Do you have an inner monologue?

[BurtReynolds]

Or are you an NPC?

Reading a bunch of trippy shit about consciousness like The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and Blindsight has got me wondering what sort of creatures I'm dealing with...

[Norah]

of course and it's a real asshole

[tree_]

Yeah consciousness is a very interesting subject. I’ve always been fascinated by it. I do have a voice in my head. But that is not me. I am the one observing the voice(s) in my head. Sam Harris has a lot of interesting material on the subject. Free will, or the lack there of is closely related and equally fascinating

[Dev]

How could the voice in your head not be you? lol. Doesn't remotely make sense. Only useful as a meditation technique for distancing oneself from discursive thought.

[tree_]

How could the voice in your head not be you? lol. Doesn't remotely make sense. Only useful as a meditation technique for distancing oneself from discursive thought.

It’s something I observe, therefore it is not me. Just like your skin or your current mood. Just something being observed. It may currently belong to you, but it is not you.

[Dev]

How could the voice in your head not be you? lol. Doesn't remotely make sense. Only useful as a meditation technique for distancing oneself from discursive thought.

It’s something I observe, therefore it is not me. Just like your skin or your current mood. Just something being observed. It may currently belong to you, but it is not you.

So what is me then if not the material me? For the record I consider my thoughts, mood, and skin to all be components of the material me(strict materialist).

[tree_]

How could the voice in your head not be you? lol. Doesn't remotely make sense. Only useful as a meditation technique for distancing oneself from discursive thought.

It’s something I observe, therefore it is not me. Just like your skin or your current mood. Just something being observed. It may currently belong to you, but it is not you.

So what is me then if not the material me? For the record I consider my thoughts, mood, and skin to all be components of the material me(strict materialist).

You are the observer, consciousness. When you’re meditating properly you’re getting in touch with yourself. Awareness itself, decluttered.

[tree_]

This is not theoretical or my subjective opinion. There are exercises you can try to experience this truth.

[tragabigzanda]

There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

[Dev]

This is not theoretical or my subjective opinion. There are exercises you can try to experience this truth.

Yeah, actually it's only theoretical. You are declassifying components of the human experience/consciousness as not representing the real you, and that is a totally subjective move.

[tree_]

This is not theoretical or my subjective opinion. There are exercises you can try to experience this truth.

Yeah, actually it's only theoretical. You are declassifying components of the human experience/consciousness as not representing the real you, and that is a totally subjective move.

If it can be changed, and you can alter it, how can it be you? Who is the you and altering who?

[tree_]

It’s just like clothes, you can wear them and you can own them but they are not you

[Dev]

This is not theoretical or my subjective opinion. There are exercises you can try to experience this truth.

Yeah, actually it's only theoretical. You are declassifying components of the human experience/consciousness as not representing the real you, and that is a totally subjective move.

If it can be changed, and you can alter it, how can it be you? Who is the you and altering who?

Everything is always in a constant state of change. A referent is not made unreal by it's temporal state.

[tree_]

Do you ever read about that fake hand Experiment? Where you can actually get somebody to experience the feeling of a dummy hand as if it were your own? You are only the space in which experiences happen. You are not your hand or your toenails. Or even your thoughts.

[Dev]

[Dev]

Do you ever read about that fake hand Experiment? Where you can actually get somebody to experience the feeling of a dummy hand as if it were your own? You are only the space in which experiences happen. You are not your hand or your toenails. Or even your thoughts.

so what. you have described some weird phenomenological experience that doesn't even remotely prove your point.

[Ello Sailor]

I post, therefore I am (redacted).

[Dev]

I'm starting to get agitated

[Dev]

I'm starting to get agitated

THANK GOD ITS NOT EVEN ME

THE REAL ME AGREES WITH TREE IM JUST NOT ENLIGHTENED ENOUGH TO ACCEPT THAT YET

[Ello Sailor]

The real you knows what's up, Dev.