A Question for brainy people!?

After looking at NDE's and OBE's, and considering IVF Epigenetic Inheritance fear studies, and very lately reading about a case of Dissociative Identity Disorder... I'm no longer convinced that statement is sound...

These are all experiences held in consciousness, regardless of whether or not that consciousness is distorted; there is always some sort of self or "I" doing this experiencing. So it seems to me Descarte's "I think therefore I am" still applies.

I'm not sure... I'm just thinking out loud, but the experimental stuff makes things more complicated, more nuanced than that simple statement... I'm not saying it's wrong... just I'm not sure it's right... I'm just not sure...

I guess my sense of my 'self' is my experience...

But it seems that some of my experiences may not originate from my 'self'...


This seems to makes things more complicated.



(P.S. I think consciousness is a really vague and unclear label... the best definition I have for it is 'experience')

Yes, but it doesn't seem that self awareness is any absolute requirement for experiencing and having an "I", since we can be pretty sure that some non-human animals are conscious - experience "qualia" - but without being self aware. Descartes' "I think therefore I am" would still apply to such relatively primitive but still conscious beings. Of course there are also some animals that have passed tests like the "mirror test".