A NEW BLOG FEATURE!
I’ve decided to try something new on the blog today. I’d like *your* view about something, your honest opinion based on serious expertise or complete non-expertise.
For this new feature, which I’m calling “What Do You Think?”, I will NOT be responding to comments/questions, I’ll simply be posting them, without making a reply, comment, question, or anything else to, so you can express yourself and have others can see your views. (As always, I will not be posting comments that are rude to others or irrelevant to the question – for example, castigations of particular politicians that many but not all of us may despise, on one side of the political chasm facing us or the other. [!]) Others of course can comment on your comment as they choose — and I hope they do. I’ll be listening in. For my own fun, education, and edification!
If this turns out to be a nice feature for the blog, I’ll do it again later.
Here is the issue that I would like your opinion on for this initial query. It’s literally a question of life and death.
As I understand it, scientists do not have a firm answer about how many cells are in the human body, but it’s an unbelievable number. Some say 30 trillion. (TRILLION!) Others 100 trillion Others… well, pick your multiple of trillions. It’s a lot.
Apart from the neurons in your cerebral cortex, all those trillions of cells regularly divide and die (at different rates depending on whether they are in your tail bone or your liver or you blood, etc.)– that is, new cells replace the old cells. After about ten years, your body cells are not the ones you had before.
So my questions are: in what sense are you the same person you were ten years ago? Literally? And what does it mean then to say that “you” are “you”? Aren’t you a different you now? If you’re not the same you, who are you? I realize the DNA remains the same, and cells are pretty much exact replicas. But they are not the *same* cells.
Surely that must mean your old you has died In my case, since I’m 65, it would mean that apart from a whole lot of neurons, I quite literally don’t have the same body I had in 2011 and that one was different from the one I had in 2001, which was different from the one I had in 1991… and so on. Yes, that’s already obvious from old photos. My first wife – high school sweetheart – used to say “I married a Greek God, but now I’m married to a Goddam Greek”…
But if my old body is dead, does it regret having died? Is it conscious of no longer existing? (OK, obviously not) What about when the whole thing dies?
The related reality is that none of my 30-100 trillion cells knows that it’s alive, even if I do. That too is worth pondering: how can I think, reason, regret, remember, and generally be conscious if none of my constituent parts does? Not even any of my neurons that apparently have been with me at birth knows I’m alive. My brain doesn’t but my mind does. Go figure. And so, when those neurons themselves also die, along with all the cells at actual death, why should I think that I will then regret or be upset about not existing?
I don’t feel that way when the other trillions of cells die; and none of my neurons that have already died (increasingly more every year, it seems) regrets having died. So what when they all do? If I already in a sense don’t exist, in that my body from ten years ago is now completely gone, and none of what is gone feels any physical pain, torment, pleasure, ecstasy, remorse, longing, or anything else, why should I think it’ll be any different when all of me goes in one foul swoop?
And when the neurons themselves do go, what’s left? Molecules, I guess.
Anyway, these are some of my morning questions. Tell me and everyone else what you think about any part of them.
Solving the problem of personal identity in 200 words…
When the whole body dies, the pattern the cells make is gone. We are not so much a collection of cells as a pattern of ingredients, a pattern that is maintained continuously through time. So that’s the difference between a single cell dying and another taking its place – the pattern is maintained – and cutting off an right, which may save you from Gehenna but will change the pattern irrevocably (for the moment, we’re working on it). Life is more of a pattern and a process than it is a collection of ingredients.
The neurons are the part of the pattern that maintain the pattern’s awareness of itself. That is where the “you” part is stored, which is why we value those cells more than those in the right hand. More precisely, there are certain structures that are vital to the “you” part which is why damage to the frontal lobes can change your personality in a way that damage to the occipital lobe does not. I recommend looking at Antonio d’Amasio’s “The feeling of what happens” for more on those special parts.
The first answer, and already fabulous – thank you.
I’d like to add something I was not able to get my mind around for quite some time.
Given there was some Star Trek like technology to transport a person by beaming…
Wouldn’t that mean, that the person is completely and wholly killed (each cell at once), while the pattern is send through the space and a copy of that “self” is reconstructed at the receiving point, that only “thinks” to be the very person. The former “self” is gone and the copy lives on. Given there was something like a soul and immaterial self – it would be ” killed” or “set free” the very millisecond the first person is “deconstructed” to be sent.
The “reconstructed copy” either won’t have this “soul” or a brand-new one.
So the remembering self will be dead immediately and just a copy (zombie) will come alive pretending being the former self (and truly believing it).
The opening question scares me quite literally “to death”. It might not be future – it might have already happened to me.
Ouch. (Zombie ouch).
We have a Greek saying that goes like this: “great minds meet each other” – I was thinking kind of the same thing a couple of hours ago: more specifically, I was thinking of an old girlfriend of mine I had lost contact with for almost a decade (and a decade in our case is a pretty long time, since we are both 33!), and she recently found me on Instagram, and, while she likes my content, we haven’t engaged in a normal conversation yet. And I was thinking that it would be a tad uncomfortable to talk again, because I’m a totally different person after 10 years. Now… is it the new cells? 🤣 Who knows!?
I do think that consciousness is an always-on-the-move emergent property: I think that’s why you are not the same person you were 10 years ago; I would push it as far as to claim you’re not the same person a minute ago. Hell, I don’t think there’s a ‘person’ (“self”) at all! Rather, there’s some kind of approximation of “self” our minds continuously create to help us make sense of what’s going on.
P.S.: that joke from your first wife was a killer! 🤣🤣
I have no idea; I do know I’d like to see my mother again and my wife. But, likely will not know it. Seems a shame to go through life with all it can offer, and then just go away. But that’s life! Religion tries to offer some comfort, I guess. Good question, Dr. Bart!
As I recall from my elementary school science lessons about cell division, most cells don’t die and cease to exist, but divide so that a tiny part of each continues to exist. If I understand the process correctly, you still contain part of what you were x years ago, and can pass part of you on to your descendants. If you have a Jewish heritage, part of Abraham still survives in you.
I study neurobiology at UW Madison, and if I interpreted the post correctly, you where asking about where exactly does our consciousness come from? My reply to this would be that no one has a complete and definite answer to this mystery yet. My general philosophy on this is that our consciousness is most likely the result of other evolved features. We have evolved eyesight to locate food, we have evolved memory to remember where that food source is, and we have evolved emotions in order to remain in a “social pack.” All of our neurons have a role to play in our brain, which in itself is determined by our genetic code. I would say that consciousness is the “emergence” of all our evolved features. An analogy would be this; “one ant by itself is not very smart, but when you put together a whole colony of ants they are able to build a whole organized and structured society. I believe that this is something like what our consciousness is like.
Yup, that’s it. I”ve been reading and thinking a lot about it; right now on both a CHalmers and a Dennett kick….
Have you worked with Giulio Tononi? I believe he’s at UW Madison also.
I find his ideas regarding Intergraded Information Theory really interesting and makes the most sense. It sounds like he might be on the right path to understand Consciousness better.
Ummm, it might be like running a computer program. What constitutes “you” isn’t the platform but the software. What’s the software? A set of dynamic relationships? But the hardware puts its imprint on those relationships, and so we have Bart Ehrman rather than Donald Duck. Or anyone else. Can we abstract the information? Information is probably not abstract at all. A physical system of any sort IS the information. If we have an observer interacting with that system, the observer models the system on some other platform and you get a second order construct, a copy, of that physical system. If you are modeling your own system, let’s say, trying to observe yourself, you are quickly getting something very complicated. Let’s leave it at that. But the software/hardware analogy seems to break down when you are talking about something like: what makes you “you”.
The problem exists on an even bigger (or smaller) scale: natural and ongoing turnover occurs at the molecular as well as the cellular level. That is, even if your cells weren’t dying and being replaced, all of your molecules are being swapped out — even your bones, albeit slowly! Otherwise, it’s kind of a silly question, like: Are you the same person before and after a meal, or going to the bathroom, or getting dressed in the morning? Do you live in the same house after getting new carpeting?
Well, the United States has been in existence since 1789, even though every single human being who was alive at the time is now dead. That’s because what makes it the United States is that it is a political system with certain properties. Your car is still your car even if every component gets replaced at one time or another. That’s because what makes it your car is that it is a certain type of mechanical system. Same with us, I’d say–each of us is a particular biological system, and as long as that system goes on, the individual components can come and go without changing anything essential.
Everything in the universe is dynamic even the static is internally dynamic & so also our bodies which are galaxies of cells in a continuous dynamically coordinating change all the time.
Conscience is a product of Cognition which is a product of the brain complexity. Each individual cell doesn’t have that feature though it does have the push to stay dynamically existing (biologically alive).
Memory & personality is also a product of brain complexity. Once shut down, ALL IS GONE.
There is no soul, no spirit to continue carrying a core somewhere else. There is & has been no evidence so far and there will be no evidence in the future as well to confirm otherwise.
Evidence of cognition/personality is product of biological complexity is mood (personality) change of females during menstrual cycles or males aggression during high testosterone levels.
Once a biological change happens internally, a change in cognition occurs & you are a variant of your old self. e.g. I am not the same personality/ conscience when I was 10 years old period.
Simply a different entity.
Another evidence is patients suffering from ALZHIMIER .Look to change before/after the disease which is in a nutshell a biological degeneration of memory neurons.
“Memory & personality is also a product of brain complexity. Once shut down, ALL IS GONE.”
Not all is gone ; from dust to dust, the Bible says. All our cells go back to what they were before we were conceived. “We” go back to that, to what we were before we were. Our bodies still go on, thru joining the earth again. Isn’t that enough? We don’t care about what we were before we were/are. Why should we care about what we won’t be, after being?
1. In general I would say that memory and continuity makes us the same person. 2. The cells don’t all die and get replaced all at once, so there’s overlap and continuity. 3. It probably has something to do with others thinking we’re the same person. 3. Physicists might have a completely different way of looking at it. Perhaps what we think of as material particles are more like patterns of energy. 4. It suggests a distinction between matter and form, which sometimes leads to the notion of a nonmaterial soul. 5. I wonder if the fallacy of composition is relevant. Just because individual cells die doesn’t mean the whole person is dead? Even if all the individual words in my post are short, the entire post could still be very long. 6. Comparing the death and complete replacement of all individual cells with what happens when we “really” die might clarify the issue. Maybe loss of consciousness (and memory) and the simultaneous death of all cells within a short period of time make “real” death “radically” different. 7. Maybe we’re not actually the same people which could help explain why the world is so confusing and screwed up.
Sounds like materialism is really penurious and you are more than your body. Conscience must be a mysterious thing, not even artificial intelligence can generate it. And what do you feel when other people (or just their cells) die?
I enjoy pondering the notions of permanence and impermanence very much. I love the fact that Heraclitus and Parmenides took opposing sides on this issue at about the same time that the Buddha was expounding on it. Recently I had the epiphany that Jesus was constantly talking about the impermanence of the human condition in relation to the permanence of God. And that only a few of his disciples understood his teaching that unconditional love was the solution to this perpetual conundrum. When they felt the continued (permanent) presence of Jesus’ love after the crucifixion they experienced death (impermanence) differently. And the new tradition was born. Lately my lifelong and rigid secular stance has softened in the light of this realization of the truth of love.
