No Self makes No Sense
I think the idea that the self is an illusion does not make sense. The obvious first complaint is who is having this illusion?
It is obvious to me that perception requires a perceiver likewise experience needs an experiencer and I think these things are indispensable.
I agree with Thomas Nagel that Objectivity is a view from nowhere. I do not see how it is possible to have knowledge without a self or language and other mental representations, concepts and symbols or pain.
It is obvious to me that perception requires a perceiver likewise experience needs an experiencer and I think these things are indispensable.
I agree with Thomas Nagel that Objectivity is a view from nowhere. I do not see how it is possible to have knowledge without a self or language and other mental representations, concepts and symbols or pain.
Comments (85)
"I think the idea that the self is an illusion does not make sense. The obvious first complaint is who is having this illusion?" I agree with this completely
On the second thing yous said:
If there is no god (and i acknowledge that possibility) then all of history is interpreted by flawed humans and flawed perspectives very often create even more or even worse flawed perspectives.
In what sense? I only experience my own thoughts I have never experienced anyone else's inner life world.
Ironically the main proponents of no self are Buddhists yet they believe in reincarnation and people have questioned what then is being reincarnated.
But because Buddhism is compatible with atheism I think they have had an easier time with this inconsistency.
History is an interesting case. Historians are supposed to look at primary sources such as diaries, photos and archaeology etc to draw conclusions.
We are expected to look at the evidence ourselves and decide upon it's validity. My beliefs about history are personal beliefs based on the persuasiveness of the evidence.
However, there are always conspiracy theorists and alternative historians to challenge majority beliefs.
I agree.
its actually hard for me even as having my chosen religion to completely reject the concept of collective consceeeence or collective soul. It just is so intuitive that its hard to completely put away. A certain holy book says "the mountains praise him.....". Humans are a subset of the universe and i would argue anything that has feeling is a subset of the whole universe and the whole universe is one living object/entity/creature.
A sentence can be quite long and so we have to process a sentence from the beginning to the end.
For example. "I went to the shop yesterday to buy some milk but they had sold out."
I think you have to be the same person from the beginning to the end of this sentence to process its meaning and then I see no reason why you should not be the same person from then on forward.
I accept Descartes "Cogito Ergo Sum" that thinking conforms your own existence.
However due to the inaccessibility of mental states to science they are an easy target for elimination.
What about the sun? The sun has existed for Billions of years. It may not be changeless but it is enduring as an identifiable entity.
However I don't think the self is an issue abut changes. I have never met anyone who thinks they have never changed.
I define the self as a perspective that of an a perceiver and experiencer.
However to if people randomly changed bodies and had memory lapses that would be very confusing. But there is enough continuity in a body and memory etc to maintain a self.
From some other perspective, a billion years is a blink of an eye. Regardless, we know that it will eventually burnout.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yet we all endow people and things with an identity of some sort. Of course, we realize that they change but still there is a continuity to their existence or enduring sense or idea of what they are.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Do you really? Then how do you distinguish various perceiver/experiencers?
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I could not agree with this more. I really think the only way we can make sense of the 'no-self' doctrine is to take a Meinongian approach, viz. if we understand it to be saying that the self is a non-existent object. The 'illusion' comes in when we erroneously assume that the self exists.
Have you tried any psychedelics or achieved a deep mediative state? In other words, have you actually done anything that would result in the loss of your sense of self?
What is the thing that loses the sense of self when in a deep meditative state? Is it not the self that loses the sense of self?
Nothing loses the sense of self, the sense of self dissolves and is no longer present. The “I” part of your consciousness goes away and “you” becomes removed from the experience of consciousness.
Its difficult to explain, but this is where the “self is an illusion” comes from.
That's what I'm asking. I've often heard it said that psychedelics provide empirical evidence for the no-self view, because when you ingest them you lose your sense of self. But if this is the case, then something must be losing the sense of self. What else could it be but the self?
Then what was experiencing the sense of self before this transformation occurred?
Nothing. Your self isnt experiencing itself, “self” just a thing that's present and in certain conditions it isnt.
I see. Well I would think that is different from the no-self view; because, as I understand it, the no-self view affirms that the self is never present at all.
I hope I can phrase this in a way that is not total gibberish...
Wouldn't it be impossible for anyone to be aware of it if they have achieved it? Only "I' know anything. If I lost my sense of self what would "I" be aware of...nothing because "I" would not exist. It is not like we suddenly have access to some overmind.
Isn't a "loss of self" really just a sensation of the loss of self that "I" am totally aware of?
