My general approach to this question is that, whatever the self is, it is never an object of perception, nor amongst the objects of perception.

If you were to ask, well what are among objects of perception, the easy answer is 'look around you'. Everything you see is an object of perception. But the self is never that, for the obvious yet difficult reason that the self is the subject of experience.

'Anatta' is not a concept, but an observation along similar lines - all objects, experience, thoughts, sensations, perceptions, and so on, are not self (an-ātman). So theorising about what 'that' is, is already going in the wrong direction, because there is no 'it' or 'that'. Knowing that this is something you can't know is the correct understanding.

Reminds me of this:

Cassius:
Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion;
By means whereof this breast of mine hath buried
Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations.
Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?

Brutus:
No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself,
But by reflection, by some other things.

Meow!

GREG

There are two connotations of "self" that are important to distinguish:

* There's a mental "sense of self"--your conscious "I"/"Me" phenomena

* There's "self" with a connotation of your entire body--all of the parts that "belong to you," your hair, your foot, etc.

The ontological boundaries of the former are the brain phenomena that amount to those particular "I"/"me" mental phenomena.

The ontological boundaries of the latter is the surface of your body, with parts that you lose--and you're always losing parts, including hair, skin cells, etc. generally being no longer considered part of your self unless it's a "significant" part/something we put a lot of importance on, such as your limbs, your organs, etc. So there's some fuzziness there for sure.

In terms of epistemic boundaries, that's of course fuzzier and it's subjective; it's simply a matter of how the person in question thinks about their mental self or what, if anything, constitutes their body.

There must be some moment when a baby looking into a mirror understands that what it sees is itself.

My general approach to this question is that, whatever the self is, it is never an object of perception, nor amongst the objects of perception. — Wayfarer

I'd also say that the mental sense of self is not among the objects of perception, because the very concept of perception is that of receiving and processing external (to one's mind) information. Selves are not external. We do not perceive any mental content--we also do not perceive emotions, ideas, desires, etc.

We can, of course, perceive parts of our body. At least if we've not had too much to drink.

Thank you very much for your reply. And happy holidays to all. (L)

What you wrote brings to mind the Zen master's response of "Who is it that is asking this question?" Which (as i take it in my limited understanding) seems to be provoking/encouraging a deeper interior examination from the questioner rather than looking for a specific answer. In fact, any answer that was in the slightest way a cliche or stock response (no matter how elaborate) was apt to provoke a smack on the noggin from the teacher. Which probably got the students attention quickly. But that was a different place and time. The point still stands however, and encourages us to keep looking.

So if i'm understanding what you wrote, the self is the "unseen seer". "Self" meaning the deepest level of one's being, or perhaps pure consciousness? Or is that a mistaken understanding of your words?

I agree with your description of "anatta". I merely called it a "concept" in the sense that nearly anything that can possibly be thought of or discussed can be called a concept. That would apply to the self as well, one would imagine.

As for theorizing and going in the wrong direction... Well, of course! Can't argue with that. Silence is the master of talking, and stillness is the foundation of movement. If one is talking about a particular tree, for example, one can't say everything about it all at once. And even a blue-ribbon panel of scientists, poets, philosophers, and artists could not totally define that one tree. And whatever they produced would be a mere reflection (however brilliant, accurate, or inspiring) and not be the tree itself. Some forums allow the user to have a signature quote in their posts. There doesn't seem to be that option here in this forum, afaik. If i could, I'd put this quote from the Tao te Ching as a sort of disclaimer to what i said: "The Way that can be told is not the eternal Way. The name which can be named is not the eternal name". In other words, take everything with a big grain of salt! Your (s)mileage may vary. :)

↪0 thru 9 My general approach to this question is that, whatever the self is, it is never an object of perception, nor amongs the objects of perception.

If you were to ask, well what are among objects of perception, the easy answer is 'look around you'. Everything you see is an object of perception. But the self is never that, for the obvious yet difficult reason that the self is the subject of experience.

