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> our sense of self is an illusion

I've heard this, several times, from "new age" as well as "scientific" type-of people. I still don't understand what people mean by this... would it be possible to explain in a bit more detail?

It's based on uncertainty of perception. We build a model of ourselves, just as we do with the real world (including scientifically) but this model will never exactly specify the real world. We can come quite close, but we can't be infinitely precise. For example, a wheel is not really a circle but it's circular enough-- and, to build on that, we can't really specify the wheel itself, except through conceptual models.

In the case of the self, we build a model of what we are based off of data we gather from introspection and from people who are close to us. But this model is constantly in flux, and can never be said to actually reach the true self (if there is a true self-- and perhaps there is, but maybe it is always changing).

Nonetheless, we rely heavily on our sense of self. This sense helps us make hard decisions because we want to keep our actions in line with who we think we are-- we need that structure to survive. So, even though it can't be said to be real in any objective sense, we treat it as though it were real and we let it guide us to the point that most of the time we do think it's real. That's the illusory aspect.

You can really bring this over into anything you perceive. An object? Well, no. The object is not really distinct from the air surrounding it, except that we treat mass and visual outline (which is also an illusion created by our visual cortex) as indicators of being "separate", even though in the strictest sense the object is completely entangled in the environment of molecules, atoms, quanta, etc.

> we build a model of what we are based off of data we gather from introspection and from people who are close to us. But this model is constantly in flux, and can never be said to actually reach the true self (if there is a true self-- and perhaps there is, but maybe it is always changing).

There's another argument (which I think your parent is referring to) which says that the thing that's doing the modeling is the very thing that's being modeled, so it's impossible to separate the data from the model. The radical conclusion people have come up with is that therefore there is no difference between the model and the data. What we perceive to be the model is actually the data, that there is nothing outside of the data because there can't be.

I haven't been able to decide if this is profound or incoherent.

That makes sense too, and can also be argued for or against!

I disagree with this argument. I think some portion of our brain is devoted to “modeling,” and the things being modeled include other parts of our brain; other parts of our body; phenomena that include certain parts of the brain and non-brain body parts (eg emotions); other times and places; other people; our environment; and so on and so forth.

Certain modes of thinking, like abstract thought and reasoning, can only draw on these models, so in that limited scope, the only a available data is the models — which there are more of than we could ever attend to exhaustively. In other states of mind, there is all kinds of other data.

George Lakoff wrote a great book on this called "Where Mathematics Comes From."

He is critical of how mathematics is currently taught from "first principles" and proofs rather than from a more intuitive body/metaphor perspective. He believes proofs are in many ways academic gatekeeping. His final chapter explains Euler's identity using only the intuitive metaphors he built up in previous chapters.

Very interesting, thank you! I've actually been wondering about this sort of idea of teaching math.

I believe that that idea is about that in our consciousness there's an idea about who we are, an idea of self, and we believe that we are that idea, and that that idea has agency or free will. But the idea of self is like any other idea, it arises in the impersonal functioning of the mind. There's no homunculus, no little man in the control center of our brains, no ghost in the shell. As the stomach digests, the brain thinks, there's no thinker, thoughts 'happen' without a self that controls it. Thoughts happen not at random but as reactions to previous memories and experiences.

"...men believe that themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby these actions are determined." Spinoza, Ethics

In spite of this I wrote, I'm not sure if I understand very well the 'self is an illusion' argument, I may be misunderstanding something.

I think you are simply presenting another theory of mind that doesn't really answer the user's question. We don't know that there isn't a real self, but we do know that the way we perceive ourselves is illusive.

To extend the idea, some philosophers that lived at different moments explained that consciousness is independent of the body and feelings and thoughts and that to experience what we ultimately are we have to experience "consciousness without objects", for example Franklin Merrell-Wolff in his book "Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object" says this, but also indian and buddhist philosophy says something among those lines.

I cannot say if what these guys said is true or if they were psychotics.

The fact that you don't realize that you're just a piece of complicated matter that acts according to the laws of nature and believe that "you" as some kind of mind or soul exist, have point of view and free will – this is an illusion.

Several great answers already, there are certainly many ways to look at this. One that makes sense to me is to consider that we spontaneously create a sense of self as and when we need to, and dissolve it when we don’t. Where is your sense of self when you are asleep, or ‘in the zone’ playing a sport, or ‘lost in yourself’? At those moments we are no longer conscious of our present thoughts, we have no sense of self as such for much of the time. It’s as though we are in the animal state, our higher brain functions disengaged. A sense of self and personal consciousness is an illusion because it is something ephemeral and temporary.

Author is a behavioral scientist, likely paying attention to observable inputs and outputs.

As sensors improve, new theory may be needed to explain observations.

> Of course the mind is irrational. And of course our sense of self is an illusion.

You admit this in one paragraph, but pretend it doesn't matter...

> It is important to continuously reevaluate what we think the mind is because it is representative of how we see the world.

...and then in the next paragraph, you're talking about "reevaluating" as if that has any meaning if there is no rationality.

If you've eschewed rationality, you're not evaluating facts--facts can only be established through rationality, be it observation or logic. A philosophy which eschews rationality is fine, I suppose--it's a creative process which can be entertaining just like any sort of fiction or art. The problem is that you're both eschewing rationality and claiming facts which can only result from rationality. It's just a special pleading to try to present your creative ideas as fact without having to prove them as fact through rationality, and I'm not fooled.

