Yup, the self exists. The self is typing at the keyboard right now.
Ultimately it’s radical free will, in a sense. But getting there probably involves considering the relationship of the plural entire-species-level self with ITS OWN context, the context of the physical world in which it operates. For even THAT level of self, you can see that it is sort of defined by its context and yet it in turn defines other elements of that context in a reciprocally causal fashion, what Alan Watts calls the figure-ground issue.
So if we take that into account, we again have to punt a bit on where we locate the Self: the self is located in the entirety of That Which Is, i.e., the whole bloody universe is the self. And at that point there is nothing external to do any causing whatsoever so we’re finally at radical free will.
Technically the body is composed of millions of separate machines that each break down separately as you die. (For example cells need oxygen or they die; each cell dies independently of the ones around it.) This means that depending on how you die, your parts die in a different order. Which means determining when your ‘self’ dies depends on which bits of you you consider integral to the ‘self’. And of course telling exactly when it’s happened from the outside is a whole 'nother matter - it’s a little bit hard to gauge the exact moment brain activity stills (if that’s the metric) without strapping electrodes to the dying puppy in question.
So yeah - it can be a little tricky to tell the moment the body stops functioning well enough to sustain a ‘self’. Quite rude of the body not to ding like a microwave.
Gotcha, that’s what I thought you were getting at. I think I’ve heard a couple of Alan Watts’ talks, and he seemed like a cool dude. It’s interesting how many varied concepts of a self or lack thereof there are in Buddhism, though I guess that’s to be expected of a tradition that’s been around for thousands of years.
But if the self is an aggregate than is there really a unified “I”? I think the buddhists say something along the lines of “you are not your thoughts”. The thoughts that we have are transient and changing, and we mistake the ones that are frequent as being “us” even though they are just thoughts.
Or to paraphrase ligotti that we are sentient meat sacks with a narrative we tell ourselves that we mistake for us, with a name that is arbitrarily assigned to us. Though it’s weird how he deconstructs the self and then goes around to say that suffering is a fact of life. If there is no self then technically there is nothing “suffering”.
This isn’t relevant to the topic as it assumes a self exists.
A narrative we tell ourselves? If an entity is being told a narrative, what is that entity? If it’s subject to an illusion, then what exactly is it, that it can be tricked by such an illusion?
Sure, we don’t have a unitary consciousness, that is, there is no little man inside your head pulling the levers and looking at the viewscreen. All the different parts of your brain are constituent parts of your self, and this self is not a unitary thing any more than a beard is a unitary thing. Is there such a thing as a beard? Yes, I have one on my face right now. That beard is not a single thing, it’s a collection of things. If I cut off a couple of hairs I still have a beard. I could cut off half my beard and still have a beard. Beards exist.
If something is having the illusion of being a unitary consciousness, then that collection of stuff that is capable of having such a convincing illusion is the “self”. If it didn’t exist, how could it be fooled into thinking it existed?
In the Vedic tradition of India there are different aspects of the self, and the whole situation is far more complicated.
It depends whether you mean atma, jiva, or ahamkara - these Sanskrit concepts can all be translated as ‘self’ in English. They are all subtly but clearly different (and all different from manas, the mind), but I’m not even going to try to explain the differences here, as it’s a large subject. Vedanta goes into the question of maya or illusion in depth, but again it’s complicated. Buddhism presents a highly over-simplified picture of this.
You reject neuroscience and Descartes in lieu of a depressive cult fiction writer.
I leave you to your indulgent, self-defeating, blind wandering.
My response may be starting to get off topic, but you may be interested in this excerpt from the Phagguna Sutta:
"Dwelling at Savatthi. "Monks, there are these four nutriments for the maintenance of beings who have come into being or for the support of those in search of a place to be born. Which four? Physical food, gross or refined; contact as the second; intellectual intention the third; and consciousness the fourth. These are the four nutriments for the maintenance of beings who have come into being or for the support of those in search of a place to be born.
When this was said, Ven.-Moliya-Phagguna said to the Blessed One, “Lord, who feeds on the consciousness-nutriment?”
“Not a valid question,” the Blessed One said. “I don’t say ‘feeds.’ If I were to say ‘feeds,’ then ‘Who feeds on the consciousness-nutriment?’ would be a valid question. But I don’t say that. When I don’t say that, the valid question is ‘Consciousness-nutriment for what?’ And the valid answer is, ‘Consciousness-nutriment for the production of future coming-into-being. When that has come into being and exists, then the six sense media. From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact.’”
