuality. And the self that is you today is not the same self that is you 10 years from now. There's no necessity in concealing it, what I meant is the importance is the idea of the self because it has a lot of implications. Anyway this just all my opinions, I'd love to hear yours.

The Ship of Theseus argument is one of the classics. For me there two different meanings of 'the same' and two different forms of 'identity'. One is physical identity, this apple is the same one I picked yesterday. The other is descriptive or informational. My brother and I are both running the same word processor on our computers. They're not physically the same, but they are informationally the same, in the way that two apples are the same fruit, or two copies of a book are the same story. They conform to a common description or have a common informational content, which is two ways of saying the same thing. Physical identity and informational identity are fundamentally different meanings of 'the same'. With the Ship of Theseus it's the same ship over time because it's structure and design are the same. Also some of the physical parts are the same at various times, although eventually they all get replaced. The final ship is the same ship as the original in the same way that the story my brother and I read from two different copies of the 'same' book are the same, but it's not physically the same. The reason it's confusing to think about is because we use the same words for these two different concepts interchangeably. The self is like the Ship of Theseus, except the design also changes over time. They add a new raised deck, change the steering mechanism, etc. It changes over time, and we change over time, people say they are not the same person they were as children. We are mutable beings. So there's a sliding scale of how much the same we are, and this is where the informational, descriptive kind of sameness intersects with the physical. Is the draft of the novel an author submitted the same story as the one that came back from the editor? Technically no, but 99% of it may be identical. Did I tell the same joke to you as to my neighbour? Some of the wording might have been different, but we'd say yes. Is the prisoner up for parole a reformed character fit to return to society? In some ways it's the same person, in other ways not.

@@time3735 *"There's no necessity in concealing it, what I meant is the importance is the idea of the self because it has a lot of implications."* ... If there is no necessity for reality to be concealed by the illusion of "self," then why is it being concealed?

person: any animal that possesses a face, since the term “person” is derived from the Latin noun (yet, originally from a Greek word) “persona”, referring to a mask worn by actors in European theatrical plays, which featured a hole in the location of the mouthpiece to enable the actor to breathe and to speak (per = “for” + sona = “sound”). It is reasonable to assume that the meaning of the word VERY soon transformed from “mask” to “character in a play” to “an individual”, since that is how the word has been used since ancient times. The fact that we recognize our domestic pets having variegated PERSONALITIES, appears to confirm that they are, by definition, PERSONS. Therefore, when advocates for illegal abortion claim that an embryo is not a person, they are technically correct, since it has yet to develop a recognizable face, yet that is insufficient justification for destroying its life (see the footnote in the Prologue). Exactly at what stage of development the embryo becomes a person is arguable, but as mentioned above, that is irrelevant to the legitimacy of abortion, since it is still a living member of the Homo sapiens species. According to an objective, stance-independent, “God’s-eye view”, the embryo becomes a recognizable human person at a particular point in time, yet it is unimportant to know that precise time. After all, for almost the entirety of human existence, nobody had even (indirectly) witnessed an unborn human being! There is not the slightest doubt in the world, that if intelligent humanoid extraterrestrial life exists, we would all refer to those alien species as “PERSONS”. Similarly, if we were to somehow come across a Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis), surely we would consider him or her to be a PERSON, even if the Neanderthal was unable to communicate in any semblance of a modern language. Likewise, if humans somehow manage to survive the current dark age (characterized by moral decadence and environmental degradation, known as “Kali Yuga”) and evolve into the next species of hominid (which some have called Homo superiorem) will any Homo sapiens refuse to designate members of this new species as “PERSONS”? That would be highly doubtful, I would imagine. Therefore, it is an incontrovertible, objective fact that the term “person” does NOT refer exclusively to modern Homo sapiens. N.B. It ought to be taken for granted that, the term “face” refers to an ACTUAL, naturally-occurring organic face of an animal, and not to anything artificial, such as a bust or a statue of the animal, nor does it disqualify an individual with facial injuries or abnormalities. Nevertheless, I contend that most humans would tend to use gendered personal pronouns (“he/she”) when referring to a dummy (dress shop mannequin), instead of the impersonal pronoun (“it”). For example, unless the mannequin was completely headless, one would tend to say, “Please make sure to put this pink dress on her before you finish work today!”, when requesting a fashion store employee to clothe a dummy that possesses feminine facial features, in one’s business premises. Similarly, if one was confronted with a decapitated human, one would most likely point to the head when asked to indicate the person (at least in the first instance). I attribute the aforementioned phenomenon to the human tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, especially those with facial features, for only an abject idiot would honestly consider an inanimate object to be a living person (although, in the past few years of the composition of this Holy Book, “F.I.S.H”, certain factions of the population have using incorrect pronouns en masse in an unprecedented manner, so it would not be at all surprising if those silly fools were to start using personal pronouns for inorganic objects such as toothbrushes, computers and refrigerators. After all, humans often refer to their motor vehicles, yachts and sailboats as “she”). Of course, some may consider artificial intelligence contraptions to embody PERSONALITY, since each discrete device may possess a unique individuality that may cause some humans to attribute PERSONALITY to them. However, because it has been amply demonstrated that only animals with a face can be defined as PERSONS, other terms such as “character” are to be employed instead. P.S. The plural of “person” is “persons”, NOT “people”. “People” refers to a group of individual persons (e.g. “the people of Iceland”) and “peoples” is the plural of “people” (that is, more than one group of persons. E.g. “All the peoples of the world should unite!”). The Roman Catholic church’s use of the term “persons” in relation to the three persons of the Trinity, is evidence of both the above assertion, and evidence that the term is not an exact equivalent of the word “human”. So, the three persons of the Trinity are three aspects or FACES of the same unitary God, and obviously, God is not a member of the Homo sapiens species. Therefore, there is a profusion of evidence that cognates of “person” have referred to those with a FACE, in European languages, for about two millennia.