'Anatta' is not a concept, but an observation along similar lines - all objects, experience, thoughts, sensations, perceptions, and so on, are not self (an-ātman). So theorising about what 'that' is, is already going in the wrong direction, because there is no 'it' or 'that'. Knowing that this is something you can't know is the correct understanding. — Wayfarer

The light at the end of the tunnel is me. =

Thanks for your reply. A mug of Shakespeare (shakes-beer?) helps one swallow the chewiest gristle of theory! :D

The light at the end of the tunnel is me. = — MJA

While watching the light at the end of the tunnel... you are aboard the oncoming train that is shining the light at the end of the tunnel...

:o

Questions such as this, "The nature of the Self, and the boundaries of the individual" are the "chewiest gristle" indeed.

Wayfarer's view that the self "is never an object of perception, nor amongst the objects of perception" seems true. I have no doubt that other selves exist, and I hope I am right that all the selves there are follow the same general pattern of being--else, how could we understand each other?

There are certain kinds of selves that have invisible tentacles extending in all directions and one never knows when one might step on one and be blasted. These selves take up a lot of room. The steppes of Russia are not sufficient for some. And some selves find small sleeping rooms spacious enough.

While watching the light at the end of the tunnel... you are aboard the oncoming train that is shining the light at the end of the tunnel... — 0 thru 9

Or, "The light you see at the end of the tunnel is an express train coming at you very fast."

Then the light and train is me. =

The light is imprisoned by a Universe that is infinitely boundless. Does that answer your question? =

Thanks for the reply. Happy holidays!

Yes, definitely. It is very helpful (and perhaps critical) in discussions about the self to keep in mind the two aspects of self: the "conscious witness self" and the "everything (including the kitchen sink) self". Humor aside, the "everything self" would include all physical attributes, mental activity, and any experiences one has had. Which also would, i think, include all of one's past selves. Like Dickens' Scrooge viewing his past self and his interactions with others. The past might be dead, but it is not gone. (Or is it gone, but not dead? Or dead, but still moving? Insert zombie joke here). Wow, now that i think about it, A Christmas Carol is quite a metaphysical work of fiction. Probably why it has endured so long.

There are two connotations of "self" that are important to distinguish:

* There's a mental "sense of self"--your conscious "I"/"Me" phenomena

* There's "self" with a connotation of your entire body--all of the parts that "belong to you," your hair, your foot, etc.

The ontological boundaries of the former are the brain phenomena that amount to those particular "I"/"me" mental phenomena.

The ontological boundaries of the latter is the surface of your body, with parts that you lose--and you're always losing parts, including hair, skin cells, etc. generally being no longer considered part of your self unless it's a "significant" part/something we put a lot of importance on, such as your limbs, your organs, etc. So there's some fuzziness there for sure.

In terms of epistemic boundaries, that's of course fuzzier and it's subjective; it's simply a matter of how the person in question thinks about their mental self or what, if anything, constitutes their body. — Terrapin Station

What you wrote brings to mind the Zen master's response of "Who is it that is asking this question?" Which (as i take it in my limited understanding) seems to be provoking/encouraging a deeper interior examination from the questioner rather than looking for a specific answer. — 0 thru 9

Right.

So if i'm understanding what you wrote, the self is the "unseen seer". "Self" meaning the deepest level of one's being, or perhaps pure consciousness? Or is that a mistaken understanding of your words? — 0 thru 9

Correct, but calling it 'pure anything' is speculation. Again it is the mind trying to grasp itself. The right way is to know that we don't know - like the Socratic attitude. That has to be deeply understood and practiced.

Wittgenstein in the Tractatus writes:

The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing.
If I wrote a book "The world as I found it", I should also have therein to report on my body and say which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then would be a method of isolating the subject or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject: that is to say, of it alone in this book mention could not be made. — TLP 5.631

In Self we trust?

