How does selfness happen?

#11
Magical Realist Online
Everything's external. All of reality. The moment we become conscious of something, it becomes external or "other". And whatever is unconscious is internal. Externality is inherently phenomenal. Internality is inherently representative.

Quote:In everyday conversation contexts, the pronoun "I" is ultimately referring to "this body" because that public object is what's available to other observers (not the internal phenomenal affairs traditionally construed as belonging to an immaterial soul or whatever).

This common sense belief in the self as the body falls apart when we consider its public nature as necessarily being a thing or an itself. Even when discussed by others, the body is never attributed with a who status but only with a what status. And so it is always assumed as a thing, as an instrument used BY the self and belonging TO the self --to the invisible who or "I" everlurking in its depths. This is likely where the notion of the soul comes from.
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#12
Syne Offline
Yes, yes, we get it. You don't understand an internal locus of identity... like Derrida.
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#13
Magical Realist Online
Quote:Does empathy make a difference? Without empathy we might believe we are alone, special, unique whereas as with it we are just another member of a herd.

The recognition of sameness in the other does indeed bestow a certain commonality and collective participation to the self. In knowing the other as another instance of oneself, one easily believes oneself as being an instance of a group or abstract category. The "I" slips from being a "me" to being a "we", losing all sense of identity as a singular self in a sea of anonymous clones--mere representatives or members of that abstract category. When soldiers go to war they are trained to think like this. Comradery, teamwork, brotherhood, common nationality. An assimilated cog in a machine. And the enemy likewise becomes a mere abstract category--an evil collective of borgs or "they" that needs to be unquestionably destroyed. No more I's and you's. Just we and they.

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