That stuff I said I was going to write about yesterday

[ultimatepsi]

I now present to a piece on the nature of reality and perception and it relevance to identity and other possibly important questions.

Comments

[kraada]

I doubt there'll be any real controversy here . . . I mean, postmodernism (which states that "Everyone is right") is bullshit . . . and if you're a postmodernist and disagree with me, you're hypocritical because by your own theory I'm right :)

That aside, I want to toss an idea out for you. Take the following two things to be definitional for the moment:
Human animal: a creature with a set of genetic material consistent with homo sapiens, capable of reproducing with homo sapiens, et al. (ie- what we normally think of as the genetic material required to be human).
Person: a creature capable of thinking I* thoughts.

An I* thought is a thought like: I know that I want to eat. I know that I was born in New York. Non-I* thoughts: I am hungry.
So the basic jist is, persons know that they are doing the thinking

[ultimatepsi]

I'll agree with you about the moral judgments and personhood. I don't think it causes me any problems. Of course, what I wrote here isn't the basis of my system of morality. Like I said, I was much more thinking about how we identify ourselves.

As for the controversy, have you seen some of the things that cause controversy amongst some of the people that read my livejournal?

[kraada]

I wasn't sure and figured I might as well toss it out there . . . I think a lot of people are more interested in defining "themselves" in terms of their personhood than in terms of their humanity. They care more about the content of their thoughts than their genes

[ultimatepsi]

The thing is by your definition of person, which I think is a good one, anyone who asks "am I a person?" automatically is.

Although the idea that people define themselves based on primarily on their thoughts, memories and feelings, does seem accurate. Maybe what's odd is that when something about me can be defined based on either how I think, or how on some outsider-observable phenomenon (either physical or behavioral), I will tend to go with the definition based on observation.

[sirroxton]

That's a gross misrepresentation of postmodernism, kraada. Don't be lame. :P

[kraada]

There are very much people who act in that way. "You're right, I'm right, everybody's right!" (which I maintain is bullshit).

However, to "not be lame", here's a definition so that if you want to actually defend this stuff, we are certain we're talking on the same grounds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy

[sirroxton]

Well, I can't really defend it until you make a remotely valid criticism, with or without good source material.