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Can someone explain the “illusion of self” concept in rational scientific terms? What exactly does it mean?
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>in rational scientific terms
>rational
No, they can’t. Make the inevitable analogy with "the illusion of chair" and watch them have a psychotic breakdown.-
All I was able to find were furniture optical illusions.
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>googling "the illusion of chair" instead of trying to understand what’s being implied
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It is referring to the fact that you cannot assign an owner to ‘your’ consciousness.
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Because “our” memories and conscious are separate, and our identity stems from “our” memories?
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>memories and conscious are separate
How would you go about showing this?-
I guess what he’s trying to say is that consciousness is a sense of being, while the "self" is a sense of the continuity of being.
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self is a set of habits, habits change
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Your brain has a mechanism for modeling and predicting what will happen in the world. One element of this is modeling and predicting what our future selves will do. What humans do is an outcome of many complex and chaotic physical processes and is impossible to model exactly, so the brain simplifies it by abstracting some sort of higher irreducible form of agency. Think of it like a linear regression — you know the process isn’t really linear, but you’re just using it to simplify and make basic predictions. Your self isn’t ‘real’, it’s just the brain trying to understand itself and predict what it’s going to do next.
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Woke af pop-sci midwit.
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You too.
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this notion seems to have no basis whatsoever
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it means nothing. scientists can’t into theology.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3A5qNXteTZA -
>explain this philosophical bullshit concept in terms of science
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the illusion of self is the scientific position on the philosophy of consciousness.
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Nope, that would be dualism.
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>the illusion of self is the scientific position
It’s the IFLS position. Legitimate science doesn’t stray into that territory at all.
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Precisely. The self is not a scientific definition and never existed in the first place.
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ur life started when ur dad jizzed on some shit in ur mom’s cunt. later on ur mom shitted the cum covered part of her cunt and named it (you).
you don’t exist as an individual person, you’re just some cum covered shit that used to be part of ur mom.
you know how you can cut an earthworm in half and get two living worms as a result? you’re like that except instead of being cut off you were shitted out -
Your not really conscious or experiencing anything at the moment. That is just an illusion produced by our mind. Consciousness isnt real.
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There’s no such thing as a continuous self entity. Your mind is constantly changing. If we took a snapshot of your mind now and again in five minutes you will find few if any similarities whatsoever… The entire scope of experience will be different…
Imagine existence with absolutely no ability to form memory at all. You would never have any sense of who you are or what life is etc you’d just know present experience and before you can even grasp it, it’s gone and the next moment is happening. Ad nauseum.
It’s this idea that you are more than a changing object that allows for a sense of self. When you notice it is constantly changing you’ll realize there is no concrete persistent self there.
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>It’s this idea that you are more than a changing object that allows for a sense of self.
>When you notice it is constantly changing you’ll realize there is no concrete persistent self there.
So which one is it, you imbecile?-
I’m on Valium but I think those statements match. Thinking you are more than a constsntly morphing object gives a sense of some sort of persisting self thing. Realization that you AREN’T more than that destroys the idea of a persisting self. The rabbithole is semi-deep. Easy to explain but leads to much questioning.
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>Thinking you are more than a constsntly morphing object
The very concept of a "constantly morphing object" already assumes there is more to it than physical states. Anyway, I wonder why people like you think "the self is an illusion" is some profound statement, but not "the chair is an illusion".-
I’m on a lot of Valium… Realization that objects are made of perceptions comes sooner than the realization that there is no self. Keep in mind the idea of a self entity is pretty much the most crucial element to our survival, and so its the best guarded secret of all.
This is why I said the rabbit hole is easy to explain but deep because it leads to a long list of questioning because it’s counterintuitive to how the brain is programmed to think for survival.
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You can’t even explain your point without appealing to the things you are trying to refute.
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Where and how?
What foundations do scientific observations stand on when we deny the legitimacy of the observer itself?
The observer isn’t your mind, your mind is itself observed.
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My take is that it is easier to grasp the idea that the Chair is only a "Chair" from our perspective. Get a little closer and it is fibers, then molecules, all the way to atoms. Sure this is a nominal point of view, but it would completely acceptable to say that the chair is an illusion because there is no such thing as a chair, it’s just an arrangement of smaller components. We say "Chair" when we speak about a certain shape, and with that shape, a certain action. Sitting.
But the concept of the self being an illusion is something that most people don’t think of and makes little sense when its first introduced. The feeling of being something more akin to a Soul residing in the body cannot possibly survive scrutiny. There is no one "place" where you are. I am not talking about self in terms of physical position (e.g. "I" am sitting in the chair), I am referring to the feeling that we are the thing that is thinking thoughts, hearing sounds, smelling smells. A homunculus driving the body.
