I would argue that the division between me and not-me is not self evident enough to base the other principles on.
When I am driving down the highway, and I want to change lanes, "I" drift to the left. I don't consciously apply a torque to the steering wheel to affect a change in the cars direction. In this situation, does changing lanes fall under direct knowledge/action? Or does it fall under the "other than me" which obeys rules established by models which follow logic (but are flawed by imprecision)?
First, the "me" is not defined by the physical body. You are functioning in a complex way when you drive the car. You have intent. The intent includes a variety of hardware and firmware that make it happen. Part of this extended system is the car, part of it your unconscious motor memory.
If I write a post-it note to myself in a language I invent, leave it stuck to a wall until I forget about it, return to the wall and see my note with the cryptic symbolic glyph on it, what has happened when I remember it?
If you draw a diagram of the intent and information content of that symbology, it follows a physical path that is clearly not part of the "physical me" but is inseparable from the "conscious me". You forget it and it "remembered" it later for you, didn't it? So in this case the conscious locus existed on multiple hardware platforms but every bit wasn't on the same platform at the same time.
In a real way, you put part of your seat of consciousness on a post-it note. It existed temporally distant from you but was continuously representative only of you (the glyph means nothing to anyone else, but represents a complete idea for you). In a way this is like the Artist-formerly-known-as-Prince symbol. It is just pretentious to do this with your name as a celebrity, but it is rationally defensible. |
