(March 15, 2015 at 6:58 am)Ignorant Wrote:(March 14, 2015 at 4:41 pm)rasetsu Wrote: Is the self necessarily unchanging? The Buddhists make a lot of arguments that there is no unchanging thing in consciousness which would serve as the self. But I wonder why the self has to be considered unchanging; why can't it change along with everything else about us?
Well you can certainly say that, but then what you mean by the "self" is something that is never identifiable. The moment you "identify" the "self" it has already changed into something else entirely.
The adjective "entirely" is, in my opinion, inapt. Change in a person does happen from moment to moment, but the change that happens each moment does not change to the entire personality or sense of selfhood, in my experience. Given enough time, you may, or may not, see a change so general as to be labeled "entire."
As a result, a person's selfhood is indeed identifiable, based on things like their views or outlooks, I think.