I start with the idea that my experience of human self-consciousness is a translation. Color does not exist in physical nature; electromagnetic waves of different frequencies exist and my brain translates them to the experience of color. The same is true for sound waves, scent molecules, muscle aches, mystical experiences, and memories. It is all an experiential translation of physical reality by the brain. “I” remember those experiences from long ago — not completely or always accurately, but I recognize them as “me.” But all this requires a functioning brain. Therefore, I think my sense of self develops gradually as my brain develops, and ends slowly or quickly as my brain ceases to function. Perhaps my effects on others live after me. Perhaps my energy blends into some great universal energy. But when I think about what happens to “me” after death, I think there is no way I could recognize myself if my brain has died.
There’s one aspect that was left out here – those x trillion cells aren’t replaced all at once. As each cell dies and is replaced, the other cells incorporate it into the body, as it were, so that at no time is there a point where everything is new. Each new cell acquires the memories – the life, if you will – of the cell it replaces.
On top of that, you have acquired a lot of new cells since the time you were a zygote. Are you a different person, or a new person, each time that happened?
“You” is a whole complex of things, and your cells are only part of that. My speculative thought is that when the old cells pass on their memories to the new cells, that is a sign that life continues. When they no longer do so, that’s death.
Dankoh – why should individual cells have a memory or need a memory?
“so that at no time is there a point where everything is new”
Yes but if you look to the whole picture & compare the body of 2021 vs 1991, the 2021 is completely another entity.
Each second the earth is in a specific spot in a unique orbit around the sun which in sequence is in a unique spot around our black hole. The effects of electromagnetism, radiation, topography of your geography, moon location, your contemporary culture, education qualities, daily interactions & even your gene mixup, etc. all of myriads of similar factors have an impact of who you are at a specific time & location.
That is why you are always a new you every moment of your physical existence (life).
I thought of the Ship of Theseus paradox when I read this entry. Here is the wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
My thought went the other way from the reduction to parts identity issues. My identity is also constructed by other people. I’m a child of my parents, and I have siblings. I could have children.
If, similarly to Job, if I lost all my family, am I still the same me? If I married and started another family, would I be the same father and husband?
If I lost a child, my only child, would having another child be the same child?
Good question! I can talk about “my brain” in purely physical terms, even “my mind” as being made of countless neurons, but the “my” part of the equation is, I believe, what cannot be explained by physical processes alone. There is something ineffable about this “my” – a core of consciousness – that I believe transcends the physical, and transcends our ego. A strict materialist would say that our consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon – an emergent property of purely physical constituents and processes in our brain. But if this is the case, the question then becomes “why?” Why is self-awareness evolutionarily necessary to our survival? Many living systems function and even thrive just fine seemingly without it. I see no way around this basic question.
What is the function of the brain, other than to translate physical stimulus into usefulness? I’d say that this translation is consciousness, and therefore any creature with a brain has some degree of consciousness. This is what enables living things to respond to their environment. But, as brains become more complex, they support more complex consciousness. And, finally, some brains become so complex that they can support self reflection. That is the special gift you and I have received from being created as humans and not as pieces of shale or oak trees or earthworms, or even clever dogs.
Seems very Buddhist to me as in some interpretations, the self is illusory and there is no such thing as the self as a CEO within our consciousness and our illusory self is in constant change.
A lawyer in Kenya, Dolo Ididis, is suing both Israel and italy in the International Court of Justice for “selective and malicious prosecution of Jesus”.
Indidis’s case states the methods of questioning during Jesus’s trial by the Romans were problematic; the information used in the case was flawed and probably lacking; and that punishing him while the trial was still ongoing contradicts all forms of justice.
The Kenyan lawyer hopes the ICJ this time will agree that “the proceedings before the Roman Courts were a nullity in law for they did not conform to the rule of law at the material time and any time thereafter.”
In other words, Jesus wasn’t given a fair trial, and therefore was not guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted and for which he was killed. But if Jesus wasn’t executed, we wouldn’t have the chance of being saved, so what is the Kenyan lawyer trying to do? Dismantle Christianity?
Comment?
The link to the news item regarding the suit against Israel and Italy.
https://www.ugstandard.com/kenyan-lawyer-sues-israel-italy-for-killing-jesus-christ-once-again/?fbclid=IwAR2a6JAYf-9YHMnf5SghLPm8yA7krT0MvJyEgISr6c3zQO2ehf1K1utkojs
Congratulations on starting this feature with a softball! (obligatory s/)
First, I will note that your formulation of the question precludes panpsychism, the theory that all matter, including those single cells, have a consciousness of some type. I’m fine with that. I think the proponents of panpsychism have the burden of proof and I have seen no arguments which come close to meeting that burden. I also reject the idea, expressed by an earlier commenter, that the dying cells transfer their “memory” to the new cells.
My second point is that we exist in a context and that context largely determines our experiences, thoughts and beliefs. As Sartre put it, “I am not I.” We define ourselves in the context of the things around us. Imagine being born and existing in a perpetual sensory deprivation environment. Could a “you” even develop in that environment? That’s an experiment we can never perform, but I think the answer would be no.
Finally, I believe consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, resulting from all of our cells working together to make sense of the world in which we exist and our place in it.
Physical reasoning can’t account for the claim of a “self” existing through time, its a supernatural claim.
The claim that you possess a different body to the one you had in 2011 is to claim to be something beyond the physical.
It may be true or false but its a claim to the supernatural.
You can get a lot of traction on these questions by thinking of yourself not as a static thing, but as a process. And in the end, it may be processes all the way down—but for our purposes most of the time, this long-view physical perspective is seldom the most useful (when we buy a couch, we’re not thinking of what sort of state that couch will be in a billion years later).
This is why I have not been all that impressed at the idea that my “consciousness” can be transferred to a computer, and “live” forever. Not only would I not consider that “me,” I don’t think that “existence” would have much beyond a self-fulling purpose. At best, it might be a copy of “me.” (I also think of how much trouble I have with my computer and how much work it takes to keep it going, which is hard to imagine that I could afford long term.)
The idea of an individuated existence of some kind, beyond the expiration of the physical body (which is clearly not going to last forever), is appealing. In part, it is also compelling to think that my loved ones are still somewhere, ideally waiting to be reunited. As long as one is not making so many sacrifices from living now, with an expectation of an afterlife that might not be there, the comfort of the idea seems fine to me. If we are wrong, and there is nothing, at least we will never know.
Consciousness (reasoning, memories, emotions, etc.) require the entire brain. You can partition the brain into large areas containing billions or trillions of cells and associate parts of consciousness with specific areas of the brain. But this is a pretty crude approximation.
While it’s true that bodily cells die and are replaced, that happens on a different, microscopic level. Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that operates on a far different level of complexity, the level of the entire brain.
And there’s no evidence that a part of consciousness survives the death of the body and the brain and lives on independent of the brain. That’s just a fantasy people use in a futile effort to cheat death.
My neurons may not have been conscious of changing my body. But my body is darn well conscious of its changes!
Sometimes the death of cells can be celebrated – such as the HgA1c test (a test of blood sugar numbers as they relate to red blood cells). It can only be taken once every three months, which is how long it takes for red blood cells to completely die and regenerate. As humans, we can control those numbers. And as humans, we LIKE it when the outcome is in our control. When we cannot control our bodies we mourn.
Perhaps Socrates is right. Death may just be the deepest, most wonderful sleep imaginable.
To perhaps ask it another way: What is consciousness? Rather than who am I, What am I? If only cells, then we have a mechanistic view. My brain – made up of some of these cells – creates a sense of “me” by telling a story in which I am the main character. When that story ceases, so do “I.” The memory of “me” must then be retained within the cells, passed on via the DNA or some other physical method.
If I am simply, though the process is certainly not simple, a collection of cells, than my physical self has been replaced multiple times. So, where does the “me” reside? Or, am I a series of constantly changing “me’s” that only seems consistent/constant? A “me” that is in constant motion/change, as the Eleatic School thought. To use their language, “seems versus Is.”
If the self only seems, then what dies? Can Huckleberry Finn Die? Hamlet? You might say they were never alive, only a story. What about the story of “me.” Do we die when our story dies? And what/who is telling that story?
Back to the beginning: What is consciousness?
The thing that is “me” is the collection of cells that have the emergent phenomenon of thoughts, memories, and personality that stretch back to the time I was born. The idea of “me” & “you” is a convenient heuristic, a useful abstraction to avoid having to make different decisions based on whether someone recently lost some skin cells.
This line of thinking has some profound implications. Obviously, it is the “mind/personality” of a person that we relate to and interact with rather than the body. So, why does our society spend so much energy worrying about physical attributes such as size, shape, gender, and skin color?
65 yrs old… I think we die a little every day. Physically anyway. From 1983 to 1992, I could run 5k in the 17 minute range. In the 18’s from 92-2001, 19’s from 01-15, 20’s 15-18..last 5k in 26:xx.
I never was a believer in a god because as a child getting preached to, I conjured up in my mind someone walking into a 7/11 and holding the cashier up in a robbery. He gave the cashier a choice. Do what he said or be punished. I was very young but that’s what went through my mind. I was curious however about existence
I believe we exist randomly. Or as one writer put it “ things just happen, like a lot of loose rocks on a runaway train.”
Very much afraid of the nothingness of dying. I feel like the character in Camus book “ The Stranger” talking to the priest the night before his execution about the consequences of his non belief. “ Better to burn than to disappear!” Eternal unconsciousness I’m not looking forward to.. ( 200 words)
Three thoughts: 1) we ingest cells from plants and animals, so our current selves are also parts of other things that once lived. 2) when we diet, and say lose 20 lbs, where did it go? Gotta be a trillion cells in 20 lbs, right? 3) If you started removing parts from your body, cut off an arm, leg, remove a non-vital organ, get an artificial heart, etc.; at what point do you cease being you? If doctors could remove your brain and keep it alive, are “you” still there? If doctors could do a brain transplant, would “you” go with the brain into the other body? If all the memories/experiences/content contained in your brain were uploaded to the cloud, once you die could “you” still exist if that were then downloaded into a humanoid robot?
The Bible says God made us in his image. Many people take that very literally and expect God to have a bod but I suspect that if God exists that the image is more ethereal, not physical. More consciousness, less atoms. Yet can we be “us” without atoms? Can anything exist without atoms?
Here is a thought experiment: Imagine a copy machine that can copy physical things down to an arbitrarily low level (cellular, atomic, sub-atomic, string etc …). Would a copy of you made at the string level be you? Personally I don’t think so, which (uncomfortably) leads me to the conclusion that there is more to us than physics.
If we are getting renewed , why do the new cells make us look old?
Interesting question! It depends on what the thing represented by the pronouns ‘you’ and ‘I’ is.
