However, I would argue that what we consider our Self changes moment by moment both in the pattern of information running through the substrate and in physical substrate itself.

And since that is the case, to me it kind of renders the whole idea of a distinct Self as rather meaningless. I am not the baby I was, 20 years from now, the now me will not exist.

If the Self is the result of a vastly complex process generated by the activity of the brain and nervous system, then it is in constant flux. How could we ever truly cut out a small enough moment of time and declare that the Self of that moment? You could never really catch that snapshot, and even if you could, it would be about as real as the stars we see in the sky that are just the light from years past.

I think we need to get over the idea and preciousness of distinct Self. It is truly an illusion.

“Does all this hard-edged scientific study of human emotions and neural processes rob them of their value and importance—of their authenticity? Are we engaging in reductionism? Do we reduce our emotions, our thoughts, even ourselves to biochemical reactions? Will this diminish our sense of Self? We are not merely our neurons and neurotransmitters. Remember that the brain is an exceedingly complex system of messages and chemistry. We are more than the sum of our parts. We are synergistically self-organizing entities composed of thousands of levels of chemical, biological, and neural organization, each level building upon the organized patterns of matter and energy that those below it have established, and creating new and more comprehensive and flexible levels of organization above themselves.

“As we’ve seen, each one of us possesses a unique set of neural networks. Our individuality, our very Self, is rooted in this vast interplay of incomprehensibly complex electrochemical interactions. As such, each of us, just as the ancient peoples of the Shanidar Caves, is irreducible to our constituent parts and irreplaceable in the broader scheme of things.”

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13585152/The-Brain-Our-Universe-Within

Also, I wonder why intellectual constructs often seem to get rendered into dualities? I wonder if this is an artifact of being a creature with bilateral symmetry. It seems we have a compulsion to first of all, discretely categorize things into boxes, even when those things might properly belong on a continuous spectrum, and then arrange those boxes into dualities.

Why does there have to be a line bisecting these things? Are we artificially limiting our understanding of the underlying reality by doing this? (assuming there is an objective underlying reality)