Question: has the belief in a completely separate Self become the dominant paradigm in our culture? Is it now the foundation of practically all current societal systems (government, industry and commerce, education, etc.)?

By "completely separate self" i mean that people are completely isolated at their core from other people and other things. People and things may interrelate, but are always apart and separate in a radical way. For example, five marbles in a bowl are related but completely separate. By contrast, the five fingers of a hand have some separation, but also some commonality.

(Some ideal/optimistic/possibly Utopian foundations would be things like democracy, freedom, equality, peace, love, family, abundance, truth, beauty, divine worship, goodness, etc. The more cynical/pessimistic/pragmatist view is that money, gold, power, natural resources, military might, sexual conquest, fame etc. make the world go round.)

The question here is whether the belief in the separate self now transcends and underlies all of those things?

If no, what is the underlying (perhaps hidden) foundational belief of our current culture? Is it a combination of factors, and is it relative to the particular place? What happens to an person when they believe they are completely isolated?

If yes (the separate Self belief is foundational), is that a good thing, a bad thing, or somewhere in between?

If it is seen as a positive, how so? Is it that our culture as a whole has caught up to the realities of science, and with the technological tools now available, is finally shaking off the centuries of superstitions that inhibited the full flowering of the individual?

If it seen as at least potentially negative, how so? Is the embracing of the separate self ideal ironically at odds with individual rights, in the long run?

I think what you're sensing is the consequence of the philosophy of individualism which is so characteristic of modern liberal democracies. This is the idea of the 'sovereign self', that 'individual choice' is the sole arbiter of what is right, and that individual conscience the ultimate source of moral authority.

There was an intriguing and controversial book written by Harold Bloom, Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human which, as the title implies, says that Shakespeare literally invented the idea of the human that the West now assumes as fundamental. Opinion is divided as to whether Bloom succeeds in establishing his thesis, but I think the underlying notion, that the centrality 'human person' is an historically recent development and something unique to the modern West, is certainly a valuable insight.

There's another influential stream of thought along these lines, which is about how Augustine created the idea of the 'inner self', as many of his tremendously influential works were deeply philosophical that were set in the first person, as a kind of dialogue between the author and God (see Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist, Phillip Cary. Also worthy of note is Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity and also Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death, Richard Sorabji.)

'Liberal individualism' can be contrasted with the more 'corporatist' mentality of Asia, where 'the nail that sticks it to be hammered down'. Indeed in many or even all traditional social orders, the individual is subordinated to the family, clan, tribe, or other social group, from which he/she derives an identity.

I think individualism ought to be valued and respected - after all, the People's Republic of China is hardly a beacon of individual freedom - but at the same time, I think philosophy has to encourage the individual to find a source of values beyond the self. The Platonic concept of 'the true and the good' and the distinction between mere opinion and true knowledge have been lost, and as a consequence, the criterion for what constitutes a moral choice often amounts to simply personal preference, 'what I like'. That has the dangerous consequence of personal preferences becoming the basis of political movements, and the subordination of ethics to mere fashion. Meanwhile, science assumes the role of 'umpire of truth' even though it methodically excludes values as such. You see many of the confusions arising from these at work on a large scale nowadays.

I think this is because the Western conception of the human person was ultimately grounded in Greek and Judeo-Christian vision of human nature which materialism and secular philosophies have tended to undermine.

Thanks very much for your reply and insights. I will check out those books. I had the one on Shakespeare, but may have donated it to clear space! Recovering bookaholic here. Was reading Thomas Metzinger's very interesting The Ego Tunnel http://polatulet.narod.ru/dvc/tmet/the_ego_tunnel.html

I'm being completely hypothetical on whether the hyper-individualism has reached a pathological stage, or is rapidly approaching one. It is not that people are any better or worse than at others times in history, though im not sure how one would begin to measure that. It seems as though countless forces are trying to manipulate, divide, and conquer us. A scared and unhappy consumer is prolific consumer. People buy more when they are feeling unwell, whether physically or psychologically. All those things you learned in school about advertising and marketing manipulations are now taken to the n'th degree. There are some devious tricks we probably don't even know about. We are bereft of a tribe so we look for a sports team, political party, or other brand to find a semblance of a community.