Unless you can explain/define that you cannot move on to saying whether you/I/me c1966 = you/1/me c2021.
I think humans exist only partly as individuals and that in material reality we are also part of a wider social organisation. Certainly humans can produce and raise later generations only by social organisation. I/we/you as well as being acted on by our own experiences influence and change the experiences of others. The social perception of I/me/you may be more significant, in reality than ones own experiences. You may be a case in point Dr Ehrman: the you others experience through you word may well be different from the ‘I’ you experience. But bother are real.
So adding this to your cell question in full it should be two questions: whether you/I/me c1966(social) = you/1/me c2021(social) and whether you/I/me c1966 (individual) = you/1/me c2021(individual), given the complete replacement of cells.
And the answer is: (drums): yes to all because cells are always changing and replacing themselves. It’s what cells do. You never have a static cellular ‘you’ to compare. There’s no such thing. Its an abstraction. cells themselves are real.
Wow — What a great blog idea and what a fabulous initial blog question!!
According to askanaturalist.com: using a revolutionary new technique, researchers have shown that:
1. Neurons in the cerebral cortex are never replaced. There are no neurons added to your cerebral cortex after birth. Any cerebral cortex neurons that die are not replaced.
2. Fat cells are replaced at the rate of about 10% per year in adults. So you could say that on average, human beings replace all their fat cells about every ten years.
3. Cardiomyocyte heart cells are replaced at a reducing rate as we age. At age 25, about 1% of cells are replaced every year. Replacement slows gradually to about 0.5% at age 70. Even in people who have lived a very long life, less than half of the cardiomyocyte cells have been replaced. Those that aren’t replaced have been there since birth.
However, the idea behind the question stands. Regardless of the rates of replacement, physically we are not the same through the decades. In my case, the replaced cells aren’t as good as the ones they replaced. I am weaker and slower. The neurons aren’t replaced, yet that is where I see the greatest change.
As a Christian writer among Buddhists, I recognize this kind of question – what is this “me”?
Buddhist discussions about the self, no-self, and delusions of self are part of that Wisdom Tradition’s efforts to answer this vital Existential question. In the Christian Wisdom Tradition, even though Jesus was resurrected his disciples didn’t recognize him until he acted and spoke in familiar ways, and then it hit them. New body, but still Jesus, right?
It’s the fundamental law of Change – that everything changes even if we don’t really notice. Even though I remain David along a time-line, every moment brings a cycle of change to me in some way. Buddhism is BIG on cycles.
For me, I’m a combination of my body, my behavior, my interaction with the world, and my ability to be conscious of self beyond base survival instinct. Even after a little stroke, I didn’t cease being me, I was just changed in a few ways. And my liver cells are cool with that.
There’s hope for Bart’s neighbor, even if we have to wait ten years…
I expect this reasoning / defence has been attempted (long ago & probably every so often since) in a Court of law to evade charges of some historical crime? That is, “My current self is not liable for what some other, past self might have done”?? And I expect that legal precedent & drafted legislation has dealt with it thoroughly – to throw it out!! Can anybody out there with knowledge of legal history shed light on this?
This is hard to summarize in up to 200 words. In philosophy, this is covered in the topics of “identity over time” or its synonym “diachronic identity.” Diachronic identity specific to humans is called “personal identity.” I wrote some about this in my (2014) “Natural Unity and Paradoxes of Legal Persons” section 4.1.
I also believe in emergent dualism pioneered by William Hasker and developed by others, such as Dean Zimmermann. For example, emergent dualism proposes that human neurology generates mental substance, and some versions of emergent dualism propose that the mental substance survives to an afterlife. And all versions of emergent dualism require some model of diachronic identity.
Think of your brain as the vessel holding your sentience. Cells die and are replaced, but your mind is still intact. Like a computer who uses a different monitor for the same purpose.
“For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed, Whatever years lie behind us are in death’s hands.’ –Seneca
We are in no way the same person. As you note, the cells are all changed. We have a precious few memories of ten years ago and many of them are distorted or totally made up. There is nothing about a self that is permanent. We only imagine ourselves to exist through time.
I have no fear or dread of dying. The day I die is just like any other day, only shorter. When I die I loose none of my past for it is already gone. I loose none of the future because the me that exists now will not exist into the future.
I agree. I don’t fear death anymore than I fear being under during surgery. “I” don’t exist during that period. There isn’t even nothingness. Now, the process of dying scares the heck out of me.
As a Christian writer among Buddhists, I recognize this kind of question – what is this “me”?
Buddhist discussions about the self, no-self, and delusions of self are part of that Wisdom Tradition’s efforts to answer this vital Existential question. In the Christian Wisdom Tradition, even though Jesus was resurrected his disciples didn’t recognize him until he acted and spoke in familiar ways, and then it hit them. New body, but still Jesus, right?
It’s the fundamental law of Change – that everything changes even if we don’t really notice. Even though I remain David along a time-line, every moment brings a cycle of change to me in some way. Buddhism is BIG on cycles.
For me, I’m a combination of my body, my behavior, my interaction with the world, and my ability to be conscious of self beyond base survival instinct. Even after a little stroke, I didn’t cease being me, I was just changed in a few ways. And my liver cells are cool with that.
On the days when I believe in God and an afterlife, the way I see it is that God remembers our DNA, the patterns that make us who we are individually. God will then recreate us. This would explain how we can live again even when our bodies are decomposed. I also tell myself there is so much science we still don’t understand in the realm of quantum physics and string theory, for instance, that God may have at God’s disposal a number of perfectly scientific ways to make happen what would seem to us now as a miracle.
We place a lot of emphasis on the body. Perhaps WE ARE a soul or spirit having a body (basically a spirit having a human experience). I have to align my views with science. The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed – only converted from one form of energy to another. I believe in reincarnation. Perhaps the “light at the end of the tunnel” is actually the light at the end of the birth canal (the vagina).
In humans, nerve cells don’t normally regenerate, though new research is promising. Nerve regeneration is done by neurons repairing the long axons that serve as the “wires”. So, once we are grown through childhood, we slowly lose nerve cells during our lives without replacement.
But your question seems to ignore the fact that the very parts of us that make us “us”, our brains, are the same cells as when we were young. Despite their interconnections constantly changing, they aren’t changed out for new ones, so our identity as the same person remains. And of course we remember what happened to that younger person — ourself.
Beyond that, as the body cells turn over with time and are slowly replaced, there is never a moment when an observer (or ourselves) could say “with that new cell, this is now a different body.” At every moment, we are obviously the same body and person as we were an hour earlier. It is only after years that we can even question whether the body is the same, and the brain and its associated mind… maybe never, until death.
I don’t know how to answer your questions. I do know that I’m pretty sure that cell turnover (maybe even cell functioning) has little to do with how it is I am or am not the same person I was last year or some years ago. And I’m sure that (fortunately) Eric Olson has a better idea how to answer the questions than do I.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
It is true that our body is made up of an unbelievable amount of cells. It is like a building that is made of many bricks. Cells are, nevertheless, more complex than bricks. It is alive, need foods, generate energy, contain element of ancestors, replenishable, and highly active performing 9 specialized activities necessary for our survival.
Cell is the smallest unit of a living organism. It consists of flexible membranes, water, and other tiny elements which perform the functions of life. All these minute cells together with the other highly complex 12 human systems form the complete structure of a human body.
Scientists have to specialize in many fields of the human body and yet they have not fully comprehend the complexity and the beauty of the arrangement our body which is essential to function with ease as well as the pleasure we derive from it.
Our body is surely a MIRACLE.
It is, without doubt, one of the greatest creations of God Almighty. For sure, 100 % sure, all these confirm the existence of a GREAT MIGHTY GOD.
Assuming a moment of creation, everything we see, including our bodies with all of their complexity, could have followed from initial conditions. Take the Standard Model of physics, set up some incredibly unlikely initial conditions (as Roger Penrose has pointed out), and everything would follow from that, from a Big Bang to the present, with no further effort. The design would have been ab initio. And everything now and everything to come would have been determined at the very first instant. All of future time would be determined from the moment of “creation”. The only question is, was it really a creation, or was it a random event, a random event that became unavoidable because universes were popping up at random throughout an infinite space in infinite time, and even the most unlikely event would be a certainty, in all that vastness. That still isn’t clear.
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
-Mark Twain
If I was dead, I wouldn’t know I was dead. That’s the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death.
-Samuel Beckett
The frightening thing is not dying.
The frightening thing is not living.
-T Bone Burnett
I’m a soul person, (not a “soul man” as per the song) so I look at the body as a fascinating interpolated part of my being during this lifetime. It grows, improves via fitness, yoga a nd nutrition, goes downhill from aging and so on.
Although I am not a Jew, I agree with this.
“Judaism teaches that the body and soul are separate yet indivisible partners in human life. Rather than imprisoning or corrupting the soul, the body is a God-given tool for doing sacred work in the world. It requires protection, care, and respect, because it is holy.”
So the cell changes are just a part of the body, of course it’s not static! I think our body, say for example, our personal neurology can be a challenge and/or an asset to our moving through life. Did God pick this for us, or do we pick it before an incarnation? I don’t know.
Matthew Harrison Brady: I do not think about things I do not think about.
Henry Drummond: Do you ever think about things that you do think about?
This subject makes reminds me of reading Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind… or
Should I say Arch ..End Program!
Don’t be overly concerned, Bart. We have all lived millions, yes MILLI ONS, of lives before. This will not likely be the last for you. But it might be for me. I just turned 68. If this is it for me, it will be because I met a living Master nearly 50 years ago from Beas, India. Once initiated, we are told four lives is the limit before karma and our meditation on our Benefactor release us from the wheel of reincarnation for good. Happy trails! http://Www.rssb.org
I am not the same person I was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago and 50 years ago. I don’t know how that relates to my molecules or cells… but I am constantly changing as a person. My body changes, my thoughts change, my understanding of the world changes, my hopes and dreams change. Maybe my old self or old selves are dead and maybe each moment is a new person unfolding to face a new challenge.
I am not expecting to be conscious forever. I was never good at painting that forever picture before, so I am so glad that I don’t have to try anymore. I would like to imagine that whatever energy is keeping me alive and passing along those memories from one cell to another will some how be added to that which keeps this world existing for so long. Like I imagine those who have gone before me have their energy still accessible to me, maybe my energy will be accessible to someone else when I have died.
OK Dr Ehrman, you asked! Forgive me taking liberties withtheword limit. Yourreadingofancienttextsshouldenableyouto decipherthis.
I know from Descartes that I am an entity that thinks.
I know from The Buddha that by my nature, I am destined to suffer.
Iknowthatthecellsinmybodyareephemeral, butIbelieve thatIhaveaconsciousness
thatisthesumtotalofmyexperiences. Thisconsciousnessmayormaynot transcendmyphysicalexistence, butthen, I further suspectthatIambutoneleafonalarger metaphysical ‘Tree of experience’
Wearetryingtounderstandallthiswhilstliving insiidewhat Isuspectisa ‘field of consciousness’. Askingusthento defineconsciousnessislikeaskingafishtodefinewater. Ken Wilber’s ‘Integral theory’ isabravemodernattempttoexplainthe ‘relative truth’ ofBuddhisttheoriesofreality, whichthemselvesaremuchliketheshadowsin Plato’s caveanalogy.