True, but the same is true with God existing. God itself, one may argue, is a name for a "perspective" too.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
To ask "who is having this illusion"? is begging the question. Maybe "one" has illusions about a "self" - this doesn't mean we reject our being. It means we reject concepts like "I," "self," "subject," "experiencer," etc. - at least in terms of traditional thinking. That we are isn't really in question, but what we are and who we are have a long history of interpretations.
I guess it depends on how capable that god is at seeing "at all angles" and making accurate discernments/judgements. It also is contigent on if that god is good and/or doesn't take bribes and doesn't prefer physically attractive women. Lets be honest god is a man. lol.
It's not inconsistent. What gets "reincarnated" in their view isn't a "self" or even an "object" in our Western sense of the term. What we are as "individual entities" or beings, we're part of a bigger "being" as well, which in their view is Anicca -- change. Since they notice all things change in the present moment (and always), ideas about "reincarnation" make sense. But the Buddhists don't stress this, and if they do it's not what we've come to believe it is in the West.
And what is wrong with summarizing these interpretations with words like "I" or "self"...otherwise we need to preface every opinion with a whole book of information that describes where this opinion is coming from. It is so much easier to say "I like ice cream" than to say "some entity with a unique consciousness that can only be shared with other consciousness in a very limited way, and this entity has existed on this place we call earth since 1981. The entity has been contained in a biological package. The entity has a brain that seems to be the birth place of this consicousness, but it can't be said for sure...and on and on and on, like ice cream".
Perhaps another way of phrasing it...what purpose would it serve to admit there is no self...? Would we act differently? Would we know anything new? Do we gain anything?
Yeah, I just think "god" is a word that refers to "being," that which is "bigger" or larger than "us." Interpreting "it" as a person-like entity is understandable, but almost certainly wrong. We see this instinct in every culture, but there's no reason to take it too seriously.
The illusion of self is present, and once it dissolves you see that all the things “self” was doing are actually a collection of processes the “self” had no real presence or control to start with.
Do remember the carnie rides as a kid, where a car goes around on a track? They have steering wheels and you’d grab it and turn it and it felt like you were the one driving, taking the turn etc but by the end of the ride you figured out you were never driving at all. Its like that.
Now, some people might think of the ride itself to be the “self”, but it doesnt feel that way just like it doesnt feel that way once you let go of the wheel and just tide the ride.
We can discern the answer simply by looking in a mirror. I think the problem of whether the self is an illusion is that it is always argued from the perspective of someone who cannot see his own ears.
Well there is still something going on, an experience is happening but its not the “self” thats experiencing. When the “self” returns, it can access the experience via memory for reference. Its present before, and after just not during..
Nothing. As long as we don't take it too seriously.
What the Buddhists will say is that we become "attached" to the "I," the "self," and that this is a cause of suffering.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I think that's a possibility. One watches a Buddhist monk burn himself alive and not move, and one has to wonder if there's something to this practice of "non-self." So we can certainly act differently, and I think it is a kind of "knowledge" in the sense of recognizing a concept that isn't what we normally think it is -- that it doesn't have a locus. I don't know about "gaining" anything per se. But, again, maybe.
Nothing wrong with referring to yourself as "me" or anything like that. As with most ordinary speech and thinking, we know what we mean by it.
If "I" remember the experience, how do "I" know that "I" was ever NOT present? It feels like semantics more than a concrete occurrence?
There might be some semantics to it ya. Its very difficult to explain to someone whose never experienced it. Imagine a room with a bunch of machines (turned on, active) in it, and your in the room watching. Then you leave the room but the machines still continue working. When you return to the room you can check the security cams to see what you missed and you will see what happened while you were away and you will notice you weren't there. Like that. So now imagine when youre in the room you are the one working the machines, and when you return after leaving, you are surprised to find on the security cams that the machines work fine without you and the machines being worked/controlled by you was an illusion.
Its like that, if any of that makes sense.
Yes, psychedelics deactivate the DMN (Default Mode Network) which is the neural network that’s responsible for our sense of self, personal narrative, etc. This deactivation is the experience of what Buddhists refer to as no-self, though I doubt any Buddhist would be willing to reduce it to such a mundane event.
There may be a deeper or more primal sense of self, like with the physiology that has to do with alien hand syndrome.
I’m not sure if philosophizing about emptiness has much actual value. The experience, on the other hand, is known to reduce existential anxiety. That does have value. Also, religious beliefs can have value for those who require that level of structure and guidance to experience meaning in their life.