I believe that this illusion, of our sense of identity being that of the ego, is what causes things like irrational hatred, irresponsible use of technology, and a lack of sympathy.
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>there is no such thing as a chair
>it’s just an arrangement of smaller components
By roughly the same token, there’s no such thing as "smaller components", either. Nothing’s real, everything is an illusion. Congratulations, you have reached the ultimate enlightenment, except your conclusion is vacuous both intellectually and experientially.-
There can never be words for things because things are not words. A table is not words, and neither are the atoms that structure it.
>Nothing is real
Define real? are your dreams any more "real" than the moment you get up out of bed and if so, why?Saying that nothing is real is just like saying everything is to the left, it makes no sense because there is nothing "fake" to compare it to. The world did not need words for it to be experienced and words are not but ways for us to describe the experience to each other. Just because everything is built on top of something else does not mean nothing is real, language has no way of grasping everything all at once, for it is not words.
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>Define real
You define "real", since you’re asserting that this and that is an illusion.-
Real is more conceptual, like how everything has an Up, Down, Left, and Right from a perspective. If you are talking about whats real, we may say that dreams are less "real" than the moment we wake up because everything that happened in the dream was just in our head. That does not change the fact that everything already does happen in our heads, so what makes the dream less real?
This is a fun conversation I don’t mean to sounds like I have the answer to what is real or not, but there is no way to know i don’t think. IF there was a way to know, it would not and could never be words, signs, or symbols. It would be through experience.
So my answer would be woke af on what your perspective. It is a principle, like Up and Down. Everything has an up and a down, but respective to something else, a context. Is the Sun above something? you would have to provide reference to something else, the clouds are above the ground, but only as long as you refer to the ground as down. The clouds may also be above if you refer to US soil and refer to the clouds over across the globe.
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>Real is more conceptual
What do you mean "conceptual"? Concepts are constructs of the mind. Either way, you didn’t answer my question: what does "real" mean, when everything that can be referenced, is an illusion according to your own standards? -
Real does not "mean" anything until you attach it to a concept.
The news story is "real" because it accurately describes the events that took place, but even then, the story is from a perspective and would but real and true regardless of who wrote it if whoever wrote the story poured their truth into it. A "fake" story would be one where the author intends to twist the events into something else, creating chaos.
The magician who pulls the rabbit out of a hat is a "real" magician because he makes one wonder where the rabbit came from. The "fake" magician is the one that can tell your fortune and read your future. Ironically, the real magic is the fake magic and the fake magic is the real.
If by real you ask what reality is and I would have to say that there is nothing but reality, everything through experience is just as real as anything else, but that is because there is nothing "Un-real" about it.
Say up. Can we say everything is up? Of course not. There needs to be a down. If there is an up, there is a down. These two concepts make one, because you cannot have up without down or vice versa. Just like reality, you cannot have something "real" unless there is something that is unreal, and there is nothing unreal because you experience the fear asleep in your dreams in the same way you would up and awake.
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So you’re simply going to ignore the most basic questions and keep churning out pseud diatribe? I still didn’t get any cogent explanation of what "real" is according to you.
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I’m not sure what kind of answer you would want me to say. If you don’t like the answer, I would rather you explain what part does not make sense, instead of implying it’s all "pseud" stuff. What is real is probably one of the most profound questions one could ask, why to get mad that I don’t have the answer for you instead of talking it through so we may both learn something.
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>I’m not sure what kind of answer you would want me to say.
One that actually explains what it means for something to be "real", instead of giving me examples of things you think are "real", or saying "there is nothing but reality". -
"Real" works in the same way that "Up" does. Up is not real, it’s a way we try to understand the universe. "Real" would depend on what you are using it for. What do you want to know is real? This isn’t something you can answer in a few sentences or even a set of books, but I hope you find your answer soon.
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So you’re just gonna keep churning out worthless diatribe without ever explaining what it means for something to be "real". Very cool. You should probably stop posting now, because you’re communicating nothing and only reinforcing your own delusions of competence.
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Where and how?
[…]
The observer isn’t your mind, your mind is itself observed.I think that
But the concept of the self being an illusion is something that most people don’t think of and makes little sense when its first introduced. The feeling of being something more akin to a Soul residing in the body cannot possibly survive scrutiny. There is no one "place" where you are. I am not talking about self in terms of physical position (e.g. "I" am sitting in the chair), I am referring to the feeling that we are the thing that is thinking thoughts, hearing sounds, smelling smells. A homunculus driving the body.