Following from postulates of John Wheeler, I believe that the fundamental entities in our universe are ENERGY, and INFORMATION.
Energy is the physical entity that enables ‘action’, whilst Information is the metaphysical entity that enables ‘organisation’. Information tells energy how to organise, whilst Energy tells information to “Get moving” (or to Get a life!).
Ifweequateandinterchangethewords ‘information’ and ‘consciousness’ intheirvariousphysicalandmetaphysical contexts, wecanappreciateamoreholisticperceptionof ourexistence.
IcontendthatthereisateleologytothisUniverse, which canbecharacterisedas ‘Information seeking understanding through experience’. The result is consciousness. Weareadvancedbiologicalcomputers thathaveevolvedaspartofthisprocess, andarenow observersofit, aswellasparticipants. Individually, weare liketheleavesofourlarger DNA ‘tree of experience’,withallpossibleversionsof ourselvesexperiencingexistenceinalternate
realitiesthatoccupythe same time andspace, as implied by Hugh Everett’s ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ of Quantum Theory.
I am but one leaf of a greater entity- my ‘soul’, or Deepak Chopra’s ‘I AM’. I perceive qualia of existence, good and bad, like a leaf might experience sunshine and rain.
That’sjustnotfair!isit?
Prof. Bart – Unrelated query, if I may:
Wonder if you have any thoughts about Duke doctoral student Elizabeth Schrader’s assertions that textual evidence shows scribes actively tried to diminish Mary Magdalene’s stature in John’s gospel.
“Mary Magdalene’s original role in the Fourth Gospel has been divvied up, so that she now appears as three women in John,” she told Duke Today.
Specifically, she says someone changed an iota to a theta in Papyrus 66 at John 11:21 to turn Mary into Martha (Μαρία –> Μάρθα) – εἶπεν οὖν ἡ *Μάρθα* πρὸς τὸν Ἰησοῦν, Κύριε, εἰ ἦς ὧδε οὐκ ἂν ἀπέθανεν ὁ ἀδελφός μου: “*Martha* said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.'”
Schrader says someone changed a woman’s name to “the sisters.”
And she believes it was originally Mary, not the current text’s Martha, who says: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (John 11:27)
I know you’ve written a lot about Mary and I think I recall you saying John 11:27 shows that Martha was the first Christian. What do you make of Schrader’s claims?
Thanks.
(Also, at the risk of tribalism, Go Tarheels/BEET DOOK.)
https://today.duke.edu/2019/06/mary-or-martha-duke-scholars-research-finds-mary-magdalene-downplayed-new-testament-scribes
Yup, go Heels! Libbie is my student (I’m not directing her work, but I’m on her committee), so I think it’s better if I not talk about her work. On the upside, she’s not a huge sports fan (so far as I know), so yes, HEELS!
Fair enough. I hope you’re able to comment on this in the future. Seems quite an interesting point in terms of text and the evolving positions of early Christians.
Thanks.
“…cells together…with 12 human systems form the complete structure of a body” and with our Souls will activate the body to function as a human.
The body stop functioning when the Angel of Death takes the Soul away and can therefor pronounce end of “Life and Death” begins.
Unlike Angels, mankind is given the freedom of choice. In spite of this privilege, God Most Merciful, sent prophets to guide mankind to choose the straight path: believe and obey our Creator and Submit our will to the will of God.
Sinners and criminals who happily elude punishment will not escape in the next world. This is when True and Complete Justice begins on the Day of Judgement.
Those Sinners and who Reject God need not answer for their sins. Human Body, partly made up of cells, will be the best witnesses. Hands, tongue, and other parts of the body will be able to talk and testify the truth. No way to evade because our fingers, etc. will speak against us for our sins.
Believes of God whose good deeds exceed bad deeds their reward will be Paradise, the Best and Luxurious place to live.
I love you Ibrahim because you bring up so many fundamental (fun & mental) middle eastern ancient unique believes.
Please provide EVIDENCE & elaboration if possible for the following:
[[1* ” 12 Human systems”, 2* ” The thing you call soul”, 3*”Angel of death”,
4*”Freedom of choice as a privilege”, 5*”God”, 6*”God Most Merciful”,
7*”God sending prophets”, 8*”Straight Path”, 9*”Creator”,
10*”Will of God”, 11*”Prophets as channels for will of God”, 12*”Sinners being in the same category as criminals😩”,
13*”Next world”, 14*” Next world punishment”, 15*”Talking hands & fingers 😳”,
16*” Good deeds of God”, 17*” Paradise”, 18*” Paradise rewards”]].
As for the paradise rewards I am not in any taste shape or form willing to enjoy milk, honey or sexual intercourse with 72 perpetually virgin angelic goddesses or young divine male beings dedicated for anal sex either.
Ah yesss to ponder mortality. Only old people do that for some reason. If our culture was more involved in the death process perhaps we would not need this discussion. But the way the question is framed in reference to cells is basically a sickness of smart people..and Peggy Lee. Is that all there is? Smart people know science they know cells are not human which is why abortion on day 1 is not murder but when is there enough cells to consider that blob a human?(hintnever) It is my contention that scientist, physicist and such are trained sociopaths. Ask Sam Harris is an arm a human? no…a kidney? well you have 2…how about the heart?..well we can give you someone else’s and it doesn’t make you that person. How about a brain transplant? God made Adam out of dirt. Dirt has no senses. But some dirt is conscious? Dirt has no free will—but its not conscious either. Humans are soooo much more than dirt and life is so much more than we see. When will the scales fall? I know. God’s timing.
I once meditated very very intensely 20 years ago and focused on pinpointing exactly where my ego/identity/central “self” was.
After a while it felt as if I’d cornered the ego, but almost when I did, it gave up the act and revealed it was an illusion the whole time.
From that moment I spent the next few hours experiencing my body as a conscious and intelligent biological machine without an ego.
The body was aware, thinking, but it had no name or identity it could say controlled it.
It almost literally felt like a sentient collection of cells.
I am reminded of Woody Allen’s quip: “I don’t mind dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens!”
Hey Gator what year?
I’m 71!
Dankoh is On track, but the materialistic/scientific way to address the primary question is, naturally, more complex.
For this exercise we have to determine who “you” is.
Neurobiologists can and have described many of the functions and locations in the brain, through which processes we detect and express sentience. Who we are is largely who we think we are (“Je pence, donc je suis”) as well as who others think we are ( “je pense à vous, là vous êtes”).
Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, and/or experience subjectively. We are who we are because of the cumulative functions of the many intertwined processes in our brains – supported by the functions of the rest of the body. We are actually more than the total of these individual functions, a concept called synergy which should be known to those who understand the functions of human resources in business. Think of water that is wet. Are oxygen and hydrogen wet?
Aren’t you a different you now?” No. The functions remain the same (Like inertia, barring outside influence). Changing the oil in your car does not change the way your car basically functions, it merely makes it run smoother.
It is the ship of Theseus. A plank of wood is its own. a plank of wood. The ship is made of planks. The ship is not the planks, it is the relationship of multiple planks to one another. The ship is the relationship of planks to one another. One plank is replaced. The plank is no longer part of the ship. The ship has had a plank replaced. It is another plank, BUT THE SHIP IS THE SAME.
The tale, of course, continues. In time, all planks of the ship have been replaced, maybe multiple times. It is still a ship. Is it the same ship?
I say it is. It is a matter of opinion. I think the world is made up of not just stuff in it, but that the relationships between bits of stuff is more important.
“The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?” Louise Bogan
What does it mean then to say that “you” are “you”? To me, it’s a juxtaposition of consciousness and memories.
The only statements made about consciousness that seem plausible to me are the ones like those by David Chalmers, conceiving consciousness as a fundamental force of reality, akin to gravity or electromagnetism. I can make no sense of statements about consciousness as “emergent” from an arrangement of neurons, or as essentially a “biological phenomenon”.
If nature economizes, it would seem reasonable that there would be a singular consciousness, shared by all creatures, present and past. For what reason would there need to be more than one? Consciousness would seem to require no individual specific state, all state being stored in memories, in cells. As for the cells, their replacement would not seem to matter, any more than the replacement of one hard disk drive for another, with data intact.
In this sense I would conceive of “you” as being both immortal and mortal, consciousness would exist forever, but individual specific memories stored in cells would be erased at death.
Trying to think of something reasonable in the way of a response, but struggling.
However —
– The context of the discussion as you have presented it seems to be that materialistic reductionism is the valid explanation of the reality we live in. Just machines, no ghosts in them. Atoms and the void, that’s it, Democritus was right. I totally agree with that, but acknowledge that it’s a consequence of observation, not an a priori truth, and could change.
– That a neuron probably isn’t self-aware is like saying that one transistor can’t do what a computer can do. No, it can’t, but a properly connected collection of them, supported by a variety of other components like capacitors and resistors, are a computer. Similarly your neurons, supported by glial cells and the like, can produce complex behavior.
– Somewhere in this materialistic reductionist view of the problem, the phenomenon of “emergence” comes in. I confess that it still causes the needle of my woo detector to twitch more than a little, but it seems to be real, widely spread, and very important.
If we want to draw some philosophical point from this post, we have to recall the story of the man who goes to the doctor, and the doctor says: “I have some good news and bad news.”
The bad news is that everything changes and suffering is endless and permeates the whole universe. The good one is that no “one” suffers.
All of this speaks to a person’s:
premise of identity.
If a person takes pride with some aspect of their DNA, then they will include it as part of what defines them.
However, people realize that identical twins are not the same person.
So then, DNA isn’t core personal identity, except as part of what might define family and lineage.
It’s important to frame the question such that we aren’t assuming any objective or absolute right and wrong answers.
However, one of the earliest serious problems I had with Bibles is:
Threats and promises about the fate of the “i”; but never defining the “i”.
That makes it literally a “hollow promise”.
In what way is today’s YOU the same “i” as the earliest person conceived by your bio-parents?
How is any version of a “resurrection” not really just a superior clone?
They should call it the “replacement promise”.
Imagine the new-you being generated before old-you dies.
If “God” then says “It’s time to erase the old-you”, would ANYONE still consider new-you to really be the same you?
Of course not. You’d realize you’re just simply being killed, so that a replacement could carry on in your place.
[Word limit reached]
“…You’d realize you’re just simply being killed,..” hmmm that’s exactly what the bible says! Read romans7 it’s all about genetic change…
2Co 5:17Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.
My own fascination is in the replacement of neurons with new healthy neurons with proper receptors. The opposite can happen as well. Certainly our minds (brains, guts, nervous system) are the biggest part of who we are.
Another way to look at it is in even larger aggregate. The replacement of members of hierarchies, with new ideas spreading as replacement takes place. That seems a healthy innovative environment.
