How biological invaders challenge our idea of self and other

this separation comes from the feeling of "I-ness" or ego. in true circles of yoga, where the stress isn't on physical exercises (that's considered not even 1% part of Yoga), consciousness is considered as the subtlest substance that's pervading the whole infinite cosmos. The term Yoga itself means "to unite" with this consciousness.

Since it's an unbroken infinite substance, once united you can experience and observe things quite apart – as if the whole of universe becomes accessible to your sense of awareness.

The yoga or unity happens by gradually peeling the layer of false ego (I-ness) that creates the impression of separation in the first place.

The ego is built on labels we assign to ourselves and to protect its existence it makes us do selfish stuff. That's why the 8 limbs of yoga has its first two limbs as the virtues and moral conducts that one should follow to pgrogress on the path. Like For instance, truthfulness, non-violence, non-stealing, non–collecting,a balanced sexual life, essentially means control over your senses and living without over-indulgence and so on.

If you observe these principles carefully they're exactly the type if followed with sincerity make our actions and thoughts more selfless causing ego to break gradually.

still posture and smooth deep breath helps in regulating the otherwise ever-wandering mind – the mind is where the feeling of separation resides. Those virtues also help in reducing the chattering of mind while doing meditation. Meditation helps in silencing the mind by concentrating on a particular form or formless for ever-increasing length of time – when the mind is silent, one goes beyond the mind and that's when the unity or yoga occurs with the consciousness.

>this lets you finesse the question of "what do you mean 'control'"

I'd say that this is one of the most difficult things about it, so as long as we're not answering this question, I agree it's not that hard (though I agree that the article didn't take these thoughts all the way).

For example, the tongue-parasite mentioned in the article: I am not sure exactly how that parasite works, but if it responds exactly how you would expect a tongue to respond, is it then under your immediate control (If it doesn't, imagine a parasite that does, even to the point of transmitting tastes)?

The fact that it does everything that your tongue does and something extra (stealing nutrition), is that what would make it not part of you? If so, what about artificial limbs that do everything the missing limb does but in addition does something else, possibly beyond my control (periodic internal maintenance, for instance)? I would say it should be regarded as part of my 'self', even though I cannot control all aspects of its behaviour.

something about your comment makes me thing about cloud computing.

I'm not making a deep point; everything which is separate has a way of enforcing inside vs outside. Some are robust (fort knox). Others are temporary, diffuse and don't hang around (a fart). Some have instruction content to help enforce their boundaries (i.e. DNA, a computer program, or the army corps of engineers manual).

At the point where an object ceases to use pure physics and starts to use information to defend its boundary, the rejection of non-self is often acquired early on. (with obvious selection bias).

If you want to rule out any supernatural stuff, you model it as: the cereal box is part of a system that includes general mills, kids like you, and this grrrreat breakfast. Most of the information content of the system is at general mills (infectious) and the consumer (defense). Tony the tiger is a plot to play kids against adults and get those boxes into households. So is putting the boxes on the bottom shelf at supermarkets.

The even creepier view is that the cereal box has some independent existence and the box is gaming general mills to propagate its existence.

Before you object that the information content and reproductive machine of the box are external, consider a sperm cell or a seed pod. Neither of these has the full information of its system; neither is self-serving. Sexual reproduction also means that in normal practice (ignoring lizards and parthenogenesis), no individual has the full machinery of the species.

Note: I'm not ascribing intellect, intention or consciousness to any of these objects. Just drawing the boundaries of information in convenient places. It's not crazy to say that a cereal box exists as a separate thing. Once you say that, you have to consider whether it exists separately from general mills (it does, other companies use it).

Your process hangup, evolved vs coalesced vs designed, is an important distinction and may bias the sorts of forms that emerge. Evolved and designed end up being similar; both are shaking up information particles until something emerges that can propogate itself. Thomas Edison set out to design a light-bulb but he didn't set out to be born as thomas edison; the ball was rolling down the hill when he started. Not to take away from people's inventions, but if you compare across 100 alien worlds, maybe there are patterns about when the lightbulb is invented, and most worlds do it after certain other pieces are in place.

Another example is the eye: this is an evolutionary form that shows up when pigments and neurons are in the genome but something more is needed. A wire gets crossed and there is no turning back.

I wouldn't say the tongue-parasite is under the fish's control, but rather that the parasite is "deciding" to emulate a tongue for its own purposes. IIRC it will eventually take off and leave the fish to starve.

I feel it's worth noting that there are a lot of functions of our bodies that we don't explicitly control. When describing them, we tend to use "other" language to describe them to the extent we don't control them, e.g. "my body did this" vs "I did this". Artificial limbs will fit into that framework just fine.