Is the Self an Illusion?

Sunday, October 9, 2022
First Aired: 
Sunday, February 23, 2020

What Is It

Most of us think it’s obvious that we have a self, but famously, both Buddhism and British philosopher David Hume are skeptical that such a thing exists. What in the world could it mean to deny that the self exists? Could ‘the self’ just refer to a series of perceptions and feelings we have over time? If so, then whose perceptions and feelings are they? Is there any way Buddhism could have influenced Hume’s thinking on the illusory nature of the self? Josh and John question theirselves with Alison Gopnik from UC Berkeley, author of The Philosophical Baby and "How David Hume Helped Me Solve My Midlife Crisis."

Transcript

Transcript

Josh Landy  
Is there such a thing as a self—something that makes you who you are?

John Perry  
Or is the self just a convenient fiction?

Josh Landy  
If we all stopped believing in selves, would the world be a better place?

Comments (13)


Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Sunday, February 2, 2020 -- 12:36 PM

The concept (or notion) of

The concept (or notion) of self is, to my thinking, synonymous with something called consciousness. There are those who question that as well, perhaps because there is no means (currently) of measuring it. Philosophy has no real estate on this matter, because it is all too theoretical and, well, slippery to get a handle on.. Hume and other early thinkers had not the beginnings of technological knowledge upon which to even begin a discussion of something so potentially profound. So, most, if not all of them, avoided any position on the matter---eschewed the topic as ineffable, as so it was. It seems unlikely to me that people like David Hume would have given Buddhism a second thought: too ethereal and, as such, inaccessible. Nowadays, there are a number of folks who have tried to explain consciousness---some of them highly respected. Mostly, their efforts have met scorn, disbelief, or worse, jealousy. I suspect many of them rue the day that they became interested in this philosophic tar baby. We are still light years away from a coherent approach to understanding the self; or consciousness; or whatever you wish to call this mystery which is odorless, colorless, tasteless and senseless. Seems to me. One possible, though tentative, avenue may lie with AI. I cannot begin to imagine how that could work---it is just a hunch.

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Tuesday, February 11, 2020 -- 11:16 AM

Every now and then, I am

Every now and then, I am moved to write something that is not immersed in a philosophical context. This is not one of those times. In the view of some, I may be standing still. That might be true. But, at least I am still standing. As a wiser man than I once told me: you have to stand for something, or else you will fall for anything. Over the ensuing forty-odd years, I have found that counsel impeccable.

aeby's picture

aeby

Sunday, February 23, 2020 -- 12:01 PM

Name of the Buddhist scholar

Name of the Buddhist scholar that both Alison Gopnik and the first caller mentioned, S--- K---?

edphil's picture

edphil

Friday, February 28, 2020 -- 10:27 AM

Yes. That is him. As a

Yes. That is him. As a practical matter we can assume that he had a very strong sense of himself, and that his realization of no-self was in the order of what he calls a non-affirming negative. In other words, a self must exist practically and experientially in order to realize its tenuousness and/or its transparency or lack of "inherent existence". It is an experience of freedom. It is on the order of a direct experience of freedom and not a belief. One of the artifacts of contemporary philosophy talk is that we may interrogate or investigate a subject in terms of "belief" and the adoption of one belief or another. Analytic meditation in the sense that he uses it is meant as an aid to direct experience. And what is the experience. I gather it may be likened to what Wallace Stevens called an ecstatic transparence. Paradoxically, such an experience represents a high level of self-development!

edphil's picture

edphil

Friday, February 28, 2020 -- 10:30 AM

On the realization of the

On the realization of the importance of self-development and of the need for a self before one can esctatically perceive its transparency, I can point you to the notion of an ipseity disturbance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-disorder We need a basic sense of self and we can strengthen that, so that we may perhaps begin to take it lightly.

Tim Smith's picture

Tim Smith

Sunday, March 8, 2020 -- 11:29 AM

Yes, there is a unique self.

Yes, there is a unique self.