I would guess they mean in more metaphorical terms. If I am attached to the idea of my own greatness type of thing. Otherwise, it sounds equally plausible to reincarnation.
Quoting Xtrix
I am less convinced. Soldiers and athletes block out pain regularly. Many women cry like babies when they bump their leg on a table and yet somehow give birth without going into shock. Mental strength? No question. Some sort of "loss of self"? Possibly, I just have no reason to believe it.
Quoting Xtrix
I can see some value here, but more along the lines of remaining agnostic to the possibilities, vs actually making a claim (there is no self) that would require evidence.
For example pain. If you are in pain you know you are and no theorizing is going stop you being in pain.
But as I outlined this is not the only problem with self because it is required for concepts, mental representations and knowledge etc.
It maybe true that an external reality exists but how can we describe it? Once we start to describe it we rely on individual perceivers.
But once you invoke this perspective you have selves. For example there have been many models of the atom. But if the atom exists independent of these models then they are mind dependent.
Where else can false beliefs exist?
Well I have experienced psychedelics. But no matter how far down the rabbit hole I go, there is always a nagging little "I' that never leaves. What the "I" is saying is "you are on drugs, don't get carried away here." I would think drugs would make it easier to identify a partial loss of self...the first step in losing the self would be forgetting you are on drugs. If I know I am on drugs, then "I' has not gone anywhere. If "I" am not on drugs, who or what is?
To be fair, I have never done...is it called DMT? I think that is the one that is supposed to be directly tied to the loss of self...maybe?
Quoting DingoJones
Can't you have this experience just by drinking too much? You wake up the next day to find video of yourself dancing on a table that you don't remember? How were the machines operating if you don't remember operating them? Heck, even entirely sober, have you ever got in your car and backed out of your driveway, then paused and thought, how did I get here? Or any other thing that just happens on auto pilot while we are thinking about something else? Our brain can do a lot with minimal to no intention.
I can't say you are wrong. But a loss of self seems to fail as the simplest explanation. It feels like claiming there is a god. A HUGE claim, with very limited evidence.
I entirely agree. I am glad you got this thread going. I have always wondered what "loss of self" even means. At least here (the philosophy forum), I know the people will have put some thought into their position...so it is interesting to see their reasoning...maybe I can at least understand their perspective, even if I still disagree.
Correct, DMT will have that result. Other psychedelics can in the right settings, but DMT is a very reliable means of producing this effect.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Id call that loss of memory and attention, not self. Also, in the “auto pilot” example, you reference yourself as part of denying your “self” was present. “...while we are thinking of something else”. That implies the self is present but otherwise focused. So I would say its not the same thing we are talking about.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Interesting, please elaborate.
On my account there is no separate ontological thing that endures despite changes, there is just an ever-changing pattern of functionality that (like a everything) only has diachronic identity because of continuity of its function, including in the case of people general awareness, which does not necessarily always include reflexive awareness. So there “is no self”, there is just “the self” that may not always have a “sense of self”.
I'm not inclined to say the self is an illusion. But the notion of a self as an "entity" somehow distinct or distinguishable from an "entity" like a sentient animal does tend to strike me as something like a fiction or conceptual confusion.
The notion seems perhaps historically related to traditional conceptions of a soul that survives the body after death. I suppose the modern notion of a Cartesian ego mediates between ancient and medieval talk of souls and more recent talk of selves.
I concur with Gassendi in characterizing the Cartesians as inept skeptics who confuse uncertainty with ignorance and conflate doubt with denial, who affirm what is merely conceivable, whose arguments proceed by pretense and fiction as well as by "artifice, sleight of hand, and circumlocution".
I expect much overinflated talk of selves is subject to the same sort of criticism.
I treat the word "self" as a bit of reflexive grammar in my discourse. It does the same job in the phrase "I myself" as in the phrase "the chair itself". I don't call the chair a self and I don't call myself a self. I call myself an animal, a person, a human being, a discursive sentient thing.
I say a thing like me "has a mind", "has mental activity", "has consciousness", "is aware". I don't say a thing like me "is a mind", "is mental activity", "is consciousness", "is awareness".
I say a thing like me "is conscious of itself", "is aware of itself", and "has a conception of itself". I don't say a thing like me "is self-consciousness", "is self-awareness", or "is its own conception" -- neither its own conception of itself nor of anything else.
What, if anything, is talk of "a self" supposed to add to my conception of a sentient animal, on your account?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
This makes good sense.
