I would take the tack that “self” is a function of a mode of consciousness; consciousness can function in modes where “self” is simply not perceived. Generally, modes that produce the self-function have tended to be pretty useful for critters of the human persuasion, so that’s where we spend most of our time.
So, consciousness first, self second (if at all), not the other way round. The pinpoint I’m looking at doesn’t have any angels dancing on it, they’re just sort of sitting and chanting. Other pinpoints will produce different output.
Until now I thought my brother (Sparc that is) was the only one crocked in the head regarding this issue. For the past 15 years he’s been contending that he’s not so sure about his own existence. Alas, as I now see, he’s not alone in suspecting how superfluous his self might be. Why escapes me entirely.
Fortunately, Sparc has more and more come to realize how tenuous his doubt about his own existence is. He hasn’t admitted it yet. But I know my brother. And when he is uncertain about something (and he rarely is) he gets this uneasy look on his face that he tries to pretend away . Obviously those in the thread that ponder the remote possibility that our inability to quantify the self gives it a dubious quality haven’t truly meditated on the meaning of the Cartesian argument cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am). So let me explain it so that you can forever banish your odd materialistic concepts of a unaware Awareness.
Descartes refused to accept anything anyone had told him, even the greatest philosophers of all times like Aristotle. This was the essence of his meditations: to doubt not just some things but just about anything that came into mind. In the end of his meditations, the only thing left was the very process of doubting itself. With other words, Descartes did not only not trust anyone else. He had come to not even trust himself! But, if you follow in his meditations, the inherent contradiction of such an act must become crystal clear. Descartes hyperbolic doubt leads to such an inherent contradiction in the end that we must simply accept the fact that our ability to doubt is the one and only thing we can not doubt! Or, to put it in Descartes own words: cogito ergo sum.
The self is a synthetic a priori resulting from our inability to simultaneously posit the existence and non-existence of a thing. You don’t just take it for granted. You must take it for granted! It’s a truth prima facie (at first glance). The self is the only thing an ultimate skeptic like Descartes can’t deny. Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), the father of transcendental phenomenology, writes:
The idea that the self would somehow be a superfluous entity in an algorithmic Turing-like Universe is the unfortunate residue of a misplaced 19th century materialism. It’s not something you go around quantifying…
ethicallynot, a “prima facie truth” is like a research paper that says “It is known that …” without a cite or evidence to back it up. It is an assumption, and if your “self” accepts it without any doubt, then it is a statement of faith.
drastic I was unclear. Biologic “self” includes such things as basic immunologic mechanisms and other tools that allowed the first multicellular organisms to stick together and keep “nonself” out. Clearly this egg came before the chicken. As neurologic complexity advanced some primitive concept of self vs nonself clearly must have existed in whatever primative form of sentience there was. Eventually enough self-referential loops evolved to allow for symbolic thought and for the ability of a mind to listen and watch itself thinking, consciousness, and with that, self became the “mode of consciousness” that you think of as its meaning.
Dream on! I’m just gathering my forces for a renewed onslaught on the constructs of gullibility. I was considering saying something about it here, if I don’t; you just wait till this years x-mass dinner.
BTW, your phenomenological arguments still don’t absolve you from an infinite regression of ‘what if the thought that makes for the thought that I exist is not my own, but an illusion or someone/something else’s thought?’, but you know that already.
I am not doubting doubt itself. I am doubting whether the conception of a thinker is necessary for thought. The fact that “I” am doubting or concieving of non-existence of the self does not lead to a contradiction.
I still think the comparison to a creator god is appropriate. For aeons people had trouble concieving of a universe without a creator. Because (they might have rationalized), if the universe wasn’t created than how could it exist?
Understanding thought is hard enough, without supposing something that exists within thought yet somehow creates itself through thought. If the self created thought, than it seems to me that the self could choose not to think. But this is not the case, we think as soon as we are conscious and will continue to until we are unconscious. Thought is necessary to concieve of the self but not vice versa.
Meditations of the kind suggested by Descartes is the evidence! The argument for the existence of the self is stated clearly and loudly in my post. What you’re essentially saying is “how can you prove anything that is a priori knowledge”. What is known a priori is know because of its self-evidence. How do you want me to prove the following axioms?
p IFF p
p -> q -> s -> p => q -> p
Who else than Husserl do you want me to cite here??? The self (cognition) is the most basic corner stone of any epistemic system. Without it you can know nothing, not even that you can “know that you know nothing”. The self needs not be proven by reference to anything external. It is in-and-of-itself its own proof. Essentially, it’s the ultimate tautological truth.
It’s not a matter of faith. Faith presumes your ability to doubt something. If you can’t doubt it, it’s not faith…
But, perspective that is “thought”. Mind is a process that applies itself to something. When you say “I’m not doubting doubt” you are indeed saying “I’m not doubting thought”. Your thinker is nothing else than the process of thinking itself. The “I” is not positing the non-existence of something else. The “I” is positing the non-existence of itself! Or, thought tries to unthink thought. As Sparc accurately points out, it enters into an infinitely regressing situation called a contradiction. Nonetheless, it miraculously transgresses this self-referential absurdity and comes out victorious, concluding it’s own existence.
Actually, the OP’s question is not new. Centuries ago, David Hume asserted that “the self” was a fiction, that what we think of as human consciousness is little more than a collection of random impulses and sensations, vaguely held together by a reasoning center.