“Lord, who makes contact?”
“Not a valid question,” the Blessed One said. “I don’t say ‘makes contact.’ If I were to say ‘makes contact,’ then ‘Who makes contact?’ would be a valid question. But I don’t say that. When I don’t say that, the valid question is ‘From what as a requisite condition comes contact?’ And the valid answer is, ‘From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact. From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling.’…”
This is another way to explain how the self, under certain definitions, can be an artifact of language.
Descartes doesn’t have much to say on the nature of the self. The neuroscience link you posted wasn’t relevant to whether it exists or not.
A sufficiently convincing illusion is indistinguishable from reality.
In fact, to be honest I don’t think neuroscience can answer this question.
Well if I don’t exist I have a few choice words for the guy who’s been shitting my pants.
In this sense, Ligotti closely follows Thomas Metzinger’s work on the science of consciousness, wherein; ‘the conscious self is an illusion which is no-one’s illusion’ [2]. For Metzinger, humans are not “selves”, rather they are simply organisms that possess “self-models” that are not recognizable as such (internally to the system). That is to say, we are merely information systems where: ‘the phenomenal self is not a thing, but a process – and the subjective experience of being someone emerges if a conscious information processing system operates under a transparent self-model’ [3].
This is the “trap” of existence according to Ligotti, which allows for a novel reading of Plato’s cave in which the cave itself is the organism, and the wall the phenomenal projection of the self-model: ‘the cave in which we live our conscious life is formed by our global, phenomenal model of reality’ [4]. The shadows that play on the walls of the cave are low-dimensional renderings of the world, filtered through the specific dynamics of information that is actually presented to the self-model. Consciousness is simply the ‘puppet shadow [that] dances on the wall of the neurophenomenological caveman’s phenomenal state space […] The cave shadow is there. The cave itself is empty’ [5].
According to Metzinger, all of this is, practically speaking, incommensurable with the register of human perception. To experience ourselves as self-models, or to experience whatever is “beyond” the self-model (whatever that may mean) is just not the sort of thing that is within the domain of human capacity. Indeed, as may be well exemplified in Rust, even acknowledging that this is the case ‘may be damaging to our mental well-being’ [6]. Yet, as in much of Ligotti’s fiction, Rust seems to hover on the brink of this experience – one foot in and out – at once he is restricted by his “programming”, and yet he is also capable of sensing the “psychosphere”. The latter is akin to Ligotti’s notion of the “fictional diversion”. This is a Borgesian fiction within a fiction, but also one which structures our experience of the world into something that is comforting, homely; something liveable (otherwise, as Rust’s partner, Marty Hart puts it, ‘why get out of bed in the morning?’).
This is what I guess I am getting at with the “self is illusion bit” as I have read. First experience was Buddhism as they said, I cannot fathom a literal sense of not being “I”.
I can… I am a semi-lucid dreamer, and I’ve had numerous dreams in which I am someone other than who I actually am. It’s reasonably easy to imagine being “someone else.”
There is also deep sleep, and we all have experience with “not being.” That, too, is not so very difficult to imagine. You will “not be” for a couple hours tonight.
It’s also possible to imagine that there is a higher level of consciousness, of self, a newer, deeper, more profound sense of “I-ness” than we experience, simply moving by analogy from snakes to mice to cats to dogs to humans. Maybe some alien species out there has this meta-self, this vaster personal awareness, which we won’t evolve toward for another 20,000 years.
(I don’t think the Julian Jaynes “breakdown of the bicameral mind” theory is valid, but let’s pretend it is: who says the process is finished? There might be several steps left, and your own grandkids might have a “new form” of self-awareness which we don’t!)
All of this is “nonsense” in the technical meaning: there isn’t any possible way to test it. But it is relatively easy to imagine!
This is making my head hurt.
But what about names? SUch words that have great power over us because they make the “I” seem so solid and real.
Thomas Metzinger, the guy your hero Ligotti “closely follows” (according to your other recent post), is on the editorial board for the journal the Neuroscience of Consciousness. Metzinger’s papers and books are on this very subject. Maybe you should read some rather than simply dismissing it? Many of them are open source.
That’s not your self. That’s the world around you dictating your actions. If it wasn’t for your ability to sense touch, or the existence of that keyboard then you would not be typing.
Ones self is literally an extension of the environment.