[amiga386]

But you are not a tabula rasa. You are made of a genetic code inherited from your parents, which strongly determines how you look and your body can do. You were clothed, fed, raised, cultured, taught by your family and others in their geographic area.

The self has a heritage even if the self refuses to accept it. You are your parents' child and not someone else, for the same reason you are also a human, a hominid, a mammal, not a fish or a tree.

[hshshshshsh]

If I am made of genetic code, why do they say I die and no longer exists even though the body remains?

[amiga386]

Your genetic code shapes who you are and how you appear to others when you're alive.

If you're alluding to the existence of some transcendental self, can you at least accept it is inseparable from your corporeal self?

[hshshshshsh]

I think the corporeal self is an illusion.

[amiga386]

Perhaps you are right, Neo. Perhaps we are in the Matrix. But you lack evidence for your position. How could you tell if you're a transcendental spirit, and not a brain in a jar suffering from last Thursdayism?

I have plenty of evidence that we're bags of chemicals wandering around a rock in space, and our consciousness is the results of electical signals passing through our synapses. If you wish to reduce the majesty of nature to "unknowable", you reduce your own position to unknowable too. If you're fine with that, I'm fine too, but I still like my position better than yours.

[hshshshshsh]

The only thing you know is you are aware. Rest everything mere appearances in the awareness. And that includes all the what ifs, the idea that you have evidence and you are sure.

[acuozzo]

If CPUs are made of transistors, then why do we call them broken when they stop functioning even though the chip still remains?

[hshshshshsh]

Are you saying CPUs are alive as in how humans and birds are alive and have conscious experiences? What is that experience? Is it the body? Or something else ?