Anybody have any unique thoughts on this? I’ve been pondering this lately and just thought I’d post the question just for fun.
I had a philosophy professor who wrote out a list on the board of all the mental experiences one can typically verify by introspection such as thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, pains & pleasures, intentions, desires, dreams, etc. Then he asked “Should the self go into this list?” He reminded us that the self is not something one typically finds by introspecting. Then he suggested that maybe the self is simply the entirety of the list - that is, the self is the sum total of all mental experiences one is capable of having.
I’ve also thought that if the self is the one doing the introspecting, how would it be able to introspect itself? It would be like a camera trying to film itself. Maybe this accounts for the ellusiveness of the self.
Yes, keep looking until you find it and then let me know.
We have to learn to organize and categorize what we perceive in the world around us in order to make sense of it and survive. The way to do this is to first establish mentally that there’s a “me” from which everything else is separate. It’s not really the case, we can’t survive independent of our environment. But it’s how the mind solves this dilemma.
The Other. Me, in other words. You are because I know you. This is why you need me man.
Seek out Lacan and Sartre. Know your Freud too, and it wouldn’t hurt to browse through some Feuerbach while you’re at it. Some parts of Jung are reasonable. Others, not.
Be careful with solipsism. Don’t get seduced by it. Just stay with Sartre and he will lead you through. In the least, learn about Heidegger’s Dasein to help comfort you. Dark times are ahead, and I’m warning you to not lean too far to the quietist right or the nihilist left. Keep Kierkegaard close to you at all times. Kierkegaard is insurance in existentialism.
If you have the right constitution, you can handle Nietzsche. If you can keep eye contact with an abyss for longer than six seconds…you can try Nietzsche. Still it is advisable to keep Kierkegaard near.
personally I would concider self to be very simmilar to the truth. it lies within and is easily seen but just as easily covered by our thoughts and feelings.
Simply said if you detach yourself from your “thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, pains & pleasures, intentions, desires, dreams, etc.” than the self is what remains, the truth of who you are beyond pretense.
but then this would require a conciderable amount of effort that most are not willing to forward for simple discovery, so these sort of discussions will continue endlessly. peace.
What would happen if doctors found a way to do a pineal gland transplant, leaving the rest of the brain intact?
I don’t think the question ‘where is the self?’ makes any sense. I mean obviously it makes grammatical sense, but content-wise. The self isn’t an object which you can find and point out. So looking for it should consist more in working out what we mean when we say self, than in trying to locate it.
I wonder if I should wish to say
What is true?
About this?
Or maybe what is whole, so as to be non-deducted?
Or maybe what is false, and human?
What shall I say unto the question of “self”?
Earthlings fit into ecosystemic nitches.
They hath much complacency,
And each of their cells has a nuclei?
“Self” is the central point of a collective temporal collition network.
The self is as you write it. A unit of language which serves as formal reference for your personal experience. This ‘self’ is useful to understand how your identity relates to other discrete identities which make up the world. The content of which can be measured in physical, social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual terms. Each of these elements can then be measured by degrees of tangibility and each can, in part, be articulated (ie. grasped in language). The rest is ‘other’ ie. what you cannot yet articulate and which, should you stretch yourself, become articulated extensions of your personal experience. This will enable your ‘self’ to intervene in the world more effectively.
Well, as a Buddhist who doesn’t have balls, and is thus not inclined to come up with the idea to use them as a way of explaining most things (with a few notable exceptions*), I think a better explanation might be that it just takes a whole lot of years of study and meditation to actually get what the Buddha got.
