What are you, exactly?

[BoevenF]

I can't believe it, but I concur with Volki 
Interesting book about this argument is "The Mind's I" by Douglas R. Hofstaedter and Daniel C. Dennett. Even if their vision of the mind if I recall it correctly points to a "mechanical" origin, it's a wide collection of scripts about consciousness by many authors, so I think valuable per se.

I think the trick is the meaning of self, if we want to think about as a nucleus of awareness  that identifies our "presence" in the universe since our birth, or as a living bucket of experiences and interactions with the universe surrounding us
and constantly modified by sensorial experiences.
I tend to apply the latter.

[LigH]

Oh, I can offer a "Douglas" too... a Dougles Noel Adams.

Don't look into the Total Perspective Vortex. For the one who wants to be happy, ignorance is bliss.

[BoevenF]

I am a pie.

[Aramara Meibi]

just part and parcel of the supreme

[tman]

Theseus' Ship: If an old ship is brought back to shore, and every last part of it replaced with new timber, sails, and rigging, is it still the same ship?

I like this question because, in my opinion, it's not about the physical world at all but about the way we as humans perceive and categorize things.  (Also, I just took a few benodryl a while back so forgive me if I don't make any sense.)

The universe doesn't care what is a "ship."  The idea of "ship" is something humans came up with as a shortcut for any number of configurations of wood, nails, sails, etc.  What is "wood"?  It's a broad term for some specific configurations of elements, each of which is just a name for a specific arrangement of protons, neturons, and electrons.  Etc.

So in this case, I think the answer really is "there is no answer."  I would say, yes it is the same ship because when I consider what makes a "ship" I am thinking of the configuration of the pieces, not the pieces themselves.  But that is just a matter of perspective on my part.  If you asked "if you take an important sword and replace the hilt, and then later replace the blade, is it still the same sword?" then I would say no, because in this case I feel that it is the blade which makes the sword.  But that's just the way it's organized in my brain.

You can apply this to humans too.  If I lose a kidney or break a hip and doctors replace it with a new one, I feel that the replacement is part of who I am and the old dead one is not any more.  You can do this with all body parts except the brain.  If you replace my brain, the body is no longer me.  The brain is the "essence" of the person just like the blade is of the sword.

Final note: http://xkcd.com/659/

[Donari Tyndale]

I'm the universe. God, if you wish to call it that. The only thing that exists. You all are a part of me, as is the earth, the solar system and everything else. Which still doesn't mean I give a hippy shit about saving the trees or starving children.

Now, that was the easy part.

The hard thing about your question is really that of why the heck our consciousness is a local phenomenon, i.e. why you think that you are in your own body.

In my eyes, the body of animals has, through interconnectedness by neurons, achieved a certain degree of coupling in the fog of quantum uncertainty that is the universe. The information that enters at one point of the body is transferred to a central entity, the brain, quick enough before randomness destroys that information.

The thing that separates my consciousness from yours is that my information entirely depends on the signals gathered by the cells that make up my body. I think that conjoined twins (There is a famous case of two with one body and two heads) are capable of having a sense of identity as being one being, but that also humans have the ability to have two identities in one body (Such as is the case of multiple personality disorder).

So while being joined by neurons gives you the ability to have a single consciousness, it is no must.

Now, another question is of course that of superorganisms such as ants. I think that ants are rightfully regarded as a single organism and have an identity as a colony, but I doubt that they have a sense of consciousness as a single being. If they were to travel lightyears instead of a few centimetres, the information they carry back into the colony is certainly subject to quantum uncertainty. Thus, humans can have a social identity as being one, but I doubt they would be able to share a single consciousness as they are not physically connected (yet).

Now, if you are the universe itself, why do you have a consciousness at all? I mean, one would not expect the universe to have a consciousness.

