Is our personality an illusion?

This troper has aspergers and one of the symptoms includes obsessive compulsive tendencies in both action and thinking. This troper is constantly wracked with depressing thoughts about the stability and reliability of a person's basic personal traits. Being very logical in nature, she wonders is it not true that most of what we are just comes from chemicles and neuron activity in our brains. If you could change those chemicles or redirect the activity of those neurons, who's to assume that you will still be you. These thoughts often interfere in this troper's daily activities and now she can't take a psych class without associating it with those thoughts (classical conditioning??)

Illusions are not necessarily meaningless.

Time is more or less an illusion too, but we use it to measure almost everything.

Those chemicals and neurons do change, all the time. As you gain new experiences, new connections are laid down that affect the way you think - and yet, the you that went to sleep at night is the same you that wakes up, yes? A personality is a constantly growing and changing thing.

The mind is no more an "illusion" that any computer program is. It's "software", yeah, but that doesn't make it an illusion. It's real, you just can't touch it.

edited 2nd Dec '10 2:11:17 PM by DasAuto

Well, it's more complicated than that. A personality isn't a set of instructions in some substrate, it's observed similarities in behavior over time.

Don't forget that there's really no reason to let the answer to this question affect you. You're still going to have the same personality, whether it's an illusion or not.

Sort of like the question of free will-if you do have it, you do what you want to do, and if you don't have it you can't affect the outcome anyways, so there's no change caused by believing you have/don't have it.

Except that if it holds true for you, then it likely holds true for others, so how can you reasonably be angry at someone for a personality they have no control over? Or, rather, how can you act on that anger and claim to be acting rationally?

edited 2nd Dec '10 8:43:12 PM by Alexander_UE

But they do have control over it. It's called learning.

Simple, if they have no control you have no control, so you can't change that you will be angry at them.

Conversely, if you assume you both do have control, then you're angry because you didn't like what they did and you want to hold them accountable for their actions.

edited 3rd Dec '10 3:26:09 PM by deathjavu

Yeah, I can't really add anything much. Except the nice idea that personalities aren't just not "illusions" (in whatever way you seem to understand that term), but are also perfectly unique.

After all, your personality is a product of all your life experiences being run through a certain filter. There are many different kinds of filters, and everyone's life experiences are unique, so every personality is super-unique! Yay!

I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the topic, I just wanted to add something. ._.

Category Mistake right hyah.

You can see and identify everything that makes you 'you', right? Or at least, someone can, or a combination of people can.

Then it doesn't make any sense to then ask "Well, where is what really makes me 'me'?". You/We/They have already seen all there is to it.

Now, it might be valid to say "Well...damn. I thought there was more to 'me' than that."

Maybe there is, but it doesn't have a visible impact on anything. I'm inclined to use Occam's Razor at this point but others don't. Whatever suits ya.

I see no reason why I can't be angry at what someone is, as easily as I can at what they do.

Of course our personality is an illusion, I have a few personalities up and running as of this moment, none of them want to admit to being nothing more than electric chemicals in my head but there you go.

Simple, if they have no control you have no control, so you can't change that you will be angry at them.

I didn't deny that. You will be angry no matter what. But the important that is placed on that anger can change your actions. And it's easy to think of times when you feel angry at someone, but recognize that your anger is irrational. Like your roommate drank the second last beer in the fridge, so when you have someone come hang out, you are surprised to find that there aren't enough beers to both have one yourself, and offer one to your guest. You feel cheated, but you aren't really justified if your roommate had no reason to believe there was anything wrong with drinking that beer.

It's all just particles. How else would it work?

Personality is real. If you don't believe me, take a personality test, preferably a good one. Take it again later, and again. After you have enough data, do a statistical analysis. The answer won't be as consistent as you'd expect, but it would be above the consistency suggested by chance.

Personal identity, however, is an illusion.

"Time is more or less an illusion too, but we use it to measure almost everything."

How do you figure? Not only are we able to consistently measure events as occurring in a constant time, we have been completely unable to do several things such as access information stored in the future, access stuff stored in the future, prevent stuff from getting into a more decayed state when it is in the future, etc.

Personality features can change, but the overall whole generally retains certain commonalities. (Except in some cases of brain damage or whatever.)

How do you figure? Not only are we able to consistently measure events as occurring in a constant time, we have been completely unable to do several things such as access information stored in the future, access stuff stored in the future, prevent stuff from getting into a more decayed state when it is in the future, etc.

I may be operating on outdated theories (and that is in fact, probable) but essentially, time is just a perception we have, because we notice that things change when you look at them for awhile. I tried to avoid using any time words in that sentence, but I couldn't, which just goes to show how deeply ingrained time is in our minds.

And an interesting sidenote, the thing you noted about retrieving information from the future is actually being worked on. Though "information" in this case is "a single particle".

edited 6th Dec '10 12:52:47 PM by SpainSun

It's not a perception, as noted on our page for Time Dilation.

Well fuck me, then.

@OP: "Being very logical in nature, she wonders is it not true that most of what we are just comes from chemicles and neuron activity in our brains. If you could change those chemicles or redirect the activity of those neurons, who's to assume that you will still be you."

I believe that there is a 'you' that underlies the patterns of behavior, thought and emotion that you can see in yourself. You can undergo change, even significant change, become a more complex person, lose certain personality characteristics, and still be 'you'. Neither therapy nor psychiatric medicine nor anything else will ever take that away. Don't worry about it.

Don't use the words "illusion", "real", etc. when discussing cognitive entities. It never helps.

How does the fact that something can change and be destroyed somehow make it "less real"?

Personal Identity however, is an illusion"

edited 7th Dec '10 2:30:41 PM by Myrmidon

Because once something changes, it becomes something different. Hence, the sensation that you are the same person is an illusion.

Not agreeing, just explaining.