[SolarCross]

Are you saying that you have neurons?

In other words, are you postulating the existence of a soul that can exist independently of the brain and that the soul has ownership of the body?

Because that is non-scientific.

People who have brain damage often have different personalities afterward. In a very real sense, your personality and consciousness are your brain.

Anyway, you are a neuron. And you are more than that at the same time.

You are a collective of neurons. And you are more than that at the same time.

You are a specific relationship of neurons. And you are more than that at the same time.

Like the hypothetical brain damaged person, your brain also changes through your life. It just changes because you are learning and growing and changing, not because of brain trauma.

So, you (like everyone else) are an ever changing patterned collective of neurons and others cells.

Which statement is correct?

1. A bicycle has wheels.
2. A bicycle is wheels.

Before you start pretending to be a science guy maybe you should master basic logic?

[Pants-of-dog]

Can bicycles own things?

No, so it is illogical to say a bike has wheels, even though we say that all the time. Just because we use figures of speech does not mean that these figures of speech are always correct and true when we look at them literally.

A bike is wheels. A bike is also a frame and handle bars and a seat, etc. But the fact that the bike is also composed of other things does not change the fact that the bike is (partially) wheels.

Now, if I take the wheels off a bike, is is still a bike?

If I take off the wheels and put on different ones, is it still a bike?

If I take off the wheels and put on different ones, is it still the same individual bike?

[Decky]

The individual is a myth, a lie manufactured by the (((bourgeois media))) Corbyn is the masses and the masses are Corbyn.

[SolarCross]

Yes a bicycle can "have" things. Anything which is composed of parts has parts.

HAVE:

: to hold, include, or contain as a part or whole

eg. the car has power brakes, April has 30 days

Again this is a tangent because when I get drunk my neurons get wacky yours do not. I am not you (thankfully).

[Pants-of-dog]

Yes a bicycle can "have" things. Anything which is composed of parts has parts.

HAVE:

: to hold, include, or contain as a part or whole

eg. the car has power brakes, April has 30 days

So a bicycle is composed of parts, including wheels.

The bike is not separate from the wheels, but instead is composed (at least partially) of wheels.

Just like you are composed (partially) of a neuron.

I like this phrase “is composed of”.

Again this is a tangent because when I get drunk my neurons get wacky yours do not.

Is the alcohol bonding with your brain cells a part of you?

When you are drunk, you “hold, include, or contain as a part or whole” some alcohol inside of you.

[SolarCross]

I can have a tangent too.

[Pants-of-dog]

None of this is a tangent.

It is an analysis of what you actually are.

Even when you get drunk, your cells are bonding with alcohol molecules, metabolising them, breaking them down, and incorporating parts of the alcohol into you and expelling others. Is that alcohol part of you when you drink it?

If you were an entirely discrete individual, there would be a clear distinction between you and the alcohol. There is not.

So it is a biolgical fact that you are not an entirely discrete individual. You are an individual insofar as it is you getting drunk and not me, but at the same time, you are not entirely separate from your environment.

So, are you an individual?

Looking at it another way, you would not know what getting drunk is if you were not part of a society that had drinking and a language that described getting drunk.

So when you get drunk and identify that to yourself, you are enagaing in a collective action insofar as you are using a collective tool (i.e. the English language) to describe to yourself the experience of getting intoxicated through alcohol consumption.

So, I would say that you are simultaneously an individual and a part of a collective. They are not mutually exclusive.

[Red_Army]

@SolarCross is going to consider any comment in this dumb thread a tangent unless it's about how communists are ant people who bathe in torrents of blood. I don't know if he thinks starting the discussion this way was mysterious or if his meat diet has finally curdled his brain, but I'm along for the ride.

It's especially funny watching him get logic owned by @Pants-of-dog in his own thread. For the record I think philosophy is gay and voted other because it seemed like the closest choice to who gives a fuck.

[SolarCross]

@Pants-of-dog
I don't think being impervious to the not-self is a necessary criteria for being an individual. That alcohol affects me doesn't change that there is a me that is affected.

Moreover language makes it easier to communicate with other individuals but does not imply a shared feeling or allegience. Mortal enemies might share a language.

What makes a collective? Allegience? shared sensation?

[RhetoricThug]

What makes a collective? Allegience? shared sensation?