The answer to that perhaps lies in the quantum mechanic nature of the world. Without anyone observing the universe, it is in all states simultaneously (Schrödinger's Cat, essentially). You are an observation of the universe, a state of the latter. In fact, every human being is a state on its own right, such as every animal and everything else. Quite obviously, the universe seems to prefer to be observed (A collapse of the wave function, if you may), as if it would not, we would just be some weird quantum fog. Going one step further, we perhaps can think of the universe liking to be maximally observed, i.e. the more information a certain state can observe, the more likely the universe is in that state. A single electron can observe a single bit of observation, spin up or spin down, thus its consciousness would be pretty limited. Undoubtedly, humans are the type of being on earth that has a maximal consciousness, thus being able to observe a lot of information at once, thus being a likely state of the universe to be in.

To summarize, if you are a state of the universe, you are likely to be a state that carries some maximal observation power, i.e. a human (or similar).

Lastly, while it holds for me that I am the universe, so does it hold for you. Your consciousness is also a valid state for the universe to be in, and you are your own universe in your own right.

Welcome to the Donariverse, bitches.

[Donari Tyndale]

Another implication of this point of view is that the state of the universe is "now". Part of your consciousness is the observation of a "past", which really does not exist. You observe the universe at this point of time and come into being only right in this instant. Your past and memories are rather a likely past, i.e. the most likely chain of events resulting in the now. A state of the universe with the ability to carry a memory is just more observation power, a further increase in likelihood. And in the context of relativity, it's not even that hard to understand. Memory is just the temporal transferal of information, just like neurons are the spatial pathway for information. Both, however, are subject to quantum uncertainty (Including your past, which is pretty cool to think about).

This relates to the ship problem in the following: Imagine Martians came to earth and were able to teleport you, albeit with destroying you in one place and making an exact copy of you in another place. No one, including yourself, would notice a difference after the teleport.

From my point of view, the answer to the problem at hand is quite simple. As you are existing only in the now, you don't need to care about whether you are destroyed and assembled again.

Your past, and thusly the past of the universe, are rather a sequence of events that result in the state in the now. However, even though you do not have a past, as your consciousness has a sense of past information observed, you can just live on happily as that just seems what the universe likes.

[Cairn]

I like to consider myself a hunky stud.

On a deeper note, I think it's quite easy to derive millions of theories about what you are.

I prescribe to dirt.

[Eonwind]

Since your discussion is pseudo-scientific I would only like to point out you're missing just a small piece of information: the second thermodynamic law, which implies a past exists.

[Donari Tyndale]

Eonwind, we're not talking about thermodynamics, really. Quantum theory takes precedence as thermodynamics arises from it in a large scale limit.
The past exists but is of statistical nature (law of large numbers, which gives rise to thermodynamics). Your perceived past is the most likely past that resulted in the state you are in now. Which features an ever increasing entropy.
Basically, you are measuring your past only in the now and thus determining it. However, it is the most likely one.
And this is far from pseudo-scientific, it is as scientific as such talks get. Human consciousness unfortunately can't be put into a formula yet.

[Timil Deeps]

Whoo... talk about a topic close to my own heart.  I'm no expert or anything, but I majored in Cognitive Studies and minored in Psychology; Riggy's question is akin to the big issues we had to wrestle with in that course of study, especially as it relates to the concepts of "mind" and "consciousness," and the the debate of Dualism versus Materialism.  We looked at phenomena such as Phantom Limb (as mentioned by Volki) and read a couple of books by Daniel Dennett (including an audacious work entitled "Consciousness Explained"), among many others.  I could go on, but suffice it to say that while I'm not an expert, I'm definitely an aficionado of the topic.

Regarding the metaphor of Theseus' Ship, I would add that we already undergo a similar process known as Apoptosis (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis), in which various cells die off and are replaced. The popular myth is that this occurs over the course of 7-10 years, by which time you basically have a whole new body, but the process is actually an ongoing, rolling cycle of renewal. Research suggests that different cell-types have varying lifespans, and some aren't even replaced if/when they die (such as the cells of the cerebral cortex).*

I am always becoming.

