What is the true nature of the self?

The self is an illusion generated by the brain. This illusion vanishes when the brain dies. — Truth Seeker

You might find (the implications of) this discussion interesting ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/894606

Thank you very much.

I went for the first option. However I think the (correct) intuition of unity is derived from consciousness, not from the self. I think there is a persistent confusion between self and consciousness which messes up a lot of the discourse.

I think there is a persistent confusion between self and consciousness which messes up a lot of the discourse. — bert1

So then "consciousness" is impersonal? For instance, my awareness of being self-aware isn't actually mine? :chin:

an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will — Quoting the description of the book

That seems to be a straight assertion of dualism, but a non-dualist can also have a sense of self, so I must disagree with the book's definition.

I am sentient but I can't prove to you — Truth Seeker

You can react to external stimuli, which is perception, and sentience is perception or feelings. Perhaps you cannot prove qualia (what you might designate as feelings), but it's hard to deny that you have perception. Perhaps a different definition of sentience is being referenced. It wasn't given.


I suppose I consider the self to be an illusion (I did not vote since I'm using a different definition of self) since there is no way to demonstrate the persistent identity of anything, be it sentient or not. It is a very pragmatic illusion, without which any complex biological being would not be fit, so the illusion goes incredibly far back in our evolutionary history. I make choices (like draw breath) for the benefit of some future material state, which I consider to be my self. The choice yields no benefit to that which actually makes the choice. It's a sort of pay-it-forward system, and it works.

Hume famously denied finding any real self during introspection, finding instead a "bundle of sensations," in the Enquiry.

But I encountered a pretty good argument against this in "The Rigor of Angels: Kant, Heisenberg, Borges, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality."

Eddington writes:

Kant realized that Hume’s world of pure, unique impressions couldn’t exist. This is because the minimal requirement for experiencing anything is not to be so absorbed in the present that one is lost in it. What Hume had claimed— that when exploring his feeling of selfhood, he always landed “on some particular perception or other” but could never catch himself “at any time without a percepton, and never can observe anything but the perception”— was simply not true.33 Because for Hume to even report this feeling he had to perceive something in addition to the immediate perceptions, namely, the very flow of time that allowed them to be distinct in the first place. And to recognize time passing is necessarily to recognize that you are embedded in the perception.

Hence what Kant wrote in his answer to Hamann, ten years in the making. To recollect perfectly eradicates the recollection, just as to perceive perfectly eradicates the perception. For the one who recalls or perceives must recognize him or herself along with the memory or perception for the memory or impression to exist at all. If everything we learn about the world flows directly into us from utterly distinct bits of code, as the rationalists thought, or if everything we learn remains nothing but subjective, unconnected impressions, as Hume believed— it comes down to exactly the same thing. With no self to distinguish itself, no self to bridge two disparate moments in space-time, there is simply no one there to feel irritated at the inadequacy of “dog.” No experience whatsoever is possible.

Here is how Kant put it in his Critique of Pure Reason. Whatever we think or perceive can register as a thought or perception only if it causes a change in us, a “modification of the mind.” But these changes would not register at all if we did not connect them across time, “for as contained in one moment no representation can ever be anything other than absolute unity.”34 As contained in one moment. Think of experiencing a flow of events as a bit like watching a film. For something to be happening at all, the viewer makes a connection between each frame of the film, spanning the small differences so as to create the experience of movement. But if there is a completely new viewer for every frame, with no relation at all to the prior or subsequent frame, then all that remains is an absolute unity. But such a unity, which is exactly what Funes and Shereshevsky and Hume claimed they could experience, utterly negates perceiving anything at all, since all perception requires bridging impressions over time. In other words, it requires exactly what a truly perfect memory, a truly perfect perception, or a truly perfect observation absolutely denies: overlooking minor differences enough to be a self, a unity spanning distinct moments in time.

I'm always fascinated by this issue, the difference between conciousness as naively grasped versus what it reveals itself to be when carefully studied. However, I am quite skeptical of the eliminitivist position. Top often is seems like a bait and switch, at least when it is rolled out as an answer to, "from whence conciousness." Because, of course, showing conciousness is not what we naively take it to be is not equivalent with explaining it or "explaining it away," as Dennett puts it — something he seems to think he accomplishes, on which I disagree.

