"A thought in your brain?" Where else would the thought be, pray tell?

I already do not think there is a "myself" beyond the processes of my brain. I do not believe in a soul, or any soul-like thing that manages to magically continue doing all my brain-processes without the aid of my brain after death.

OP seems to be trying very very hard to communicate something very obvious, in a very awkward and repetitive way. What am I missing here?

The OP claimed that there is no such thing as me, that there is no I, no self, no ego or person I can identify as myself. My claim is that he is wrong, there is such self--it is my experiences, thoughts, feelings, etc. tied together by memory and grounded in a physical body. When I think of what I am, that is what I think of. When I identify what I am, that is what I list. When I introspect, I experience myself thinking, feeling, remembering, etc. It's true that like the OP I don't experience anything else in my subjective experience, but then, I don't think there is anything else to experience.

What I don't get is why you think this is weird (since some psychological theory of the self has been popular in philosophy for hundreds of years), or why you think it is irrelevant to the claim of the OP. I am directly denying Gorodeckyj's claim. He says I don't exist. I say I do exist. If you wish to ignore my view (as he has), that's fine, but I don't then see why I should take seriously the claim that I don't exist.

Also, I don't know what "mentioned criteria" you are talking about. Did someone list the criteria that an adequate definition of the self must meet?

My definition of the self is not at all impervious to the evidence gathered from the investigation--rather it is amply confirmed that such a self exists every time I think, feel, etc.

I actually think that the view of the self that I'm articulating is a much more natural view than the one you are assuming, but I'm not really sure why it matters.

Nah, it is an extremely simplistic methodology. Some early accounts (such as Francis Bacon's) of empirical natural science said that we just sort of look at the evidence and a hypothesis will arise out of it. Obviously this isn't accurate at all as a description of the scientific method. I am describing this as a "simplistic empiricism" because it seems to have a similiar attitude to Bacon towards our subjective experiences.

What I'm suggesting is that instead we should have a more explicit idea of what we are looking for in our subjective experience before deciding whether or not the self doesn't exist.

Here are some random esoteric sounding quotes from the Gospel of Thomas. Enjoy.

"If the flesh came into being for the sake of the spirit, it is a wonder. But if the spirit came into being for the sake of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed, I marvel at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty."

"Let him who seeks not cease to seek until he finds : when he finds, he will become troubled. When he is troubled, he will wonder, and he will reign over the All."

"If they say to You, 'Where did You come from ?', say to them : 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being of itself, established itself and revealed itself in their image. If they say to You : 'Who are You ?', say : 'We are its sons. We are the elect of the Living Father.' If they ask You : 'What is the sign of your Father in You ?', say to them : 'It is movement and rest.'

"He who has come to know the world has found a corpse, and he who has found a corpse, the world is not worthy of him."

"He who believes to know the All but not himself falls completely short."

"Lord, many are around the water-spring but nobody is in the well."

"He who knew the world has mastered the body, but he who has mastered the body is superior to the world."

"He who has grown wealthy will rule, and he who possesses power will renounce it."

"Whoever is near Me is near the fire, and whoever who is far from Me is far from the Kingdom."

"When You see your own likeness, You rejoice. But when You see the images of yourselves which came into being before You, which do not die nor become visible, how much then will You be able to bear ?"

"Seek and You will find. Yet, what You asked Me about in former times and which I did not tell to You then, I now desire to tell You, but You do not ask after it."

"He who will drink from My mouth will become like Me. I myself shall become like him, and the hidden will be revealed to him."

"When will the Kingdom come ?" Jesus said : "It does not come by expecting it. It will not be a matter of saying : 'See, it is here !' or : 'Look, it is there !'. Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it."

"If those who lead You say to You : 'See, the Kingdom is in heaven !', then the birds of the sky will be there before You. If they say to You, 'It is in the sea !', then the fish will be there before You. But the Kingdom is inside You and outside You. When You know yourselves, then You will be known, and You will know that You are the children of the Living Father. But if You do not know yourselves, then You dwell in poverty ; then You are that poverty."

My mass takes up space = exists

I'll just "continue to be" tyvm

Lol, but it is not your mass. It is just mass. You will not continue to be. Your body, thouhts, feelings will continue to be. There could be thought about YOU, saying YOU will continue to be, but it is only thougt.

In fields of science there is no agreed upon interdisciplinary definition of self (and certainly not for hundreds of years), in fact there is a great deal of confusion about what self is. There is however a definition that is shared universally: it is expressed in the intimate intuition that I am a self, I am present in the here and now, that I am in fact the most certain fact of life and that I am operative in that I think thoughts, have memories, cause events etc. It is this universal intuition and the criteria expressed therein that is being targeted here.

