Is your tulpa alive?

[Werther]

Greetings everyone,

 

I am having a tulpa for several days now and we have made rapid progress with our process. But now I wonder if she is really alive. Not sentient or conscious. Alive.
In science, more precisely in biology, there are some characteristics on which one depends if a thing is alive or not. (Even if these criteria do not have to be met without exception and one still argues about some of them).
These criteria are:

1. The ability to reproduce
2. The ability to respond to stimuli
3. The ability to communicate
4. The ability to evolve (and adapt)
5. The ability to grow
6. The ability to metabolise
7. The ability to move
8. The ability to regulate internal (chemical) processes
9. Being physically separated from the environment

Which of these characteristics applies to your tupla/s and do you believe it feels enough to be considered alive?

Regarding Izzy (my tulpa), I am convinced that she reacts to stimuli, communicates, adapts to her environment (me) and grows.
As for the possibility of independent movement, I would say that this is only partially true, as Izzy can only move in my imagination.

In my opinion, with 4 1/2 of the 9 criteria, it is even and unfortunately I cannot declare her alive or dead.

 

What do you think?

[Ranger]

I'm a tulpa and I can do all of those things when I control the body.

 

I don't really know how to address 1,8, and 9 without the context of a body... But 1 is true if you include tulpas making tulpas, 8 is true if you mean stress management, and 9 is true if the wonderland completely changes?

 

Well, she's more likely alive than dead.

 

What does this have to do with metaphysics?

Edited January 9, 2020 by Ranger

[Ember.Vesper]

Are you alive? A human body is alive. But you are not your body. And once you have headmates, your body no longer belongs just to you. So can you still count characteristics of the body as characteristics of yourself?

 

A tulpa is the same fundamental kind of being as a host, a kind for which we tend to use the label 'person'. A person is a unique set of values, beliefs, opinions, priorities, identities, and emotional and behavioural tendencies. A human brain can support many of these. In systems that have learned to switch, it regards one as being just as good as another, interchangeable parts.

 

Biological criteria for life are predicated on having a physical body. We can extend them by analogy into other fields, as in Conway's Game of Life or the internal subjective experiences of tulpamancy, but not all of them are going to be strictly applicable. For instance, my form has well defined separation from both the mindscape and physical world environments it moves in, but it does not metabolise. It could feed, but would gain no benefit from doing so. On the other hand, the cells bearing my specific mental processes do metabolise -- but since I am more software than hardware, many of these cells are also used at other times by my headmates.

 

-Vesper

[Werther]

2 hours ago, Ranger said:

I'm a tulpa and I can do all of those things when I control the body.

 

I don't really know how to address 1,8, and 9 without the context of a body... But 1 is true if you include tulpas making tulpas, 8 is true if you mean stress management, and 9 is true if the wonderland completely changes?

 

Well, she's more likely alive than dead.

 

What does this have to do with metaphysics?

How and what do you metabolise, if I my ask?

Well, it's more like ontology, but there is no ontology section. 😄

And thanks for your answer mate. 🙂

 

1 hour ago, Ember.Vesper said:

Are you alive? A human body is alive. But you are not your body. And once you have headmates, your body no longer belongs just to you. So can you still count characteristics of the body as characteristics of yourself?

 

A tulpa is the same fundamental kind of being as a host, a kind for which we tend to use the label 'person'. A person is a unique set of values, beliefs, opinions, priorities, identities, and emotional and behavioural tendencies. A human brain can support many of these. In systems that have learned to switch, it regards one as being just as good as another, interchangeable parts.

 

Biological criteria for life are predicated on having a physical body. We can extend them by analogy into other fields, as in Conway's Game of Life or the internal subjective experiences of tulpamancy, but not all of them are going to be strictly applicable. For instance, my form has well defined separation from both the mindscape and physical world environments it moves in, but it does not metabolise. It could feed, but would gain no benefit from doing so. On the other hand, the cells bearing my specific mental processes do metabolise -- but since I am more software than hardware, many of these cells are also used at other times by my headmates.

 

-Vesper

I still consider the body to be mine, because I'm the one using it and the one who needs to use it. But I will definitely share if she needs or wants to. 🙂

 

The problem is, and there is no way to avoid sounding paradoxically due to the boundaries of language, II don't beliefe in persons. I think "I" do not exist. "I" is an Illusion. A lie the universe, the society,  the will (Schopenhauer,) god (Barkeley), the brain (Metzinger) or whatever you want to call it, is telling it's self to keep functioning.