I believe that this illusion, of our sense of identity being that of the ego, is what causes things like irrational hatred, irresponsible use of technology, and a lack of sympathy.
is just saying that a chair is simply an item on which we can sit, the concept of chair is only in our mind. Like the item is not "chair" in itself like it’s not way define it from a physical point of view. It’s just another part of the universe. I don’t think he is saying that the item we call "chair" doesn’t exist.
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>It’s just another part of the universe
There are no items and there is no universe. All illusions in your head. Sorry.-
I don’t know, maybe
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This is all a bit semantics, all we see is the illusion. When we talk about Water it doesn’t quench our thirst but we know what we are referring to. Water is composed of something, and that is composed of something as well, it gets ever small but words can never describe them because the things themselves are not words. The sun is not a word, the moon is not, the grass or trees, the edge where the sky meets the ground neither is the feeling of being compelled and engrossed by a good story.
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>Water is composed of something, and that is composed of something as well
If the self is an illusion, then by the same standard, nothing is composed of anything. -
I think I understand you. As we can only have a representation of the world through our senses, we cannot know what they really are. We just form concepts in our mind and all. I agree with you, I don’t see how it can be different
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I think you’re very deep and profound. I understand what you’re saying. I don’t see how you could be wrong. Other guy just doesn’t understand.
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>The feeling of being something more akin to a Soul residing in the body cannot possibly survive scrutiny.
Except it does.
Show me this philosophical zombie that essentially killed themselves by navel gazing too hard. -
Realizing no-self does not eliminate what appears to be hatred of nigs. I realize i have no self or free will and that nigs are the same. I still feel disgust and fear around them – and see myself taking action to protect "myself".
But yeah, when DaKwan rapes i figure he is just a nig nigging and he didnt choose to be a nig,etc. I dont blame him. I still think it would be better if all nigs were in africa.
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Why are soul-tards so aggressive in these threads? They always ruin the discussions with their over-emotional investments in the topic
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>literally the only one to mention souls ITT
>muh "soul" boogeyman
No one likes your low IQ intellectual posturing.
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>the self is an illusion
>the self isn’t real
>literally the only thing a human can objectively say to have interaction with doesn’t actually existWhat foundations do scientific observations stand on when we deny the legitimacy of the observer itself?
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Ummm, sweaty? It’s different, okay? The sense that you inhabit a physical world made up of separable elements that travel through time is just different. Senses and mental constructs pertaining to bland kindergarten materialism are real, while everything else is an illusion.
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The illusion of Self is not attempting to dismantle the concept of a conscious observer. The "self" may be an illusion, but you certainly are real, and you are observing.
The self is more referring to the feeling of being somewhere behind the eyes, between your ears. Someplace in your head. This feeling attributes to many other things, like feeling that you are something separate from the world, the universe, as opposed to being a part of it, being the whole.
This does not mean you do not interact, or that having a conversation with your mother dissolves into mere neurochemical processes, but that what we feel like we are is not the entire story. With some attention, really looking into the nature of being, we can see that there is nothing that separates us from the whole. It is all one.
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>you certainly are real, and you are observing
What "you" are you referring to, champ?-
Probably the metaphysical "God" concept, which would be conscious of all things including all of us simultaneously. We are the puppets it experiences the dream through. This probably isn’t something that will be grasped over a brief LULZ chat, at least it took me over a year to get past the common logical misconceptions.
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You’ve just descended into full-blown YouTube pop-buddhism comment section drivel. Your posts have exactly zero intellectual content at this point. Why are you bothering?
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Any soccer mom can read a book off a shelf and comment some BS on a YouTube video. I’ve had these experiences first hand on many occasions, so I’m telling you from the horse’s mouth, not a copy and paste of a new age con artist.
If you tell me what you need me to do to turn this into some form of intellectual content, then I can try to do that.
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>I’ve had these experiences first hand on many occasions
I don’t think so.>I’m telling you from the horse’s mouth
Your posts have zero intellectual content, and the fact that you’re so adamant about continuing this anyway, is definite evidence of the lowest form of Dunning-Kruger-tier ego-driven behavior.-
I can assure you I have. If you tell me what it is you want to know to provide some sort of intellectual content regarding this, then I would enjoy doing so.
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Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know. Curb your childish ego and stop spamming discussions with zero-intellectual-content pseud
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New age bookshelf BS (literally a meme tier famous quote). Ego is not bad.
They don’t necessarily need to talk because for those sages there is no distinction between literally anything, and all words work by distinction. So when an experience is had where all distinction dies, words no longer work.
My own experiences have been more along the lines of the self and other divide dying, unity of all things. But not to that degree. I understand what they are saying though. I want to provide something useful.
