Eastern philosophy says the self is an illusion

C

Cypress

"Cypress you motherfucking whore!"
Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.” Science agrees

Western view: The self is a pilot
This “I” is for most of us the first thing that pops into our minds when we think about who we are. The “I” represents the idea of our individual self, the one that sits between the ears and behind the eyes and is “piloting” the body. The “pilot” is in charge, it doesn’t change very much, and it feels to us like the thing that brings our thoughts and feelings to life. It observes, makes decisions, and carries out actions — just like the pilot of an airplane.

This I/ego is what we think of as our true selves, and this individual self is the experiencer and the controller of things like thoughts, feelings, and actions. The pilot self feels like it is running the show. It is stable and continuous. It is also in control of our physical body; for example, this self understands that it is “my body.” But unlike our physical body, it does not perceive itself as changing, ending (except, perhaps for atheists, in bodily death), or being influenced by anything other than itself.

Eastern view: The self is an illusion
Now let’s turn to the East. Buddhism, Taoism, the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, and other schools of Eastern thought have quite a different take on the self, the ego, or “me.” They say that this idea of “me” is a fiction, although a very convincing one. Buddhism has a word for this concept — anatta, which is often translated as “no self” — which is one of the most fundamental tenets of Buddhism, if not the most important.

This idea sounds radical, even nonsensical, to those who are trained in Western traditions. It seems to contradict our everyday experience, indeed our whole sense of being. But in Buddhism and other schools of Eastern thought, the concept of the self is seen as the result of the thinking mind. The thinking mind reinvents the self from moment to moment such that it in no way resembles the stable coherent self most believe it to be.

Put another way, it is the process of thinking that creates the self, rather than there being a self having any independent existence separate from thought. The self is more like a verb than a noun. To take it a step further, the implication is that without thought, the self does not, in fact, exist. In the same way that walking only exists while one is walking, the self only exists while there are thoughts about it. As a neuropsychologist, I can say that in my view, science is just now catching up with what Buddhist, Taoist, and Advaita Vedanta Hinduism have been teaching for over 2,500 years.



https://bigthink.com/the-well/eastern-philosophy-neuroscience-no-self/
 
Hume criticizes the very concept of identity. Which would send current identity politics people into hysterics. 'But this is what I really am!'
 
BidenPresident said:
David Hume said the self is an illusion as well.

If you look at Aristotle, he never really talks about a self.
Click to expand...

Actually he did but he rambled on about so many things regarding self that it's almost incoherent.

What he did really focus on was the idea of the soul when talking about self.
 
BidenPresident said:
David Hume said the self is an illusion as well.

If you look at Aristotle, he never really talks about a self.
Click to expand...

I think the author is writing in generalities. The western tradition has generally always focused on the individual self as the ultimate psychological reality. Descartes hung his hat on that premise. The Buddhist and Daoist traditions famously see attachment to the self as an illusion which obscures reality.
 
BidenPresident said:
First, which author, I mentioned two? And what do you mean by "generalities" by that author. Both are quite specific in what they say.
Click to expand...

The author of my article. I wouldn't refer to Hume or Aristotle as "the author"

There are exceptions to every generalization.

In Asia, I can see the Zhu Xi and the Neoconfucians subscribing to a certain kind of individual selfhood, since they believed the individual was endowed with a certain type and amount of Qi.
 
Cypress said:
The author of my article. I wouldn't refer to Hume or Aristotle as "the author"

There are exceptions to every generalization.

In Asia, I can see the Zhu Xi and the Neoconfucians subscribing to a certain kind of individual selfhood, since they believed the individual was endowed with a certain type and amount of Qi.
Click to expand...

Ok. I am not knowledgeable enough to discuss those philosophies.
 
Cypress said:
Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.” Science agrees

Western view: The self is a pilot
This “I” is for most of us the first thing that pops into our minds when we think about who we are. The “I” represents the idea of our individual self, the one that sits between the ears and behind the eyes and is “piloting” the body. The “pilot” is in charge, it doesn’t change very much, and it feels to us like the thing that brings our thoughts and feelings to life. It observes, makes decisions, and carries out actions — just like the pilot of an airplane.

This I/ego is what we think of as our true selves, and this individual self is the experiencer and the controller of things like thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Click to expand...