But that's exactly the thing: if I were claiming anything it would be that the mind is chaotic. But to arrive at that, like you said, I must use processes of rationality. That doesn't mean the mind isn't chaotic, and it actually exemplifies what I'm trying to say quite well.

We exist in a reality that is inherently chaotic. We can approximate but never reach. But our approximations help us move around, because as we can see the chaos also has some kind of structure (think of the Lorenz attractor). We can't explicate the structure, but we can certainly create our own structure-- which is where rationality comes in. If we constantly re-evaluate the mind, we constantly build new structures which are adaptive to the energy of the era in which we conceptualize, and we are better suited to continue to create within this reality.

> We exist in a reality that is inherently chaotic. We can approximate but never reach. But our approximations help us move around, because as we can see the chaos also has some kind of structure

Yes, obviously models can be useful approximations of reality. I'm not rejecting all models, I'm rejecting the models which do a poor job of approximating reality.

But if they're too inaccurate, they aren't useful. The point here is that the coherent, singular "self" model of reality is too inaccurate to be useful any more. Neuroscience has demonstrated the idea of a coherent, singular self to be wrong. When we're asking questions like at the beginning of the article ("Did Anna Karenina really want to die?") the singular, coherent model of self isn't useful.

This shouldn't be taken as a criticism of those who believed in the singular self before neuroscience. They created hypotheses, and the experiments which tested those hypotheses and resulted in our current understanding of the self would not have happened without their work. We can remember them as history. But we can't treat these disproven hypotheses as equally valid to more nuanced understandings of the self, out of some sort of nostalgia for philosophy.

This isn't a rejection of the practice of modeling reality, it's a rejection of the models which our understanding has grown beyond, in favor of more accurate models.

Okay, but as you can see from my first post, I agreed with you (opinion, not fact) that the self is an illusion.

What are you trying to say, exactly? It seems you are trying to argue with me but haven't found anything concrete to latch onto.

You said, "That doesn't mean we should dispose of philosophy altogether."

I am saying we should dispose of philosophy as it pertains to modeling the self, because the models of self which philosophy has given us have long outlived their usefulness.

Not really. I use my sense of self every day. So do you.

How so?

I'm also not trying to claim anything as fact.

There is no "theory of mind" and there is no philosophy that could explain the self or the mind..

This view may find some resonance with Buddhist philosophy and psychology.

Depth, irrational, dynamic, chaos. I dont see how this approach helps in making any meaningful statements. Its the typical ‘unable to define it argument which is tiring.

I'm not trying to make an argument.

But on that note, do you think the mind can be defined? I'd be interested to see if you could do it "objectively".

No, which means maybe we should stop arguing about it. 'Mind' is primarily a word.

EDIT: i seem to be restricted from replying further:

We can discuss everything, but the argument goes in circles around non-duality, hard problem of consciousness, subjective experience, and keeps moving the goalpost of the "mind" to increasingly subjective and impossible to examine-or-falsify definitions. We can equally discuss about any kind of fiction.

You also have another beast: define "definition" and "objectively". Those are not concrete entities that can be probed in the real world, they are convenient shortcuts to our mental processes that may well be flukes.

The idea that we can't discuss anything until we can precisely define it presents a bootstrapping problem for science.

Interesting thought. Should we stop arguing about the universe as well?

In response to your edit: Yes, exactly. That is the chaotic aspect. You can't really define anything but you can define everything. It's paradoxical. Whatever. We still need the illusory aspects. Without such discussion we would never have had the industrial revolution, artificial intelligence, medication, etc. All of these things were based off of discussions of inexplicable ideas like morals, idealism, health, utilitarianism and, yes, MIND. Define all of those things for me, in an objective way. You can't. Sorry.

None of these are really based off of reality. They work in reality, but that doesn't mean anything.

>But on that note, do you think the mind can be defined?

A visceromotorically allostatic predictive regulator of sensorimotor contingencies.

If you use mind as an undefined word, then of course, words are easily definable.

If by the use of the word mind, you are referring to some specific thing, then me defining what you refer to is simply restating your definition of that thing.

Most conversation of mind thus end up in semantic debates or system of beliefs.

Like you say, until we can objectively observe a representation of the self in the brain, and label it mind, then the mind isn't a real thing.

Now you can imagine a thing which you have not observed, believe it to exist, and call it mind. That's where you start debating beliefs, which is a futile exercise.

I thus like to define the mind as the subset of my brain which generates my inner voice. And the self is the set of things my mind groups under it, for example when I say "I". Self is thus a moving target defined by my mind. Mostly an imaginary construct therefore.

You have made strong, authoritative statements on the nature of the mind, with no supporting evidence. Are you an authority on the mind?

I mean no offense, but unless you are an expert in the field, how can you state so strongly that "of course there is no theory of mind?"

Also, at the time of this comment the parent is is the top comment. I ask those who upvoted: Why?

If we're going to maintain a high quality of discourse on this website, we have to stop upvoting comments just because they sound good. I'm not asking for a full CV from every poster, but when you boil down one of humanity's greatest unsolved mysteries to an unqualified one-liner, I expect some evidence.

Haha, what kind of evidence do you think exists on such a topic?