Consciousnesses is not a dogma, consciousness is a dynamic relationship with everything else in existence. Where do YOU begin and where do YOU end, SolarCross? You're mostly an amalgamation of the past and its conscious activity. And as a prime mover, with the power to generate motion, you have an opportunity to leave your mark on the totality which is snowballing and fleeting right before our eyes I. Here you are, using a language YOU didn't invent, swimming through a service environment you didn't create (thanks @noemon), posting self-referential thoughts on this technological extension of consciousness. Yet, you're under the impression that you own this kind of experience, as if you didn't need the whole world just to experience anything in the first place. So the story goes, out the birth canal and into the mother's arms, little baby solipsist got a name.

Where is he now? He's posting sweet nothings on a forum called Pofo, waiting for the world to reply.

[SolarCross]

Okay so apart from @Saeko who despite her (their?) unique personality believes she is (they are?) a collective we have POD who reluctantly accepts the reality of his individuality but nonetheless maintains that he is a collective at the same time. So let's look at that...

To test the proposition of whether someone can be an individual and a collective at the same time I will use my own self as the test subject rather than @Pants-of-dog because I am not @Pants-of-dog so I can't presume to speak for him the way he would presume to speak for me. I am an individual that's a given, empirically so since that is my direct experience. Could I also be a collective? That begs the question which collective? I have British citizenship so maybe that means I am in the British collective? I speak English so maybe I am in the English language collective? Or I am a member of the species homo sapiens so maybe that is a collective too? I like classical music, is there are classical music liking collective? Also I am quite tall. I wear clothes. I drink booze. I drive cars but not motorcycles, any of those and more could be collectives for all I know. I have travelled by plane a few times, perhaps I am in the flying collective? I approach the divine by means of the northern paganism, so perhaps that is another collective? The trouble is there are too many collectives and none of them are real the way I am real.

[Victoribus Spolia]

@SolarCross

Aren't you always inadvertently admitting of your own individuality by describing your own personal membership to a collective and using the designator "I"?

Not to mention, the axiom of argumentation I have used elsewhere gives me strong reason to challenge the collectivist position. There is no true collectivism in the sense of a hive-mind that denies individuality, such a notion is actually incomprehensible to us on a personal level. The gradation of views is really a spectrum of acknowledgment regarding rights.

What are commonly called "collectivists" are not those who can actually deny individually (as I said, they really can't); rather, such only deny that individuals have rights that ethically override the considerations of the broader body-politik.

Hence, the only possible poll option that could reflect "collectivism"would be this (which isn't in the OP I might add):

"I am an individual (as such cannot be epistemologically denied), but I don't believe that my individuality is ethically relevant when it comes to political considerations."

[RhetoricThug]

To test the proposition of whether someone can be an individual and a collective at the same time I will use my own self as the test subject rather than @Pants-of-dog because I am not @Pants-of-dog so I can't presume to speak for him the way he would presume to speak for me. I am an individual that's a given, empirically so since that is my direct experience. Could I also be a collective? That begs the question which collective? I have British citizenship so maybe that means I am in the British collective? I speak English so maybe I am in the English language collective? Or I am a member of the species homo sapiens so maybe that is a collective too? I like classical music, is there are classical music liking collective? Also I am quite tall. I wear clothes. I drink booze. I drive cars but not motorcycles, any of those and more could be collectives for all I know. I have travelled by plane a few times, perhaps I am in the flying collective? I approach the divine by means of the northern paganism, so perhaps that is another collective? The trouble is there are too many collectives and none of them are real the way I am real.

What's this some kind of goofy word game? So be it... It's called ecology. You're an individual and you live in a community.

@Victoribus Spolia Politics = rational irrationality. For rational irrationality at an individual level to have an effect on political outcomes, it is necessary that there be systemic ways in which people are irrational. Hence why I think you sound batshit crazy when you say I Am A Paleo-Colonialist, Monarchal-Imperialist.

I've been an Anarcho-Capitalist Now for like 9 months bro, do catch up.

Right. It's still a groundless label. But go for it.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Pants-of-dog
I don't think being impervious to the not-self is a necessary criteria for being an individual. That alcohol affects me doesn't change that there is a me that is affected.

Moreover language makes it easier to communicate with other individuals but does not imply a shared feeling or allegience. Mortal enemies might share a language.

What makes a collective? Allegience? shared sensation?

What is a necessary criteria for being an individual?

Having a clear and distinct separation from another thing cannot be, as that is not satisfied, but you are still an individual.

I hever claimed language implied a shared feeling of allegiance. I said it was a collective tool. Language is a tool that is used by people together. Moreover, your brain would never have developed enough to think “je pense, donc je suis” unless it had been taught a language at a very young age.

You would not be you unless you were taught to use the collective tool that helps you think.

