Sam Harris Q&A: Self-illusion and No-self

Sam Harris answers fan questions about free will, Noam Chomsky, upcoming elections, his vote for Hilary Clinton, Islam, and meditation.
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[prajnabala]

No self is not an experience. When the self falls away, there is no one to have an experience.

[youarewhatyourelookingfor]

There is one thing that never changes and that is what is aware of all of it.
Ie. What is aware of my being afraid, happy, sad, etc is not afraid, happy, sad etc

[tnvol]

materialism vs non materialism in theoretical physics there are great scientific minds on each side of the debate

[JMT]

He must be the best ad lib speaker I’ve ever heard. It’s as if he has written a script... how does he do it??

[rockyboon]

Who is the one who has to see the illusion of the self.

[markdelej]

“You” are atoms being aware that they are atoms. You are the universe being aware of itself. You arent something separate from it. You are it. When “you” feel you are a soul inside your body and head and can lift your arm up and are a controller of your organism and a driver of your body and controller of your mind that is an illusion because the only controller of your organism that can move any atoms around in it at all is the laws of physics. Therefore when “you” lift your arm, actually the laws of physics lifted your arm. So if you claim “you” lifted your arm then you must also claim you shine the sun. “You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing” - alan watts.

[naturalisted]

There is a Self in the brain, because the Brain is where it is. Why have we convinced ourselves that we should be able to locate the Self in one tiny spot in the brain? Have we forgotten that our brains ARE a tiny spot? A tiny spot in the vast universe. I mean, if you zoom in on anything enough, you will look past It.

[ramram]

I may not be or have an unchanging self - but it seems I do have a more or less stable self that undergoes both minute changes in e.g. mood, thoughts or attention or much slower changes of beliefs, motivations or attitudes. But change does not neccesarily mean illusion. I do not wake up within an unknown body, nor do I suddenly remember a completely different life, and the friends of family of yesterday are still there today. Who I am is a more or less stable internal feeling, and what I am may be further be defined by work, family, memory and actions - but these too tend to be stable, rather than capricious or random. So actually it's rather easy to find a pretty stable self.

[williamburts]

So because you can't find a self in the brain there is no self, could it be that the self Isn't the brain and that is why you can't find it in the brain?What would you be looking for in the first place? The self isn't an object so how do you find it? Sam harris is a naturalist, everything can be reduced to chemistry. You can study chemicals all you want but studying them in themselves don't tell you what it is like to be human.

[jaientenduunevoix]

Does this mean that when you think of, say, childhood memories, you're literally remembering the memories of someone else? Because "you" weren't there, because there is no "you" to have been there?

[benjaminrudolph]

In an odd turn of events, the Void has manifested "Sam Harris", a body without a self, which has turned the notion of the absence of a self into a personal philosophy. Fuck it, room for everything under the sun.

[dason]

If there is no self then why is their a feeling of a self? and what am I ?

[naturalisted]

We die, but there will always be a Self or First-person experience being experienced because it is by definition impossible to experience nothingness (if Nothingness is what "happens" after death).

[NM-bpdy]

Thoughts exist but there is no thinker experiencing them.
So true.

[jz]

How about your personal experience with self-delusion?

[johnnyb]

" . . . no spot in the brain . . ."

Going on the ASSUMPTION that there is a PHYSICAL source of Personality/Identity . . . aren't you?

[benjaminrudolph]

How the fuck do you suppose "you" can experience your own absence?

[ondrejsaly]

He should study top-down causality as well...budhist philoshopher not a humble scientis...

[joeloughlin]

Seems paradoxical? It is paradoxical and you don't have the answer.

[newdrug]

I call BS. You know who you are. And sam harris knows who he is.