You mentioned China and freedom. We in the West probably picture faceless and countless drones milling about doing their boring routines, never feeling highs or lows or much of anything. But even this image is most likely derived from advertising and movies. Nonetheless, the West would not likely adapt well to such a lifestyle. There has to be a happy medium between that blandness and everyone in their own wi-fi bubble cell, reaching out to others mostly when there is a chance that it could go viral.

We in the West probably picture faceless and countless drones milling about doing their boring routines, never feeling highs or lows or much of anything. But even this image is most likely derived from advertising and movies — 0 thru 9

Actually I had in mind more the PRC government's routine and complete disregard for basic human rights and Tibetan autonomy, among other things. And, yes, must get around to reading Metzinger (and Antonio Damasio).

You mentioned China and freedom. We in the West probably picture faceless and countless drones milling about doing their boring routines, never feeling highs or lows or much of anything. But even this image is most likely derived from advertising and movies. — 0 thru 9

There are quite a lot of Chinese people in the UK these days. They seem pretty cheerful and self-assured to me. Maybe they feel history is on their side :)

:D Probably! I was picturing old cold war propaganda about communist countries how everything was bland, boring, and state-approved. With a constant lack of toilet paper. While in the West it was one never-ending party for everybody with MTV, beer, and supermodels of course!

The Ego.

This subject always perplexes me. I get the gist of Freud's system of Id, Ego, and Super-ego. If i recall correctly from my scant reading most of the problems Freud described came from the clash of the Ego with the Id and Super-ego. But of course, there are other definitions of "ego" other than his. What is your definition? When is the ego good and when is it bad? Or is it always the same? Can it be too big or too small? Where does it fit in with the rest of our mind? And maybe most importantly, do we control it, or does it control us?

(Posted this in another forum without much feedback, but it may apply to this discussion.)

To consider self-esteem, one could first consider the very concept of "self".

Which brings to mind this quote from Dogen: “To study enlightenment is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the body and mind of others drop away. No trace of realization remains and this no trace continues endlessly.”

This may seem all well and good for Zen masters or practicing Buddhists or maybe magickal wizards, but what practical use is that in real life? (one could ask). To continue the thoughts i wrote in the first response in this thread, any steps to re-balance the ego (that which is one's sense of self) will more than likely yield positive results. It is not an all-or-nothing affair where one is trying to lose, or worse yet "kill", the ego. Some gentle and gradual reducing may help, though. The ego can become inadvertently enlarged, much like our bodies or the pile of our possessions can. There seems to be something in the human mind that likes to grab and hold onto things to fill the void. This can be natural and healthy, like eating when hungry. But it quickly can go to extremes, that much seems self-evident. At least it relates to my experiences both past and present in attempting to find the balance points. When applied to the body, it can lead to a toxic obesity and ill health. With possessions, it may manifest as extreme hoarding.

"A ping pong ball on the ocean"...

But when it is the self itself trying to hyper-expand to fill the void and deal with a sense of emptiness, it is harder to deal with because it is not visible. Not visible, but existent nonetheless. A feeling of disconnection and isolation from other humans and the rest of the world is perhaps one of the most common feelings. (There have been several recent threads concerning this isolation and feeling of solipsism such as: http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/776/the-isolation-of-mind/p1 ). When one feels as separate, small and powerless as a ping pong ball floating on the ocean, it seems like we are battered about at the mercy of the wind and waves. The first inclination might be to do something like the expression "go big or go home". But if one completely identifies with the Isolation, and believes that they are totally separate from everything else, "going big" might just make the situation worse. Instead of being a "ping pong ball self" floating on the ocean, there is a "beach ball self" floating on the waves.

