Re: PSYCH/PHIL: We ARE the Experience

Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Mon, 27 Jan 1997 02:10:55 -0500


Nice points.

Still, as these experiences are shaped by our memories, physical parts,
stored interpretation mechanisms, selectional intelligence that charts plans
for next experiences and can partly experience itself, etc., - wouldn't it be
natural to include some of those into the notion of Self as well? Otherwise,
we call the Process the Self, while the Substrate of this process - our
bodies,
knowledge, preferences are... what? Then we could also say that only
processes
are real in anything, and non-interacting things are just not there - then
we lose
the continuity of the entities and can't explain why they suddenly start
experiencing
this or that. So I'd say that Self is a package of both experiences and
abilities.
At this point in the evolutionary process, [some/most] experiences seem more
fluid than [some/most] abilities, so with the tradition of calling parts
with greater
continuity "objects", we can see why people objectify the package of abilities
into the notion of personality. Maybe, in another situation - with fluid
internals
and relatively fixed/simple environment (e.g., a TH hosted by the Amish),
these
notions would swap places...

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