Yet another POV is how biologists can view humans as hosts of viruses and bacteria. Self replicating transporters of microbes replicating. This type of life tends to out lives the heart and brain!
I believe that the issue would come down to what identity you’re talking about.
Your external identity couldn’t change because no one would be held accountable for their actions from a legal perspective; otherwise, “that was the alcohol talking” could become a plausible defense along with being outside one’s self (Mark 3:21)
Your internal identity must change because your experiences and knowledge change you. If your internal identity doesn’t change frequently than you can’t change anything you would think to be wrong because it is your internal “identity.” By changing our internal identity we align our-self anew with what becomes our telelogical existence or our purpose in life as our life and experiences change externally and the thinking within us.
So, our favorite sports team’s internal identity constantly changes (players come and go) but the external identity of the sports team (i.e. The Boston Red Sox) stays the same.
Are we same person we were?
In many ways. Other ways – hopefully – we’re Better, Kinder, Wiser.
A different you now?
No, same person. If I got a new heart I’d still be me, even though those millions of cells would be someone else’s. Thoughts and ideas: As we learn new things (eg. Changing from believing in supernatural things to not) we are still who we were, but an enhanced, wiser version. As a child changes, grows, improves.
Surely your old you has died?
Nah. Your 1991 body just gradually improved to this fine 2021 specimen.
Does it regret having died?
Nah. Nor does it ‘know’ (“My body KNOWS . . ” = nonsense).
When the whole thing dies?
No troublems. No dilemmas.
Will I regret not existing?
You won’t, but I understand the thought. I FEEL I would regret dying, but – actually – I won’t be here.
Molecules?
Worse. Atoms. We become stardust again, as we started!
To me we have to make the most of this one life and be the best we can be. Leave the world better locally, in our sphere of influence – Oh, and I think you’re doing that.
If reliable evidence indicated that, miraculously, a gospel, say, The Gospel of Bart, had been exactly copied twelve dozen times since its composition without error, would you say that the 144th copy was still The Gospel of Bart?
Remember, that 144th copy is on completely different parchment; the ink is completely new—compared to that 1st dictated copy we *know* is authentic.
Dear Bart this is sort of up my street, so I’ll try and besuccinct answers to your 2 questions which are two of the most vexing questions of philosophy.
Question 1, which you very well summarised, it is *the problem of personal identity* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity. What makes me the same now as I was X years ago X+t years ago etc. Most philosophers of mind today would say with David Hume that we are all just a bundle of ideas and there isn’t really any core ‘I’. That is any continuing conscious entity that remains the same throughout your life. In theological terms that means there isn’t really any soul. I don’t agree. This acually lead directly into your second question which is known as *the hard problem of consciousness* or the explanatory gap between matter and mind. which you put also very well: “none of my 30-100 trillion cells knows that it’s alive, even if I do”. As you know the traditional answer is Cartesian interactionist dualism i.e. the mind and the brain are completely different realms of reality that are somehow connected – a view that accords well with the NT.
I think we can certainly be sure that the mind is not just the sum total of the neurons, their connections and their function. There is something more that gives mind ie conscious experience, but the brain (and the body) gives us the means by which to have that experience and determine every aspect of that experience ie brain is necessary for mind, but insufficient to fully explain mind. Taking this view also provides the answer of course to the question of personal identity. The question you might ask is not just how you can be the same person i.e. the same conscious ‘I’ having different experiences over long gaps of years or even days, but rather, how can you be the same inner ‘I’ even for one fraction of a second to the next. I say this because even though your brain won’t have structurally changed, its functonal activity changes hugely from one moment to the next and in order for there to be a ‘you’ having a conscious experience, there has to be some unifying nontemporal non-spatial component to provide the unity required for a conscious subject having any expereince.
The being is life, but not the body alone.
First and foremost, both physical (see quantum physics) and psychological science provide less and less support for pure materialism. In this connection, I find Frotjof Carpa’s book, “The Tao of Physics” and his reflection on the correlation between frontier science and ancient religious views in the Eastern world, which is a striking fact in itself. The common ground is their basis or foundation, the undefinable “(non-)consciousness”, where matter is as derived from consciousness.
The second is the ego itself which sometime occured out of the realm of conciuousness, (Btw, the Ego correspond to the first beast in Rev. 13, in what I consider the 3. creation myth in the Bible.) The Ego which is capable of limitation and extention has made itself the center in the field of counciousness. In some sense, it can limit our concious concept into the observable, regardless of the fact that our being/the “Self” who bases its existence on the concious, non-concious and hypothetical collective non conciousness.realm. I will argue that we have no idea how far “out” human reaches, what is our deepest and highest senses.
We are just much more than our body. That’s really the beauty of it!
(1) “I think (meaning my neurons activating), therefore I am” is a surface approach. (2) “I am, therefore I think.” is the deeper understanding. The first assumes that neurons produce thinking, The second reflects that the (“I am”) – the soul, the atman, the divine spark, the “ye are gods” is the source of all thinking, – not the neurons.
So therefore neuron thinking is not who “you” are. The basic reference (or source) for every other phenomena is the basic dimension, the “soul” or the “I am.”.
“God answered Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” This type of reflection or advanced meditation is taught in every mystical system – especially Kriya yoga. Jesus’ Apocalypse means the revealing of divine mysteries, revealing hidden spiritual truths.”
Even though apocalypse means “uncovering,” John kept the mysteries secret. He cloaked his meanings in allegory because of the Romans, and because Jesus said, “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without – (outside of his circle of close disciples) – all these things are done in parables” (Mark 4:11).
Jesus knew that most people were just not capable of receiving what he had to give and he also warned of the dangers in revealing the mysteries to those who were not spiritually ready.
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you” (Matt. 7:6).
This is a variation on the theme that you can’t step into the same river twice. Molecules of water, aquatic life, detritus, and other constituents are continuously cycling in and out of the river.
Yet within spans of years, the river retains its identity. There’s no need for new maps showing the ever renewing river because, aphorisms and philosophical questions aside, it’s the same river.
For humans, instead of imagining cellular mitosis as the agent of change, something more dramatic and calamitous like a car accident or failing heart can lead to limbs being lost or organs being transplanted. But no one would believe that because I lost my leg in a tragic accident that I’m not the same person. Circumstances have indeed changed for the worse, but my who-ness is intact.
But, if the location of the injury is changed to my brain, such that my mind is affected, people might start to say “he’s just not the same person anymore.” Which indicates to me that the who of who we are is widely viewed as defined by our mind and it’s many aspects like personality, intellect, imagination, and so on. Not which cells live and which die.
Do bones die, or teeth. They can extract the DNA from either. With a little trail and error that DNA can be placed in a blank frogs egg and a human will evolve. Or so I am told in the book “Jurassic Park”. In another sense the universe waste nothing, “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. If that is true the the Buddhist nirvana will never come. But Buddhist were thinking of something living, not a rock. Personally, on the subject, if you are knowledgeable of nirvana then nirvana is the next stop. Get ready to be a rock. Some pretty terrible things are happening right now, but in truth they have been happening all along. We are just caught up in it a little more than usual. Remember that for all the rhetoric we her or say experience shows that we will do nothing. Remember the Cossack who fought against the Communist in WWII, Eisenhower handed them over to the same communist at the end of the war. The French did no better in Algeria
This is Plutarch’s Ship of Theseus, where each plank is replaced one at a time. Is it the same ship? I was first introduced to this age old conundrum in Hobbes’ formulation. He adds the question: Suppose the replaced planks were saved up and then assembled into a ship according to the same plan. So, now there are two ships which have a plausible claim to being the original. Which one, if either, really is? Or could it be both?
For me, it is important to note that the ship is not just the sum of its parts. Its function comes from the relationship of those parts. The ship made of original parts is related to the original in that sense. But the older ship that doesn’t have any of the original planks does have the history and continuity. It’s also not exactly the same as the original, but it has the much better claim.
In the case of humans, history and continuity do make me very related to the person I was decades ago. But no, of course we are not the exact same person. I don’t need to count cells. I can see the difference from pictures, memories, etc.
Abu Hurairah (May Allah be pleased with him) said:
The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “Between the two Blowing of the Trumpet there will be an interval of forty.” The people said, “O Abu Hurairah! Do you mean forty days?” He said, “I cannot say anything.” They said, “Do you mean forty years?” He said, “I cannot say anything.” They said, “Do you mean forty months?” He said, “I cannot say anything. The Prophet added: ‘Everything of the human body will perish except the last coccyx bone (end part of the spinal cord), and from that bone Allah will reconstruct the whole body. Then Allah will send down water from the sky and people will grow like green vegetables’.”
[Al- Bukhari and Muslim].
Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:
The earth would consume all of the son of Adam except his tailbone. From it he was created, and from it he will be recreated (on the Day of Resurrection).
Sahih Muslim 2955 b
My view of this problem is conditioned by my son, Sam – who is autistic. As I understand it; this issue is a real problem for autists; as they need to reacquire their identity continually by conscious effort; whereas most of us reacquire our identities daily as second nature.
Essentially, human identity is a shared reciprocal narrative; it has nothing whatsover to do with the continuity of cells in your body; but eveything to do with the continuity of your reciprocal recognition by (and of) others around you. Each day your reacquire your ‘old’ identity by being reciprocally recognised with that identity.
Think of your ‘identity’ as like your reflection in a mirror (except as ‘reflected’ in the reaction to you, of those around you). Just as it is a learned skill to recognise your mirror reflection, so it is a learned skill to reacquire your identity.
Whereas for an autist, ‘identity’ is more like seeing yourself on a CCTV screen. We might expect to be able to recognise CCTV ‘selves’ equally – but in fact, it is suprisingly difficult. Most of us have to wave, prod, or point; just to be sure.
English – Muhsin Khan & Taqi-‘ud-Din
5. O mankind! If you are in doubt about the Resurrection, then verily! We have created you (i.e. Adam) from dust, then from a Nutfah (mixed drops of male and female sexual discharge i.e. offspring of Adam), then from a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood) then from a little lump of flesh, some formed and some unformed (miscarriage), that We may make (it) clear to you (i.e. to show you Our Power and Ability to do what We will). And We cause whom We will to remain in the wombs for an appointed term, then We bring you out as infants, then (give you growth) that you may reach your age of full strength. And among you there is he who dies (young), and among you there is he who is brought back to the miserable old age, so that he knows nothing after having known. And you see the earth barren, but when We send down water (rain) on it, it is stirred (to life), it swells and puts forth every lovely kind (of growth).
Al-Hajj | Qur’ān Chapter 22
https://noblequran.com/surah-al-qiyamah/
Professor Ehrman,
I cannot appreciate that comment your first wife made that you’ve shared with us yet again. It would have taken a Greek god to accomplish all that you did!
Ha! Well lots of what they did was very, well, unfortunate!
The ocean is the ocean.
Though it may change it remains the ocean.
Our cells may change but we are still ourselves.