Without this intuition you wouldn't be talking about an intimate self at all and wouldn't be interested in defending your use of that word. Instead, you would be using "I" as relative to practical purposes only, such as a pronoun, or in referring to the relative autonomy or some kind of continuity of biological organisms, narrative identity, self-modelling, etc (all of which use "self" in a way that is completely different from its use in the intimate intuition). If you insist that a self as used in the latter ways exists, then I have no disagreement (although I think the use of that word is too vague and misleading). But if you reply to my claim "intimate subjective self doesn't exist" by saying "but I have other uses for the word self and can prove that the things I use this word for do exist", then I will reply that you then have simply missed the context that I'm suggesting.

In fact most likely you still have an insufficiently reflected intimate intuition of being a self, but it appears like your other definitions deflect you from investigating its seeming existence. It is a common problem and one that I myself had to battle with. All I can suggest for now is to clarify the context and muster the courage and honesty to actually subjectively investigate whether YOU do exist. In the investigation that is being suggested here, intellectual reflection serves as a clarification of the problem and as a way to collpase intellectual barriers that prevent the investigation, but the looking itself is not intellectual. Upon completion of the task there will be a realization (a collapse of the deeply rooted belief that there is a self) that will inform the intellect in profound ways but is not in itself precipitated by the intellect.

If you define self as a variable collection of events, things and experiences, then I wonder how there can be a way to falsify the claim that you are a self.

Let's say that instead of "self" we're investigating "fear". I will define fear as the intimate subjective experience of fear. You can define it as brain process or as a behavioral pattern of biological organisms. I have a framework to find out whether there is such a thing as fear in my subjective experience. I watch a horror movie and then verify that yes indeed there is the subjective experience of fear. You can analyze my brain and say that there is data which sugests that I experience fear. If however despite the data you've gathered I actually don't experience fear, then I simply don't experience fear. When you look at my brain you see only brain processes, not fear. When I experience fear I experience exactly fear, not brain processes.

In other words, in the context that has been suggested, whether I am a self or not is not investigated by looking at my brain or body, it's investigated by looking at my own subjective experience. Objective evidence is not useless in this, it serves as clarification, but the problem itself is solved within subjectivity. So yes, from your point of view and relative to your concerns empiricism that is limited to the subjective is simplistic, but relative to my concern it is the only kind of empiricism that is a viable option. I can't say whether I experience a self merely by looking at data gathered from analysis of my brain or the behaviour of my biological organism.

Wrong. I think, therefore I am.

Okay, so any adequate definition of the "self" in the sense you are interested would have to include these claims:

1) I am a self.
2) I am present in the here and now
3) I am the most certain fact of life.
4) I think thoughts, have memories, cause events, etc.

Your view (correct me if I am wrong), is that in each of these criterion, the "I" doesn't refer to anything real. So sure, thoughts happen, memories happen, presentness happens, etc., but they are not related in an important way to an "I."

My view is that the "I" does refer to something real--it refers to the relations between the thoughts, memories, presentness (which are grounded in a physical brain) and so on such that they are experienced as connected. The most obvious manifestation of this is in memory, where I experience past thoughts in my brain as having been thought by the same mind as the one having the memory, or past events in my life as having happened to me.

However, the crucial point is that the reference of the "I" is not part of the intuition that you think is relevant. If I think it refers, then I have to point to something that can sustain the actions you think our intuitions associate with it.

I'm not really sure how these other uses of the word "self" differ from the intimate intuition. They seem to me much the same--although obviously they offer different accounts of how to make sense of this intuition.

It seems to me that I am just not getting what you mean by the "intimate intuition self." Here's one stab, is it the sense of "I" that Descartes was concerned with in the cogito?

I find this a little confusing. According to you, I don't actually believe in the intimate intuition self. Why should I investigate its existence if it doesn't exist? Seems rather pointless...

People have offered various thought experiments meant to convince us that we are really immaterial souls or physical bodies. Others have claimed that the definition I am offering doesn't do justice to our intuitions about the permanence of the self.

I disagree. I think I can experience fear without being aware that I'm experiencing fear. Thus, I think that using subjective introspection about our mind is a limited methodology. Furthermore, the discovery of the unconscious and the role of pharmacology in therapy have both shown the limitations of introspection as a method of discovery about the nature of the mind.

Well, when I said that it was a simplistic form of empiricism I wasn't really thinking about it not including objective evidence (although that is a legitimate point). Mainly I meant that as a method of subjective investigation (what philosophers call phenomenological research) it is extremely naive to think that all you do is just pay attention to what is going on in your mind. Just as in regular science we develop hypotheses and then use experiments to test them, you should do the same with your subjective investigation. Thinking that instead you just "pay attention" to your mind is like people who think that science is done by just "looking" at the world.

I think __" presupposes a thinker. If the conclusion is that there is a thinker, then using the "I think__" proposition is question begging and thusly fallacious. Next.

This is getting pretty long and off topic. It is nice, that most of you can write pages about some random bulls..., which you think is relevant to this, or post here your favourite gospels or whatever, but please, try to focus on what I am trying to say. I really have no time to read throught super long posts about your beliefs or philosophy.