We have plenty of ways of characterizing the perceiver that perceives and the agent that acts. A sentient being perceives and acts. A sentient animal perceives and acts. A person perceives and acts...
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I'm inclined to agree that it's only genuine sentient things that have genuine knowledge.
I don't object to a use of words according to which some artificial intelligence, construed as a simulation of a sentient thing, has artificial knowledge or a simulation of knowledge. Such simulated knowledge would be transformable into genuine knowledge when it is successfully shared with a genuine sentient thing.
I'm inclined to disagree that language is required for knowledge. It seems to me that at least some nonspeaking animals, like monkeys and dolphins and dogs, have knowledge. I also say they have concepts or conceptual capacities, they are conceptual creatures. I might perhaps say conceptual capacities are required for knowledge.
I'm wary of using the term "representation" to characterize experience, and tend to prefer "presentation" in some contexts.
What does any of this have to do with the concept of objectivity? It seems to me there is subjectivity and objectivity in all our experience.
Our capacity for introspection seems primarily to depend on a special exercise of conceptual capacities. It does not seem to depend on a special channel of awareness, like a distinct "sensory modality".
The same instance of exteroception may be conceptualized in various ways. Is it the Sun I see, or only a snatch of its light? Do I see the sunlight reflected off a mountain, or do I see the mountain? There is no fact of the matter in general with respect to such questions. Our conceptualization of the "object of perception" depends in part on our habits of conceptualization, in part on our purposes in each particular occasion, in part on objective features of the perceptual "presentation" or "appearance".
Our capacity to conceptualize "the object" of visual perception does not stop where light strikes the eye. The same perceptual presentation, the same appearance, may be taken as the activity of a perceiver.
What thing is the perceiver? What thing is the source of the light by virtue of which we see the mountain?
Some answers to such questions are suggested immediately by the flow of integrated appearances. Such answers may be corrected, refined, or extended by careful investigation in keeping with the balance of appearances.
And such answers may be embellished, disfigured, or displaced by fictions and unwarranted conjectures.
I do not refer to the self as "a sense of self" for reasons I have outlined such as its necessity in understanding sentences and perceiving etc.
I have done some mediation and I have been unconscious. In meditation I kept my self knowledge as the person trying to meditate, in unconsciousness I temporarily ceased to exist.
I don't see the point in trying to undermine the self. If you want to avoid negative thoughts and mental states you could try shifting your attention, medication, distraction and so on (even sedation/unconsciousness) but I see no reason to attack the self as if it were the main villain.
I don't think someone could be very functional having their self identity undermined as we see in cases of amnesia and dementia. It is useful to keep track of who you are and exhibit a consistent personality.
Buddhists believe that discernment is an essential aspect of practice, however, that itself can’t resolve the problem of suffering (attachment to self or ignorance of our true nature).
In other words, the "self" is a useful idea with practical utility. But does that warrant the promotion of the "self" to the status of ontological primacy?
Losing self-attachment may well be the way to avoid suffering, but there is still oneself that is the thing no longer suffering.
I have given my reasons for the necessity of the self for perception, language and experience and memory.
My example of amnesia and dementia is is responding to the idea we should try and minimize the self. And these are examples of the confusion caused by having one's identity compromised.
Meditation may help someone deal with pain (likewise hypnosis) but it is not a permanent state to function in.
Ironically Buddhists have been accused of being selfish for sitting around meditating and even begging to support this lifestyle whilst lots of people need help.
Perhaps arguably, the deactivation of the DMN (neuological Buddhist ideal) can result in more efficient functioning, particularly of an overactive DMN.
I agree, I do not see much point in living in that state all the time, or much time at all. That doesnt mean it isnt useful at all though.
I do not know what causes me to have a self but I know it exists for various reasons. You can know something exists without being able to give an account of its constituents.
I think it has the same status as consciousness which we know exists but can't explain or model.
Saying the self is fractured or a composite is not the same as saying no self. But I have compelling evidence for my self about it's continuance.
For example every time I meet family they recognize me and reaffirm that I am the same person.
The genes in my body and my finger prints are unique.
There are photo albums with me in at different stages in my life. When I wake up after sleeping I have no confusion about who I am I can validate my memories by things like visiting the house I grew up and looking at examination statistics. And I can't swap bodies and become someone else.
So this level of continuity is sufficient for me to believe I am a continuous entity.
But as I have been saying the main issue is who has experiences and perceptions. Consciousness is solipsistic in a sense that we can't get outside of what to be truly objective.