Well, the "beach ball self" is definitely bigger. Sometimes in certain circumstances bigger is better, but sometimes not. The reflexive habit to expand our identity while keeping the walls of that identity air-tight can lead to a ballooning effect. The more air pumped into a balloon, the larger it becomes. But the air pressure is also increased which may lead to a sense of tightening constriction. The larger an inflated balloon becomes, the thinner its skin is. This makes it more vulnerable to pinpricks and the like. A beach ball on the ocean may have lots of room to bob about. But imagine a room filled with many beach balls, all inflated to the max. They are "feeling" (so to speak) internally pressured from the air, and externally pressured from all the other beach balls pushing against their thin vulnerable surfaces. One can then imagine the sorts of dynamics and conflicts arising from this hypothetical situation. This describes in a very general way many of the interactions around us, imho.

Those who say that this situation is the way things are and is unavoidable, and it boils down to "survival of the fittest" are probably concerned with becoming the largest beach ball on the block, while trying to deflate their competition.

And there are those who know this dynamic exists, but are looking for other ways of existing. Those that look long enough might find something.

Thanks for your consideration of these ideas. Hope they are as helpful to read as they were for me to write. Any feedback is welcome.

Not sure about the phrasing mortal existence, ‘tis somewhat Highlanderish what with our mortal sins n’all, but nevertheless I tend to view the idea of Self and individual exclusivity as a social construct, an implicit function that coordinates as part of a historical rearrangement of the social contract in our contemporary era that compels compliance in a more sophisticated manner.

The Hobbesian fear of punishment has transformed from an authority to a social form of punishment; by developing a universal conception of an ‘individual’ deviation from mass opinion is minimised since what the bourgeoisie require is the power to control in order to maintain sustainable capital. Under the conditions where people assume they are making their own decisions, disciplinary conditions and thus the threat of being subordinated is no longer applicable as the slave ‘wants’ to be the slave, preventing the possible outbreak of any Nietzschean ressentiment. Should a mind become rehabilitated enough to desire escape – thus forming the first instance of authenticity [see Heidegger] which is basically the authentic Self or where one becomes conscious of freewill – their entire identity is at risk due to the entrenched and powerful social conditions that has normalised its coercive techniques to impose conformity. That is, they forfeit their true nature for the herd.

I therefore agree that there exists an ‘individual’ where one can articulate an independent discourse vis-à-vis a conscious morality and whilst we are entirely social, a Being in Time, we nevertheless contain the capacity – consciousness itself – and the free-will to evolve to ‘existentiality’. What is unfortunate is that the objects available to us to be used as instruments to develop this capacity for ‘individual’ articulation or morality has become absorbed – due to capitalism – to hinder this possibility as people themselves have been turned into objects.

Thank you very much for the thoughtful reply. And welcome to TPF! :)

↪0 thru 9
Not sure about the phrasing mortal existence, ‘tis somewhat Highlanderish what with our mortal sins n’all, — TimeLine

I was just trying to focus on our current existence, as opposed to any possible afterlife. Probably was not critical that i made that distinction though.

↪0 thru 9

The Hobbesian fear of punishment has transformed from an authority to a social form of punishment; by developing a universal conception of an ‘individual’ deviation from mass opinion is minimised since what the bourgeoisie require is the power to control in order to maintain sustainable capital. Under the conditions where people assume they are making their own decisions, disciplinary conditions and thus the threat of being subordinated is no longer applicable as the slave ‘wants’ to be the slave, preventing the possible outbreak of any Nietzschean ressentiment. Should a mind become rehabilitated enough to desire escape – thus forming the first instance of authenticity [see Heidegger] which is basically the authentic Self or where one becomes conscious of freewill – their entire identity is at risk due to the entrenched and powerful social conditions that has normalised its coercive techniques to impose conformity. That is, they forfeit their true nature for the herd. — TimeLine

