Just after December 2012 started, I’ve got in a home accident when I almost lost two fingers from my right hand. This event thought me some hard lessons but unexpectedly it also remembered me an old thought lost somewhere in my mind. Years ago I asked myself what is that we call “I”. This question applies for all of us and once we hoop over the obvious and meaningless answer like “Well, I is… I, right?”, its “me” isn’t it? In the end, “I” can use a mirror and “identify” myself into the reflected image? Or do I?
At the time I’ve realized that once you start looking closer to the question, a real “black hole of the mind” opens and pulls you in. Let’s think for a minute. What if I loose a limb (as I almost did on that day of December 2012)? Is what remains still me? Is the “new I” the same entity as the “old” one? But what if I loose my face in an accident and no one not even myself can recognize me? If my identity depends on my external shape and look then does it mean that each time when I change my clothes I’m somebody (or something) else? Well, my cat may very well think so, for a moment, but not me. I’m arguing here, that even if I lose most of my limbs, my appearance and most likely a part of my brain, I will still find something I can call “I”, or “me”, even if most likely no one else would be able to “identify” this new “me”. So back to the question of “What is “I”?
In 2012 I’ve blogged about a possibility of an existence of a “global mind” or better said a “group mind”. My current belief is that an identity is made of a subset of our brain neurons which can hold enough information (persistent memory state) to uniquely identify us, in the state we occupy in the universe.
How many neurons and which ones, is the next good question, (I think 😉 ).
Of course, this is only a hypothesis, since I have no solid proof to back it. However I’m looking closely to the issue since how we define our identity is and will be one of the most important question the human beings ever encountered. In the new age of the internet, when our minds will be much tighter connected, the identity issue will get new dimensions and meaning.
Cheers for 2013!
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