Self: What me worry ?

[Dancing David]

I really would like to post this in the Science forum but I think some might holler.

The Buddha, also known as Gautama made a very simple preposal.

The self does not exist.

This was mainly an argument to persuade people that there is no immoratal soul or being behind human existance. The logic of his argument runs like this: All things that people claim are self are actualy just transitory states of being or mind, the body is impermanent, the mind is impermanent, feelings are impermanent, sensations are impermanent and conditioned responses are impermanent. According to the buddha all things that are mistaken for the self are transitory and there fore there is no 'self'. There is just this mish-mash of things that we tend to label as the self, but there is no self.

Buddhism has often been misquoted as saying that the world is illusion, what is illusion is the self.

So, what do you think? is there a self, or is it illusion?

Thanks

dancing David

[Rusty_the_boy_robot]

Please add:

The self is the "agent".

And I will particpate in your thread.

[Akots]

If the entire universe is an illusion, then we redefine the world illusion to mean "the universe." We also redefine our concept of the word "illusion."

Saying the physical universe is "an illusion" is like saying Schrodinger's Cat proves quantum mechanics; it's an example.

I tink he was trying to say that the physical world is uniportant beyond simple survival, and is not to be obsessed over.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Rusty_the_boy_robot
Please add:

The self is the "agent".

And I will particpate in your thread.

Oooh, like a secret agent? (hidden self)
Or an agent who represents someone else?(fronting self)
Or a re-agent? (reactionary self)

Peace
dancing david

[Akots]

Smith. Agent Smith.

There is no spoon. :cool:

[Upchurch]

Being self aware, I would say that there is at least one self: mine. Beyond that, I can't say for certain.

As for it's duration, I really only have speculation. However, because I have not been self aware for all time up to this point, that would imply that my self is at least partially transitory. Whether it continues to be for the rest of time remains to be seen.

[whitefork]

Upchurch, those dogs ate your self. I can see your aura emanating from them.

White "son of sam" fork

[Upchurch]

Originally posted by whitefork
Upchurch, those dogs ate your self. I can see your aura emanating from them.
Entirely possible. Rosemary (right) and Thyme (left) have managed to chew on a little bit of everything in reach. However, that doesn't negate the fact that my self existed at some point in time (or in Thyme).

If anything, this would only go to show that the self exists and that it is transitory.

edited to add: just to be clear, when I say that Thyme is on the left, I mean the left of the two dogs. Not to be confused with myself who is on the left of the picture.

[whitefork]

"Metempsychosis, Lisa. Metempsychosis"

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10234d.htm

Or as Molly Bloom had it "met him pike hoses".

(what, no parsley and sage?)

[Rusty_the_boy_robot]

Originally posted by Dancing David


Oooh, like a secret agent? (hidden self)
Or an agent who represents someone else?(fronting self)
Or a re-agent? (reactionary self)

Peace
dancing david

"agent" like "agent" that is not caused but is causal. OOooh, or 007, he always get's the ladies.

[neutrino_cannon]

There is a self, but it is a morel.

[whitefork]

Stay away from the shrooms, n_c.

David,

I think that 'the self' i.e. your identity is derived from the physical world. It is derived from from the physical world because of the accident of the situation of your birth - your parents, your genes, when and where you were born, and all the things that have happened to you since, which were (almost) all imposed upon your physical start-point by other physical things. But I am also an idealist - I believe the physical world itself is an illusory, transitory thing. Therefore a self which is dependent on an illusory, transitory physical world must also be illusory and transitory. What it boils down to is that your 'self' isn't really you. I think what the Buddha was trying to say was that if you realise that your 'self' isn't really you then maybe you might be on the road to figuring out who you actually are. That's kind of how I see it, anyway.

Geoff.

:)

[Yahzi]

Self is an illusion in the same sense that temperature is.

It is a term describing a vast conglomerate of individual objects operating in tandem.

"Power is like a cloud: the further away from the center you are, the easier it is to see." - Anon Chinese saying.

Consciousness, and temperature, are similiar.

[Mercutio]

Mary Calkins, in the early 1900's (sorry, not near my books) wrote, in the American Journal of Philosophy, her "Philosophical Credo of an Absolutistic Personalist," where she argued (basically starting from cogito ergo sum) that the self exists, that we are aware of other selves, that we are related to these other selves as parts of a greater whole, and eventually that the entire universe, past present and future, is a self.

It is a remarkable piece of writing, and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in this thread's topic. IMHO, she nails down her logic much tighter than Descartes ever thought about doing, and if you accept her first premise ("that mental entities exist"), you are pretty much there for the whole ride. Not to mention that the writing itself is just beautiful, an example of what scientific writing used to be...sigh...