Yes but the point is that if we really had no self or a fractured self we would be less functional. And If I am right then that makes the self indispensable.
This is a general point. The self unifies perceptions and this is related to the so called "Binding Problem. The brain processes input from the nervous system in different places but we have a coherent unified perception. Somehow brain processes and inputs (or something else) interact in such a way as to create a coherent gestalt (whole). This also lead to the problem of homunculi.
I think some people are motivated to and illusionist or reductive explanation to preserve materialism but I don't see the need to deny things existence to preserve an ideology and I am not defending the self for ideological reasons.
Believe what, exactly? When looking at it closely, it's obvious there's no such thing as "self." Are you your thoughts, feelings, actions? Where are "you"? Where is this "self"?
A useful, common-usage term we all use? Sure. But in the same way as speaking of the "meaning of life" or something like that. I know what you mean, but there's no way to pin it down in any naturalistic sense. Likewise for "soul," likewise for "spirit," "subject," "mind" for that matter.
If you're defining "self" within a certain theory, and giving it a technical definition I'm not aware of, then that's different. I don't see you doing so. In fact you've given no definition, and so it's hard to say whether or not we "believe" in something when we don't know what it is.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
What "evidence" is there that there IS a self? Well, first we have to define what we mean by "self," and then provide the supporting evidence. But none of that has been done and, in fact, when you go to do it you find it evaporates. Is your liver a part of your self? Is it your brain? Your thoughts? Your sensations? Your memory? Etc.
Like the concept of "God," people will often say similar things: "Well you can't PROVE there is no God!" I hope you see the flawed reasoning in that sense. I think you're doing something like that here.
I am.
It seems to me it must be a fundamental fact or constraint and the law of identity that at some stage, such as even the atomic level, that there are individual things.
Just in order to identify any entity and to have any structure. For example a bike has several distinct structures which allow it to function. And so I have no problem with the concept of distinct entities. And therefore why shouldn't the self work like this?
So I don't think we all merge into one universal consciousness.
There is pain, yes. There are sensations. There are thoughts. There are sights and sounds. There are all kinds of phenomena in the world. To attach a "I," "me," mine," "you," etc., to it is tricky. It's fine for everyday use, but when you analyze it philosophically or scientifically, or even introspect for a while (or meditate, as in the Buddhist case) you find that it's not really defined at all. This is why it's sad to be an "illusion." It's not that you or I don't "exist," but that those very terms (when referring to individual "selves") are actually quite vague and, in the end, meaningless.
I think the whole "inner/outer" or "external/internal world" debate is a mistake. In fact I started an entire thread about this in the "Notion of Subject/Object" a couple months ago. It's taken us down blind alleys and dead ends.
The very question, the problem itself (about the self or the subject or the external world), is based on a set of beliefs and assumptions about the world which have their origins in the thinking of Descartes, the Scholastics, and the Greeks. I think this is precisely the reason claims that are made about the "self" being an illusion is particularly hard to grasp to us Westerners, whereas in the East it's much easier -- due to their very different traditional ontologies.
I am not attaching anything to these things I am saying they don't make sense without an experiencer to be subject to them.
It is quite easy to imagine a tree continuing to exist without being observed but I don't see how things like pain and language and dreams can continue to exist with out someone to have them as experiences. I have also recently mentioned the binding problem and the issue of unified perceptions.
Either one person combines sensory input and ideas to see an object or scene, or several people communicate with each other to build up a picture. But then in the latter scenario each individual still needs to unify all the information for a coherent perception.
Apparently Hindus believe in the soul/self but Buddhists don't but the issue is constantly debated in their histories. I don't see it as a resolved issue in those cultures.
I think you have it exactly backwards. The huge claim being made is that there IS a self. Tell us what it is and what evidence there is for it, and then we can tell you whether we believe in it or not. But that's either not been done, or when it has -- e.g., as some "entity" residing somewhere behind your eyes -- it can be shown to be not that. All we know -- whether on drugs or in deep meditation -- is that there is phenomena happening and changing -- both "in" our minds and "in" our bodies, as well as "outside" of "us," and that none of it is really "me." It's not an easy thing to grasp, especially growing up in the West, but it can be experienced. If you haven't experienced it yet but are truly interested in seeing it, then yes either take harder drugs or my recommendation would be to go to a meditation retreat for a week.
OK, but where is this "experiencer"? Where is awareness? Is that the "self"?
