The elusive "I"?

[STT]

I am not this body, I am not these thoughts. I don’t believe the elusive I is all that elusive.
I is everywhere. I want. I need. I believe. I don’t want, don’t need, don’t believe. Me, me ,me. Mine, mine, mine. Ego run amok. What is so elusive about something that is ever present? What is elusive for most is the ability to let go of I.

Can you directly experience the experiencer or “I”?

 

[GEddie]

I am not this body, I am not these thoughts. I don’t believe the elusive I is all that elusive.
I is everywhere. I want. I need. I believe. I don’t want, don’t need, don’t believe. Me, me ,me. Mine, mine, mine. Ego run amok. What is so elusive about something that is ever present? What is elusive for most is the ability to let go of I.

You are the body. Without which you’d be nobody.

You are not the thoughts, which are just the output of your mind.

“Letting go of ‘I’” should not even be desirable; Death will cleanly deal with that soon enough.

ICXC NIKA

 

[STT]

I can say things like this: “Yesterday I had the experience ‘X’ in the ‘a’ mode. Today I am having the experience ‘X’ in a ‘b’ mode, which has certain similitudes with the ‘a’ mode, but it has some differences too. I also have had the experience ‘Y’ in a variety of modes, and many other experiences.” I realize that those are somewhat different experiences, but the subject is the same: me.

Also, I can listen to the descriptions that someone else makes of his own experiences, and some times I can understand what he says, because I share them. However, I distinguish between his experiences and my experiences, not necessarily because of their content, but because of the subject: There might be an experience of ‘X’ for which the subject is him, and an experience of ‘X’ for which the subject is me.

Of course you need a subject “me”. You cannot possibly do anything without the subject “me”. “me” is simply a reference which allows you to do thing. Think of walking without having a reference. It is impossible. Our brain has this capacity to simulate the “me” but that doesn’t mean that there is an experiencer or “I”. There is a fantastic talk on ted that you can listen to it here. The story is about a woman who had a stroke on left side of her brain which is responsible for simulating “me”. She explain how she lost her control on doing simple things.

In all these cases it is me who has those various experiences, and I know it with such evidence that no writing or speech whatever can convince me of something else. But my knowledge of this facts is obviously based on experience (on what else could it be?). And, analogously, it would be preposterous if someone demanded that the experience I have of myself be of the same kind of experience that I have when I feel hot, or sad, or tired.

Do you want to convince me that I am elusive to myself?

I just provide an argument that we cannot be sure about “I” but “me” as it is discussed at length in the previous comment.

So, it is your brain. The “elusive I” is always there. If you didn’t experience yourself, how would you be able of repeat “I this” and “I that” so constantly?

It is of course the brain which create “me” as it is discussed in the first comment.

 

[Michael_Mayo]

Do you think Jesus and Buddha didn’t share with you and me the “fiction” of the I? Perhaps you think that when someone asked “them”: “did you say something, Master?”, there was simply no answer, because there was no I listening to the question? Did they speak sometimes? And if they did, were they addressing someone? And if they did, what were they addressing to? fictions?

And, if the I is a fiction, then it must be being produced by an imagination; but whose imagination is this?

Of course they shared it. It is part of our psyche. But they did not limit their sense of being to it, that is, the ego. They were able to transcend it even as there used it.

 

[Michael_Mayo]

I wouldn’t even go there. Why flirt with Buddhism if one is already in the boat of Saint Peter?

Experience is fleeting, but until the final breakdown, the bodied mind who records the experiences in his head, is constant.

ICXC NIKA

Buddhism has alot to offer when it comes to psychology, mindfulness, compassion and detachment. It can give us a fresh perspective and appreciation for the boat of Saint Peter, the teachings of Jesus and closeness to him.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Of course you need a subject “me”. You cannot possibly do anything without the subject “me”. “me” is simply a reference which allows you to do thing. Think of walking without having a reference. It is impossible. Our brain has this capacity to simulate the “me” but that doesn’t mean that there is an experiencer or “I”. There is a fantastic talk on ted that you can listen to it here. The story is about a woman who had a stroke on left side of her brain which is responsible for simulating “me”. She explain how she lost her control on doing simple things.

Do you say that “I” need a subject “me” to do something? What about the me? Does it need its own subject as well, for its reference?

“Who did it?”, someone asks me. I respond: “I did it!”. “So, it was you!”, he says. “Yes, it was me”, say I.

And you think that when I say this, it is more than one subject speaking?

 

[puzzledtoo]

SST: "Can you directly…? I don’t know, I’m not even sure that is important in the end. I am sure though that because of the “I” or ego that I’ve experienced much less of this life than I could have had I learned about letting go, mindfulness, and being present much earlier in life. The ego is always wanting to know of the future or remembering things from the past-good and bad. A hundred or thousand times each day being pushed or pulled in this or that direction. So while this is happening I’m missing the present.

