The ship of Theseus dilemma of the biological body only applies to the structural proteins. The main alteration to the self is aging which is your body trying to replicate increasingly damaged genomic templates. There are certain underlying patterns that remain stable through life, enough to constitute a solid identity. Nuclear somatic DNA (what is usually considered when one talks about 'genes') remains constant enough throughout life (beleaguered by cancer/mutation), but generally speaking your body is rebuilt according to the same template. Core brain patterns such as the Default Mode Network, Limbic System and Self-reference networks remain stable. Personality remains remarkably stable across a lifetime, as do attachment style and beliefs about the world. You can think of new information rebuffing the personality core, which is fundamentally evolutionary strategy. Ergo your 'self' is a pattern localized in your body, replicated with relative stability in your vessel until death, so it's not accurate to say that you are always changing on a fundamental level. It's more accurate to suggest that new information fortifies a pre-eminent self that is 'dressed up' with new beliefs appropriate for the current environment, as per plasticity.
The materialist perspective at least posits that you are a coalition of micro-organisms that have engaged in a symbiotic treaty. This 'United Nations' of your body presents a corpus to your mind, adopting a survival strategy that complements the physical features attributed to you through genetics.
Religion however is certainly a force for good. I always say that religion is physiological rather than ideological temperament because it can 'buffer' social defeat through belief in higher power, this has been demonstrated quite frequently in studies where religion boosts parietal, prefrontal, limbic and neuroplastic systems. Beliving in (really believing, understanding and digesting religious message as fundamental—vipassanā) can actualize brain changes, so it is truth! Believe hard enough in Buddhist teachings and you might just reach enlightenment.
LoL, I finally understand what this experience was about or so I think.
The "Phenomenological homunculus".
I agree that there is an ongoing inertial process happening within the body. In fact, I think that the mistake was on my side because I don't think this was even about impermanence lmao, but about a psychological impression:
Why does experience appear as if there were a separate subject behind these processes, observing them, controlling them, and remaining the same throughout them?
Pay attention! Now, I am not saying that the biological evolutionary process is "impermanent" or non-existent (This wasn't even what I wanted to talk about in the first place, I should have thought about this more thoroughly at the time. My bad), but
why does life presents itself as if there was a subject separated from the process itself?
The experience of seeing through that was what threw me off balance when it happened. But as I said previously, I don't think I had the words to describe what happened very accurately.
Why does that entire system present itself as if there were a controller behind it?
Why does it seem as though there is something that exists outside of change and observes that change?
Because the problem would not simply be: “The self remains.” But rather: “The self is on one side and the process is on the other.”
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GGWP: “The process is precisely what I am: a biologically and psychologically continuous process with enormous causal inertia.”
JayJay: “Yes, but notice that the thought
‘I am this process’ is itself another event within that process. It arises dependently on the organism, its history, its brain, its environment and current conditions. So why posit an additional GGWP behind the process who independently owns or controls it? The organism can have genuine agency without requiring a separate controller outside the causal process.”
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It doesn’t seem like the experience was:
“I discovered that the body changes and therefore the self is not permanent.”
It seems much more like:
“For a moment, the experience very clearly revealed the separation between a supposed subject and the processes it supposedly controls.”
And so the inquiry would be:
Does that separation truly belong to the structure of the experience, or is it a way in which the process itself shapes itself?
@Tabula Rasa
@Sovereign
