Considering the Self Part Two: A "Constant Consciousness"

Welcome everyone!



This evening, I do hope it is quite alright if I happily share a path of thought that I have been blessed with rather recently.

In the previous post, I believe I discussed the consciousness or self, and the relationship this has with the body and the physical world.

To best explain, I believe that another happy analogy is very useful. Let us consider two separate individuals, John 1 and John 2. John 1 and John 2 have undergone the exact same experiences as one another (by experiences we shall also include thoughts). They were born in the same way by the same parents, their bodies are identical genetically and are currently in the exact same position as one another. That is, we shall say that they are in the same situation.

Now, John 1 and John 2 need to make a decision at this point in time. Will they choose the same decision? Or rather, is it possible that they can choose to make different decisions?

I do believe that this scenario may be considered at each moment of the Johns' lives in which it is possible thay they can make decisions and think - starting from when they first become conscious to when they stop being concious (stop being able to think).

In my opinion, there are two possibilities. Either, the consciousness is decided purely by external and physical factors and the thoughts of the individual prior to the point in time. That is, the situation as we have defined above. In this case, John 1 and John 2 must make the same decision, since the machine that generates decisions is defined by external factors only and these external factors are the same at any one point in time. So, if the consciousnesses - the decision generators - make decisions at any one time based on external factors, and these external factors are the same, then so too must be the decisions generated at one point in time by John 1 and John 2.

I believe that this case, the "constant consciousness" case, means that the consciousness does not possess power over the actions that it takes. The little friend perhaps does so at any one point in time. However, ultimately it did not decide this. This is because when the mind (shortened from consciousness) first started thinking, these thoughts were controlled by the external (the external includes the brain).Thus all thoughts after that may be considered part of a chain reaction.

^^ I must say that I am find great difficulty in knowing if I have explained this happily enough. Thus, I would be very grateful indeed if you would wish to post questions about this.

In short, this case means that the self does not decide what it is at a point in time, and is only itself by pure circumstance.
I personally believe in this particular case as opposed to the other and I believe this helps with later arguments.

^^ If it is quite alright, I shall explain the second possibility in the next happy post and I do believe this possibility may be explained a little faster than the possibility described here. ^^ I very much enjoyed explaining this however.

^^ I do apologise greatly if this was silly of me and not very clear.

Thank you very much for reading. I hope this was fun for you.

Thomas.