[QUOTE=Anomalous Reading]
I do think we have some… sense of who we are. I know that if I do somethings it just won’t feel right to me. There are some things that just aren’t typically part of my personality - and don’t feel right. As I’ve matured, I’ve learned some of that those things are and I avoid them. I just don’t like what doesn’t feel “authentic” it somehow seems less than honest.
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One of the things that led me to post in this thread was the expressed intent to keep the discussion somewhat grounded. For me, attempting to define the self in terms of the ability to distinguish right from wrong or the “authentic” from the “inauthentic” is too close to a flight of fancy.
However, I am intrigued by the idea that the “innermost” self is that which we ourselves nurture. It seems to me that we attribute to the self the nice, warm, enlightened aspects of ourselves. (I would guess that SDMB posters would attribute to their inner selves the quality of intelligence.)
It was the innermost self that held the baby girl on the day she was born, but not that same self that called her a whore when she was fifteen and the less said about who paid for the abortion later that same year, the better.
Is it more difficult to believe that there are (at least) two different aspects of yourself, the innermost and the outermost, rather than to believe that there is no self, as such?
Personally, I think this is a simple linguistic illusion, as opposed to what I call the spooky illusions of Richard Bach and that ilk.
If one asks the question, what is my outermost self?, there seems to be a simple answer, my skin, or something like that. Then one asks, what is my innermost self, what is it like? Is it conscious? Does it have any physical qualities? Does it have size, location, temperature?
I can’t answer any of those questions, but I think I can point out the error.
Let’s say I make a claim that there are no unicorns.
There are no pink unicorns with mother-of pearl horns. There are no baby blue unicorns standing a mere 5 and a half hands high with pure ivory horns. There are definitely no plaid unicorns with adamantium horns.
There are no leprechauns with bright green suits and tam-o-shanters with shamrocks bobbing at the headband. And even if there were small, pink humanoids with the words achy-breaky heart tattooed in the form of an inverted heart shape around their navels, green tam-o-shanters (sans shamrock) and a horn growing out of their foreheads, they would NOT be leprecorns.
In these assertions, I seem to have defined three similar things two dissimilar things and, possibly, two separate categories of things, all of which share the characteristic of not existing.
Likewise with the idea of the self, or more simply, the idea of an inner self. Is there really a different self in charge when one swears at the old lady blocking traffic in front of one’s car? Does the inner self curl up and lay at the foot of one’s bed while one sleeps?
Is there any reason that the answer to the question of what the outer self is can’t be the same as the answer to what the inner self is?