About me

Metaphysics

Blue is a colour. Football is a game. I like both.
Whereas when it comes to blue footballs I am indifferent.
What - in small part - makes me me is liking blue the colour
and the game of football, and being indifferent to blue footballs.
I also like fleet foxes and Fleet Foxes, I dislike gooseberries and fascism,
I desire chocolate and coffee, I recall scoring goals for Stanley Rd Junior School
and having my eyes tested in 2016, I plan to exercise more next week
and write about Montpellier, I regret failing two driving tests and
believing in Tony Blair, I have a psychological addiction to playing table tennis,
I unfailingly support Chelsea F.C. and the Wales rugby team... and so on.

These invisible things, often called mental or immaterial, exist
somewhere inside a physical body. Mine, as I think of it!
Thoughts happening inside my body are mine too. Being thus enclosed is
what crucially makes them so. This reasoning, though, is problematic.
Does the body make the thoughts mine or the thoughts make the body mine?
On certain thoughts being necessarily exclusive to me, there is no way of knowing.

Is there an actual (inner) me?
Descartes could not doubt that, inside a human body, there is thinking going on.
But is it a me, a self doing the thinking?
Might a self - in reality - be a succession of overlapping thoughts,
and feelings, and memories, extending through time?
Derek Parfit thought as much. And William Hazlitt believed that
our future selves are on a par with all other selves. I.e. other people.
Thus, ideas and acts of self-interest make no sense. What a lovely notion that is.
Some two and half thousand years earlier, Siddhartha Gautama had a very similar one.

Tangential thinking.

A shelf is a self without its h. (Not the kind cockney’s drop.)
Most memories, desires, thoughts eventually peter out.
They have a shelf life. Some don’t, outlasting the body in which they occur.
Like Buddha’s non-self thoughts.

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Metaphysics Blue is a colour. Football is a game. I like both. Whereas when it comes to blue footballs I am indifferent. What - in small part - makes me me is liking blue the colour and the game of football, and being indifferent to blue footballs. I also like fleet foxes and Fleet Foxes, I dislike gooseberries and fascism, I desire chocolate and coffee, I recall scoring goals for Stanley Rd Junior School and having my eyes tested in 2016, I plan to exercise more next week and write about Montpellier, I regret failing two driving tests and believing in Tony Blair, I have a psychological addiction to playing table tennis, I unfailingly support Chelsea F.C. and the Wales rugby team... and so on. These invisible things, often called mental or immaterial, exist somewhere inside a physical body. Mine, as I think of it! Thoughts happening inside my body are mine too. Being thus enclosed is what crucially makes them so. This reasoning, though, is problematic. Does the body make the thoughts mine or the thoughts make the body mine? On certain thoughts being necessarily exclusive to me, there is no way of knowing. Is there an actual (inner) me? Descartes could not doubt that, inside a human body, there is thinking going on. But is it a me, a self doing the thinking? Might a self - in reality - be a succession of overlapping thoughts, and feelings, and memories, extending through time? Derek Parfit thought as much. And William Hazlitt believed that our future selves are on a par with all other selves. I.e. other people. Thus, ideas and acts of self-interest make no sense. What a lovely notion that is. Some two and half thousand years earlier, Siddhartha Gautama had a very similar one. Tangential thinking. A shelf is a self without its h. (Not the kind cockney’s drop.) Most memories, desires, thoughts eventually peter out. They have a shelf life. Some don’t, outlasting the body in which they occur. Like Buddha’s non-self thoughts.
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