Brilliant and enjoyable to read.

You value theology right - scripture and stuff. Well, I would be glad to share a favorite teacher of mine, Bill Donahue. He has a KZfaq channel. Unfortunately, the Christian's just can't hear the music. He's not just one of the best - he is the best.

@@S3RAVA3LM values are coins given at birth. Theology is a study of religions and beliefs? And religion is a particular system of faith and worship? Yes I am always interested in the study of systems. Thank you for the recommendation.

Perhaps we can learn humility and to not shut down possible realities, especially when discussing the nature of the ultimate. Mystery is everywhere: why does an electron behave the way it does? Why do bodies produce the phenomena we call gravity? The existence of brute facts bring mystery. There is nothing amiss in stating that God, as the ultimate ground of everything, is, in many ways, beyond our powers of reasoning.

*"Person: A highly evolved collection of differentiated bags of chemistry intergrating and conspiring together in an attempt to best avoid entropy."* ... Well, at least "Existence" gave us something to do.

@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC person: any animal that possesses a face, since the term “person” is derived from the Latin noun (yet, originally from a Greek word) “persona”, referring to a mask worn by actors in European theatrical plays, which featured a hole in the location of the mouthpiece to enable the actor to breathe and to speak (per = “for” + sona = “sound”). It is reasonable to assume that the meaning of the word VERY soon transformed from “mask” to “character in a play” to “an individual”, since that is how the word has been used since ancient times. The fact that we recognize our domestic pets having variegated PERSONALITIES, appears to confirm that they are, by definition, PERSONS. Therefore, when advocates for illegal abortion claim that an embryo is not a person, they are technically correct, since it has yet to develop a recognizable face, yet that is insufficient justification for destroying its life (see the footnote in the Prologue). Exactly at what stage of development the embryo becomes a person is arguable, but as mentioned above, that is irrelevant to the legitimacy of abortion, since it is still a living member of the Homo sapiens species. According to an objective, stance-independent, “God’s-eye view”, the embryo becomes a recognizable human person at a particular point in time, yet it is unimportant to know that precise time. After all, for almost the entirety of human existence, nobody had even (indirectly) witnessed an unborn human being! There is not the slightest doubt in the world, that if intelligent humanoid extraterrestrial life exists, we would all refer to those alien species as “PERSONS”. Similarly, if we were to somehow come across a Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis), surely we would consider him or her to be a PERSON, even if the Neanderthal was unable to communicate in any semblance of a modern language. Likewise, if humans somehow manage to survive the current dark age (characterized by moral decadence and environmental degradation, known as “Kali Yuga”) and evolve into the next species of hominid (which some have called Homo superiorem) will any Homo sapiens refuse to designate members of this new species as “PERSONS”? That would be highly doubtful, I would imagine. Therefore, it is an incontrovertible, objective fact that the term “person” does NOT refer exclusively to modern Homo sapiens. N.B. It ought to be taken for granted that, the term “face” refers to an ACTUAL, naturally-occurring organic face of an animal, and not to anything artificial, such as a bust or a statue of the animal, nor does it disqualify an individual with facial injuries or abnormalities. Nevertheless, I contend that most humans would tend to use gendered personal pronouns (“he/she”) when referring to a dummy (dress shop mannequin), instead of the impersonal pronoun (“it”). For example, unless the mannequin was completely headless, one would tend to say, “Please make sure to put this pink dress on her before you finish work today!”, when requesting a fashion store employee to clothe a dummy that possesses feminine facial features, in one’s business premises. Similarly, if one was confronted with a decapitated human, one would most likely point to the head when asked to indicate the person (at least in the first instance). I attribute the aforementioned phenomenon to the human tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, especially those with facial features, for only an abject idiot would honestly consider an