Okay so apart from @Saeko who despite her (their?) unique personality believes she is (they are?) a collective we have POD who reluctantly accepts the reality of his individuality but nonetheless maintains that he is a collective at the same time. So let's look at that...

To test the proposition of whether someone can be an individual and a collective at the same time I will use my own self as the test subject rather than @Pants-of-dog because I am not @Pants-of-dog so I can't presume to speak for him. I am an individual that's a given, empirically so since that is my direct experience. Could I also be a collective? That begs the question which collective? I have British citizenship so maybe that means I am in the British collective? I speak English so maybe I am in the English language collective? Or I am a member the species homo sapiens so maybe that is a collective too? I like classical music, is there are classical music liking collective? Also I am quite tall. I wear clothes. I drink booze. I drive cars but not motorcycles, any of those and more could be collectives for all I know. I have travelled by plane a few times, perhaps I am in the flying collective? I approach the divine by means of the northern paganism, so perhaps that is another collective? The trouble is there are too many collectives and none of them are real the way I am real.

Yes, the group Homo Sapiens is as real as you are. In fact, it is real in the same way you are real.

Whether or not any of these are collectives depends on the definition of collective. You really should define it.

You do engage in collective action. When you complain about Muslim immigrants, you are defending the interests of a collective: European people. When you use money, you are engaging in the collective action we call “the economy”. The same could be said about voting, attending or playing in sports events, having a family, obeying traffic laws, and many other things.

Also, I never claimed to be a collective. Please do not presume to speak for me.

[SolarCross]

Aren't you always inadvertently admitting of your own individuality by describing your own personal membership to a collective and using the designator "I"?

True and unavoidable without turning my perceptions into referenceless gibberish. If I say "I/he/she/it/we/they am/is/are the quite tall collective" it becomes meaningless.

Not to mention, the axiom of argumentation I have used elsewhere gives me strong reason to challenge the collectivist position. There is no true collectivism in the sense of a hive-mind that denies individuality, such a notion is actually incomprehensible to us on a personal level. The gradation of views is really a spectrum of acknowledgment regarding rights.

What are commonly called "collectivists" are not those who can actually deny individually (as I said, they really can't); rather, such only deny that individuals have rights that ethically override the considerations of the broader body-politik.

Hence, the only possible poll option that could reflect "collectivism"would be this (which isn't in the OP I might add):

"I am an individual (as such cannot be epistemologically denied), but I don't believe that my individuality is ethically relevant when it comes to political considerations."

That seems like a more reasonable interpretation of collectivism yet the "broader body-politik" is also composed of individuals so the collectivist is merely degrading some individuals (probably not himself either!) in favour of other individuals (likely himself)... In this light collectivism is just a nasty kind of individualism which dehumanises some for the benefit of others.

[RhetoricThug]

What is a necessary criteria for being an individual?

Having a clear and distinct separation from another thing cannot be, as that is not satisfied, but you are still an individual.

I hever claimed language implied a shared feeling of allegiance. I said it was a collective tool. Language is a tool that is used by people together. Moreover, your brain would never have developed enough to think “je pense, donc je suis” unless it had been taught a language at a very young age.

You would not be you unless you were taught to use the collective tool that helps you think.

All of which has been said in this thread.

When you use money, you are engaging in the collective action we call “the economy”. The same could be said about voting, attending or playing in sports events, having a family, obeying traffic laws, and many other things.

Yeah, we manage a personal temple and participate in the societal temple. Hence why ecology and economy share Oikos

This thread is mind-numbing, and there's clearly an effort to ignore my posts.

Cry me a river.

No thanks.

[Victoribus Spolia]

@Victoribus Spolia Politics = rational irrationality. For rational irrationality at an individual level to have an effect on political outcomes, it is necessary that there be systemic ways in which people are irrational. Hence why I think you sound batshit crazy when you say I Am A Paleo-Colonialist, Monarchal-Imperialist.

I've been an Anarcho-Capitalist Now for like 9 months bro, do catch up....that was literally my first thread on here other than my lobby post.

Besides, the fact that I sound bat-shit crazy (contra some collective standard as to what constitutes a "normal" or "non-bat-shit-crazy-view"), is merely a testament to my own commitment to individuality, is it not?

[Victoribus Spolia]

This thread is mind-numbing, and there's clearly an effort to ignore my posts.

So, let me get this straight, you are intentionally cryptic and verbose under the false guise of profundity 90% of the time, and then you are shocked when people scroll past your posts even with the 10% where you are actually making a concise and salient point?

Cry me a river.