GEddie: I am not the body. I am not the job. Father, mother, son, brother are all labels, but they really are not me. They give the ego a sense of identity different from the other. The other being you for example. The ego probably can’t survive without an other to argue with, fight with and make war against. Then again “my” ego does a pretty good job of arguing with “me”. I am not this body. This body is changing all the time and has changed much throughout the decades. I am not the beliefs I have at any given moment-beliefs change.

 

[STT]

Do you say that “I” need a subject “me” to do something?

No. I differentiate between “I”, experiencer, and “me”, reference. We need “me” to perform tasks, think, etc. What I am arguing is that we cannot prove or provide any evidence that there is an “I”.

What about the me? Does it need its own subject as well, for its reference?

That is “me” which is constant and subject. We can experience it too. We attach it to any activity.

“Who did it?”, someone asks me. I respond: “I did it!”. “So, it was you!”, he says. “Yes, it was me”, say I.

Think of it this way. There is a “me” which attached to any activity. That is true that we verbally use “I” to explain things but that doesn’t mean that there is really an “I”.

And you think that when I say this, it is more than one subject speaking?

I think it is simply the subject “me” not “I” which is attached to act of speaking.

 

[STT]

SST: "Can you directly…? I don’t know, I’m not even sure that is important in the end. I am sure though that because of the “I” or ego that I’ve experienced much less of this life than I could have had I learned about letting go, mindfulness, and being present much earlier in life. The ego is always wanting to know of the future or remembering things from the past-good and bad. A hundred or thousand times each day being pushed or pulled in this or that direction. So while this is happening I’m missing the present.

You can only experience “me”, the subject, which is constant and attached to any activity. In fact it is ironic to me to say that experiencer/“I” can experience “experiencer”/“I” because you need a framework in which it keeps the self inside, to experience, and outside, to experience the self, at the same time. This is logically impossible.

 

[STT]

You are the body. Without which you’d be nobody.

You are not the thoughts, which are just the output of your mind.

“Letting go of ‘I’” should not even be desirable; Death will cleanly deal with that soon enough.

ICXC NIKA

Death cannot resolve any problem since you either have a body or you don’t. You can experience things in the first case and simply cannot in the second case. The experiencer cannot possibly experience itself because you need a framework which accommodates the self and at the same time have the self outside of the framework to allow the experience. This is logically impossible.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

No. I differentiate between “I”, experiencer, and “me”, reference. We need “me” to perform tasks, think, etc. What I am arguing is that we cannot prove or provide any evidence that there is an “I”.

That is “me” which is constant and subject. We can experience it too. We attach it to any activity.

Think of it this way. There is a “me” which attached to any activity. That is true that we verbally use “I” to explain things but that doesn’t mean that there is really an “I”.

I think it is simply the subject “me” not “I” which is attached to act of speaking.

Marvelous! And… Which one of your senses do you use to experience your “me”? I think that we all were mixing things up to now. But we are so fortunate that you have come now to give us such clarity, and with such authority in your words…

…And, when you experience it, how do you know that it is your “me” and not your “I”?

 

[BobCatholic]

Lets start by the Descartes’s argument: “I think therefore I am”. One can say that “I experience therefore I am”. This seems a better argument since thoughts are part of our experience. This means that “I” has the ability to experience. One however can doubt this and argue that experience as an event happens so there is need for an experiencer. Is “I” elusive?

Watch “The Matrix” and tell me whether you took the red pill or blue pill.

That will make you doubt your experiences as real.

 

[STT]

Marvelous! And… Which one of your senses do you use to experience your “me”? I think that we all were mixing things up to now. But we are so fortunate that you have come now to give us such clarity, and with such authority in your words…

We experience “me” directly, like our thoughts so we don’t need any sense to experience it.

…And, when you experience it, how do you know that it is your “me” and not your “I”?

Actually there is an argument in favor of this: We need a framework to experience the experiencer in which the experiencer is inside and outside of framework at the same time. The experiencer should be inside in order to experience and should be outside in order to be experienced. This is logically impossible.

We wouldn’t have any struggle to prove that “I”/soul exist if we could directly experience “I”.

 

[STT]

Watch “The Matrix” and tell me whether you took the red pill or blue pill.

That will make you doubt your experiences as real.

Actually I watch the movie so I know what you are talking about.

The external world as you mentioned could be fake but the experience itself cannot be fake.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

We experience “me” directly, like our thoughts so we don’t need any sense to experience it.

Actually there is an argument in favor of this: We need a framework to experience the experiencer in which the experiencer is inside and outside of framework at the same time. The experiencer should be inside in order to experience and should be outside in order to be experienced. This is logically impossible.

We wouldn’t have any struggle to prove that “I”/soul exist if we could directly experience “I”.

