Why are we born as ourselves? (soul, self)

[bg7]

If you were born someone else, that someone else would be yourself. So then you'd be asking why are we born ourselves when you were in fact born someone else. So, how do you know you weren't born someone else other than you should have been?

Its a nonsense question. Just because you can formulate a question doesn't mean much more than that you have a grasp of language conventions. Don't read too much into it.

Why is the sky yesterday? Answer me that.

[EricS39]

The question still is vague. Of all the bodies born in history, how did this one become "me"?

And it's not the physical matter but it could be quantum physics based. Or it could be that since time is not constant the time of birth is random coincidence and fertilization as well...in a world with lots of possible outcomes but not uncommon for birth through sexual reproduction to be the one that brings you alive

[mbradleyc]

I am the culmination of my parents genetic codes. I am similar to my brother and sisters, but not quite the same. I share enough personality traits with my siblings and especially each of my parents that I know I could not be anyone else.

Although the environment of my home growing up helped shape me, my parents chose that environment because it was what they were most comfortable with, so it goes back to them again. It is significant that my father chose to leave his home and live several hundred miles away and against my mother's wishes, so I am a fair bit different from my cousins. But not a great deal different. My mother's comfort with the environment was pretty much limited to inside the home, not outside.

The older I get the more sure I am that I could only have been who I am.

If there is an afterlife, I am coming to the conclusion that I will lose my self in it and my identity will be gone.

Reincarnation? I just don't see it. Ghosts? Absolutely not.

[hifijohn]

Originally Posted by Swan Dive

I have been wondering this for a long time...

Why are we born as ourselves? why was I born as myself and not say someone from a hundred years ago ? or why was I born as a human instead of a dog? or a bird or something else?

Is there a philosophical school of thought that has addressed this? or attempt to answer this? How about a book?

Is there a term for this questioning? or a subsection of philosophy?

Thanks !

let me take a stab at this one-- you were born a human because your parents were humans.

[allenk893]

We are not born as ourselves. You as an entity have always existed. You're an eternal soul. When you weren't here, you existed inside of God. When you were ready, he sent you to Earth.

[Lunar Delta]

I've had this thought before. I think a better way to word it would be "Why is this subjective awareness that I call my consciousness associated with this particular brain?" Certainly, there were thousands, probably millions of people conceived at nearly or close to exactly the same time as me, and born at the exact same moment as me, and yet I am here and they are wherever they are. Why didn't this subjectivity arise in another human brain, or an alien's brain, or even a sentient machine's processor? Even on Earth there are other animals (dolphins, nonhuman great apes, elephants, crows and magpies, etc) that obviously have some level of subjectivity. Why not one of them?

I don't think it is a question that can ever really be answered.

[bg7]

Originally Posted by allenk893

We are not born as ourselves. You as an entity have always existed. You're an eternal soul. When you weren't here, you existed inside of God. When you were ready, he sent you to Earth.

On a bus, or what?

[bg7]

Originally Posted by Lunar Delta

I've had this thought before. I think a better way to word it would be "Why is this subjective awareness that I call my consciousness associated with this particular brain?" Certainly, there were thousands, probably millions of people conceived at nearly or close to exactly the same time as me, and born at the exact same moment as me, and yet I am here and they are wherever they are. Why didn't this subjectivity arise in another human brain, or an alien's brain, or even a sentient machine's processor? Even on Earth there are other animals (dolphins, nonhuman great apes, elephants, crows and magpies, etc) that obviously have some level of subjectivity. Why not one of them?

I don't think it is a question that can ever really be answered.

How can subjective awareness not be inextricably linked to said subject.

It can't be answered, again, because its a nonsense question.

Lop off half your brain. You'll soon find you're not quite the same consciousness.

That goes for those who have had brain injuries permanently preventing any recollections of more than an hour ago. What is their self?

And brain injuries that result in meek people being full of rage and discontinuous with their previous selves

There are no real mysteries other than:
1) why or how does anything exist?
2) how does the sum of activity in the brain actually result in consciousness?
3) why can't you tickle yourself?
4) why do people actually buy Dunkin Donuts "coffee"?

[Lunar Delta]

Originally Posted by bg7

How can subjective awareness not be inextricably linked to said subject.

It can't be answered, again, because its a nonsense question.

Lop off half your brain. You'll soon find you're not quite the same consciousness.

That goes for those who have had brain injuries permanently preventing any recollections of more than an hour ago. What is their self?

And brain injuries that result in meek people being full of rage and discontinuous with their previous selves

There are no real mysteries other than:
1) why or how does anything exist?
2) how does the sum of activity in the brain actually result in consciousness?
3) why can't you tickle yourself?
4) why do people actually buy Dunkin Donuts "coffee"?

I think part of the problem is a failing of our language. The way I see the question in my mind makes sense to me, but I have no idea how to express such a concept in words. I would like to state though that I am in no way a believer in Cartesian dualism.

I agree with everything else you said though.

You were not born as yourself simply because the self did not exist prior to birth.