The reference to "Funes" here is to Borges' short story "Funes the Memorius," about a man whose head injury curses him with a completely perfect memory. It's a really thought provoking story on this topic and not long.

St. Augustine's consideration of the self building on self-evident triads is an interesting approach too. The one in Confessions is probably the most well-known, but in the second part of "De Trinitate," he builds a remarkable edifice of these, one of the more interesting treatises on philosophy of mind sandwiched into a theology text.

I am talking about these three things: being, knowing, and willing. For I am and I know and I will. In that I know and will, I am. And I know myself to be and to will. And I will to be and to know. Let him who can, see in these three things how inseparable a life is: one life, one mind, and one essence, how there is, finally, an inseparable distinction, and yet a distinction. Surely this is obvious to each one himself. Let him look within himself and see and report to me. (Confessions)

What's the difference between self and consciousness?

By sentient I mean conscious. Philosophical zombies behave as if they are conscious but are not actually.

Thank you very much for your detailed post. I didn't really understand the quoted text because my brain is depressed which diminishes comprehension. If I ever get well, I will re-read it.

By sentient I mean conscious. Philosophical zombies behave as if they are conscious but are not actually. — Truth Seeker

Then you seem to define 'conscious' as having one of those 'self' thingys as defined by the quoted book.
I don't consider myself to be conscious then, in the same way that a roomba isn't. Sure, it reacts to its enviroment, but it's only an automaton and lacks the external control that would give it the free will that actual consciousness would.

What is the true nature of the self?
The self is an illusion generated by the brain. This illusion vanishes when the brain dies.The self is an immortal soul that is resurrected after death of the body.The self is an immortal soul that reincarnates into another body according to karma.The true nature of the self is unknown and unknowable. — Truth Seeker

I'd select 1 and 4.

1. The self with which "I" identify. The Subject, ego, the sum in Descartes, is an illusion.

4. I intuit a silent self, popularized by Vedanta/Buddhism, as the observer, but not necessarily. I'm exploring "the organic being," aware but of Nature, drives, feelings, sensations, movements, without the content generated by the brain happening to have generated the first self. It is unknowable to the first self, and that's the only self asking, and the only self which wants to know. It on the otherhand, is perfectly content with being itself. (Either/both interpretations)

Anyway, for what that was worth.

I'll read your link. Sounds interesting.

For instance, my awareness of being self-aware isn't actually mine? :chin:
2h — 180 Proof

Yes, in spite of the emoji designed to ward off yeses. That "awareness" is the illusion too. Not even awareness in the sense we wish it to mean. It is codes generated to trigger Feelings and action. Some of same have evolved to the complexity of Narrative experience.

Now you have to have meant "mine" as in the being you are, not those constructions. I know you did, because we share the same basic constructions, and that you did, lends more credence to our intuition (call it) that there is a being you are before/beyond/outside of the self generated. Well, that Being you are is not ultimately bothered with the awareness of self aware etc. Unknowable to our philosophies, we are only fanning the flames of the illusion (just as, paradoxically/hypocritically I am right now. Its inescapable). That being you are is always presently responding to the coding of the illusion. The latter, I has displaced it is natural aware-ings with illusions. Most of them in Narrative form, requiring a Subject.

Write the word “self” on a label and stick it to any one of the options you’ve provided. The entity upon which that label finally sits is the self, and in every case it is the human individual in its entirety.

I'm not voting for any off those. The first should be reworded:
The self is generated by the brain. The self vanishes when the brain dies.

That's what the self is. A conglomerate of brain activity. Everything that is important about me is found in that. They are the things that define me. When people talk about me, they may describe me physically, but that's primarily to make sure everyone is talking about the same person. People don't say, "I never liked him, because of his height." Or, "I always enjoyed hanging around with him, because of his hair color."

They might say, "He annoyed me because he talked about genealogy all the damn time." Or, "I love his passion for Bach." Those are the things that are me. And that's all brain activity.

I should add that I am not at all convinced that all brain activity is purely physical. As I've said several times, I don't think physical interactions of particles and structures can explain consciousness. I suspect the answer is a form of panpsychism. I suspect particles have, in addition to physical properties like mass and charge, a mental property, called proto-consciousness. Proto-consciousness is absolutely necessary for the generation of self, as are the physical properties.

