I don’t claim the division is perfect. There’s the extended phenotype, and all that jazz. However, the claim was about the “most natural place to draw a line between you and not-you”. Of course there is no perfect place to draw that line—so, a few fillings do not disturb the general thesis.
Assuming one has to draw a line, there will probably be a best place to draw it.
I think the assumption that one has to draw a line is arbitrary, like deciding what amount of market capitalization constitutes making a corporation “too big to fail” and what falls short of that, or deciding “when ‘life’ begins”. Such line-drawing exercises leave me thinking “Um...what?”
Uh huh. So: I care about my toenails less than my kidneys too. But the context from the post is whether people identify with anything other than their conscious mind—and the answer I was giving was of the form: yes, of course!!! Consciousness is like the PR department. If you think that is you then—in my book—you have made a basic and fundamental existential mistake.
The most natural place to draw a line between you and not-you is at your boundary as a biological organism.
I disagree strongly and see no reason why you’d think that.
Have any fillings in your teeth?
I don’t claim the division is perfect. There’s the extended phenotype, and all that jazz. However, the claim was about the “most natural place to draw a line between you and not-you”. Of course there is no perfect place to draw that line—so, a few fillings do not disturb the general thesis.
Assuming one has to draw a line, there will probably be a best place to draw it.
I think the assumption that one has to draw a line is arbitrary, like deciding what amount of market capitalization constitutes making a corporation “too big to fail” and what falls short of that, or deciding “when ‘life’ begins”. Such line-drawing exercises leave me thinking “Um...what?”
Uh huh. So: I care about my toenails less than my kidneys too. But the context from the post is whether people identify with anything other than their conscious mind—and the answer I was giving was of the form: yes, of course!!! Consciousness is like the PR department. If you think that is you then—in my book—you have made a basic and fundamental existential mistake.