But I know that the name Werther applies to this body, this living being.

 

If my tulpa is just that, just another name and another lie, than she is redundant and superficial.

But that doesn't prevent me from loving her. Humans tend to love made-up things the most. 😉

 

Never heard of Conway. I will definitely check it out.

 

 

[Ranger]

36 minutes ago, Werther said:

How and what do you metabolise, if I my ask?

 

The body metabolises the food I eat, but otherwise tulpas burn energy of some kind in wonderland. Any mental process requires energy, so even if the source isn't from the imagined body, a tulpa's existence is made possible from the physical one.

 

You can also restrict how many calories you burn, especially if your visualization ability is off.

[solarchariot]

Interesting. I don't remember 9 being a thing. what being can be physically separated from its environment? Taking things out of their environment usually results in death. Do things have clear boundaries? Mostly, but even that is not as clear as we use to think. We live with other organisms. If you had and used a magic button that could kill all bacteria on the planet, all mammals, humans, would die. 'the secret of trees' is a must read book- because earth is more like the movie avatar than you might think. The practice of cutting down the 'elder' tree resulted in a decline in for immunity and swatches of trees around the missing elder died.

 

Fire fits almost all the criteria for life. Is it alive? When computers start making themselves, and evolving themselves, are they alive? Viruses are not considered alive, but they do reproduce. there are some meta materials that scientist have made that can actually reproduce, and this non-robotics. Are those things alive? They even metabolize, have distinct boundaries, some of even have cell like structures... If you loose the ability to reproduce, do you cease to be alive? Yeah, that's probably bizarre stupid... viruses reproduce not alive, so software, malware and stuff, they reproduce- probably not alive... but, if it sentient AI Malware, is that reproduction?

 

Hypothetically, for argument sake, let's say the operational personality is not you. In this argument, assume you are your brain, not your personality. We assume when you say biological organism, you referring just to the hardware, the body, they brain. Whether it's metaphysics, religions like Buddhism, poetry like Blake, Whitman, Rumi, or actual science- Gazziniga (Book who's in charge,) or psychology- Freud, Jung, Joseph Campbell- all of these in agreement, you- personality- are not the body or the brain. For lack of better terms, the personality is avatar that is likely a gestalt of personality fragments, or archetypes. Neurologist perspective is the personality, the actual experience of being conscious, is an illusion, and various brain regions that are independently processing data in a modular way send information through a singular module that filters out unnecessary information and uploads this into your consciousness 80 millisecond to 3 seconds after processing it. One of the quickest proofs of this by neurologist is take your index finger and touch your nose. the sensation at the finger tips has to travel thought the arm, shoulder complex, up the spine into the brain. the sensation at the nose goes straight to brain. Your experience of touching your nose is simultaneous, and that can't happen if you're doing the math. you see things and hear things at the same time- light hit your eyes before the sound hit your brain- and yet your experience of lips moving with sound is in sync- and yet- if it's a movie and the sound is off- you get irritated. Go figure. Alight- based on this, your personality is a hallucination. i prefer avatar because I can relate to that. it's a program created by the brain and history and gestalt of stuff. the reason twelve people at a car accident report 12 different realities is because not all filters deliver the same experience. they all agree a car accident happened, but not about the color of the car etc.

 

neurologist like Gazzinga is going to say this is a one way trip of information. all experiences are uploaded, conscious avatar does not tell the brain what to do. (I am basing that on his books, not actually words from his mouth. I could be wrong.) I believe the conscious avatar can tell the brain to do things. Like, make a separate personality. The brain can do that. I mean, that's all the brain does. The brain is a personality simulator. Everything your brain records is geared towards mimicking, evaluating, and predicting what personalities are going to do in response to behaviors and words and situations. The brain can even disengage a personality if it believes personality will be harmed- DID, disassociation- personality goes off line, but the experience doesn't go away. Sometimes another personality comes up, one that can tolerate the situation or pain due to the gestalt of archetypes delivered. Are they alive? From the perspective of primary personality, and the brain hosting- yes. Not only are they alive, but they are now integral system avatars necessary for over all system regulation. They could not exist without each other. The body/brain can't navigate the world without the software, the personality filter that uses to prioritize information retrieval and storage. You can't live without bacteria in your gut, or personalities in your brain. Well, technically, you could have your brain removed and live on life support- that's technically living. you could still reproduce. One can argue if that's a life. that's actually come in law, keeping a spouse alive on ventilator long enough to reproduce to provide a heir. They even have successful penile transplants- which you have to wonder, are they making laws for who's child it is?

