Every skull wears an acquired face and calls it "self". I suspect that language – word-fetishizing – is why "the myth of self endures".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_model

Every skull wears an acquired face and calls it "self". I suspect that language – word-fetishizing – is why "the myth of self endures". — 180 Proof

Granted that it's an invention, does it persist because it accomplishes something ? What is it to be a discursive self, the kind Descartes took for granted? Why did Descartes take it as obvious that his voice was unified ? Why not we think therefore we are ? Brandom is good on this.
***
Kant’s most basic idea, the axis around which all his thought turns, is that what distinguishes exercises of judgment and intentional agency from the performances of merely natural creatures is that judgments and actions are subject to distinctive kinds of normative assessment. Judgments and actions are things we are in a distinctive sense responsible for. They are a kind of commitment we undertake. Kant understands judging and acting as applying rules, concepts, that determine what the subject becomes committed to and responsible for by applying them.
...
The responsibility one undertakes by applying a concept is a task responsibility: a commitment to do something. On the theoretical side, what one is committed to doing, what one becomes liable to assessment as to one’s success at doing, is integrating one’s judgments into a whole that exhibits a distinctive kind of unity: the synthetic unity of apperception. It is a systematic, rational unity, dynamically created and sustained by drawing inferential consequences from and finding reasons for one’s judgments, and rejecting commitments incompatible with those one has undertaken. Apperceiving, the characteristically sapient sort of awareness, is discursive (that is, conceptual) awareness. For it consists in integrating judgments into a unity structured by relations of what judgments provide reasons for and against what others. And those rational relations among judgments are determined by the rules, that is the concepts, one binds oneself by in making the judgments. Each new episode of experience, paradigmatically the making of a perceptual judgment, requires integration into, and hence transformation of the antecedent constellation of commitments. New incompatibilities can arise, which must be dealt with critically by rejecting or modifying prior commitments. New joint consequences can ensue, which must be acknowledged or rejected. The process by which the whole evolves and develops systematically is a paradigmatically rational one, structured by the rhythm of inhalation or amplification by acknowledging new commitments and extracting new consequences, and exhalation or criticism by rejecting or adjusting old commitments in the light of their rational relations to the new ones.
***

Granted that it's an invention, does it persist because it accomplishes something ? — plaque flag

"It persists", it seems to me, because "self" might be a kind of cognitive (memory) bias related to emotion-enabled scenario-planning and judgmemt (Damasio).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis

update:

Brains model worlds. In order to construct an “objective” view - an Umwelt - the organism must successfully “other” itself as the “subjective” part of that viewing.

[ .... ]

A classic example from ecological perception is landing a plane on a runway. The pilot fixes on a landing spot and just maintains a steady optic flow. So a sense of self emerges from the process of becoming the still centre of a world in smooth predictable motion. You and your target are one. Two halves of the psychological equation. The wider world is likewise reduced to a continuous flow. The brain is modelling reality in a cleanly divided fashion which is not a model of the world, but a model of us in the world as the world’s still and purposeful centre, with the world then passing by in a smooth and predictable manner. — apokrisis

:fire: :100:

I like the marker hypothesis. It seems to model a 'deep' subrational self. Great quote from apo too. The brain as hardware, with the help of cultural software, models the relationship of an avatar and its world. Memes on top of genes that were built to host them ?

Memes on top of genes that were built to host them ? — plaque flag

So the 'biosemiotic story' goes ...

So the 'biosemiotic story' goes ... — 180 Proof

What do you think ? And do you have a view on Dennett's later work ( From Bacteria to Bach... )

I'm not persuaded that 'memetics' explains much. And Dennett's later work seems to mostly be earlier work rehashed / reformulated. I've barely skimmed his last few books.

I'm not persuaded that 'memetics' explains much. — 180 Proof

It does seem vague.Yet language is our killer app. So perhaps it's a matter of finding the right grip. Timebinding looks central to me, and it's not just infrastructure. It's knowhow compacted into symbols, an extension of our nervous system, Popper's World 3 or something.

