(May 17, 2013 at 2:33 pm)Sal Wrote: .. you're, I reckon, unable to realize that the self is an illusion.
Tell me, if I was to say "square circles exist" do you think that makes it so?
Now, how is that different from claiming that the self exists? I've yet to encounter a coherent definition of self that isn't just tricks of language the same way that saying that square circles exists.
That you're unable to see this distinction makes me believe that you think that dualism is correct and that numbers and letters exist apart of our minds. I do not think that, and my views most align with naturalism and I reject any form of dualism.
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I mean here that, for example, with a fMRI we can see where thought arises in someones brain. But I'm doubly aware that since that can be viewed and is most decidedly part of reality, why should thought or the accumulation of experiences, the Self, be any different?
Dualism is a logically challenged concept whose only saving grace is its leading to slightly less absurd results than Monism. It may be the attempt to apply the Dualism-Monism spectrum which is to blame. Long before I assent to saying my sense of self is an illusion I should prefer to ask what the necessity is in deciding between these two perspectives.
I am a thorough naturalist given that no one has demonstrated anything to be supernatural or other than natural. Really the only reasonable use of the word "natural" is in distinction with things man-made, and even then, given that we ourselves are natural, so too must be all that we produce.
I would be interested to hear what it is that you reject by calling the "self" an illusion. You seem not to like any existing definition of it, so which do you intend when you call that an illusion? More importantly, who is doing the rejecting if it isn't your self?