 

There is so many ways to go with this discussion. Make it simple. If you consider your personality alive and important enough that you defer to it's wants and preferences, then you should also equally defer to any other personality in your head. Within reason. If you hear voices telling you to hurt yourself or others... Well, don't do that. You know that old paradigm, the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other... Are they real entities, tulpas, metaphoric ways of processing opposing impulses, independent brain modules, or are they actually you, on a continuum of you? Seriously, if 'tulpa' is used as a way of debating sentience, or in any other fashion denigrating and dismissing it's value, then the word is being incorrectly used. Tulpa is simply a way of making a distinction of how personality came into being. I assume you came about through natural processes, were born, had some experience, and eventually came on line and became assertive. Is that how you define sentience? Dangerous path, because you're one train track away of falling into a trap of thinking persons born north of the track inherently have more value. Koko the gorilla had personality, she had vocabulary, she had wants and preferences- she could process abstract information! (she watched mr rogers neighborhood. Rogers went to visit her. She recognized him, hugged him, and then took off his shoes!) what Koko lacked was a human brain and body. We know for a fact she was alive, and yet- the way we treat gorillas has not changed.

 

This is not rocket science. Tulpas are alive.

Edited January 9, 2020 by solarchariot

[Ember.Vesper]

3 hours ago, Ranger said:

What does this have to do with metaphysics?

 

Here, we tend to use 'metaphysical' to mean 'mystical, supernatural, or spiritual' and consign only those subjects to this section. But that isn't the typical, traditional, or exclusive meaning:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics:

Quote

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.

 

So 'What is life? Who and what is alive?' is closer to metaphysics than 'My tulpa's spooky mental powers turned off my Xbox' is, even though the former isn't the generally accepted purpose of this board.

 

1 hour ago, Werther said:

I still consider the body to be mine, because I'm the one using it and the one who needs to use it. But I will definitely share if she needs or wants to. 🙂

 

I've only been associated with this body for about three years. It doesn't look like me and doesn't feel particularly comfortable to be in, so I don't consider it mine, even though I can take control of it anytime I like. But we officially regard it as a shared resource of the three of us.

 

1 hour ago, Werther said:

The problem is, and there is no way to avoid sounding paradoxically due to the boundaries of language, II don't beliefe in persons. I think "I" do not exist. "I" is an Illusion. A lie the universe, the society,  the will (Schopenhauer,) god (Barkeley), the brain (Metzinger) or whatever you want to call it, is telling it's self to keep functioning.

I use an operating definition of personhood, previously stated, that corresponds to our subjective experiences as a switching system. Tulpamancy is largely a matter of constructed realities and subjective experiences, so it should not be a great stretch to consider personhood in similar terms and still assign it value.

 

1 hour ago, Werther said:

But I know that the name Werther applies to this body, this living being.

 

We regard the body as an impersonal tool devoid of and undeserving of any name or identity of its own.

 

1 hour ago, Werther said:

If my tulpa is just that, just another name and another lie, than she is redundant and superficial.

 

Expecting a tulpa to be any more real, more deep, or more alive than a host seems overly ambitious. Both arise in the same flesh as part of the same human condition. I'll agree that more than one person in a body is redundant, but spare bodies to move into are hard to come by.

 

-Vesper

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by Ember.Vesper

[theholodoc]

I have granted "Existence" to my tulpas. I do they exist? is to me a more interesting question than, are they alive. As has been noted above, whether or not we  our selves, or personalities, are alive, is a matter of debate. If we are a delusion, we may not be alive. But, We do exist, "I am that I am" sort of thing. Of all things metaphysical, of that I am certain;  I am. (of interest, in the Torah, when Moses asks God who he is, he, God replies "I am that I am".)  We create our tulpas, and they are as real as we are. Are we therefore Gods? Do we live and then die? If we exist, and exist as energy moving in a brain, the first law of thermodynamics says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.  it is said that God is immortal.  Just sayin'

[Werther]

First of all, thank you for your langthly response, mate. 🙂

And sorry if I don't reply to everything.

20 hours ago, solarchariot said:

Interesting. I don't remember 9 being a thing. what being can be physically separated from its environment?

I have gathered the criteria from various sources. Most of them had 3-7, but they didn't always overlap.

More in a sense of a membrane, skin or bark.

And I said there is a lot of debate going on in the scientific community about the list.