I can't make sense of what you're saying. Maybe @bert1 will more cogently answer the question I put to him.

What is the true nature of the self? — Truth Seeker

Always a great question.

I would have voted for 4 but you added “…and unknowable.

Most of us believe that we… — Quoting the description of the book

To posit “most of us” there must be a quantity of distinct things first, and a judgment about “most” of them. The things here posited are “us”.

So the author is including himself as part of “us” but I assume distinguishing himself from at least some of the others by sub-dividing “us” into “most”.

So if he is talking about quantity (most) he needs individuals to comprise that quantity.

So he needs a group of separate individual things in this “us” or “we” he is talking about.

The true nature of “self” has something to do with being an individuated thing, as in a brain for instance, but also something to do with words and knowing. By learning, the self is born.

I have no scientific idea about “immortality” “resurrection” or “reincarnation”.

I don’t think we need to know that there is a “soul” a separate Cartesian substance from matter, to have this good discussion.

But why is it that because we posit a self (just as the any author who says “most of us” must) this self is an illusion?

Just because we posit a self, for it to be there, is it not there, deposited, like anything else might be?

If everything was an illusion, we wouldn’t know it. We have to know something to later learn it is an illusion. Once we see the illusion, we don’t know that thing - that thing never was in the first place - but now we know not to call it a “thing” but instead should call it an “illusion”.

BUT I’ve still posited an “it” just the same, in order to refer to the thing that we now call an illusion.

Before we call the self an illusion, we would need to clarify whatever are we pointing at that is only an illusion. But in order to get to wherever we are pointing at, we must walk a path, speak some words, move on solid ground. We must say something like “do you see that thing over there or do you see nothing or do you see something that you call a self but don’t realize such a name is an illusion?” There are so many things we must know first before we could answer this question.

Everything can’t be an illusion or there would be no way to distinguish an illusion.

So maybe the self is what is known in between all of the illusion; the self is knowing itself.

Maybe knowing is the illusion.

Maybe you never read this.

If the self was known to be an illusory construct, to whom (or to what) would that construct be known?

If I posited a pink unicorn and you showed me it was an illusion, we could take it completely out of the conversation, throw to the flames with all of the other illusions, return to reality, and just look at the flames. I challenge you to take the self out of conversation and say anything at all about the flames. The author said “we” and “us” in his first sentence quoted. The self is a needed pivot to make words move so unless words are an illusion, or they are self moving (then we wouldn’t have this conversation), a self must be in the same picture. The self would still be there, the one talking with words of the known such as “flames”.

Another interesting post.

And citing Augustine from way back there in history shows this great question we still ask has been there for humans to ask maybe since there were humans.

And I totally agree that self is not just tied up in the brain, but the activity of knowing and willing. Positing a self is willing a known being.

Here is the better St. Augustine passage I was thinking of from De Trinitate:

For people have doubted whether the powers to live, to remember, to understand, to will, to think, to know, and to judge are due to air or to fire or to the brain or
to the blood or to atoms or to a fifth body (I do not know what it is, but it differs from the four customary elements); or whether the combination or the orderly arrangement of the flesh is capable of producing these effects. Some try to maintain this opinion; others, that opinion. On the other hand, who could doubt that one lives and remembers and understands and wills and thinks and judges? For even if one doubts, one lives; if one doubts, one remembers why one doubts, for one wishes to be certain; if one doubts, one thinks; if one doubts, one knows that one does not know; if one doubts, one judges that one ought not to comment rashly. Whoever then doubts about anything else ought never to doubt about all of these; for if they were not, one would be unable to doubt about anything at all.40

Thank you for your interesting reply. I have spoken with people who meditate regularly who said that they experienced the silent self which is beyond the chatter of thoughts. I have never experienced the silent self. Have you?

The self feels like an entity even though it is not an entity but a process. This is what I mean by the self being an illusion. I like your idea of proto-consciousness. How would we test this idea?

The self feels like an entity even though it is not an entity but a process. This is what I mean by the self being an illusion. If solipsism is accurate, the self is all there is and everything else is generated by the self. I don't think solipsism is accurate even though we can't actually test the idea.