Yet language is our killer app. — plaque flag

Sure.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/799982
However, memetics ain't language any more than shapes are clouds or events are time.

Right. So what I mean is finding the right grip on our language. We 'are' language in the sense that we often take our 'host' for granted. Philosophers and scientists are machine elves working on the blockchain, stacking insight cubes in the noosphere. It's all 'material,' just to be clear. There's not mind but minding. Brain's the legs, mind's the dancing. A dance is not unphysical because time is involved.

That might be what confuses people, an insistence on something frozen. God is frozen, unmoved, can't have the bastard wiggling.

I recognize and sympathize with the idea that the self is an illusion, but only in the sense that everything is an illusion. — T Clark

Okey dokey.

I am what's left when you subtract out the Other, yes. — frank

Indeed!

However, memetics ain't language any more than shapes are clouds or events are time. — 180 Proof

Indeed.

I am not sure what people are saying doesn't exist.

You seem to saying language is necessary for somethings existence.

I didn't start thinking about consciousness until my twenties. And I don't remember anyone using the term or discussing it with me before then.

But I was clearly conscious before then. A word makes sense to me when it matches or describes my experiences. As someone who left religion which saturated my childhood I have experience of rejecting ideas that don't make sense or have no evidence.

I am not sure what you are referring to by software and hardware. There are lots of continuous things in our life to reinforce our identity. But what ties them together is memory. Memory seems to play a role in self and is part of the reason we can attribute an array of events and sensations to ourselves.

But other people can also witness we are the same person through time. Like you can differentiate your cat from the neighbours.

I can tell myself or someone else that the self is a myth but the myth may be that the self is a myth.

Who or what is it tells me this and who or what is it being told to when I hear and think about this? Is "I" and "me" and "myself" something other than my self?

If the self is a myth then what remains when the myth of the self is rejected?

You seem to saying language is necessary for somethings existence. — Andrew4Handel

I don't see how you are getting that. Perhaps you can quote and I will explain.

Before long we think that nothing is more real than this convention — plaque flag

I thought you were saying we bring something into existence (or you might say reify it) with language.

I was also referring to comments like this:

I agree. I think I was not right to call it a metaphor. I like the idea that language discloses or unveils phenomena. Adorno did that. — plaque flag

I may have been conflating you with this:

I suspect that language – word-fetishizing – is why "the myth of self endures". — 180 Proof

I am not sure what your theory of language is but I don't think we can talk about things that don't exist.

So for example I don't think we could talk about gods if they don't have characteristics of things that exist to attach the definition to. I think experience is so rich we can make robust concepts from experience.

I suppose my theory of language is that is must start by referring to things before we can abstract to concepts. It is hard to describe mental entities but we can use analogy and metaphor I suppose. Or we can assume mentalistic terms are being used in a similar way by most people.

This was my issue in a previous thread about the subjective. We can't actually compare what we are referring to with subjective mentalistic terms. So we may just be stuck in our inner world in one sense immune to other peoples skepticism about our mental states..

I thought you were saying we bring something into existence (or you might say reify it) with language. — Andrew4Handel

Thanks ! What I meant was that the self (not the body) is a learned performance, a piece of training, something like software that runs on the body's hardware. Descartes takes this discursive self for granted as the thing that just cannot be doubted. He took the unity of his voice for granted. He took semantic and inferential norms (a public self-transcending language) for granted. If you look at my 'normative crowbar' thread, I talk about how a philosopher, as a philosopher, always assumes a social world, because philosophy is always directed beyond the self. Philosophy moralizes. It says : Thou ought.

I suppose my theory of language is that is must start by referring to things before we can abstract to concepts. — Andrew4Handel

I also think it starts pretty simple, maybe with worldly objects, but then we can make lots of metaphors which drift into literal concepts as we use them enough.