I think this is a nice brief, if not very comprehensive summation that describes our transitory nature as temporal beings. However, I think Rigwyn's question is trying to get at our essence(s) as beings in relation to ourselves, eachother, and our physical environment.

One of my favorite answers to this question is by C. S. Lewis, who was reflecting on whether people really have souls or not. His conclusion was this:

"You don't 'have a soul'; You are a Soul. You have a body."

I realize this quote proverbially "breaks the hermetic seal on a metal cylindrical container of subterranean invertebrates" by including topics such as spirituality and religion, but the question is so big that I don't think physical sciences alone can comprehensively/meaningfully address it.

...Aaand that's all the time (and big words) I have for this post, for now...

I look forward to continuing this discussion!

-Timil

*See this selection of articles for more info on cell-death and replacement:
http://askanaturalist.com/do-we-replace-our-cells-every-7-or-10-years/
http://www.livescience.com/33179-does-human-body-replace-cells-seven-years.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/02cell.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[Rigwyn]

Nice posts, guys. I'll have to chew on some of these a little later.

A few related thoughts that I'm still playing with. ( well, one thought for now, I guess. I forgot the others after typing this one up... :/ )

Regarding Volki's suggestion that consciousness is something external that inhabits a working body ( Correct my if I misinterpreted this ), I'm not so sure I like that idea but, but if you word it a little differently, then its more palatable to me.

ie.

Thought, mind, consciousness is energy that has passed though the body and brain. Perhaps in the same way that electricity changes when it passes though a coil or a light bulb, perhaps there's a similar relationship with energy and thought. If this is so, then you could argue that this energy was originally external.

With regard to spirituality, I want to say that if there is a god then for me, it would have be the universe itself - not some puny heroin-addict-looking human with a messianic complex or political agenda.

[Eonwind]

Eonwind, we're not talking about thermodynamics, really. Quantum theory takes precedence as thermodynamics arises from it in a large scale limit.
The past exists but is of statistical nature (law of large numbers, which gives rise to thermodynamics). Your perceived past is the most likely past that resulted in the state you are in now. Which features an ever increasing entropy.
Basically, you are measuring your past only in the now and thus determining it. However, it is the most likely one.
And this is far from pseudo-scientific, it is as scientific as such talks get. Human consciousness unfortunately can't be put into a formula yet.

No Donari, you're completely misunderstanding the quantum theory if you think it supersede or can break the two thermodynamic laws. While the future (in a quantum mechanic view) can be seen as a cloud of probability which collide in a "fixed" state when the a phenomenon is observed, the past is an already happened configuration so it's no more in a probabilistic uncertainty state. Also never forged that while the general relativity theory is more like a geometrical theory which not strictly time dependent (and just to make a silly example of what it means does not actually forbid by itself the time travel in the past) the quantum mechanics equation are time dependent and so speaking about the possibility of the past being a cloud of probability now is contradictory.

I also think the introduction and a better understanding of the second thermodynamic law especially in the relativity theory can make it possible to make the QED theory and relativity come closer to each other, perhaps ending all the silliness about possible time travels in the past.

Now speaking about human consciousness has not a scientific definition, so it entirely not a scientific topic, so in the end science is totally unable to tell anything about it; just like science is unable to prove anything outside its own domain (and always remember science is nothing but a method).
That's why any argument involving science trying to explain religion, metaphysic and other topics under the philosophy domain can only be defined pseudo-scientific at best.

[Donari Tyndale]

I also think the introduction and a better understanding of the second thermodynamic law especially in the relativity theory can make it possible to make the QED theory and relativity come closer to each other, perhaps ending all the silliness about possible time travels in the past.

Mate, sorry, but that just nonsense. Thermodynamics is just statistics, and nothing else. There are no laws on its own, they are a consequence of the underlying theory. If you don't get that, it's best we don't further this argument.