That is a very weak argument: there would be a logical impossibility if we said that the experiencer is inside the framework and not inside the framework at the same time and in the same respect; or that it is outside and not outside at the same time and in the same respect. But to say that it is inside and outside at the same time and in the same respect is not logically impossible: It is only “strange”.

It is strange because we are used to think on the cognitive relation “subject-object”: the subject perceives the object. Then we say: everything which is perceived is an object. And we proceed to apply this model universally. So, if someone says that the “I” perceives itself, then it would be expressed by saying that the I is subject and object at the same time. It is just a matter of words, because we don’t pretend that self-awareness and perception or knowledge are the same thing. When Descartes says “I know that I am, but what am I?”, he does not have other answer but “I am a thing which thinks”; nothing else. Had he said “I know that the chair in front of me is, but what is it?”, he would have had a richer description of the chair besides saying that it is a “res extensa”, and it is not because the chair has more perfections than the “I”, but because it is comparable to many other things while the “I” is comparable to nothing else. I guess Descartes just needed another word to describe the experience: “in the act of perceiving or knowing an object I have an apperception”. Perception and apperception are not the same thing. While perception is a relation that we establish between a subject and an object, apperception is a “self-self” reflexive relation.

Now, this does not have to, nor could, be “proved”. This does not have to do with definitions nor with axioms and inference rules. This is previous to all that, and it is absolutely singular. I have an apperception of my self, but I do not have an apperception nor a perception of any other “I” or “me” in the world. And no body else has a perception or an apperception of my self.

… But you say that while you don’t experience your “I”, you have a direct experience of your “me”. Please, tell us: How do you describe your “me”?

 

[Michael_Mayo]

We experience “me” directly, like our thoughts so we don’t need any sense to experience it.

Actually there is an argument in favor of this: We need a framework to experience the experiencer in which the experiencer is inside and outside of framework at the same time. The experiencer should be inside in order to experience and should be outside in order to be experienced. This is logically impossible.

We wouldn’t have any struggle to prove that “I”/soul exist if we could directly experience “I”.

This topic requires experience in meditation and contemplation rather than philosophical speculation if you really want some answers. Have you tried that path?

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Actually I watch the movie so I know what you are talking about.

The external world as you mentioned could be fake but the experience itself cannot be fake.

You started your thread as a phenomenalist, and now you are a Cartesian. Is it because, being a truth seeker, you changed your mind, or because you don’t distinguish between phenomenalism and rationalism?

 

[STT]

That is a very weak argument: there would be a logical impossibility if we said that the experiencer is inside the framework and not inside the framework at the same time and in the same respect; or that it is outside and not outside at the same time and in the same respect. But to say that it is inside and outside at the same time and in the same respect is not logically impossible: It is only “strange”.

It is strange because we are used to think on the cognitive relation “subject-object”: the subject perceives the object. Then we say: everything which is perceived is an object. And we proceed to apply this model universally. So, if someone says that the “I” perceives itself, then it would be expressed by saying that the I is subject and object at the same time. It is just a matter of words, because we don’t pretend that self-awareness and perception or knowledge are the same thing. When Descartes says “I know that I am, but what am I?”, he does not have other answer but “I am a thing which thinks”; nothing else. Had he said “I know that the chair in front of me is, but what is it?”, he would have had a richer description of the chair besides saying that it is a “res extensa”, and it is not because the chair has more perfections than the “I”, but because it is comparable to many other things while the “I” is comparable to nothing else. I guess Descartes just needed another word to describe the experience: “in the act of perceiving or knowing an object I have an apperception”. Perception and apperception are not the same thing. While perception is a relation that we establish between a subject and an object, apperception is a “self-self” reflexive relation.

That is the point I am making: An object can not be subject too at the same time. This is not strange but impossible to me.

Now, this does not have to, nor could, be “proved”. This does not have to do with definitions nor with axioms and inference rules. This is previous to all that, and it is absolutely singular. I have an apperception of my self, but I do not have an apperception nor a perception of any other “I” or “me” in the world. And no body else has a perception or an apperception of my self.

I agree.

… But you say that while you don’t experience your “I”, you have a direct experience of your “me”. Please, tell us: How do you describe your “me”?

Just close your eyes and don’t let anything scatter your mind. What you experience in background is “me”.

 

[STT]

This topic requires experience in meditation and contemplation rather than philosophical speculation if you really want some answers. Have you tried that path?

No, I have never meditated. How it is? Can you explain it to us? Is it consistent with what I augured?

 

[STT]

You started your thread as a phenomenalist, and now you are a Cartesian. Is it because, being a truth seeker, you changed your mind, or because you don’t distinguish between phenomenalism and rationalism?

I think I stick to the fact that experience is real. What I argue is whether “I” is real. Could you please elaborate why do you think that I change my mind?