That said, I don't accept her first premise, and have a hard time defining a self as anything exact. Some have it as a part of the whole person (thus we can talk to ourselves, being simultaneously 2 selves in one?), others see it as a "social self," recognising that everything we do and are is influenced by all those around us. Such a fuzzily defined concept is hard to see as useful.

[Upchurch]

Originally posted by whitefork
(what, no parsley and sage?) Who do you think my fiancee (that's her upper arm on the right) and I are?

Originally posted by Upchurch
Who do you think my fiancee (that's her upper arm on the right) and I are?

Dobermans?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The term self is another dildo for philosophers. Someone define it, please.

~~ Paul

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
The term self is another dildo for philosophers. Someone define it, please.

~~ Paul
What define Dildo:D, self or philosophers? Or define it?


Sorry couldn't resist[bad girl slap wrists]:D


No self, Buddha's right.

[CWL]

Originally posted by Upchurch
Being self aware, I would say that there is at least one self: mine. Beyond that, I can't say for certain.

I'll say! That's because I'm just a figment of your i...

You know the rest.

[BillyTK]

It's a boundary issue resulting from arbitary distinctions such as public/private, internal/external and self/society, for instance.

And as we can only know things in terms of our understanding, rather than knowing things directly then, to quote UCE's old sig, "Whatever you say it is, it isn't."

So in conclusion, anyone fancy a pint?

[Rusty_the_boy_robot]

The self is the atom(s) in your brain that give rise to consciousness.

I will call these atom(s) the C-particle for ease of use.

So the C-particle is what gives rise to the self. Self remains coherent over time because the C-particle is connected in a continual locatative chain over time, even if parts of the C-particle change. If all of the C-particle were to change at the same time then we no longer have the same self.

For example if all parts of the C-particle were to cease functioning (i.e. brain death) then we are no longer the same self.


What about the problems?

Well what if someone duplicates my C-particle? Then is there two of me?

What if my C-particle stops functioning completely, then starts up again?

What if someone modifies every part of my C-particle at once? Then who did I become and what happened to the old self?

:confused: :confused:


The "agent" sure does solve this connundrum.

:) :D

[whitefork]

Originally posted by Upchurch
Who do you think my fiancee (that's her upper arm on the right) and I are? The term "sage" has been redefined in these here parts. Are you sure you or your fiancee are ready to shoulder that burden?

[whitefork]

I'll stick my neck out again.
We start our lives with nothing much, a capacity for awareness of the stuff around us. Soon thereafter we start to differentiate our body from the rest of the world. Never mind the chronology or details of how this happens. The self emerges as a product of that process. Finally a series of abstractions leads us to a belief in the separate existence of the voice within.

I don't especially distinguish myself from my body. For certain purposes we may regard them as distinct, but you run a real risk in doing that. I'll borrow the term "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" from my evil twin, Whitehead.

[hammegk]

I more & more strongly conclude that "self" as *I* think about it is the *me* bag-o-bones my *I* is intimately correlated with.

*Me* is the link between the *I* that is, and the world of perception.

I have no specific knowledge one way or the other if *I* has its own "self", although if Brahman=Atman the answer would I believe be no.

[whitefork]

"...the word curmudgeon seems to derive from the French "coeur mechant", so that an old curmudgeon is nothing worse than an old naughty heart." From Lanterns and Lances by James Thurber

[metacristi]

Is there a self?

I don't know whether a self does exist,if by 'self' we understand an immortal soul,existing at some ultimate level of reality,the atman of hinduism in what 'objective knowledge' is concerned but I believe [I have my 'subjective' evidence for that in the form of strange personal experiences] that a soul,still material and capable to interact with matter at our level,faintly however,does exist [I make no claim of having 'objective' knowledge for that,only subjective knowledge,enough to base a rational belief].I am open however to the possibility that science will be able to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that mind can be explained in its entirety by materialism [as we understand it today].
My belief does not imply having certitudes that it is true.This merely means that this hypothesis is the most probable in my subjective system of values of course [after carefully examining all existing evidence available to me,both objective and subjective] .

For the moment,in the light of current 'objective' knowledge,it's not at all clear that consciousness can be entirely reduced at materialism as we understand it now [either in the reductionist model at the laws of physics and chemistry or as computational emergence-prefered by a majority of scientists in cognitive sciences].
Moreover I am not at all sure that all forms of dualism have been soundly disproved as some emphatically claim.Neurological experiments have put in evidence indeed the existence of some correlations between mind states and brain states.However these observed correlations can count at most as evidence for causality but not for identity.
Sure there is the objection that in all fields of science,from all known experiments,such a type of causality implies identity.I'd not argue against that however I'd argue against the use of tradition as proof for that.
Indeed tradition is never a proof.There is no logical neccessity that causality should imply identity even at consciousness' level.