If someone comes here now and don´t want to read trought all the posts, here is quick "what is going on here"
http://ruthlesstruth.com/arena/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=659

Still waiting for someone, who wants to try this for real, or at least is not writing here his opinions and stupid filosophical bulls... and really wants to see the truth.

You should have that mass in your skull checked.


From above link:

1. What is the message? What is this truth you talk about?
There is no you. You do not exist. The thought you think yourself to be is a thought, like any other. Some thoughts refer to something real. This one doesn't.

stopped

right

there

Yes, you can think about something real, or you can think about yourself, about you (what you think you are). In that case that thought doesn´t refer to anything real, becouse the YOU you think you are doesn´t exist.

I am real. What part of that does your cerebral cortex not compute? If I can write, I exist. As I breathe, I exist. If my penis penetrates an awsum pink hole, known as a vagina, I exist (and can bring life into existence). Amazing, but true. And real!

A gf of yours can touch me if it's really that necessary

Umm.. sir, you are not enlightened (at all). Please put the axe back in the trunk. Everything will be fine.

This is a forum for discussion, not advice on how to get enlightened (although you are of course free to offer such advice). So if you post some claims about the nature of spirituality or the self, then you should expect those claims to be discussed.

However, it is fair to request the conversation stay on topic. I've been disputing the claim that the self doesn't exist. Is that off-topic?

What from what was said here before you don´t undestand? Do I have to really just repeat it all again? Ok, for a last time:

If I say: You don´t exist I mean not body, not thoughts, not feelings, etc. All of that is simply existing.

If I say you don´t exist I mean that YOU that you think you really are. You don´t call yourself hand, mouth, neck, foot.

What you call ME is all preferences, likes, dislikes, loves, hates, fears, all you think you are. Like if you think you are nice to people, ugly, smart, you hate some kind of people, you are better in something than others, or whatever - there are milion thinks you think of you. From all of this is this concept about who you think you are. But it is just concept. It is just another thought. It is not real. Not like a brain or hand.

If you think about yourself like a person having all these charakteristics, it is one big fat lie. In your life you are acting like this YOU really exist, whatever happened you firstly look at this concept - would "I" (my concept) like it? or not? do I (my concept) want this? or this? do I (my concept) fear this? But there is no real I. When you see it is all lie (liberation/enlightenment) you can all from sudden act free.

I will understand if you don´t want it. You can love all you think about yourself, even your fears. You can love all this lies. It is ok. Just understand, what I am saying here.

Bro, I just think you're full of ****. Thoughts that travel through your brain are as real as your foot, hand, elbow w/e. Now I understand where you are getting at when you say your thoughts about yourself are nothing more than some subjective concept we "make up" (and some believe in this more than others.. this lie as you call it.. but there are others who just don't buy into that kind of thinking). What you're describing sounds a lot like the ego. Also, I have a problem with people that like to tack on their own definitions for things like real, I, you, we, exist, etc that really fall too far from the actual definition, so much so, that they end up "word dancing" and not really saying much (not to be confused with ranting).


The bottom line is that "we" all "exist" (all of "us"). You just want that word to mean something else.

You are a sum of all your parts (mass). Mass exists and takes up space. Our "existence" is the sum of all of our experiences, knowledge, emotions and thoughts "being" in that space (and consciousness is just our awareness of our existence). When we die, all that **** dies too (imo.. atm.. ) and we no longer exist.

Yes, individual human beings really do exist; otherwise, there is no good reason for human rights, morality, justice, yada yada yada... Don't buy into the "darkness" that there is no "I"!

No that is not point. Point is you doesn´t exist.

Lets go practical. I have described, what is this ME or YOU for me, this concept throught which everybody sees life.

What is this for you? Who you are? How do you describe word "I", when you say I am happy? Please focus and say only pure truth. You don´t need to write long posts, just basic truth, like if you describe something to 8 years old.

There are human beings. No problem with that. Please read again what is this about.

By the way, if you say thing A must exist, becouse if not, there would be no use for things B, it is not proof that thing A exist.

No Ruach HaKodesh? Not the "spiritual enlightenment" for the tzaddikim!

OP, you was born, you became self aware- and you are going to die. It is fact. Self is of course real. It is real for the undefinable length of time that there is light within the mass you occupy. Being self aware is not a bad thing, that is a belief you choose to create,

Absolutely pathetic display from people that think the self is real, and trying to go on and defend it , you people are laughable.

And then there's the cowards that claim they dont experience that self and think that understanding the concept is enough. LOL you are worse.

A+.

There most definitely is an "I". If you've ever been around a crying new born baby you would know there is an "I". That "I" is crying for survival not dismissal or else why cry at all?

Body was born, became self aware and is gonna die. It is fact. What about concept you call "I"? When that was born? How does it change during life? Can you drop it? Is that real?

So you say "you" is only belief you choose to create? Is that belief real?