Evan Thompson: Two Views of the Self - No Self vs. Self-making Process

June 28, 2016

Waking, Dreaming, Being | Dr. Evan Thompson | Talks at Google (2016)

Evan Thompson: Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (2014)

Evan Thompson - "Waking, Dreaming, Being" at CIIS (2014)

Evan Thompson: Waking, Dreaming, Being & the Middle Way (2015)

Evan Thompson: The Nature of Consciousness: A Neurophenomenological Approach (2017)

Evan Thompson: Why I Am Not a Buddhist (2020)

[wonkmonk]

Transcript:

Well, is there a self? Is there really a self? What I've been saying is that the self is a process. It's an experiential process. It's under constant construction, and I've just tried to indicate some of the ways it changes across waking, and sleeping, and mind wandering, and daydreaming, and dreaming, and lucid dreaming. So, it's a process that's constantly being configured and reconfigured. So then, well, what exactly is it? Is it, is there really a self?

Well, one way to go with that, and this is very popular nowadays, is what I call a kind of neuro-reductionist. I actually call it "neuronihilism" in my book. And this is the idea that, well, really, there is no self. And sometimes this is linked to Buddhism because in the Indian context, the Buddha's idea was "anata" or "anatma", "no self". And so the idea is often, well, there really is no self, and neuroscience is saying the same thing that the Buddha said. All there really is, this is not the Buddhist words now, this is the modern neuroscience way of talking. All there really is, is the illusion of a self created by the brain.

Now, there's a sense in which I think that view gets something right, but I also think it's misguided. So, the sense in which it gets something right is if you think the self is a thing or an entity, that it's single, that it's unified, that it's permanent, that, to use philosophical language, it's a kind of a substance, an entity. If you think that the only way there could be a self is if it were like that, well then, if there isn't anything like that that you can find, then it's going to follow that there is no self. But that's not really the way we should have been thinking about the self in the first place. Rather, as I've been trying to illustrate, the self is not a thing or an entity, it's a process. And it's enacted, that is to say, it's through perception, through memory, through social cognition, through culture, through language, and through all of that being rooted in the life of the body, which of course includes the brain but isn't just about the brain. It's also about the brain being in a body, geared into a world, immersed in an environment, that the self is constantly being enacted through that dynamics. And so, it's not a fixed, single thing. And even if we feel, experientially, as if it is. Of course, when we examine it carefully, it's not. It's a process. The way that I put this in the book is to say that when I say that the self is not a thing but a process, what I mean is that it's a process of "I-ing", a process that enacts an "I" in which the "I" is no different from the "I-ing" process itself. Rather, like the way dancing is a process that enacts a dance, in which the dance is no different from the dancing.

So, in summary then, self-making, this is the Indian concept of "ahamkara", is like dancing, and the self is like a dance, not a thing or an entity, but a process.

[BavinGeter]

Yes! Finally, someone just cuts through the unnuanced bullshit of neuroscientists claiming “there’s no self” whilst simultaneously assuming that literally everyone has the same exact concept of what self means

[e-t-y]

There is a sense-of-self, and that's what matters. All the ideas we have about ourselves are held there, and it does "exist." Identity, self-concept, self-esteem levels are held there. To debate whether there is an entity of "self" is kind of like debating whether there is an entity in the ear which accounts for our hearing, or one in our eyes that accounts for what we see. There is the sense. There must be a sensor. Matters little what you call it.

[familyshare]

That's ALSO what the Buddha said. We construct (sankhāra) a self of things (my body, my car, my job), feeling tones, perceptions, and "my" consciousness.

[Knaeben]

Buddha never actually said there is no self. He never answered the question.

[e-t-y]

We have what can be called an "inner experiencer" where things are happening in the psyche. The debate about whether that can and should be called a "self" seems superfluous.

[trump]

I really struggle to understand this distinction. Nietzsche makes a similar observation in regards to human nature, instead of "self", in the context of Homeric thought.

But I just don't get it. The self, using these definitions, escapes any sense of practical application. The whole thing feels reductive and you end up in the same "noself" category.