Eonwind, what you do in quantum field theory (the stuff that actually matters), not quantum mechanics (I used QM for the sake of being simpler to understand for most) is that in order to derive the outcome of something at point b while starting at point a is that you allow for everything to happen in between and weigh the possibilities accordingly. This gives you, if you know the incoming particles, the scattering amplitudes for outgoing particles in colliders.

Whatever you consider psuedo-science has always been an integral part of physics, interpreting whatever our model means for us. The many world interpretation or the Copenhagen interpretation are just two of those.

My argument is (And perhaps you've heard a little about QFT and can follow) that as you can not say which state you were in precisely, as it is bound to be subject to quantum mechanical uncertainties (Heisenberg uncertainty principle) you must weigh all possible pasts according to their likelihood in order to determine a "physical" past. Only in the now you are truly observing sharply. The past and future are quite muddy.

I don't see any problems with time travel either, considering I can go around a building and return at the same point in space. Relativity is so much more than just a geometrical theory, it tells us, and to the best of our experimental capacity, that time and space are actually equal parts of spacetime.

Here's a few (thought) experiments:

a) You put the rest of the universe into a sealed box. It would invariably go Schrödinger's Cat on you, and only you opening that box would determine the state it is in.

b) Say you exist now. You take a look at yourself in a few seconds, i.e. you self-observe. In between, you did not observe and were thusly in a superposition of all possible states. Your atoms were statistically spread out all over the universe, you were even in a state that included a superposition of your own death. Do you really think a consciousness can handle something like that?

c) We know of quantum eraser experiments. You can ERASE THE PAST of particles and make, in retrospect, their past a superposition again. This would, in theory, be possible for you and me as well.

P.S.
An electron just doesn't care about thermodynamics, and thus the wave function of you. Thermodynamics solely predicts how that wave function likely behaves.

[Pierre]

I also think the introduction and a better understanding of the second thermodynamic law especially in the relativity theory can make it possible to make the QED theory and relativity come closer to each other, perhaps ending all the silliness about possible time travels in the past.

Mate, sorry, but that just nonsense. Thermodynamics is just statistics, and nothing else. There are no laws on its own, they are a consequence of the underlying theory. If you don't get that, it's best we don't further this argument.

I understood Eonwind to be saying that a better understanding of why the second law of thermo (entropy always increases) holds could help stitch together QED and general relativity.

There are interesting physics papers out in the past year on the second law of thermo and why it holds, it's a valid scientific inquiry.

Stitching together QED and general relativity?  That's just electromagnetism and gravity - why don't we see if it can unify all the forces, so include strong and weak?  Anyway, I've no idea how that would be done. 

But it would not surprise me if the second law was connected to the arrow of time (always heading to the future, I guess that is another way of stating the second law, not sure about this) which was somehow connected to the structure of spacetime (space and time are not on completely equal footings, there is a minus sign difference), which a better understanding of could point a way towards unifying gravity with the other forces.

I liked that part of Eonwind's comments.  But one correction, general relativity is definitely time dependent.  You solve Einstein's field equations and get what's called a metric, just a way to measure distances in any kind of curved space.  The metric has space and time components.  So it's just like quantum mechanics in that respect.

Agree that consciousness is way too big vast complex and hard to grapple with - we don't even know where it's located - doesn't stop people from trying, but I don't see physics having anything to say about that for a very long time.

Donari, for thought experiment B, I think you are taking one of the interpretations of QM to be true, probably many worlds - if you are Copenhaganist then you would say you were always in the state you observed, you just didn't know it for sure until you made the measurement.  And we don't know which interpretation is correct.  So, maybe we will be able to deal with quantum, with our darling little minds. 

Consciousness probably stretches and grows as we do, I don't think when we were in trees looking a bit more like monkeys that we could have ever grasped the concepts of cars and computers and cell phones.