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Their wisdom, warning specifically against your scrotebraination, is just "new age bullshit" while your shitty teenage posturing is wisdom. Of course.
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It is, because you don’t understand why they say that, and are repeating a famous quote from some soccer mom spirituality site or something.
The Buddha spoke a great deal. Adi Shankara spoke a great deal. The person you are quoting wrote an entire book.
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>you don’t understand why they say that
They say that specifically as a warning against you and your likes.
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The conscious observer, I am referring to you who is typing this now. I can see what you are saying, that this is all semantics and that I dug my own grave by using certain words. Like the atheist that will say "bless you" to someone who sneezes.
The illusion of self does not mean "you" are not real, but it is claiming that the feeling of being an ego is not accurate or identical with the nature of the rest of being.
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>I am referring to you who is typing this now
But the "I" that you’re talking to, is an illusion, according to "you". Why are you trying to use "words" to indirectly communicate with an "illusion" when you could just bask in the glory of our shared true nature by meditating?-
Who knows, not "me" that’s for sure
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There is no "you" doing the thinking or feeling. It all just arises, persists for a time and goes away.
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In Buddhism, there is the concept of absence of self called anatman in contrary to the self called atman in Hinduism.
Buddha said that a self doesn’t exist because there is not a thing in humans that is non changing and permanent. In some hindu texts, they refer to the self at something that is the true you, that never changes, and doesn’t die.-
Those who talk don’t know.
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Who is "those"? You mean Buddha and hindu priests? Or people who related what I said to me?
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Nothing is real, maaaaan
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It means that, even though you have a direct and immediate awareness of your own consciousness, it cannot be objectively quantified and verified, therefore the high priests of scientism have decided to explain away the problem by simply decreeing that you do not exist and in fact no one exists.
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Umm, sweaty? Just because your brain is too stupid to understand reality and decides to hallucinate some fairy dust bullshit magical "consciousness", doesn’t mean it’s real, okay?? Do you even know Anton syndrome? It proves that consciousness is an illusion.
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>Quote
If you are bound to your past hour, if you must babble today because you babbled yesterday,[14] if you cannot transform yourself each instant, you feel yourself fettered in slavery and benumbed. Therefore over each minute of your existence a fresh minute of the future beckons to you, and, developing yourself, you get away “from yourself,” i. e., from the self that was at that moment. As you are at each instant, you are your own creature, and in this very “creature” you do not wish to lose yourself, the creator. You are yourself a higher being than you are, and surpass yourself. But that you are the one who is higher than you, i. e., that you are not only creature, but likewise your creator — just this, as an involuntary egoist, you fail to recognize; and therefore the “higher essence” is to you — an alien [fremd] essence. Every higher essence, e.g. truth, mankind, etc., is an essence over us.
>Quote over
>Tl;Dr:
I am. My body, my mind, my past, my knowledge are merely my property that I can discard. However, the past and future don’t exist, except as an idea, so assuming I am *and will be have have been* is silly. -
ok i will attempt it.
right now, you believe you are a ‘person’ reading a text.
an enlightened person wouldnt do that, for him he would experience the experience of reading a text.
youve asked the hardest question in the world. let me try again.
the reason you think you are a ‘person’, a ‘body’, a ‘soul’ etc is because you have not meditated enough.
you have to look at EXPERIENCE in order to know what it is…
if you do, you will find that experience is just thought -> feeling -> visual experience -> body experience -> feeling -> thought -> ad infinitum in any order possible…
if you do you will discover that the previous begets the next… and that it is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of the previous. you will also notice that it is really the same ‘energy’ that becomes "thought", "feeling" "visual experience", etc… that is to say they are only differently "colored"…
this will mean nothing to you unless you meditate and see it for yourself.
so an enlightened person does not believe he is a "person doing actions" for example, or a "person feeling something"… because he can see constantly the action-reaction energy that lead to an "action" or "reaction", and he cannot see an individual agent anywhere…
even with so-called "external" phenomena, he sees that "external" phenomena has the exact same effect on "his" actions or thoughts as "internal" phenomena… he cannot find a "person" anywhere… all he can see is smell, visual experience, bodily experience, thought, feeling, taste, sounds…
TL;DR: We think we are "persons experiencing the world" but this runs counter to actual experience!!
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i should add a link if you are interested: accesstoinsight.org you can even browse by subject here if youre like me and think you are very clever.
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Liberationunleashed.com guides people to the experience of no-self. Easy if you have done any meditation or can focus on things.
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it means that self is a byproduct of language and symbolic thought
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That’s a strictly NPC-like view on the matter.
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