I also think it starts pretty simple, maybe with worldly objects, but then we can make lots of metaphors which drift into literal concepts as we use them enough. — plaque flag

Can you give examples?

My idea of reification is when things like moral and social terms and norms get treated as law like or given.

When they are just possibly inventions to justify actions and societal trends and I would apply this to ideas like "It is wrong to kill" which either I think states a preference or does not refer to a natural law.

So I am nihilistic about those kind of meanings but I think words do tend to refer to things. I people need to agree on what the self is referring to in these kind of discussions.

Who has the power to have the final say in what words mean or refer to? We could become nihilistic and see no foundation for meaning or solipsistic and resort to the individual as final arbiter of meaning.

It seems to me that generations of humans have dealt with being a self. It has been framed in different ways, but I am pretty sure we all are in the same pool, treading water. The recognition of isolation is interwoven with different ideas about connection.

The situation is not self-explanatory. Very different kinds of investigation, philosophical and psychological, have and are being pursued.

The tiny boat is not close to any shore.

It does not seem to me that having a No Self doctrine makes for better people or a better society. I use Japan in World War Two as an example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War

"The book meticulously documents Zen Buddhism's support of Japanese militarism from the time of the Meiji Restoration through the World War II and the post-War period"

"Hakugen points to twelve characteristics of Japanese Zen which have contributed to its support for Japanese militarism:[6]

4. Emphasis on śūnyatā and selflessness, "leaving no room for the independence of the individual".[8]

7. The belief in mutual dependency, which "led in modern Japan to an organic view of the state coupled with a feeling of intimacy towards it"

Almost all Japanese Buddhists temples strongly supported Japan's militarization

I am not sure what your theory of language is but I don't think we can talk about things that don't exist. — Andrew4Handel

The word "self" (like "god") exists and we use – "talk about" – it meaningfully and incessantly (re: Meinong's Jungle, Witty's language games, etc).

I don't think you can replace self-referential talk.

So I don't think it is a game,

I went to the shop
I had a nightmare
I hallucinated
I am 46
I got a mortgage

Are we supposed to say "My brain is 46" "My brain had a dream" "My body got it's first mortgage."

The reason I defend the notion of god and now call myself an agnostic is because I don't associate the word "god" with a particular religion but with the human based concepts of intelligence, creation and meaning and so on.
So this is my method of deriving meaning or concepts from other things. I think conceptualising is probably essential for us. We learn about consistency between types.

My idea of the self is not entirely conceptual though but is extracted from my experience as the subject of conscious experiences but it is stronger than that. It is me that is in pain. Strong sensations are happening to me that reinforce my perception of a self. It is closely tied to consciousness which is all about experience for me. I consider both an essential mystery that needs explaining.

What?

The Self is just a ghost in the hive mind of society until it appears out of the fog of history in a cloak of righteousness, defying a world that's become evil. — frank

A most eloquent quote Frank and a great summary of Sophocles - Antigone.

Indeed the two deceased brothers Polynices and Eteocles could almost be twins and if the concept of self was to be divided they are a division of self.

Both dead of course and so Antigone doing rightly wants to bury both not just Eteocles as the king ordered.

A most eloquent quote Frank and a great summary of Sophocles - Antigone. — invicta

Thank you!

Indeed the two deceased brothers Polynices and Eteocles could almost be twins and if the concept of self was to be divided they are a division of self.

Both dead of course and so Antigone doing rightly wants to bury both not just Eteocles as the king ordered. — invicta

Makes sense.

I think telling people that the self is a fiction could be harmful and this could apply to telling people they don't have free will and a range of related issues. Leading to hopelessness or nihilism or reducing horizons.

I think people should be exposed to the issues raised in philosophy of mind so they can decide what they find compelling. Some people, as happened with the Matrix film's influence, may draw radical conclusions or be influenced by preexisting mental health problems to questionable actions.

But I feel that studying the Philosophy of mind may have had a positive impact on my mental health but I can't say for sure. It certainly expanded my concept base.