Free Will is the larger issue. It doesn't really matter what the thing is that takes an action if we can't attribute choice to it.

I enjoyed this show.

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Tuesday, April 27, 2021 -- 6:46 AM

I cannot grasp the notion of

I cannot grasp the notion of an illusory self. That just does not make sense. Each of us has a faculty; an identity we think of as our 'self'. It is as real as the color of our eyes, or the name we were given at birth. It is a memory after we die. But, it never was illusion. Seems to me. Now, if anti-realists wish to argue that such things as eye color are illusion, go ahead. That is just smoke and mirrors. There is a lot of it going round, these days.

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Thursday, March 10, 2022 -- 11:38 AM

According to one authority,

According to one authority, consciousness is a hallucination. I don't think so. But if the hallucination hypothesis IS right, then, by association, the self is illusion. Not in my opinion. So what are consciousness and self really? Appears they are whatever authorities say they are. Really?

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Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Friday, March 11, 2022 -- 3:40 PM

Doing more digging--- mining

Doing more digging--- mining definitions,as it were, the relation between consciousness and self is hard to explain, but harder still to explain away, as some thinkers have tried to do with consciousness, of itself---when they, in infinite wisdom, could do no better. (See Dennett's account, for example). There is what legal practitioners call a nexus, or connexion, between these terms and their meanings.
(I used the old spelling of connection to show temporal relationship, a century or so removed.

See, we cannot explain consciousness or selfness in the language of mathematics, physics or quantum mechanics. Just as there is no useful way of comparing a steam engine with a nuclear reactor: their energies can both exert force; do work. Outcome is similar. Input, far different. The point I am making is this: there will be no consensus on ideas about consciousness and self, .until procrastinators decide that notions of hallucination and illusion are, uh, irrational. There will be no next Big Thing. Try harder to think better. Go big, or stay home...

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Daniel's picture

Daniel

Sunday, September 4, 2022 -- 1:10 PM

Good point. Home's not big

Essential predication within the context of free association of reference-contents for terms like self and selfness occurs by application of identity relations, that is, when one thing is said to be another. The key move in self-identity is adding the relation to the reference of a reflexive term, such as "here", "now", "I", et al. The ontological question of Self therefore asks whether or not such reflexive terms bear use-independent contents or are purely conventional. One way of answering this question is asking whether or not their contents are interchangeable. If self x would rather be self y because self y appears to self x to be a much happier self, then that indicates the conceivability of interchangeability. This however would violate the identity condition, since a change of self x's becoming self y does not entail a happiness-increase for self x, but rather self x's annihilation. The question can therefore be provisionally answered by saying that selfness is non-illusory (=exists) only in cases where the identity relation includes at least one reflexive term with non-interchangeable contents. Note that no claim is here made for what a self is or as to what other properties might be ascribed to one. The purpose of the suggestion is merely to point out the characteristic of ontological non-derivation ascribable to the contents of the self-concept, which in addition contributes to an explanation of its foundational status in Western philosophy.

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Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Tuesday, October 18, 2022 -- 4:35 AM

It is curious how things,

It is curious how things, ideas, words and so on appear on a blog platform I read, one or several days after I have commented upon them. It is as if I MYSELF do not exist at all, but my ideas, words, and so on do.. There is never acknowledgement or attribution offered me. Sort of like the difference between scientific rationality and 'what if'. All this could be because of synchronicity? But I don't think so.

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Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Sunday, October 23, 2022 -- 8:40 AM

If, for a few moments, it can

If, for a few moments, it can be considered that self is another term for consciousness, please consider this: there are some bloggers who are thinking about consciousness as an evolutionary process. Julian Jaynes suggested as much years ago when he wrote: 'the Origins of Consciousness...'
I thought he was on the right track, but his primary subject, bicameral mind, must have overarched the consciousness notion. I have done my own thinking on this and have left comments on some articles that parallel the subject. Seems to me it would be useful if we could say: we learn to be conscious. That would follow Piaget's account of childhood development: much better than calling it hallucination or illusion.

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