I think, therefore, I am?
Are we (only) our brains?
I love this type of thought exercise. They’re fun. It’s one of those that nobody can really prove or disprove. Which makes answering them (or attempting to) that much more fun.
My knee-jerk answer is, of course we are our brains! We are our thoughts and our minds. Our bodies just mere hardware to our software -- a clunky one at that. But wait, what are our brains really, but electrified hunks of flesh, able to construct and execute (predictable) algorithms?
So I guess our brains are simply just hardware too. Running what kind of software, now that is the question.
Answer me this: what happens when the brain becomes damaged? Through illness, erosion of time, or broken by injury? Now the software cannot execute as well, the electricity cannot travel through oxygen-starved pieces of flesh, cannot access data from damaged memory banks, cannot form the right words due to a break in the wiring.
What does that mean for these people? Are they no longer the same people they were?
Are they less?
Like an outdated cell phone, with a cracked screen and a faulty battery, no longer able to install updates to keep up with the latest applications. Sorry! You need version 13.0 or later! No, you do not have enough memory to install the latest version. Guess you’re out of luck then. Goodbye.
I refuse to believe we are simply the sum of our thoughts, the weight of our bodies, the sound of our voices. We can’t be, right? Otherwise, what’s the difference between us and machines with replaceable operating systems and upgradeable memories?
Here’s another thought: We are only who other people think we are. Think about it, if we disappear tomorrow, and nobody notices, then one could argue we didn’t actually exist.
We kind of need that acknowledgment, don’t we? After all, it doesn't matter what we tell ourselves in our minds, if nobody else could hear it.
Like Schrodinger’s cat: if nobody opens the box to look inside, then does it really matter if the darn cat is dead or alive?
I think what I’m getting at, is that we can’t possibly be so easily explained like individual pieces of software. We’re more. We are also part of a larger, vastly intricate, interconnected information system. That sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? We are all connected, therefore, we all matter, in one way or another. Our “selves” cannot be defined in isolation without first acknowledging its connection to each other.
Forgive me! I believe I have gone on a tangent now. Also, I think I am changing my original answer to the question.
We are (not) our brains.
Can’t wait for them to scoop it out blues
The body is a drag. it sucks. lazily, ineptly moving around. depressingly slow, desparungly awkward.
that's why I'm yanking 'myself' out, the moment I can. the age of tissue and bone as an integral part of what it is to exist must and WILL come finally to an end!!
Once all that flesh gets cut away, and fed to the dogs, we shall truly realize the metaphisical destiny of our species: real metaphiscal existance. existing joyfuly without unwanted input, or need. with no pain, or hunger, feeding only on sensation and thought.
that will be something to wish for.
no more cumbersome barriers between the desire to act and fullfillment.
no more oversized thumbs , struggling to precisly touch a tiny keyboard...and failing..
no. just an endless flow of words and words. words and words, words and words. words and wirds and words and words.
we'll be so efficient in producing thoughts and articulating them flawlessly.
more words and words , words and words...
untill i'll get bored.
then I'll remember that this whole 'mind over matter' crap, this dubious distinction between matter and essence, brain and organs, body and soul, was brought to us by backward, ignorant hacks who lived thousands of years ago. 'thinkers' that were so completely obssessed with finding definitions and reasoning out distinctions that they would be in a mental asylum, if they were living today.
integration, goestalt, complexity, was something they shrugged off.
no. enough. no nore of those bozos. time to finally ACCEPT the inseperable and just try to survive and grow , despite limitations to knowing and existing.
maybe touch up the article before I post, for a change..
We are human beings
Humans are the animals that cross the nature and do extra things .
If we relate ourselves to other animals we'll see that our only work is surviving and reproducing to prevent our extinction but as we all know we do lot of extra things and in these extra things we created the world of internet where our other self exist where we can be anything or anyone and here we are only the mind and not the body we all are virtual here.
So we are body+brain in real life and we are only brain on the internet and the problem is we are giving importance to our internet life more so we are becoming just brain and we are creating most of things for the Muse of our brain like movies, music, virtual games or worlds just for the brain.
So we can say we are becoming more of the brain now a days.
Fallout
my brain is the fallout
of a nuclear holocaust
in which I destroyed
every iota of mental health
vodka sodas for everyone
would you like one?
my body is a temple
until the party
involves beer pong and shots
my body and brain
are one
making decisions that for sure
lead to self-sabotage and hangover cures
We are the Glue
We are neither the body nor the brain. We are the glue that holds the neuroglia, platelets and assorted subchondral osseous tissues from oozing into the vacuous void of the universe, a pink mist of a translucent and truculent goo, just some humanoid cell droppings for an alien spacecraft to clean off his windscreen. I imagine the aliens would have a wash button on the dash that sprays a special windscreen cleaning solution to clean this unmentionable mixture off their shiny spacecraft windscreen.
The glue is not a physical or mental thing, it’s more of an attitude, like the childhood insult about 'I am rubber and you are glue'. Glue is the thing that bonds us together. And by bond, I don’t mean those financial instruments we use to invest that work counter to equities, or that secret agent who drinks things that are shaken and not stirred, I mean those things that help us to hold it all together. For when we choose to give up and no longer hold ourselves together, we might just dissolve into a truculent goo that drifts into space and plops onto the windscreen of a passing alien spaceship and nobody wants that to happen, at least I don’t.
Body or Brain that’s the question.
The question has been asked
“Are we the whole body or just the brain?”
My thoughts on this subject are that we are NOT the physical self. Rather we are a Soul wearing a human suit.
Maybe that sounds a little simple but why muck it all up with a lot of fancy words to explain the same thing?
I observed my mother minutes after she died and I can honestly say there is quite a difference between a living body inhabited by a Soul, and a dead body that is Soulless.
An inhabited Soul filled body, has a glow about it. Especially if the soul is a good one and lives to do good.
A body that is uninhabited (Dead) somehow has no glow, has a darkness, or shade over it. It’s not scary, just empty.
So my friend, in my opinion, look not to the body for it is a finite thing, instead look to the ethereal for there you will find infinity and wisdom of eternity.
Are we even both?
How can we be so sure that we are only the brain? Or only the body? Or better yet how do we even know that we weren't something else before that?
Just because we are human beings and we have brain and a body, doesn't mean that it is something we had before!
I tend to think that we existed even before that! Like before having bones, brain, hands, body etc, we might have been in the air waiting to evolve into something else. Like butterflies before becoming that, they were something else and then they evolved.
Like technology, like weapons, like everything!
Nothing of those were existing but there were only an idea away or problem solved away.
we’re just us
I'd like to say that we are just the brain because, honestly, I don't feel like my body is me. I've always felt like it was just something I got shoved into. And in a way it is, my body is mine by chance, but if that's true than all of me is only me by chance. The point is, the brain is part of the body, and we can't be the brain without being the body.