The self feels like an entity to what, or to whom?

Even if it were a process, that process would be something, and therefore not be an illusion.

I think we all say “self” and we then think of some sort of immaterial “soul” substance, leading to words like “immortal” and “reincarnation” which lead to “heaven” or “God”. It is easy for us to throw out God and heaven as illusion, and the soul.

But what is doing the work in all of this judgment between entity and process or reality and illusion?

Answer: an individuated thing. An entity, as aptly identified by the word “self” as any of “we” who would use the word “us”.

May be a cop-out but Hume's famous phrase here merits a mention:

"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception."

Notice this does not claim, as is often said, that he denies that a "self" exists, only that he cannot catch it. It plays a fundamental role in perception, but when we inquire as to what it is, we stumble around it.

The self feels like an entity even though it is not an entity but a process. This is what I mean by the self being an illusion. — Truth Seeker

Does the definition of "entity" not allow a process to be an entity? I really don't know, but I wouldn't approve of that limitation. The entities we call human beings are not nothing but physical objects. As I said in my previous post, that leaves out everything that truly defines - to ourselves and to each other - each of us.

I like your idea of proto-consciousness. How would we test this idea? — Truth Seeker

I can't imagine. If it is true that particles have proto-consciousness, then there is no way to test anything in its absence. We can't try to create artificial consciousness without it, because we can't remove it from the material any more than we can remove the mass.

Also, while I don't think the physical properties of the structures and processes are sufficient to explain consciousness, I also don't think proto-consciousness can explain it without the structures and processes. Just as we can't try to explain a magnet with only the mass or charge, I don't think we can explain consciousness with only the physical properties or mental properties.

I have never experienced the silent self. Have you? — Truth Seeker

No. At least not in the way you might be thinking.

I note:

1. The ("experience" of the so called) silent self which can be talked about, is not the silent self.
2. You, I, and every human is ("experiencing") the silent self incessantly (perhaps until death? But I literally cannot "say"). Every breath etc. etc.
3. The silent self is not "achieved" "attained" nor "experienced," it was already always there and needs only to be attuned to.
4. One technique is to attune to your breathing, not as in "I am breathing," "body is breathing," "counting breaths," or the like; not by "switching" from the chattering to the breathing, or from "becoming" the breathing; but rather, by being (breathing).

I think there is a persistent confusion between self and consciousness which messes up a lot of the discourse.
— bert1
So then "consciousness" is impersonal? For instance, my awareness of being self-aware isn't actually mine? :chin: — 180 Proof

It seems to be localised. If consciousness is transparent, to the extent that one cannot see the rose tint, or whatever the opposite is (blue?), then this body's consciousness is this body's, and that explains the persistent illusion that the body image is the consciousness, because otherwise it is mere breath (aka 'spirit'). In which case "what it is like to be a bat" is intelligible as being just like being a little furry flying me that is shortsighted and can echo-locate.

And that understanding would seem to lead very naturally to a common-sense ethic - if all consciousness is 'the same', then 'do not do to yourself over there what you would not like if you were over there, because you are over there as well as here.

Nice try. :smirk:

If solipsism is accurate, the self is all there is and everything else is generated by the self. I don't think solipsism is accurate even though we can't actually test the idea. — Truth Seeker

Instead of from the solipsistic point of view, why not look for this “self” from the opposite point of view? Instead of looking for your own “self”, you can look for it as you would any other object of science, by looking at the world out there.

Forget any notion of your self or immortal spirits rising after death. Forget these private fantasies and forget all hopes in a “self” discoverable alone in your mind. Turn this mind to experience as it comes.

I read Trurthseeker’s posts and I see something particular to you. I see a unique personality. I read Enoah’s, or Unenlightened’s, and I see differences in voice, in tone, in content of focus.

Those are real, measurable differences. Those differences are not illusions. We can start the question “what is the nature of self” where the differences have so much more contour and form to measure against and balance.

What is the nature of the thing that makes Truthseeker posts never the same as Fire Ologist posts, which are different again from Count posts? How can only illusion link a post to one of us and not interchangeably to any of us?

There must be something behind certain differences between us. How else would we see difference?