A single rabbit for example can not reproduce, but is concidered to be alive. So some exception have to be made.

 

20 hours ago, solarchariot said:

Fire fits almost all the criteria for life. Is it alive? When computers start making themselves, and evolving themselves, are they alive? Viruses are not considered alive, but they do reproduce.

Fire is not a thing, it`s a process. When you consider the possibility of fire to be alive, we are working with two completely different definitions of life.

Computers? Yes, probably. I'm no expert, but I wouldn't discount the possibility. And no, viruses do not reproduce. Cells produce viruses after virus DNA is injected into them.

 

20 hours ago, solarchariot said:

there are some meta materials that scientist have made that can actually reproduce, and this non-robotics. Are those things alive? They even metabolize, have distinct boundaries, some of even have cell like structures

Very intrestring 😮 can you link me some papers?

 

20 hours ago, solarchariot said:

There is so many ways to go with this discussion. Make it simple. If you consider your personality alive and important enough that you defer to it's wants and preferences, then you should also equally defer to any other personality in your head. Within reason. If you hear voices telling you to hurt yourself or others... Well, don't do that. You know that old paradigm, the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other... Are they real entities, tulpas, metaphoric ways of processing opposing impulses, independent brain modules, or are they actually you, on a continuum of you? Seriously, if 'tulpa' is used as a way of debating sentience, or in any other fashion denigrating and dismissing it's value, then the word is being incorrectly used. Tulpa is simply a way of making a distinction of how personality came into being. I assume you came about through natural processes, were born, had some experience, and eventually came on line and became assertive. Is that how you define sentience? Dangerous path, because you're one train track away of falling into a trap of thinking persons born north of the track inherently have more value. Koko the gorilla had personality, she had vocabulary, she had wants and preferences- she could process abstract information! (she watched mr rogers neighborhood. Rogers went to visit her. She recognized him, hugged him, and then took off his shoes!) what Koko lacked was a human brain and body. We know for a fact she was alive, and yet- the way we treat gorillas has not changed.

As said before, I do not believe in Personhood/Personalities/Souls (In the sense of a livelong consistent identity with own opinions and a free will)

21 hours ago, Werther said:

The problem is, and there is no way to avoid sounding paradoxically due to the boundaries of language, II don't beliefe in persons. I think "I" do not exist. "I" is an Illusion. A lie the universe, the society,  the will (Schopenhauer,) god (Barkeley), the brain (Metzinger) or whatever you want to call it, is telling it's self to keep functioning.

But I know that the name Werther applies to this body, this living being.

I believe at least this body is alive. And mostly I say "I" when I speak of the body, because otherwise it would be too complicated in everyday life always expressing myself 100% philosophically correct.

Yes, you are right, when this body was about 2-5 years old I came into existence by myself. But no t

hat's not how I would define it.
Sentience. It's hard.
I guess I'd call myself sentient, yes. Because something (I'm not sure what exactly) uses the illusion of me to make this body respond to stimuli.  And yes, I understand your concern.
Well, I don't know of any method of determining whether something is sentimental or not. So we can only guess. If it has a CNS, for instance, or says it's sentient, we should definitely assume it is. Well, I am not a big fan of the term "value" ether. 😄 But I think I got the Idea. I totally agree with you on that. Cruelty against animals is a huge problem of humanity.

[Ember.Vesper]

21 hours ago, solarchariot said:

what being can be physically separated from its environment?

 

I think the criterion means physically separate in the sense of having distinct and persistent boundaries. "This point in space is within the lifeform; this neighboring point in space is in the surrounding environment."

 

8 hours ago, theholodoc said:

I have granted "Existence" to my tulpas. I do they exist? is to me a more interesting question than, are they alive.

 

When speaking of non-physical aspects of intelligent beings, "existing" may indeed be a better term than "living", removing a confusing dependence on biology.

 

8 hours ago, theholodoc said:

If we exist, and exist as energy moving in a brain, the first law of thermodynamics says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

 

If we're really going to look at thermodynamics, the physical energy of our existence in brains is perpetually lost into the environment in the form of heat and replenished by metabolism. We are not made of the same energy from one moment to the next; the way our matter and energy is organized gives us physical continuity as the individual atoms and photons somewhat rapidly change out.

 

The laws of thermodynamics protect energy, but not how it is organized, so information on how our brains are organized is easily lost. Any part of self that exists independently of or after the life of the body has to be independent of the physical energy of the brain.

 

-Ember

Edited January 10, 2020 by Ember.Vesper