The illusion of identity

Stephen Hawking's believes that identity is an illusion that exists so we can cope with life and the reality is we are just chemical reactions. Anybody else?

Interesting concept for someone that depends on hard science to survive.

The self as an illusion has been one of the main ideas argued throughout the history of philosophy. I think it's an existential theme which every human probably confronts throughout their life--who are they?, what are they?, what is their identity?, etc. The self is even so elusive that people refer to it as a mystical poltergeist of sorts, in other words a soul or spirit.

It's kind of weird talking to Jake Gyllenhaal 

   Pfft.  

  It's good seeing you back in the forums once again!     

The thing is people have always had mistaken beliefs because of the way things seem. For example people believed the earth was flat and still and everything rotated around the earth. Is it not more logical that we are but chemical reactions, a part of a universe that's bound by causality, than the belief system we currently hold?

"Master, last night I dreamed that I was a butterfly!"

"And how do you know that you are not now a butterfly dreaming that you are a human?"

With apologies to Lao Tzu or Chang Tzu or whoever originally wrote that for my awkward paraphrase.

If we're all just chemicals then we're chemicals that think and feel. If we're all just energy than we're energy that thinks and feels. Others recognize us as a self even if we don't recognize it. We make plans, have doubts, feel compassion, make decisions, etc. To say we're only chemical reactions doesn't disclose anything about us existentially. It seems impossible to reduce our existence to merely being a series of chemical reactions, or energy, or good people and bad people without it sounding like one attitude among many attitudes one may take about our existence--one narrative among endless narratives about Beings.

You're a real deep thinker Joe...

Do the internet a favour and unplug your keyboard.  

Stephen Hawkin? Isn't he a bootscootin' dude on the Country and Western music scene in Nashville? Hawkin has a brain that is surely full of many chemicals, especially ones from Mr Walter White. Hawkin's nightly sense of identity probably involves drunks and people who sleep through his songs. 

   You contributed nothing more than I did, so why don't you lead by example and unplug your own keyboard.

Pfffft.  

trysts. I love your intelligent response. My feeling, and the point Hawkin's makes is that it's important to recognise this because if it's true, then it suggest that the reality is, we have no control or free will but rather are bound by the causality the universe contains.

Thank you, tomtryto. I personally am quite sure I have free will:)

Is it possible though, that your conviction and the conviction of others, could be misplaced. Einstein believed that people had no alternative but to do as they do because of absolute determinism. What evidence do we have that we can control anything outside of cause and effect?

I think free will is a given. I choose to type my thoughts today, I choose to drink coffee right now, I choose these things. That's free will, in my view. What theory can dispute that I choose? What theory predetermines my attitude towards events? I can always change my mind. I think it's just a fiction of a novelist to predict what I will think next, what my attitude will be, what I will choose. 

 Of course, human societies around the world believe in personal responsibility--free choice. Judges and juries look for who is responsible, who freely chose to do this or that thing. I think determinists are just religious people with a different bible, in my view:)

Hawking may be right.

No, he is alive--but apparently there were rumors that he was dead.

               I'm gonna use my free will here to say that Trysts uses her determinism to bash this country every chance she can use her free will. I mean its not like a conditioned Pavlovian dog responce, its just an observation that caught the eye of my free will.  IMO

Sodding ? So he's a landscaper with a low hourly rate ?