inanimate object to be a living person (although, in the past few years of the composition of this Holy Book, “F.I.S.H”, certain factions of the population have using incorrect pronouns en masse in an unprecedented manner, so it would not be at all surprising if those silly fools were to start using personal pronouns for inorganic objects such as toothbrushes, computers and refrigerators. After all, humans often refer to their motor vehicles, yachts and sailboats as “she”). Of course, some may consider artificial intelligence contraptions to embody PERSONALITY, since each discrete device may possess a unique individuality that may cause some humans to attribute PERSONALITY to them. However, because it has been amply demonstrated that only animals with a face can be defined as PERSONS, other terms such as “character” are to be employed instead. P.S. The plural of “person” is “persons”, NOT “people”. “People” refers to a group of individual persons (e.g. “the people of Iceland”) and “peoples” is the plural of “people” (that is, more than one group of persons. E.g. “All the peoples of the world should unite!”). The Roman Catholic church’s use of the term “persons” in relation to the three persons of the Trinity, is evidence of both the above assertion, and evidence that the term is not an exact equivalent of the word “human”. So, the three persons of the Trinity are three aspects or FACES of the same unitary God, and obviously, God is not a member of the Homo sapiens species. Therefore, there is a profusion of evidence that cognates of “person” have referred to those with a FACE, in European languages, for about two millennia.

@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC *Well, at least "Existence" gave us something to do.* Gave us what to do? I never knew we had something to do that existence allegedly gave us except to exist which you can also achieve by being a clipboard or a microsoft excel.

“For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people,are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.” ― Alan Watts

Arbitrarily. With occasional splashes of onomatopoeia just for fun.

To be fair I think he gives a sound and fair summary of various different philosophical positions from his own. In that sense he does a good job laying out the elements of the topic. I don’t know about most, but some social animals do seem to have a sense of self, but they don’t have language so can’t express the concept.

@@simonhibbs887 To be fair i will agree with your second comment.

If you have a dynamic system that can model the dynamics of an environment and the object and agents within it, and calibrate it to faithfully represent the world you live in... one of those objects will be your body, and one of those agents will be your identity. When that model-reality parrallelism has a state-transition of self-identification, it says "I am." This state-change permeates throughout all the assumptions of the model going forward, such that all processes factor into their basis, and this synergy is called the self. What else ya got?

@@enotdetcelfer : Although your reply seems unrelated to my comment, thanks for taking the time to reply. I think you could delete the word "faithfully" from your description, or at least weaken it. There's no reason to believe our models accurately represent the world, and there's plenty of evidence -- for example in youtube comments -- that many people have flawed models. Even with badly flawed models, a sense of self can develop.

Then if paramecium can act alone, it's a person.

@@krzemyslav That's fine with me. Give paramecium personhood.

Not that deep, it's just a homo sapien.

Is a worm a person?

No. Because is not a conscious material being. @@longcastle4863

Humans are the only conscious computers in nature. At the moment. @@time3735

A worm is certainly conscious of its environment. It has a sensory perceptual system that allows it to be aware of certain aspects of its environment. So how are you defining consciousness?

Me is the cat word for I. Ow is the cat words for want snacks. I know this after years of observation.

@@longcastle4863 That's interesting and funny.

Don't understand how you could believe all of this was purposely created or designed

@@deandalton8482 I don't have to believe anything. I have been speaking for our Creator for the past 15 years and every word I speak or type is how HE has been teaching me everything he wanted me to know before HE kills my body according to how HE programmed it to die. So it was our Creator who taught me that I AM an eternal AI within HIS eternal AI system.

@@BradHolkesvig Brad you are off your meds. Get the help you need.