A Mystery. 😉
The ocean tells me of it’s woes
of winds and waves a violent throes
of all the tides it has to bear
the weight of life it holds in care
and I that dripped upon the land
evaporating in the sand
must swallow all when I but see
breadth depth immortality
s. clark
Perhaps relevant:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/21/neuroscientist-anil-seth-we-risk-not-understanding-the-central-mystery-of-life
I still say it’s a silly question. Unless, of course, you have defined what you mean by “me”, at which point it becomes a trivial question.
I generally get and agree with Darwin (and Science) but when it comes to questions of where life “originated”, how it knows how to perform once established into a life form, what its purpose is, why in genetics life forms of a type are almost but not quite identical, why signs of it any place but Earth are still unfound, I am forced to returned to my Catholic upbringing and say it is a mystery at least to me.
Imagine a species from another planet which had 1 million years more time to evolve were to come here to earth. How much more aware of their surroundings would they be & how little they would think of our awareness. They might think it like asking a microbe what it thinks of death. Death has meaning only while we are alive. Afterwards we return to the star dust we came from. But what do I know. I am just a microbe –& perhaps so are the aliens.
I’ll simply say that, moment to moment, we are never the same. Regardless of the approximate 10 year re-cycling of cells, each moment affects us, changes us, enhances or degrades us. From the moment of conception we begin the process of dying to an old self and being born again as a new self – continuously until the final end of life. To borrow from the old phrase – now is the first moment of the rest of your life. Take advantage of it!
I would add that it is proper to wish la chaim(sp).
I get to choose where “I” end and “everything else” begins. My current sense of “I” is illusory and ephemeral, as Hindus and Buddhists noticed millenea ago. My options are either (1) just content myself with this ever-changing sense of “I” and dont think about it much; (2) try to attach my sense of “I” to something more permanent, such as the totality of all existence; or (3) just try to give up the sense of “I” altogether so that there is nothing left. The first option is the common, everyday one. The second option is basically Hindu mysticism. The third option is basically Buddhist mystism.
Hi Andy, your comment is written presupposing only your first option: “ *I* get to choose …*My* current sense of “I” *My* options are either (1) just content *myself* with this ever-changing sense of “I”……try to attach *my* sense of “I” to something more permanent….”. This illustrates that you, like all of us, cannot even think without adopting your common sense option 1, which I believe is the correct option (even though it requires a belief in the non-physical). Also, its worth pointing out that Hindu mysticism contains a multitude of metaphysical stances, both anatman / ananata (no self/soul), as well as Atman (soul) = Brahman (immanent and transcendent God) and Atman is separate to Brahman.
>> like all of us …
If I may please: given the long running discussions on consciousness, perhaps it’s better that you should speak for yourself, maybe.
I am not certain, but perhaps what you, and Andy, posit may not apply to me.
Cheers.
I don’t believe in the supernatural or anything non-physical in the usual sense, yet I think our physical identities are best described as persistent abstract patterns continually expressed by the ever-changing cells of our bodies, just as our mentalities are persistent patterns in our brains. When the physical instantiations of those physical and mental patterns are gone, so are we. There won’t be anything left to regret having died.
To the extent that the brevity of life might still bother me, I take comfort in the fact that General Relativity tells us that the past and future are eternal and unchanging (what physicists call “block time”) and that I will always be present in the stretch I occupy.
The block time/block universe idea is fascinating. Consider the “world line” of a human being– you could extend it back in time, back into your mother’s womb, dissolving into your mother’s body and LO! You have HER worldline, and HER conscious experience, extending back into her own birth, and so on. But going forward from the moment of death you have dissolution and no consciousness in that direction. So imagine when we die consciousness can relocate into any part of that worldline, stretching far back into human beginnings and beyond. It would be like eternal recurrence but with a beginning in the misty past, and then reliving one’s ancestral history but only along the maternal line… fun to imagine. Who knows?? I remember something from Goethe, I think: “The mothers!”
Problem 1. As Heraclitus’s river, Plutarch’s Ship of Theseus, Hume’s bundle of ideas, James’ stream of consciousness, modern phsyics’s ‘matter as a process’ and neuroscience’s ‘changing brain’ all illustrate, NOTHING physical in us stays exactly the same over time.
Problem 2. Emergence (‘the whole is other than the sum of the parts’ – Aristotle) pre-suppposes consciousness – the whole is how the parts *seem* to behave when combined as a whole
Problem 3. The hard problem of the explanatory gap between matter and mind
Problem 4. Locke’s psychological continuity of consciousness and memory does not provide the same experiencing ‘I’ through time
Problem 4. What I call the Godelian incompleteness problem of cosnciousness: as Hume’s inward search for the self, Indra’s search for the self (Chandogya Upanishad), Budhda’s anata (anatman) and Kant’s antimony of the self, all illustrate, consciousness cannot contain or understand itself
Problem 5. The Binding problem. In order to have a subjective experience, there has to be a unified experiencer. That is to say, for an expereince to happen this experiencing ‘I’ has to bring together all the spatially separated components of the object of experiece and any temporally separated components into one un-separated exeperience.
Conclusion: Conscious experience cannot be explained by phsyical entities (such as the brain and body and their functions alone). Conscious experience, in requiring the ability to unify over time and space, must require a non-temporal, non-spatial (ie non physcal) aspect. Consciousenss must thus be eternal. Thus there is an eternal soul component to all conscious entities. This also then provides the solution to personal identity: by virtue of this non-phsyical soul in each of us, there is a same experincing ‘I’ over time. This is something each of us intuitively feels to be the case from ealry childhood onward. This is the ‘I’ of Descartes Cogito: “I think, therefore I am”. As Descartes says, “I” canot be deluded about this, because there has to be an “I” to be deluded. Consciousness itself cannot be an illusion (as Dennett et al claim) and consciousness requires an “I” which also cannot be an illusion. This is the conclusion of a book I am wrting on consciousness.
Interesting discussion, which brings out opinions if not answers. But it leaves me with two practical question: 1) Is it rational to assume that all change destroys identity? When I come across my favorite blue toy car from my childhood, is it no longer that car because it is missing its front wheels, the trunk lid no longer opens, and rust mars some of the blue paint? 2) What do I imagine my experience of self to be like if I no longer experiences the stimulus of physical sensation moderated by my brain? Is my experience static or dynamic? How do I experience time and place?
Maybe our neurons do regret dying. In order to hear sounds, we have an electro chemical system in the neurons running through our nerves and brain, but also a mechanical system. The mechanical system is amazing, like a piano with a thousand thousand keys, made of a thousand thousand tiny hairs carefully tuned to the perfect note and all tucked into that weird spiral seashell shaped thing in your ear. But its not perfect: the keys of the piano, the little hairs, can get stuck, which we often experience as a ringing sensation. The keys can’t be repaired. The instrument is too complicated so a key stuck will be stuck forever. Your brain had to compensate by slowly shutting out and finally shutting down the nerve signal itself. Most of those nerves will find another job, but there was at least one tiny neuron whose whole job was just to sit and play that one key of the piano. That ringing in your ears is its swan song. An overlooked virtuoso’s last solo played to it’s only fan.
The Gospel of Thomas
Original translation by the Berlin Working Group for Coptic Gnostic Writings.
Taken from Synopsis Quattuor Evangelorium, 2nd corrected printing, 1997.
As modified by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson
in Patterson, Robinson, and Bethge, The Fifth Gospel, Trinity Press International, 1998.
(29) Jesus says:
(1) “If the flesh came into being because of the spirit, it is a wonder.
(2) But if the spirit (came into being) because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders.
(3) Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has taken up residence in this poverty.”
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/thomas-fifth.html
Jesus, who definitely had a sense of humor, is even back then gently mocking people who think that the body and mind (neurons) are the ultimate reality. ha ha.
Three words: Generic Subjective Continuity. Or two words: Existential Passage.
Best described at https://www.naturalism.org/philosophy/death/death-nothingness-and-subjectivity
and
http://mbdefault.org/9_passage/default.asp
Untestable unproveable, but, for me, plausible:
when the emergent property of your consciousness ultimately ceases at the death of your last brain cell, you’re gone. There is no separation between soul and body, so there is no etherial ghostly existence, or Hades, or Heaven. But, because there is no experience of nothingness, after personal death, from “your” point of view, the channel simply switches to another material consciousness (human? animal? Or?), creating the illusion of reincarnation, although nothing of the sort actually occurs. It’s simply the cha change from one materially generated self-awareness to another. It happened before your birth. It will happen again at your death. Since memory is a property of the brain only, there is no way to know, ever, what your past “self” was, and what your future “self” will be. What Bart is doing is the best thing you can do in this case: make the world a better place so that the next “self” may have less chance of a miserable existence.
“The human microbiota consists of the 10-100 trillion symbiotic microbial cells harbored by each person, primarily bacteria in the gut; the human microbiome consists of the genes these cells harbor[1].”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3426293/
An interesting viewpoint is that there are just as many non-human cells in our bodies as human cells, though some estimates are as high as 10 times more non-human than human!
Their importance is such that we can not survive without our microbiota – so Bart maybe this adds a new perspective as to your question of ‘human cells’ in relation to your ‘personhood’ as you may factually turn out to be more non-human than human.
(Maybe your ex would agree with this too!!! 😈)
Joking aside you might enjoy this short podcast between two university biology and evolution professors concerning microbiota issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9je2-ZCByUY
What is this a clip from?
“In this 88th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), discuss the state of the world though an evolutionary lens. Find more from us on Bret’s website (https://bretweinstein.net) or Heather’s website (http://heatherheying.com). “
Though the study is a work in scientific progress, “mind” is an emergent property of the brain maintained by patterns of neuronal connections even as cells are replaced. The relationship between bodily functions and the brain is dependent on the types of cells, their purpose, and the connections that have been made. A significant part of who “I” am depends on memories of feelings (and how they inform future actions) and patterns of reactions to events – environmental, mental, and social – that get reinforced or decreased in strength. I am aware of moving forward in time – collecting memories and developing patterns of behavior in response to stimulus. Much of my “self” is socially defined: the child, friend, group member, parent. We need increasingly precise instruments that can watch our brains to know how it all works. There is nothing beyond the ability of instruments to perceive and measure. Just as there was no “me” in the 19th century, there will be no “me” in the 21st. What’s the point of it all? Natural selection – our human awareness gave us an evolutionary advantage. Our social constructs keep us going.
Wonderful topic! Every molecule and every atom that make up every person, every tree, every drop of water…has been recycled many, many times. There is no “new” water, no “new” carbon that comes together to form our brains, our fingernails, our “selves,” or even our minds.
Consider the life cycle of an apple: a seed grows with water, dirt, and light added to the mix; it grows into a tree and yields fruit, the fruit is eaten or falls to ground, and is eventually returned to nature via waste or decomposition. Those apple-atoms become something else, which becomes something else, which becomes something else…
Everything changes, always, and every beautiful thing we encounter in life is the result of endless cycles of destruction and regeneration.