They're actually quite similar. Remember that it's claimed the Buddha himself was a Hindu prince (at least according to legend, I'm not sure how historically valid this is but it's the best we have), which seems at least plausible. The Hindus believe in Atman, the "true self" which is supposedly something different from what we normally identify with. In realizing this, one sees that one is actually part of Brahman.
This is all very different from the concepts we've grown up in, especially handed down in our sciences and since Descartes, Kant, etc.
Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa... didn't they all have selves?
Hence the joke of the original title of Life of Brian: "Jesus: Lust for Glory".
You dont need the self for that cohesion and unity. It happens without it. Thats why they call the self an illusion.
Interested in people's reports about this kind of thing, however (inherently) unreliable.
Ask Thich Nhat Hahn or Jon Kabat-Zinn if it's a permanent state. Your sense of "meditation" is limited. That can refer to a formal practice, like sitting on a cushion etc., but what's being practiced or cultivated is awareness and equanimity -- which of course can be used in any circumstance. So running can be meditation, swimming, having a conversation, etc. It's an exercise, like yoga. I like thinking of it that way.
All of the philosophical-type stuff about the self, or the concept of "Anatta" in Buddhism, doesn't really matter all that much. But I can tell you from experience that if you persevere with it, you'll see what they're talking about. You don't have to take anyone's word for it. In that sense, I truly doubt you've meditated deeply -- it's not easy to drop attachment or to recognize thinking as thinking. I myself have only caught glimpses -- but even that is worth doing.
The narratives we build around this so-called "self" is what is usually the issue for us. Jealousy, insecurity, reactions to our social environment, reactions to pain, etc. -- all have to do with our conditioned responses and our sense of "self" as a possession.
The appalling vanity? I don't understand this comment.
It's fine if one falls asleep while meditating. It's very common. But the point is to fall awake. There's nothing "vain" about that.
Damn! I thought it was droll.
Speaking for myself, I think and I know there's something doing the thinking but I'm inclined to believe it's just the brain reflecting on its own thoughts.
Well I am getting a bit too old to go seeking these things out. Maybe an opportunity will present itself one day. I would still expect at MOST, a loss of the SENSE of self. I can't really wrap my head around what "loss of self" even means.
Quoting DingoJones
And that is exactly what I am trying to tease out here. What EXACTLY is the difference?
Quoting DingoJones
How do you know that is not what is happening during drugs or meditation?
Quoting DingoJones
Based on definitions of words "I" exist. To claim otherwise is extreme, and I would demand stark evidence to entertain such a notion...just like I would for a supernatural entity. The only evidence I have against either is that I see no evidence of either. Honestly, I am not even sure what people mean...if you lose your "self" can I now destroy your body and this lost consciousness will exist elsewhere?
Or are you just losing your SENSE of self? I can deal with that. I can even accept that I lose my SENSE of self when I am unconscious (not always...I have been unconscious as far as any outside party was concerned and most of my senses were "off", but I could hear everything that was going on?? - Remember to tap out on time if you ever do JiuJitsu or Judo, haha).
Yes. And so much more.
Quoting Xtrix
California.
Quoting Xtrix
It's just a word. It has a definition. We often use words to summarize more complex concepts (like self).
I am not saying I don't somewhat understand your post modern semi nihilistic view here (that is like all of my academic philosophy vocabulary used at once, so I may be entirely wrong), but what purpose can it serve?
Does grass exist? If we get down to it, it is really millions of individual cells. Within these cells are organelles that serve vastly different functions. How dare we call ALL of this "grass".
Quoting Xtrix
But these are not all the same. By definitions, "subjects" and "minds" certainly exist. "Souls" and "Spirits" only definitely exist as metaphors or fiction (I am not saying they don't exist, but they MIGHT not). Similarly, based on definitions and usage, most of us know "selfs" exist...but, of course, they exist as concepts...but upon deeper inspection, most words only exist as concepts, just like the Grass example I gave above.
Quoting Xtrix
Nope. Just dictionary and common usage.
Quoting Xtrix
this works: a person's essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.
Quoting Xtrix
We both keep using "I" and "you". We are assuming selfs.
I would describe it as sense of self sure. Thats why people call it an illusion, cuz the “self” is t really there. You recognise the mechanics at work (or think that you do), thst you normally think of as your “self” doing.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I think your right it makes more sense to call it loss of self. So the difference between that sense and memory is categorical, memory is something the self (or the illusion of self) has access too. Attention is something the self does (but I suppose its possible other parts of consciousness can pay attention to things as well).
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Because it feels different. The feeling/experience of loss of sense of self is not the same as accessing memory or losing/gaining/focusing Attention.
