Roger Walsh - What Makes Personal Identity Continue?

Personal identity seems so strong. We have the same sense of ourselves throughout our lives, even though everything about our physical bodies and brains is changing constantly. What then causes the continuity of personal identity? Some say personal identity is an illusion, but that seems like cheating. Others credit a nonphysical soul. That seems as though it's cheating too.



Roger N. Walsh is an Australian professor of Psychiatry, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, within UCI's College of Medicine.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[Westrwjr]

One of the VERY BEST of the Closer to Truth series I have heard yet (out of quite literally hundreds). Walsh has grasped the full picture of what it means to be human, to have a conscious mind that goes beyond ordinary reductionist explanations, and seemingly exceeds ordinary naturalistic limitations imposed by current trends in neuroscience reflection. It’s as though he’s viewed all 5, 000+ CTT episodes and been asked to provide a sensible capsule summary on what it all means for us as individuals.

[quakers]

Eckhart Tolle asked a great question. What would happen if you did not know your name, the whole story in the head of who you are was gone? This is not a question that has some kind of definite answer because unless somehow we could think back to earliest childhood when we did not have a story how can we approach such a thing. For Tolle it seems the answer might be something like with no story we would live in the moment which for him is all we are in the end. For how many of us is the story of me more of a burden than a source of inspiration? Are we carrying a story around that is more real than what is happening right now?

[soleknight]

One of the best psychological and spiritual academics (if I am allowed to call him that) in the world today

[kenhtinhthuc]

The ones who believe in the self might be favored by evolution via e.g. self-preservation...Evolution is all about survival not about truth.

[AMorgan]

Excellent talk, I'd like to hear more from Roger Walsh.

[rotorblade]

of course the lower level like atoms,
electrons, light etc. can in principle explain chemistry, mechanics then higher level psichology, and things like culture, etc but it’s not useful to go up the chain like that, unless there is something relevant to bring into focus.

[maxwellsimoes]

Guys believes social economy defines person. However he rejects how his minds show it up. Social economy defines person are absurd liar because person are atribuites from conscieness . Social only determined how conscieness workes.

[mikel]

What Roger Walsh can to tell you is that when you're thirsty you usually drink water.
He can't do more than that. /
Here is a "partial" answer to your "quest": the degree of the animal capacity to be aware ( = to be conscious ) is the genetic ability to quickly assemble the epigenetic process in which a "causal stimulus" follows and feeds the same "causal metabolic chain".
The "stimulus" creates the "process", the "process" creates the "function", the "function" creates the "template", and the "template" reinforces the "function".
This real process is a continuous positive-negative ( yes, both at the same time ) feedback process.
If you try to control it, it "refuses" and "rejects" your control ( the natural entropic homeostatic process "knows" perfectly itself the best natural way to optimally manifest in its entropic realm, and...it is not the way the human idiot can wrongly imagine about it ).
The only way it can be "started" ( artificially) correctly is by "set it" and don't ever "touch" it again!
Evidently, one should only know how to do it.

[AlmostEthical]

IMO the easiest way to understand the self is to think of it as a landscape. A landscape of neuronal dynamics that, like any land, is impacted by the environment. In this comparison, culture is the broader landscape of which you are a small plot.

[bobcabot]

mine is broken, irreparable - i had to trow it away...

[rudraksha_diksha]

These questions need lifelong research...5 mintues talk can take you to roller coaster

[johnyharris]

Meditation focuses the attention to such an extent that dissolution of the ego/self occurs. Psychedelic drugs have the same effect but employing a brute force strategy. Dissolution of the ego/self is purely a neuronal event but often leaves a person with a new perspective on their consciousness. This is because without the sense self to ground you as an individual, you feel apart of a larger whole, be that the universe/fundamental consciousness/nature or whatever you may then attribute to your new understanding of the self being an illusion.

[JagadguruSvamiVegananda]

The dialectic exercise in the following three paragraphs should help one to understand the nature of the fundamental conscious observer, that is, the ULTIMATE observer of all phenomena, in other words, the subject/Subject, which is the authentic self (as opposed to material objects):

If someone were to ask you if you are the same individual you were at birth (or even at conception), you would probably respond in the affirmative. So, then, what PRECISELY is it about you that has remained constant since conception? In other words, what is the self-identity you had as an infant, which is the present “you”? It cannot be any part of your body or mind, since none of the atoms or molecules in your zygote body are extant, and “you” certainly did not possess a mind at conception. If you are reasonably intelligent, you may claim that your genome is the same now as it was then. However, it has recently been scientifically demonstrated that genetic code can (and usually does) mutate throughout an individual’s lifetime. Furthermore, nobody factually conceives of their essential nature as being merely a sequence of genes!

More intelligent souls would probably counter thus: “The thing that stays the same from my birth to the present time is my sense of self.” This too, is fallacious, since the sense of self does not emerge until at least a couple of years after birth. An infant has no ideation of itself as an individual actor. You may then say “I was a (male/female) human being” but that doesn’t specify any PARTICULAR human (you, yourself).

So, then, what EXACTLY is it that remains “you” from conception till death? As demonstrated, it cannot be any particular thing or object. That which we refer to as “I” (“ahaṃ”, in Sanskrit) is existence itself, which precedes any artificial sense of self (“ahaṃkāra”, in Sanskrit). It is, in other terms, no-objective-thing, non-localized-spaciousness, the Subject-of-all-subjects, the Ground-of-all-being, which is the Universal Self. Therefore, your essential nature is eternal Being-Conscious-Bliss, usually referred to as “God” by Theists. See also Chapter 10 of "FISH" regarding egoity.

[syedaleemuddin]

Roger what about a person who's a very bad person during the day but at night he will go out and help the hungry and homeless people?
Secondly. I am son of my Mom and Dad and my passport will have my proper address, so that's me. Is it not?

[kevanhubbard]

I have just been looking at a picture of some light pollution that the Swiss beamed into the sky of the Queen and Prince Philip meeting again presumably in the afterlife.But what I wonder remains of these two former individuals I suspect nothing of the self remains as what we were merges back into the One as Plotinus would have had it but I suppose all the experiences we had are not lost.

[eBoardR]

👀 *Ship of Theseus* 👀
All the molecules in the brain/body are eventually replaced every so often, so what's to say we remain the same person..

[mickeybrumfield]

There does appear to be more going on than meets the eye, for instance it is difficult to understand why one is so fiercely committed to protecting and preserving this accumulation of atoms that one sees as themselves, in a sense it seems like an irrational obsession.

[whateverittakes]

Didn’t get the answer I was looking for

[davidrandell]

All atoms and atomic objects double in ‘size ‘ every 19 minutes. Can or how does a ‘soul’ etc keep up? Max Stirner’s “ creative nothing “ has yet to be improved upon. “The Unique and Its Property, 1844/2017 Landstreicher translation.

[JungleJargon]

I've been me from a very young age.