Sorry about that ridiculous watermark.

  • Melmi
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    6 months ago

    Maybe. We might be getting into the weeds of unknowable philosophical questions here.

    My belief is that my consciousness now is more or less the same as when I was young. But then, there’s no way to know that, as we only exist in the current instant. It’s possible I sprung into existence when I woke up this morning.

    And yet I think that the claim “there’s no continuity of consciousness, the You that existed yesterday is not the same You that exists now” is just as unprovable and thus unknowable as the claim that I am the same Experiencer that I always have been. We have no understanding of what consciousness even is.

    To be honest I’m not really sure what consciousness “changing” means. I’m curious what you mean by that. In my mind, either it is or it isn’t the same. It’s just the thing that experiences my identity, my body, qualia. It’s awareness itself.

    I think some of the difficulty here boils down to the impossibility of defining consciousness itself.