The thing in itself of the “self” need not leave us stranded in solipsism, when the question is about the reality of the individual mind who posts here on this forum. We have each other as testament to the fact that we each must have ourselves.

Many people believe that humans have immortal souls which leave when the body dies and is either resurrected by God or reincarnated according to karma. I am not convinced that souls exist but I am open to examining any new evidence for the existence of souls. — Truth Seeker

Regrettably I can't vote for any of the options.

From the jacket copy of the attached book:

Rather than a single entity, the self is really a constellation of mechanisms and experiences that create the illusion of the internal you.

I don't much like the use of 'mechanism' as it's a hangover from mechanistic materialism. But otherwise, there's nothing too objectionable about it from a Buddhist perspective, although Buddhism sets this is in the context of continued existence (saṃsāra) rather than a single life. But it's important to understand that Buddhism generally rejects the idea of a soul that migrates from life to life and of a single unified self that continues to exist unchanged while all else changes (see for example the text Sati, the Fisherman's Son.)

One of the schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism ('Northern Buddhism' which developed historically later than the Theravada Buddhism of Sri Lanka and Thailand) developed ideas of the 'storehouse consciousness (ālāyavijñāna) in which 'karmic imprints' (vasanas) are imprinted and which then give rise to experiences in future lives. That said, the specific individual in this life is not the same as the individual who generated them in a previous life, but neither are they completely different. When asked if a person in one life is the same as a person in a previous life, the answer will usually be, are you the same person you were when you were a child? The answer being, you're neither the same person, nor a different person.

The store-house consciousness (ālāyavijñāna) receives impressions from all functions of the other consciousnesses (i.e. sensory and rational), and retains them as potential energy, bīja or "seeds", which manifest as, or 'perfume', one's attitudes and actions. Since this consciousness serves as the container for all experiential impressions it is also called the "seed consciousness" or "container consciousness".

According to Yogācāra teachings, the seeds stored in the store consciousness of sentient beings are not pure.

The store consciousness, while being originally immaculate in itself, contains a "mysterious mixture of purity and defilement, good and evil". Because of this mixture the transformation of consciousness from defilement to purity can take place and awakening is possible. — Wikipedia, Eight Consciousnesses

Allied with this, is the concept of the mind-stream, which is not quite the same as a soul (although to understand the distinction takes considerably more explanation):

Citta-santāna (Sanskrit), literally "the stream of mind", is the stream of succeeding moments of mind or awareness. It provides a continuity of the personality in the absence of a permanently abiding self (ātman), which Buddhism denies. The mindstream provides a continuity from one life to another and also moment to moment, akin to the flame of a candle which may be passed from one candle to another: William Waldron writes that "Indian Buddhists see the 'evolution' of mind in terms of the continuity of individual mind-streams from one lifetime to the next, with karma as the basic causal mechanism ( :angry: ) whereby transformations are transmitted from one life to the next." ¹

According to Waldron, "[T]he mind stream (santāna) increases gradually by the mental afflictions (kleśa) and by actions (karma), and goes again to the next world. In this way the circle of existence is without beginning."

The vāsanās or "karmic imprints" provide the continuity between lives and between moments of existence. According to Dan Lusthaus, these vāsanās determine how one "actually sees and experiences the world in certain ways, and one actually becomes a certain type of person, embodying certain theories which immediately shape the manner in which we experience."²

1.Waldron, William S. (n.d.). Buddhist Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Thinking about 'Thoughts without a Thinker

2. Lusthaus, Dan (2014) Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun. Routledge. — Wikipedia, Mindstream

Something to think about, anyway, as Buddhism neither accepts there is an immortal soul in the usual sense, nor the materialistic idea that humans are only physical beings.

The only other point I'd mention is the idea of 'possessing' a self. Usually a self is what has possessions - I have various property, computers, cars, books and so on. Whether I possess a body is a moot point, as I have no way of knowing whether I could exist in the absence of one. One might believe that there is a self, without believing that it is something one possesses. But I admit that is a pedantic distinction.

Being me feels like being a self. According to the book I recommended in the first post in this thread, this is an illusion because the self is a process not an entity.

If you have any evidence for the existence of souls, gods, resurrection or reincarnation please show us and we can examine the evidence together. Thank you.