X-Message-Number: 14143 Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 15:41:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Scott Badger <> Subject: Re: survival and continuity, the present-moment self "Brook Norton" wrote: > So survival really just becomes a more vague > idea that life and some specific, important > qualities of an entity continue over time (not > that a soul or absolute identity continue over > time)." I'm not sure what you mean by "absolute identity" (I have even less of an idea what you mean by "soul" but let's not go there). If by "absolute identity" you mean an exact duplication of Self-A into Self-B (i.e. A = B), then from the perspective of Self-B, no time would have passed. Any experience at all results in the processing of information and a physiological change (albeit small) in brain and thus identity. I argued that survival occurs when the current self accurately "perceives" itself to be equivalent to or a very close approximation of a recent previous self. > Our consciousness and emotions and drive to be > happy seem to only exist at the present moment. > Our past and future selves are only important > in that we have memories of the past and > anticipations of the future that affect our > happiness at the present moment. Only in the > present moment do we survive. Beyond this > connection to the past and future, I don't see > any special significance to our continuity over > time. I was exposed to a similar argument when I read, "The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts. He argued that humans are anxious creatures because we spend so much mental time in the past and in the future. He even suggests that our ability to move back and forth in mental time contributed to the formation of our sense of "self" (i.e. the one who recalls and the one who predicts, the coherent "thing" that seems to be moving through time is given the name "me"). But the notion that there is only meaning in the here and now is a curious one to me. Now maybe this is a strained argument to some, but what is meant by, "now" or "in the moment"? After all, when it comes to discriminating between time units, our perceptual abilities have their limits. For example, I cannot discriminate between one nano-second and the next, but I can discriminate between one second and the next. So how much time are you talking about when referring to words like "now"? A second? A few minutes? A day? Then Mr. Norton used the analogy of a baseball in flight, saying: > A baseball only moves through the air when you > compare several time frames to each other. > Movement is meaningless if you only look at the > present moment. I'm not sure I follow you now. I thought you were arguing that the meaning is in the "present moment", and now it sounds like you're suggesting that one cannot derive meaning by only looking at the moment. If the latter is your position, we agree. There is little meaning to be derived from a single time frame without taking the context of the other moments of the ball's flight into consideration. The meaning is in the movement, not in the moment. Similarly, meaning does not exist in the moment for us. It is the perception of the self over time that gives us the context from which we construct meaningfulness. > I believe that evolution has conditioned our > brains to cherish memories (memories provide the > information needed to live long enough to pass on > the genes to the next generation) and to feel > happiness when working toward a happier future > (again, planning for a happy future is very > helpful in living long enough to pass on your > genes). I see problems with this paragraph as well. In the first place, plenty of animals don't have anywhere near our capacity for memories and they live long enough to pass on their genes. Secondly, not all memories are cherished many memories are actively repressed and there is probably an evolutionary basis for understanding why that is. Thirdly, our memories are often distorted at the time they are formed due to strong emotions associated with the event. Plus, over time, our memories become even further distorted for various reasons. Our enhanced ability to recall the past (e.g. where food was, where danger was) and our concomitant ability to anticipate the future (e.g. where the food will be, where the danger will be) is perhaps one of our greatest assets in terms of survival. > And so through evolution, we find ourselves very > occupied with contemplating the past and future. > But again, we only really exist at the present moment > and to say that our future selves are somehow a > survival of our current self seems without meaning >... a word game. We are who we are right now. > Past and future versions of ourself will have their > moment to be conscious and no more. Again, I don't think it's possible to live in the moment. No one really does that. No one can. The moment is already past. Meaning is in the movement, not in the moment. The closest you can come to living in the present is concerning your self with your very near-term future. And the difference between you wanting to survive in the near-term vs. wanting to survive in the longer-term is simply a matter of degree. How can there be meaning in the former and no meaning in the latter? Best regards, Scott Badger ----------------------------------------------------- __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get Yahoo! Mail Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14143