Well said, and I generally agree. I would add if i may that those in control of others (bourgeoisie, to use your term) are quite clever in their near-sighted greed, and do not wish to have a united mass of people to deal with. Conformity without cohesion is what I imagine they desire in their "subjects". (I cringe slightly at the term "herd" when used to describe conformity, because of the sub-human connotation of that word. Still it is not as bad as the word "sheeple", which is a tad smug, imho.) Based on the general modus operandi of those wishing to impose their will on the populace, the strategy of "divide and conquer through isolationism" seems to be most effective. We are told and sold how individual, separate, unique, amazing, and stunning (this seems to be a popular phrase, along with "jaw-dropping") we are at our core. We just need a little help (in the form of whatever it is they are selling, be it product or idea) to reach fully blossomed self-hood, so we can proceed to market our identities and inspire others to do the same. Individualism, once a noble goal of mature psychological growth, has been turned against us and used as a lever to separate and control. And the more competitive and ambitious a person is, the harder it may be to resist. The bloody circus of modern UFC "gladiators" has entered our blood and minds, it seems. If you can kick everyone's ass, then you will be dominant and get all the goodies. (The promoters would probably say that they didn't write "the law of the jungle". They just take it to absurd extremes for our amusement.)

To be clear, i am definitely NOT advocating any loss of individual rights, personal abilities, or self-improvement. Those are wonderful things worth holding onto, of course. I am proposing that we in modern Western civilization, have most likely never experienced living in a truly functioning community. Thus, even the word "community" seems quaint, if not naive and vaguely utopian. To move in the direction of some type of unity and cohesion, but of our own free choosing -unmanipulated by others-
may be what we unconsciously hunger for.

(Easier said than done, of course. Sorry for getting on the soap box! ) :)

And welcome to TPF! :) — 0 thru 9

Ahh this old Nietzschean has also joined us here :P

It depends on your view as to whether a community is a collection of individuals or whether it is subject to the sum of its own parts, where as you suggest there is a subsistence of an un-manipulated ‘utopian’ society that enables the group to mirror justice without being subject to time? Can this cohesive homogeneity be sustained without an evolutionary dynamic and radical unpredictability affecting the flux and dynamics of continuity and discontinuity as though the second law of thermodynamics is merely a misnomer? The heterogeneity of society cannot be separated into a continuous picture and this radical unpredictability is the very impediment of a perfect social design - hence Nazism - and any impediment to something successful requires its elimination. The impediment itself is the ‘individual’ since consciousness leads to questions, free will invites an authentic awareness and an proper ego, intuition takes us out of the process of experience and pushes us beyond the normal constraints of reality that we become more attuned to what really is. For instance, you could have a perfect life, a home, loving family, beautiful wife so then why would you feel like something is wrong? These socially determined and habituated positions trap one into a mental prison and the dependence leads us to reject our own consciousness – that is our own free will – in order to survive the impending anxiety. Thus the reason why we desire the community in the first place is to avoid our true nature (what would humanity look like if consciousness did not exist?) and this is the tragedy and our unique position in nature.

I do, however, agree that there exists a possibility to reach an authentic unity but only when the individual has transcended to this existentiality and conscious awareness and only amongst others of the same mental state whereby they exercise this freedom together. Human rights and liberal democracy is as close as we could get to this but even so the traps of capitalism and globalisation far outweigh the good and to denote those who dismiss all that is wrong in this world deserve the cringeworthy title of being a part of the 'herd'.

For instance, you could have a perfect life, a home, loving family, beautiful wife so then why would you feel like something is wrong? — TimeLine

If you have all that and still feel that something is missing, then something is indeed missing - it is your own head and reason ;)

Ah, would that be so even if your wife prostitutes herself but she is beautiful or your family - in the Kafka 'Metamorphosis' sense - only "love" you for things other than who you really are? A house is just an object without genuine love. Of course, I am forced to make spatial concessions to aid your comprehension on the phenomenology but even so you voice the very ignorance and inadvertently exemplify my point.

I missed you.