I certainly do not have that ability.
Yep. Sometimes I’m quite aware of doing that intentionally — after half an hour of thinking about a topic, I’ll shift gears and treat that entire train of thought as a noun. The whole discursive thought process gets turned into a kind of token that I can then use in a sentence that references it, and my mind still holding on to the whole notion when I reference the token.
Minds are amazing.
This is rather like dreams, I think. Sometimes in a dream I seem to have a complete understanding and memory of things that never happened in real life. It makes complete sense at the time, but if I remember it when I wake up, I realise it was just a dream.
Of course there’s the famous poem: I dreamed I was a butterfly… or was I a butterfly dreaming I was a man… ?
I obviously know nothing of your inner life, but I have a feeling that you might do this without fully realizing it. If you ever have a “sudden recall” or other such type of feeling, that’s the ability.
I obviously have some version of it, but not the detail or the vividness that you report. I think it’s tied to my poor ability to visualize.
We have had a passel of threads on this topic. My personal opinion is that “self” arises not from the result of thought but out of the instinct for survival. It appears to be mostly a spectator to our thoughts and existence, but I believe it to be more organic rather than rational.
Yes, I can only imagine the amount of text spilled on this topic. It’s fascinating and usually fun to debate. Plus, it can reveal a lot about the preconceptions one has for one’s own individuality. On further analysis, the self seems fuzzier and less distinct than the western tradition would lead one to think. It seems to exist only functionally, not actually. One can easily say “the lungs are for breathing and if you remove the lungs you will no longer be a breathing entity.” What could get removed to make one lose a sense of self? The brain? That’s likely where the self emerges, but people can have pieces of their brains removed or damaged and still retain a sense of “self.” It’s such a bizarre, unlocatable thing, but it seems constantly real, indisputable, and almost tangible.
Not understanding that argument. People can have portions of lungs removed and breathe, a kidney removed and excreted, a keg removed and ambulate …
We tend to ambulate better upon the removal of a keg.