Is the Self Real?
Feb 20, 2020Is there such a thing as a self, something that makes you who you are? Or is the self just a convenient fiction? Would the world be a better place if we all stopped believing in selves? These are some of the questions we're asking in this week's show.
Comments(10)
Harold G. Neuman
Sunday, February 2, 2020 -- 12:36 PM
The concept (or notion) ofThe concept (or notion) of self is, to my thinking, synonymous with something called consciousness. There are those who question that as well, perhaps because there is no means (currently) of measuring it. Philosophy has no real estate on this matter, because it is all too theoretical and, well, slippery to get a handle on.. Hume and other early thinkers had not the beginnings of technological knowledge upon which to even begin a discussion of something so potentially profound. So, most, if not all of them, avoided any position on the matter---eschewed the topic as ineffable, as so it was. It seems unlikely to me that people like David Hume would have given Buddhism a second thought: too ethereal and, as such, inaccessible. Nowadays, there are a number of folks who have tried to explain consciousness---some of them highly respected. Mostly, their efforts have met scorn, disbelief, or worse, jealousy. I suspect many of them rue the day that they became interested in this philosophic tar baby. We are still light years away from a coherent approach to understanding the self; or consciousness; or whatever you wish to call this mystery which is odorless, colorless, tasteless and senseless. Seems to me. One possible, though tentative, avenue may lie with AI. I cannot begin to imagine how that could work---it is just a hunch.
Harold G. Neuman
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 -- 11:16 AM
Every now and then, I am时不时地,我被感动着去写一些不沉浸在哲学语境中的东西。现在不是那种时候。在一些人看来,我可能是站着不动的。这可能是真的。但是,至少我还站着。一个比我更聪明的人曾经告诉我:你必须坚持一些东西,否则你会爱上任何东西。在接下来的四十多年里,我发现这个律师无懈可击。
aeby
Sunday, February 23, 2020 -- 12:01 PM
Name of the Buddhist scholar艾莉森·戈普尼克和第一个来电者提到的那个佛教学者的名字,S- K- ?
Cindy Prince Baum
Monday, February 24, 2020 -- 3:51 PM
Tsongkhapa! (https://platoTsongkhapa! (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tsongkhapa/)
edphil
Friday, February 28, 2020 -- 10:27 AM
Yes. That is him. As aYes. That is him. As a practical matter we can assume that he had a very strong sense of himself, and that his realization of no-self was in the order of what he calls a non-affirming negative. In other words, a self must exist practically and experientially in order to realize its tenuousness and/or its transparency or lack of "inherent existence". It is an experience of freedom. It is on the order of a direct experience of freedom and not a belief. One of the artifacts of contemporary philosophy talk is that we may interrogate or investigate a subject in terms of "belief" and the adoption of one belief or another. Analytic meditation in the sense that he uses it is meant as an aid to direct experience. And what is the experience. I gather it may be likened to what Wallace Stevens called an ecstatic transparence. Paradoxically, such an experience represents a high level of self-development!
edphil
Friday, February 28, 2020 -- 10:30 AM
On the realization of theOn the realization of the importance of self-development and of the need for a self before one can esctatically perceive its transparency, I can point you to the notion of an ipseity disturbance.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-disorderWe need a basic sense of self and we can strengthen that, so that we may perhaps begin to take it lightly.
Tim Smith
Sunday, March 8, 2020 -- 11:29 AM
Yes, there is a unique self.Yes, there is a unique self.
Free Will is the larger issue. It doesn't really matter what the thing is that takes an action if we can't attribute choice to it.
I enjoyed this show.
Harold G. Neuman
Tuesday, April 27, 2021 -- 6:46 AM
I cannot grasp the notion of我无法理解虚幻自我的概念。这根本说不通。我们每个人都有能力;一种我们认为是“自我”的身份。它就像我们眼睛的颜色,或者我们出生时被赋予的名字一样真实。它是我们死后的回忆。但是,这绝不是幻觉。在我看来。现在,如果反现实主义者想要证明诸如眼睛颜色之类的东西是幻觉,那就去吧。那只是障眼法。 There is a lot of it going round, these days.
Harold G. Neuman
Thursday, March 10, 2022 -- 11:38 AM
According to one authority,According to one authority, consciousness is a hallucination. I don't think so. But if the hallucination hypothesis IS right, then, by association, the self is illusion. Not in my opinion. So what are consciousness and self really? Appears they are whatever authorities say they are. Really?
Harold G. Neuman
Friday, March 11, 2022 -- 3:40 PM
Doing more digging--- miningDoing more digging--- mining definitions,as it were, the relation between consciousness and self is hard to explain, but harder still to explain away, as some thinkers have tried to do with consciousness, of itself---when they, in infinite wisdom, could do no better. (See Dennett's account, for example). There is what legal practitioners call a nexus, or connexion, between these terms and their meanings.
(I used the old spelling of connection to show temporal relationship, a century or so removed.
我们无法用数学、物理或量子力学的语言来解释意识或自我。就像没有一种有用的方法来比较蒸汽机和核反应堆一样:它们的能量都能产生力量;所做的工作。结果是相似的。输入,大不相同。我想说的是关于意识和自我的观点不会有共识,除非拖延者认为幻觉和幻觉的概念是不合理的。不会有下一个大事件。努力更好地思考。Go big, or stay home...