ADN

I think I kind of agree with Ja when he says the body is just a vessel... if I understand the question correctly... the mind is basically what controls everything, right? If you're tapping your foot, it's because your mind told you to do it. Your foot doesn't have a mind of its own.

Is that what you mean, Dee? This is definitely an interesting topic... /:D" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt=":D" />

but that episode wasn't just about the mind. the Egyptian souls are hardly just "the mind". I think if you completely divorce the body from the mind, the mind loses the sensory input from the body, the considerations of the body, the needs of the body, and therefore a part of the mind becomes vestigal, and eventually, ceases to be a part of the mind... and thus the mind becomes something other than what it was when it was bound to the body.

the mind of wisdom knows no two atoms of your body ever touch, and thus it is only by non-atomic facts that bind the cells of the hand that the illusion of the hand is maintained. But should the illusion of the body be transcended, the body must be maintained in the mind, or the focus of the mind dulls, and soon there is no sense of self as there had once been.

This is why we meditate AND exercise.

QUOTE(raum)there is no part that is the sum of the parts that comprise the whole.
I'm gonna have to go with Raum on this one. The mind, without the body, loses the physical senses and experiences of the body. Although initially we might appear to be the same in our reactions, over-time we will cease to be ourselves, evolving into something we would not have become had we remained complete. Change the nature of the being, and you change the being...it's called evolution.

translated for RuffRider: You can take the boy out of Kansas, but Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore.

Im with raum too. I mean a unit is a unit. If you seperate the items within that unit it doesnt mean that one single part of that unit represents that whole unit.

We can bring a lot of further twists into this whole thing. What if you get another person to do the same and then using those same radio transmitters you mix and match the bodies and the brains. Without the body you cannot express your brain, without the brain, you cant do anything with ur body.

So, none of you subscribe to my 'Matrix' based assesment..? Consciousness is pretty powerful stuff, would the brain be discomplacent as a cyborg..?

I don't know about your second point, Dee. To me it kind of defeats what raum said. If you can just swap with any body, then the body is kind of irrelevant, and the mind is more important.

Well I think the mind is more important than the body. The body is pretty much just the house for the mind; it's where the mind dwells.

QUOTE(AYHJA)So, none of you subscribe to my 'Matrix' based assesment..? Consciousness is pretty powerful stuff, would the brain be discomplacent as a cyborg..?I thought I was a cyborg once...but my wife told me that putting a toaster oven on my head did NOT make me a cyborg.... regardless, people look at you strange when you are a cyborg.

Seriously, I think any of the parts in a system can be reflective of the whole... the mind more so than other parts as it is the center of awareness and personality. However, resembling the whole and being the whole are two very different things.

the consciousness is powerful, but the mind is not consciousness, it is the sum total of consciousness.

for example, your body, gives you the sensory impression to facilitate your mind.

look, if you don't know what day it is, you look at the calendar. it says Saturday, so you act like its a Saturday.

well, what if you had no calendar? it would still be a day, but what input would you recieve to analyze what day it was? Thus, how could every mind be on the same track, if not for consesnsual states? What would guide your actions, when your brains contains locked down memories from the earliest ages of your life? When would be "NOW?"

the body is not simply the "container" of the brain, it is the "physiological appendage of being." it is a piece of sensory equipment and a piece of machinery to navigate a terrain.

without that sensory equipment, your understanding would be grossly different, even if you could function. Without experience of a hand, how could you possibly imagine "grabbing something"? Without experiencing gravity, what would be the need for strength associated with heavy musculature. Without experiencing extreme weather conditions or natural harshness, what would be the need for shelter?

The mind is informed by the nature of the experience of the body, Matrix or not.

See, that is how NEO appears to fly... by transcending the experience of walking, and the illusions of distance and gravity that his mind was informed by by agressive sensory input in his little soup pod. were he to have never had that experience, he would not need to travel that way when in the matrix, and he would completely be unable to function in a body, from the atrophy of his appendenges, and the sudden RAW experience of REAL unbuffered and unregulated physical experience.

that is how Agent Smith, who never experienced being "born", but rather being "spawned". He was able to enforce his presence through colocative assimilation. Because as an Agent, that is how he "moved" to locations of disturbances, until the experience of NEO jacking him solidly in the first movie ending. he experienced getting jacked that way, and thus knew ti could be done.

So the answer is, if you never had a body, AT ALL, you would not have much more than your base programming, and whatever force-fed artifical intelligence your consciousness was jacked up with. so unless you knew there was a "body" you would not even need "movement", and might even be unaware "OTHERS" exist. not unless you imagined it, and likely the imagining of it would not even be experienced as a duration of time, and you could "revisit" that postulation, as there would be no validation for limiting your thought to that single "moment" when there is no pituatary body to regulate time.

that is why i do not challenge Pseudo-Dionysus when he defines God as the "highest Octave of Thought", for at that point, in that octave of thought. This is simply impossible to imagine for as long as we have the inescapable burden of physical experience, personal identity and perspective.

If your brain were seperated from your body it would leave it with all the experiences that made you who you are.For a while it would retain all those memories of seanse and touch so it would still be you but just living by thought.Its true you would no longer be the same person becouse this new experience would change you just as any majoir life changing event would.We are the result of are desisions and how we deal with this experience called life and each day can change you in small or big ways. No matter what changes happened woudnt it still be the same person with a new view of things. What about some one who is happy go lucky and becouse of bad events in there life becomes bitter and hatefull .You would say he changed.Is there a difference ? I vote for the brain ,The body is just the living shell.