Latter-day neurologists increasingly agree with Hume.
astorian I think you’re mixing up ego and self. The seat and mechanics of what we perceive as I is slightly different as the existence of the same. “Do ‘I’ exist?” doesn’t beg for an explanation of what ‘I’ is. Actually to start wondering what it is demands the acceptance that ‘I’ exists.
Now :sigh: ethnicallynot must you?
I guess you do. The ‘doubt argument’ again. Fine so we’re stuck with infinite regressions of doubt. This does not bootstrap into existence of I. It just means that the doubt equation has an unsatisfactory resolution in a paradox. As I have pointed out before; thinking that you do not exist is ludicrous on a practical level. However, out of a philosophical perspective it is as of yet not proven and comes down to faith. You’re as always just doing away with the problem by claiming its irrefutable evidence is that it is. Famous logic of theists and other believers; “it’s self evident that X is, hence Y.” Really???
I am skeptic enough to doubt my doubt is mine, thank you very much.
I wouldn’t call it ego and self but I agree that the mechanics from which it result and the self itself should not be mixed up here. What I’m contending isn’t some solipsistic rhubarb mush gone awry and totally removed from the corporeal world. All I’m saying is that the self is at the basis of any form of knowledge. This thread is not about whether something exists outside consciousness metaphysically speaking, which becomes more tenuous and more a matter of faith. This is about whether we can be certain about our own existence. And we can, despite Sparc’s peculiar assertion to the contrary.
Funnily enough, Sparc admits that he has to postulate the existence of self to determine whether it exists. Clearly, as I said before, he agrees with me without admitting it :D. He tries to bypass by saying:
But that’s incorrectly formulated. It should be: it’s self evident that X is, hence X. Which is a tautology. As I said, we are dealing the most ultimately self-evident tautology here!
PS. Believing I exists make me a theist
Eh? Nah! Thought is self-evident therefore thought is??? So what? You’re equating thought with ‘I’. So you have to start with:
Thought is equal to ‘I’ ergo Cogito ergo sum.
But how do you come to the first conclusion? How do you know that ‘your’ thoughts are ‘yours’ they could be the nasty nightmares of a green ogre, or the messiah, or God forbid me.
Theist? Yeah! Hey, you and others refuted this recently: ‘this sentence is true, therefoe god exists’ I know that God was an arbitrary example, but isn’t the logical structure to what I proposed you are saying very similar?
Permit me to address the OP from a theological perspective (Buddhist). I apologize in advance for my lack of expertise.
I don’t think you want to ground the doctrine of anatman (no-self) on Descartes. Descartes’ argument was an epistemological one: it concerned the foundations of knowledge more than an actual inspection of the nature of identity.
Furthermore if one actually accepts the sort of radical skepticism implied in Descartes’ thought experiment, then one is led to doubt the outside world with greater certainty than one doubts the existence of a “thought-bundle”. To paraphrase B. Russell’s summarization, we are more certain about subjectivities than objectivities.
And if one is skeptical about the existance of the outside empirical world, then discussion of evolution, etc. is pointless.
The Buddha, in fact, spent a fair amount of time detailing a taxonomy of a hypothetical human. So, the doctrine of “anatman (no self)” does not mean that human thoughts/feelings/decisions/behaviors/whatever have no underlying structure. Rather, it is that the self, as commonly understood as unified, permanent, unchanging entity, is an illusion.
An illusion, DSeid might add, borne of natural selection. The latter might form a sturdier basis for the anatman doctrine. I might add that the condition of attachment probably has strong selective advantages, though it may also advance human suffering.
ethi, you can’t prove an axiom. It is accepted as if true without proof and is the base of any particular epistemology. But such axioms are not accepted without any reserved doubt. And no particular epistemolgy is a perfect model of reality. The most famous example, oft quoted on these here boards, is Euclid’s parallel lines do not cross postulate … and I think that you know the rest. BTW, perspective’s analogy to the universe being proof of a creator is apt.
Out of curiosity, do any of the following have “selves”, and if so how are each of their “selves” different?
a grain of sand
a bacteria
a sponge
a fish
a mouse
a dog
a chimp
a whale
a human
Is this the same as asking if they have consciousness? As if they have souls? As if they have thoughts?
Where in evolution did self start? Where in development does self appear?
You have to define your terms.
Attachment to life starts rather early in the chain. If one believes in the mirror-test (does a creature understand that its image in a mirror corresponds to itself), then this aspect of a “self” appears rather late in the game. Dogs and dolphins fail the mirror test, for example.
So I would say that different aspects of this so-called self arise at different levels of development/ evolution.
I should note that Scylla has advanced a number of reasonable objections to the mirror test.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ethnicallynot * Your thinker is nothing else than the process of thinking itself. The “I” is not positing the non-existence of something else. The “I” is positing the non-existence of itself
. Obviously those in the thread that ponder the remote possibility that our inability to quantify the self gives it a dubious quality haven’t truly meditated on the meaning of the Cartesian argument cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am). So let me explain it so that you can forever banish your odd materialistic concepts of a unaware Awareness.
Meditations of the kind suggested by Descartes is the evidence! The argument for the existence of the self is stated clearly and loudly in my post. What you’re essentially saying is “how can you prove anything that is a priori knowledge”. What is known a priori is know because of its self-evidence. How do you want me to prove the following axioms?