This is why people call it experiencing “becoming one with the universe”. It sounds like some hippy nonsense but damned if Zi can figure out a better way to put it. Thats what its like.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Oh, ok god just in the sense that it sounds like a supernatural claim and dismissed for similar reasons?
The view of naturalism and modern science, for the most part. But again this presupposes "material," "body," and "physical" have meaning, and in my view they don't -- in the technical sense. Again, for ordinary usage there's no problem, but any real definition of "body" went out the window in the 17th century, as you know.
They just brought up questions of solidity, energy, and such. We still can understand what the world is and that it exists
Fair enough. In that broader definition, you are also your car, your house, and your clothes.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
OK, and what is the definition?
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Not post-modern. Nihilism also has nothing to do with it. What I'm discussing here actually goes back at least 2500 years. Maybe "mystical" is what you mean or something like that. In which case I don't agree.
I don't know what you mean by "purpose" here either. What's the purpose of hanging on to the concept of "self" in that case?
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Sure. The "self" exists too. So does the meaning of life. So does beauty and justice. So does the financial crisis in Venezuela. Ordinary usage and ordinary language is fine, but we're doing philosophical analysis here, and thus appealing to commonsense notions and the dictionary just doesn't work.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I don't understand "by definitions, x and y certainly exist." I think this is all very confused.
Grass not only exists in ordinary usage, but it also has a scientific meaning which you began to describe. It has a color and a form extended in space, etc. When analyzing the "self" scientifically (or philosophically), there's simply nothing to explore -- it hasn't been defined in any meaningful way, so we can't even begin to analyze it in the way we can "grass."
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Which is exactly wrong. Although this surprisingly comes up a lot in this forum - people want to settle issues with appeals to common sense and Webster's dictionary. That's not doing philosophy. It's actually more like walking into a physics department and citing the dictionary when discussing "energy."
Quoting ZhouBoTong
So if we didn't use those words, there would be no "selves"?
Regardless, in your sense God exists, since we all say "Thank God" and whatnot. Ok, that's fine. But it's not philosophy and not science.
Lots of things are considered common sense. The moon illusion is a good example. Or gravity for that matter. For nearly 2000 years things were considered to be "going to their natural places." OK, discussion over - everyone knows it, no sense questioning it. Ditto for "God," and these days maybe something like "American exceptionalism." If you're happy with common sense notions, that's fine. I'm not out to "disillusion" anyone, but once you take a serious look into these concepts, it's quite interesting, and everyday notions just don't help.
No, they completely discarded any sense of "body" or "material." Newton himself thought it was an absurdity, but it's what the evidence was pointing to. So the mechanical philosophy was a dead end. And it has never been revived.
I didn't say anything about "understanding what the world is" or that it "doesn't exist."
That's "understanding what the world is". How could Newton have disproved the solidity of matter? How is that possible? I don't get it. If it's solid and cohesive, we then have some understanding of it
What is "understanding what the world is"? What are you referring to in that first sentence?
I never said Newton "disproved the solidity of matter."
"Understanding" was defined, in the beginning of the scientific revolution, in the context of the mechanical philosophy -- and explained, for example, with the concept of contact action. In this context, "body" and "matter" was given a definition. With Newton's "occult forces," that philosophy collapsed.
It doesn't mean the world doesn't exist or we can't understand anything. It just means the idea of "matter" or "body" or "physical" no longer have a technical definition. Hence issues like the "mind/body" problem is meaningless and, as I've written elsewhere, the long debates about "subjects and objects," about the inner/outer world, etc., are likewise useless.
This is all just completely false. Everyone knows what matter is.
:)
OK.
As far as I can tell, naturalism seems the most reasonable point of view for anyone to assume as a worldview. Why? You may ask. For the simple reason that it exists, as a worldview, within the bounds of reason and what can be known. By what can be known, I refer to what can be perceived through the senses and then comprehended by reason. Anything beyond what can be known and beyond reason is by defintion then unknowable and/or incomprehensible. Given that what is non-naturalism coincides with the unknowable, it strikes me that to entertain a non-naturalistic standpoint is like a person born blind trying to perceive and understand color. It's impossible. I've heard many definitions of foolishness and one, to my reckoning, is trying to do the impossible. So, to put it into a choice format, it's either naturalism or attempt to do the impossible. Which is more reasonable?
That said, albeit naturalism is preferable over anything else, I suggest we keep an open mind about other alternatives but with the caveat that we bear in mind that they're unknowable.
