Friday, 5 August 2011
What About an Invisible Self?
14:45 | 
Posted by
Alexei
Possibilities for seeing the self break up into two distinct categories.
1) The self is available to perception.
This one is easy. Try to perceive it, and you will find that it's nowhere to be found because it doesn't exist.
2) The self is such a thing that it cannot be perceived by its very nature.
There's this thing that happens where I write a really long refutation of something, and only right when I finish do I see a much quicker and simpler way to do the same thing, and end up deleting the original post. That just happened.
So, turns out this one is easy too. If the self cannot be perceived, then there can be no such thing as self-awareness. Simple as that. Think it through, you'll find it holds up any which way.
1) The self is available to perception.
This one is easy. Try to perceive it, and you will find that it's nowhere to be found because it doesn't exist.
2) The self is such a thing that it cannot be perceived by its very nature.
There's this thing that happens where I write a really long refutation of something, and only right when I finish do I see a much quicker and simpler way to do the same thing, and end up deleting the original post. That just happened.
So, turns out this one is easy too. If the self cannot be perceived, then there can be no such thing as self-awareness. Simple as that. Think it through, you'll find it holds up any which way.
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4 comments:
There are people who'll say that Kant's idea of free-will stemming from the noumenal proves a self also.
We can throw that out pretty easily by pointing out that, such a statement is not falsifiable.
On top of that.
What cause and effect are forces that act ONLY within experience.
If there is a self outside of experience it can not have an causal effect on "your life" , in other words, there is no way a self could exist separate from experience.
They can stick that in their pipe and smoke it.
Scientifically speaking, there is no self. Experientially Speaking there is no self (look).
And noumenally(invisible self) speaking, there is no self.
I call the "StepVheN is a philosophical Ron Jeremy and has proven on all 3 levels you could think of that there is no self" triune.
also I'm not so much a bad speller as a lousy typist so there
'If there is a self outside of experience it cannot have a causal effect on "your life"'. Would you mind elaborating on this?
**'If there is a self outside of experience it cannot have a causal effect on "your life"'. Would you mind elaborating on this?**
Thing's outside of experience can only effect your life when they are represented in experience.
Self isn't represented in experience it's not represented in your life.
What we have are thoughts about the representation(phenomenon) of an actual self. We have nothing of a self(noumena is unknowable) and nothing of the representation of a self.
It isn't possible for a self to exist at all then because the very definition of self requires that it has an impact on/in your life experience.
Self doesn't have an impact in your life experience.
What has an impact in your life is thoughts ABOUT a representation of a self. 3 levels of abstraction from any actual self are involved here.
Simply put it's not the self that has a representation in your experience but thoughts about it, and if it has no representation/impact in your experience by definition it cannot be a self.
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