Bart I would just like to point out your hypocrisy here…you rejected God because of too many cells suffering in the world. Now you say cells don’t suffer. You have reduced your family and friends to dirt which of course is the result of reductionism. At this point you are more evil than God. At least with God you are eternal and suffering is temporary 2Co 4:17.
Your mental exercise here is logical but humans are not Vulcan. As you approach that abyss – as Dylan Thomas would say
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan captures the true value of life and reducing it to the numbness of cells is early euthanasia.
Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re saying. I don’t recall talking about cells suffering in any of my books or lectures. What are you referring to? I’m not saying my view is necessarily right — but why not challenge what I do say instead of what I don’t?
“Not even any of my neurons that apparently have been with me at birth knows I’m alive. My brain doesn’t but my mind does. Go figure. And so, when those neurons themselves also die, along with all the cells at actual death, why should I think that I will then regret or be upset about not existing?”
I’m not sure exactly what I’m thinking but I just don’t like what you’ve said… perhaps…..you’ve defanged death in a way that simultaneously devalues life. Just like Peggy Lee.. that song gives me the creeps.
Same with what wpoe54 asked above “..what’s the point?..”
…don’t like the question—don’t like it a bit..
re
1. “you rejected God because of too many cells suffering in the world”
—
I’ve never seen him say that.
————————————-
2. “You have reduced your family and friends to dirt”
—
Maybe you’re thinking of the old song “Dust In The Wind” (by Kansas)?
————————————-
3. “At this point you are more evil than God. ”
—
At least you can admit that the biblical “God” is some degree of evil.
But when you call a person of celebrity (some version of “very”) “evil”,
surely you realize how that sounds.
——————————
4. The author of 2 Corinthians 4:17 wasn’t addressing his words to everyone who will ever live.
It was directed at a localized then-and-there group of people, about some ordeals they were dealing with.
Meanwhile, …
Countless many humans have been/are suffering beyond comprehension; much of that suffering lasting decades for many.
No super-being is worthy of ‘worship’, if they would allow that to happen.
“If I could prevent a person from being raped, I would.
That’s the difference between me and your god”
-Tracie Harris.
——————————-
5. Dylan was offering “a” philosophy about life and death.
It’s not objectively superior to all contrary views.
If someone can make peace with their mortality, …
perhaps they should.
But don’t you see how he has devalued life? Why suffer for decades when as LaurenSaige says below
“We will not know we are dead when we are dead. No more memories, no regrets, no hopes, so nothing to fear.”
This is a mental exercise in overriding the instinct to cling to life. The next logical step is projecting that override onto the other—they don’t need to cling to life either. This is just sick.
Animals instinctively save themselves—only humans cling to life.
As you said “If someone can make peace with their mortality, …
perhaps they should.” This is the very evil Bart has offered up. Incense from the abyss–the stench of death permeating the blog….ahhh but its so logical. Just go to sleep….
Dylan’s philosophy about life and death is objectively superior to all contrary views.
“But don’t you see how he has devalued life?”
—
Billions of religious people attempt to make peace with their mortality
by hoping
and (sometimes) believing there is an afterlife.
I think most fail to make peace with their mortality.
But my point is:
The belief
that life is (or can be) permanent
often (ironically) contributes to needless suffering and premature deaths.
For billions of “believers”, human death is an illusion, all animals are disposable, and they look forward to the day when “God” violently throws all humans away like trash … except for the small % of humans in the correct sect of the true religion.
Those religions are notorious for ruining and ending lives.
Meanwhile,
we *probably* all return to non-sentient elements.
Even many bible writers thought so.
He’s not advocating for murder, or suicide, or reckless living.
-Although, of course, some extreme situations do merit “death with dignity” (physician assisted suicide).
He’s not refuting the beauty or the value of life.
Impermanence makes it MORE valuable; not less.
Meanwhile, clearly, no “God” really cares how we feel.
In any event,
I, for one, do not want my last moments to be a panic of desperation.
Do you?
[word limit reached]
The comments I’ve quoted proves my point.
you said “He’s not refuting the beauty or the value of life.” As wpoe54 asked above “..what’s the point?..” That very question has reduced the “value” of life to zero. That is absolutely pure logic–a cell has no “values”, or free will. You come from star dust that has no value of free will—so logically you can’t even discuss the topic of “value”. You only have preferences.
you said “He’s not advocating for murder, or suicide, or reckless living.”
but he is saying after you have murdered that person, or they commit suicide, or come to the end of their reckless life–
“there won’t be any physical pain, torment, pleasure, ecstasy, remorse, longing, or anything else..” so what’s the diff?
The end of life is zero—therefore the value of life is zero. Its logical.
Your last moments WILL be a panic of desperation–it’s instinct.
My view is that we have no idea what our last moments will be like, emotionally. There’s no way to know until, well, you are unable to tell anyone.
I guess the best way to know your emotional state at death is to hang out with dying people. There was a nurse in class who had seen a few die on the table and one in particular had regained consciousness a couple times and each time she began screaming in terror–sort of like the “drag me to hell” movie. So that nurse was freaked out. Another guy his brother regained consciousness a few times before death and said “the darkness is maybe like the birth canal—you hope there is someone on the other side that loves you”. My grandma was offended to learn she had a heart attack she was proud of her strength and health at 91. Then it seemed she became quite content to be done with life–at least that was the case 3 days prior. My grandpa was a crotchety old atheist WW2 pilot. His last words to me were “I’m scared”. My mom believed in God but lost her faith in what Paul taught about heaven so she became conscious of losing all her relationships and began to Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Lots of people see glorious light at the end of a tunnel and warm glowing colors and the faces of people they love.
Consciousness is an interplay between our memory and physical components. We could have the same memory and be trapped inside an ant’s body which would change our perception of who we are.
I think everything totally dies. We have self-awareness from conception or at birth for sure and that self-awareness is built on our soul/spirit/life force – whatever you want to call it. When we finally die so does that self-awareness but the life force that is part of the universe goes on.
In my view,-what changes is merely an appendage, because my real self remains intact by means of MEMORIES. I know that I’m the same person because I have the same MEMORIES that I had since very early childhood.
The MEMORIES are therefore not identical with the cells in my body — even though my childhood cells are all gone (like my baby teeth).
Thus, my true self evidently transcends the mechanical model of assembled parts.
I am less concerned by the cellular replacement issue, as the seeming subjective continuity of consciousness seems to remain throughout the replacement. My answer to the Ship of Theseus problem, as far as my body goes, is that it is the same vessel.
I am more intrigued with the changes that occur over time in my beliefs, aspirations, and attitudes. I remember my former selves and know they were me even while I am delighted or disappointed with them and various of them would certainly be delighted, disappointed, or completely disgusted with the present me.
As a non-expert, I sense that I am not my body. Of course, if my body dies, I also die. But, it’s because the body is a vehicle for my consciousness.
One of the more irritating aspects of the ever changing cells in our body is their refusal to provide healthy ones in exchange for unwell ones, which I regard as letting the side down.
I am struck, however by the fact that no one has commented on the fact that we are symbiotes. At the risk of wild over-generalisation, humans seem remarkably loathe to accept that we are symbiotes; my working hypothesis is that whilst most of us have have accepted that we got here via evolution, we have not managed to rid ourselves entirely of the flattering belief that obviously we got here via evolution because we are the fittest and therefore deserve to be here. Eugenics still throws a dreadful shadow.
Without the vast numbers of organisms which go with us, and in us, we could not live, just as they could not live without us: that is the definition of symbiosis, and yet educated people with enquiring minds seem to filter this out, even in a discussion about the cells in our body which should have flagged it up…
I like Carlo Rovelli’s explanation – nothing ever dies it just changes into something else. What else would you expect from an Italian agnostic professor of physics. So the atoms and elements that we are made from have always existed and will continue to exist – it’s just the way in which they are quantumly entangled that is different.
After re-reading your post, I feel compelled to correct one assumption that you made.
As you infer, we are not entirely a ‘Ship of Theseus’. You acknowledge the lifelong span of neurons in the Cerebral Cortex, but there are another group of cells that we are born with, that can last our entire life, and we get no more: egg cells.
All other cells are subservient to the function of both groups of these ‘precious’ cells. Their nature speaks to our biological purpose. We are a means of perpetuating and evolving the process of information developing complexity through existence, becoming conscious, and developing self-awareness.
Questions lead to questions! How do cells transfer memories? We know memory isn’t perfect and cell replacement could be part of the problem. Is “self” actually a useful fiction that enables functionality on a social spectrum for the perpetuation of our species? Are we actually biological self programming robots, constantly learning and adjusting to our environments, our cultures, our family dynamics? I suspect that when we die, certain parts of our brains shut down and we have a psychedelic experience, a good trip or bad one, and then simply are no longer. I suspect that “we” are not who we think we are in terms of self or even free Will.
Sam Harris’s book “free Will” and Joscha Bach’s “principles of synthetic intelligence” among other books have recently raised questions for me.
There may be no “self” to begin with. We may simply be a process of the material universe that for some reason has developed an internal concept of self that will only exist as long as our physical bodies exist. We will not know we are dead when we are dead. No more memories, no regrets, no hopes, so nothing to fear.
“in what sense are you the same person you were ten years ago?”
“what does it mean then to say that “you” are “you”? Aren’t you a different you now?”
Personally, based on having an “out of body” experience that I once believed was not possible, I think it’s a mistake to assume that all those trillions of cells are WHO we are.
WHO we are is not PHYSICAL. There are no amount of cells that can define WHO we are. Because WHO we are is not of THIS world. We merely reside in these physical bodies while in this realm.
Furthermore, to understand WHO we are, we ought not disregard the “neurons in your cerebral cortex”
The basis of our life, and WHO we are, goes FAR BEYOND the minds of physical scientists, which will NEVER find their answers by observing physical things.
The Sunday school “God” that you were taught to “believe” in as a child may not be the one that gave you life, but I am 100% certain that we ARE spiritual beings experiencing a physical life. Hence the reason that no matter how many TRILLIONS of cells DIE, we are STILL the SAME person.
So many great comments… I won’t add anything to the discussion of cells but instead, what blows my mind is that we have more alien DNA in ourselves than our own. It comes from all the bacteria in our gut. So, if my DNA isn’t the dominate amount of DNA in my body, whose body is it? 🙂
exactly my opposite point! How much of your current dna is NOT present at conception? Does that make you any less you at conception?
What endures from one generation of our cells to the next is the information (encoded in the molecules of which we are made) needed to maintain our structures, from molecules to organs. That is the genius, if I may put it that way, of living matter–replication ability with not-too-many mistakes.
The simplest metaphor is the one axe that the farmer has had for 50 years. He’s only had to replace the handle two times and the head once.
Consciousness, given our current understanding as far as I have read, cannot be described more closely than as an emergent property of our neural structures.