You're not alone. And that's a respectable position, no doubt.
Quoting TheMadFool
If anything "non-natural" is completely unknowable, then of course what you say logically follows. But what is "nature"? If it's simply anything we can understand, then that's fine - but coming to view the knowable world as "nature" has a history, up to the modern scientific narrative of the Big Bang, evolution, particles, forces, etc. Its origin is ultimately Greek. If this current worldview is one among others, as you admit it is, then it too will evolve.
History has all kinds of ways of understanding the world -- whether it was considered God's creation or ??????. To believe we've settled on the ultimate interpretation is common in every era.
I connect the notion of no-self to the philosophy of determinism. If freedom is an illusion, the self-as-conative is also an illusion.
The flow of samsara I connect to the concatenation of cause and effect.
It is always applied adjectively. The typical formulation is that 'everything' (i.e. all experienced phenomena) are anatta (without self), dukkha (painful or unsatisfying) and anicca (impermanent). So, everything (i.e. every conceivable thing, experience of phenomena) is anatta, anicca, dukkha. If you undertake one of the well-known ten-day Vipassana training courses run by the Goenka school, that is taught as the basis of the practice - that you dispassionately observe the flow of experiences, sensations, and thoughts that arise and note that each of them have these 'three marks' or characteristics, naturally leading to detachment or cessation (which is much harder to do than to say, in my experience.)
But it's also important that when asked 'does the self exist or does it not', the Buddha declines to answer. Instead he maintains what is traditionally described as 'a noble silence'.
Why is this? He explains to his attendant Ananda, that to answer either 'yes' or 'no' to the question 'does the self exist' are both incorrect. (The text is here. ) To answer 'yes the self exists' is to side with the 'eternalists' - those who claim there is an eternal, unchanging soul. To answer 'no' is to side with the nihilists - those who claim, basically, that death is the end, that there are no karmic consequences to actions in the present life in a future state.
So both of these are regarded as 'extremes'. I suppose, to transpose the terminology to a modern day idiom, 'eternalism' is roughly like those who believe that on death, one goes to heaven and finds all one's deceased relatives and possessions awaiting them, as is taught in some popular religions. The other extreme is the common view that the body is simply a physical system or unit and that on its decease, there is nothing further. So the 'middle way' of Buddhism rejects both of these as 'extreme views'.
Fantastic point. The Heraclitean maxim panta rhei will probably never lose its relevance. As you so correctly remarked, the axiom I'm using in my argument is that whatever there is, if there is, beyond our senses and instruments is simply impossible to access and ergo, all that we can ever do is speculate, speculate and speculate. Given that these speculations will forever be impossible to verify, to invest belief in any one of the many theories that will invariably pop up would be a grave mistake because there'll be implications, some of which may not be beneficial to us. Think of religion for instance - it is, in essence, a theory of what is beyond the senses and our instruments and look how much damage it's done.
Yes indeed. But not only religion -- philosophy as well. You can't have science without philosophy. Remember that science was simply "natural philosophy" in Descartes' day, Newton's day and Kant's day. This framework and its interpretation of the empirical world dominates every other understanding in today's world, including the Christian account (or any other religious perspective, really). Therefore it's important to ask: what was this philosophy of nature? What was the basis of its interpretation of all that we can know, through out senses and our reason?
Well, a clue is given from the word itself: "natural." And so "nature." This word, as you know, comes from the Latin "natura" and was a translation of the Greek "phusis."
It turns out that ?????? (phusis) is the basis for "physical." So the idea of the physical world and the natural world are ultimately based on Greek and Latin concepts, respectively.
Nothing you don't know, of course, but since you mentioned "beyond the senses" I was reminded of ideas about the "metaphysical" world (currently kidnapped in part by New Age-type "thinking"), which itself has its origin in ??????, as being the title for all of Aristotle's lectures after the ones on "physics." Supposedly this told students not to read the "meta-physics" until they read the lectures on "physics." So our current conception of metaphysics as the study of things "beyond" the natural world isn't even quite right -- but an interesting side note anyway.
So the question "What is 'nature'?" ends up leading to a more fundamental question: "What is the 'physical'?" and that ultimately resides in the etymology of ?????? and, finally, in the origins of Western thought: Greek thought.
The analysis of this concept is very important indeed to understand our current scientific conception of the world, and therefore the predominant world ontology (at least non-religious, or perhaps simply the de facto ontology ). Maybe this digression is worth a separate thread, but I've always found Heidegger's analysis of it to be the most enlightening. Would be worth discussing.