Odd life question

I’m probably the only person who thinks about this.

Why is my conscience (perhaps this isn’t the correct term to use here) inhabiting this particular body and living this life and nobody else’s?

Whilst I know that everyone is living a life through their own head and own emotions, I find it difficult to understand why I’m living this one in particular. Essesentially, why am I me?

Reply 1

CityofMud

Original post by em1602

The luck of the draw, or karma. Pick whichever you believe in.

Reply 2

ZombieTheWolf

Original post by em1602

Weird because the very conscience that encompasses your body asked that question oOOOoooo

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 3

ta225

Original post by ZombieTheWolf

Weird because the very consciences that encompasses your body asked that question ooo

Stopppp

Reply 4

Axiomasher

We're all an emergent consciousness of the body we 'occupy'. It's not as if your consciousness could float around, it exists only because of the structure and activity of your body's brain/nervous system.

Reply 5

QE2

Original post by em1602

Another way of expressing your question would be to ask why every puddle just happens to be exactly the same shape as the hole it occupies.

Your "consciousness" is a function of your physical brain. It would be impossible for your brain to house any consciousness other than the one it generates through its own electro-chemical activity.

Reply 6

ta225

^ why I shouldn’t have used the word consciousness. Thanks for your input though

Reply 7

Abaddon rex

Original post by em1602

^ why I shouldn’t have used the word consciousness. Thanks for your input though

We all live in a universe of our own perceptions and are shaped by the experiences we perceive in it so I would suggest that your consciousness could only be in your body if it was different it would be in another body.

Reply 8

OxFossil

Disappointingly, I must concur with the usual suspects here. Consciousness appears to be an emergent property of nervous systems. Nervous systems generate a consciousness in the same way that a battery connected in an electrical circuit to an incandescent bulb produces a light. The light is not an entity that is separate or independent of the battery or the circuit.

Other nervous systems like yours produce very similar consciousnesses, which you can recognise as your fellow humans. An octopus' nervous system produces an octopus "self", with a different kind of consciousness, and an ant's nervous system produces ant consciousness. Probably. But we will never know exactly what it is like to be an ant, or an octopus or even another human.

Reply 9

QE2

Original post by em1602

^ why I shouldn’t have used the word consciousness. Thanks for your input though

What did you mean if you didn't mean "consciousness"?

Reply 10

ta225

Original post by QE2

What did you mean if you didn't mean "consciousness"?

I’m not really sure. It’s difficult to describe. I kinda meant why am I living this life and nobody else’s (because I am ik). It just feels weird that out of the billions of people on earth im this one, and I know nobody really knows the answer

Reply 11

QE2

Original post by em1602

The answer is clear. If you were living their "life", you would be "them", not "you".

Lives aren't like shells that we inhabit, separate from us. they are not fixed, preprogrammed chains of events that you merely experience. Our life is a consequence of how we interact with out environment, our genes, random chance, etc. As we have no way of knowing for certain what our "life" is going to be from this moment, the question of "this life" and "that life" is kinda irrelevant.