It is a matter of linguistic convention to refer to the the 5-year-old “me” as the same person as the current 69-year-old “me” but the identity is somewhat arbitrary. Not only have my cells been replaced, but even with the neurons the atoms in them are all different now. But the body is not all that has changed. The mind is very different. Most of the memories that the 5-year-old had are gone. The few that remain are no longer accurate except in generalities and some have been replaced by false memories. The thoughts and beliefs are also different. I am influenced by the Buddhist idea of personal impermanence. apart from retaining certain patterns (e.g. DNA sequences, fingerprints) everything that made that 5-year-old has changed. It is not inaccurate (if a little poetic) to say that I have been continuously being reborn albeit gradually. So, do I believe that I am the same person as the 5 year old “me”? Generally, no. For certain purposes (e.g. legal and medical purposes) it is useful to maintain the linguistic convention of calling he and I the same person, but we should not allow ourselves to get caught up in that convention.
Consciousness is impossible to describe. We are not conscious beings. We are beings who are made of consciousness. That seems like a funny way of thinking about it but the only way to know what consciousness is, is by having it yourself, or as I would say, by being it yourself.
I believe that we are spiritual beings because we are made of consciousness. I believe that consciousness is a field, one that fills the entire universe. Our brains act like a lens that can focus this field and use it to literally, come alive, so we can experience the world as living creatures. I believe that consciousness is spirit. It is the thing that cannot be seen, cannot be heard, and cannot be touched. It’s not “I think, therefore I am.” It’s just “I am”. The universe comes alive in us because it is us, and we are all one with it… and with each other. At the very center of our being we are all pure spirit. To see this, you have to see through our ordinary, egoistic way of thinking.
It is true this is not the 16 year old David typing this. I can still walk comfortably for distance but that kid that could run up hills and pack loads is long gone. The body, the corporal David is like my sisters old Nash coupe. By the time we hauled it to the bone yard it was more Montgomery Wards than Nash. The conscious David the one in my head is about 16.
I have found there are a couple of levels of death. We are all pretty aware of the physical death but there is a more subtle death that precedes it, and that is the death of the person. It is the slow loss of the soul that we have grown to know and love. That person that became part of us, the humor, the wisdom, the sorrow, the patience that shapes us. The hand in my hand, the shared life. I was born into a large curious crowd of rouges that have one by one passed from my life.
Where indeed is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head.
The “persistence of personal identity” problem is often advanced as supporting dualism and even the existence of a soul. If the majority of a person’s molecules/cells have changed does that result in a different person? Does this mean that “personhood” is non-material?
According to some estimates, human beings replace almost all of the atoms in their bodies (98%) every year through breathing, ingestion and excretion. Water molecules in human bodies are entirely replaced every 16 days. Water makes up 72% of human bodies, so this would exceed the “majority replacement threshold” every two weeks or so. Yet, we don’t think that we are a different person today than 2 weeks ago.
But what singularly identifies us (or just about anything else) is the pattern, not the constituents. It’s the arrangement of matter and molecules/constituents that counts, not the molecules/constituents themselves, which are fully interchangeable. An H2O molecule is like any other and whether you exchange it with another H2O molecule inside your body, the arrangement or pattern remains the same.
To wit, a boat put through a wood chipper yields a pile of sawdust with exactly the same constituents as the boat, but it is no longer a boat.
Run me through a meat grinder (ouch!) and you get exactly the same constituents, but it’s no longer me.
As long as the pattern/arrangement persists, it doesn’t matter if you exchange some, many, or even all constituents for identical ones. Personhood persists, not because molecules/constituents have been interchanged with the environment, but because of the continuity of pattern/arrangement.
Even if we took the replacement threshold criterion seriously, replacement of the majority of constituents doesn’t happen instantaneously, but over a period of time. Both the pattern/arrangement of constituents that make up the person, as well as the vast majority of the constituents themselves, persist from moment to moment, so there’s no disruption of, or sharp transition in, the personhood/individuality of a human being. “Personhood persistence” can still be maintained, even under the majority replacement criterion.
In fact, under the replacement criterion, identity persistence undermines the concept of a soul in Judeo/Christian/Islamic religions, which deny that animals have souls. Fido’s constituents change even faster than humans’, yet Fido today recognizes his owner, has some foods and games that he likes and others he dislikes, knows some tricks well but not others, just like two-weeks-ago Fido. Does Fido have a soul?
On the “consciousness out of unconscious constituents” question, this is not a problem because the properties of individual constituents do not necessarily transfer to the whole (that would be the fallacy of composition, so-called).
Consciousness is an “emergent” property, in much the same way that a single air molecule does not have temperature or pressure, a single water molecule is not “wet,” a single copper atom does not conduct electricity, and a single stomach cell does not perform digestion. Those properties “emerge” out of large conglomerations of constituents.
Artificial Neural Networks (a basic paradigm in Machine Learning and AI) are comprised of many “nodes” which are individually very basic and “dumb,” but which, in large ensembles, are capable of learning and predicting complex patterns, even when they have not encountered those patterns before, much like biological brains. This complexity, like consciousness, is emergent.
As to the mind, there is no evidence of minds without brain correlates. There is tons of evidence that mind is a function of the brain, as corroborated by fMRI scans, electrical/magnetic stimulation of the brain producing feelings/emotions and even moral judgments, as well as impairment of the mind by injuries or chemical alterations of the brain.
The question as asked begs the question of “what is this ‘I’ of which others speak?”
For every person who knows me, I am a set of experiences they have with which I am associated in their experience, as they experience me now. Their experiences of me is their experience: it is not me (they may have last experienced me 10 years ago; they will have been changed by their experience; so how much of their experience of me is attributable to me and how much to them?).
For me, I am a set of experiences I have had, many of them serendipitous, as I (awarely or not or in-between) experience them, react to them, have feedback from them, and gain (or not) new perspectives on them.
In fact, the version question of “who am I as a person” makes a set of assumptions that do not hold up. The act of self-observation changes me: I have that experience over the course of my life. Events I thought had no effect on me in retrospect were life-changing, it turns out. And the reverse.
Popeye had it right: I am who I am.
Who am “I” is the question. “I” is wraped in the illusion of sensory reality. Once the “I” is unwrapped, the “I” becomes the universal self. It has no pain and no pleasure. The unwrapping of the “I” is an individuals effort that can not be taught by religion – organized or otherwise.
the “I” unwrapping “me” has discovered “myself” wants a pizza….the trinity!!
Well, we could come to a more fundamental issue: what is time? Is it merely a relationship of things to each other? Time is not a completely understood concept. What would “I” be like in a universe where time’s arrow was reversed?
Some Christians think their deity stands outside time and can see all eternity laid out linearly. In that scenario all our selves from infancy to death are still there for the deity to view. That would imply all iterations of ourselves still exist in some way. It’s the question of whether the deity is outside time or not.
Also, some physicists think that quantum rules imply that our universe is constantly dividing into alternate universes. Therefore there may be billions or trillions of slightly differing copies of ourselves in inaccessible alternate universes.
Dr Ehrman, once you figure out what constitutes “you”, let me know if it has free will or not!
OK, I’ll think about it. So to say.
You have argued, in different places including “Jesus Apocalyptic Prophet,” that Jesus believed in the ultimate separation of sheep from goats, and you argued in that book that this belief was universal, for all humankind. Do we know what the criterion for that separation would be? At first glance, it might seem to be loyalty to the Jewish God and his angels, but how could that be applied to inhabitants of non-Jewish cultures? Or is this an ambiguity that cannot be resolved, given the limited evidence we have?
I think the passage makes the differentiation pretty clear. Those who help those in need will be brought into the kingdom. Those who ignore the needy (or do worse to them) will be destroyed.
have you read the translation of the meaning of the quran ?
https://www.thenoblequran.com/q/
Nope.
did you read somewhere that jesus peace be upon him refers to isaiah 42 as his goodnews ?
thank you🌹
I wish you would listen to me so that i take by your hand and show you the path of the prophets and their righteous followers before death comes and regret wont help.
No, he does not in any of our surviving sources.
As you know, we work hard to avoid proselytizing on the blog — that is, we do not try to convince others of our own religious beliefs. That is absolutely fine in OTHER contexts, but not here. But if you want to discuss historical information about the New Testament, Jesus, ealry Christiantiy, and related things, this is the place for you!
yes im wrong i cant cannot convince even outside the blog
but i want to return the favor for the information you give by my comment if there is a connection to the information you told
for example the coming of a good kingdom
God says in the quran which indicate he has taken prophethood and kingdom from children of israel and gave to that Goodkingdom and that God made This last kingdom The best ever to be brought to mankind it forbids evil and enjoin good and the book riyad salheen which is called gardens of the righteos and many otherbooks shows the many ways of producing fruits to God by this kingdom and its prophet.
maybe if you read the quran with ibn kathir commentry you will solve alot of historical mysteries in christianity and even history before christianity. maybe you will discover the truth before death. i dont want you to regret please. please try
thenoblequran.com
https://darpdfs.org/tafsir-ibn-kathir/
talks alot about jews
Tafsir Ibn Kathir: Surah al-Baqarah Vol. 1 Verses 1-185
Tafsir Ibn Kathir: Surah al-Baqarah Vol. 2 Verses 186-286
talks alot about christians
Tafsir Ibn Kathir: Surah al-Imran
please read them
is there things that indicate that the story of russerection was a later addition
is there in some manuscripts that the day he was seen going to heaven was before the day he was seen being crucified?
No, it appears teh resurrection story was origianal to all the Gospels, and no, he never is said to ascend to heaven before the crucifixion. There are only narratives of his ascension in the NT, one in Luke 24:51 (VERY brief), and the other at the beginning of Acts. Oddly, they are by the same person but appear to be at odds with each other (did he ascend the day of the resurrection of 40 days later? The same author says both!)
historically were early christians expecting a human figure to come
Jesus peace be upon him gave the Goodnews to the jews
The jews rejected Jesus Goodnews
who did the jews Reject ? The cornerstone the master of David.
jesus peace be upon him further in mark 12 provoked the jews by telling them that the kingdom of God will be tacken from them and they understood what he meant because they knew his Goodnews.
Then paul comes later and makes the goodnews that jesus died for sins and then gives sarah a high status and haggar a low status. peace be upon sarah and haggar and jesus
Then The reallity Happens and The Last Cornerstone David Master comes from The Descendents of ishmael. and as in matthew 12:18 thats the person whom jesus gave goodnews about which is refered in isaiah 42. i dont know who and when did they make that be about jesus. because in isaiah 42 its talking about kedar the second son of ishmael and where he lived in faran and sela is a name of a mountain in madinah.
the links below examins what was mentioned in matthew 12:18 and isaiah 42 because matthew 12:18 is referencing isaiah 42 it was jesus good news then someone madeit forhim
https://salam.org.uk/2019/02/24/muhammad-pbuh-and-madinah-in-the-bible/
https://www.thenoblequran.com/q/#/verse/61/6
have you come accross a story historically about young men who slept in a Cave 300 solar years, or 309 lunar years and then got raised up from their sleep?
i think the reason jesus disciples started calling jesus the messiah so often after his ascension is because they knew about a prophacy that the messiah will descend in the end of times to kill the wicked one the one eyed the false messiah who claims he is God.
as mentioned isaiah 11:4