The idea of the self is not in ancient Greek philosophy, Aristotle for example.
It was invented by Christianity to explain that God is a person (Jesus) and so is a human equally a subjectivity.

The idea was not challenged until 1739 with a sustained critique by David Hume.
Today, the concept of the self is challenged by philosophers in the Western tradition.
 
BidenPresident said:
The idea of the self is not in ancient Greek philosophy, Aristotle for example.
It was invented by Christianity to explain that God is a person (Jesus) and so is a human equally a subjectivity.

The idea was not challenged until 1739 with a sustained critique by David Hume.
Today, the concept of the self is challenged by philosophers in the Western tradition.
Click to expand...

I would imagine the philosophy of self started with the first human that developed the ability to think logically.

This would have had to form the basis of all rules within a tribe, self preservation, do unto others.

You don't murder me and I don't murder you type of thing because self is important.
 
Tinkerpeach said:
I would imagine the philosophy of self started with the first human that developed the ability to think logically.

This would have had to form the basis of all rules within a tribe, self preservation, do unto others.

You don't murder me and I don't murder you type of thing because self is important.
Click to expand...

You imagine things that are false.
 
BidenPresident said:
The idea of the self is not in ancient Greek philosophy, Aristotle for example.
It was invented by Christianity to explain that God is a person (Jesus) and so is a human equally a subjectivity.

The idea was not challenged until 1739 with a sustained critique by David Hume.
Today, the concept of the self is challenged by philosophers in the Western tradition.
Click to expand...

Plato/Socrates discussed the nature of the individual immortal soul.

The Stoics seem to have had an inward oriented view of the self.

Obviously Augustine and Aquinas were working from the Christian tradition of the self.

I'm pretty certain that Descartes, Locke, Kant were looking at things from the perspective of the self.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but the East West split seems pretty self evident.
 
Cypress said:
Plato/Socrates discussed the nature of the individual immortal soul.

The Stoics seem to have had an inward oriented view of the self.

Obviously Augustine and Aquinas were working from the Christian tradition of the self.

I'm pretty certain that Descartes, Locke, Kant were looking at things from the perspective of the self.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but the East West split seems pretty self evident.
Click to expand...

But Plato did not conceive the person as a subject or ego. There was no true self. In fact, Plato like most Greeks thought of the truth of the person to be social.
Stoics did tend to lean toward the notion of the self as a private entity.

Although Kant was bothered by Hume's criticism of causation, Hume's fundamental criticism was about the very idea of identity.

After Hume, Hegel (1800) described the historical development of the concept of the self which completed itself in his time.
 
BidenPresident said:
But Plato did not conceive the person as a subject or ego. There was no true self. In fact, Plato like most Greeks thought of the truth of the person to be social.
Stoics did tend to lean toward the notion of the self as a private entity.

Although Kant was bothered by Hume's criticism of causation, Hume's fundamental criticism was about the very idea of identity.

After Hume, Hegel (1800) described the historical development of the concept of the self which completed itself in his time.
Click to expand...

Cypress loves to give everyone's opinion but his own!
Like all the other threads he starts ,they are only for dropping names
 
Cypress said:
Plato/Socrates discussed the nature of the individual immortal soul.
Click to expand...

According to the Socratic maxim, every evil action is actually ignorance, because no one
“does evil voluntarily” (Protagoras 358b).

We are so accustomed to refer the problem of action to the will
that it is not easy for us to accept that the classical world thought
it, by contrast, almost exclusively in terms of knowledge. As has
been effectively observed, one could say that for the Greek person
“as soon as the good is known, freedom of action, which is for us
in the last analysis the decisive thing, is abolished.” In the Gorgias, Plato can thus write that the
intention expressed by the verb boulesthai is not directed toward
action, but toward its object, and that “a man doesn’t want this
thing that he is doing, but the thing for the sake of which he’s
doing it” , which as such can be nothing other than a
good, real or supposed .

Action is always secondary with respect to its end, and the
meaning of the word boulesthai, which is most often translated
as “to desire, to will,” is more similar to an intellectual judgment
than to an act of free will. And it is not only for love of paradox
that Gorgias’s Palamedes, in the imaginary trial brought against
him by Odysseus, defends himself by affirming that, if he is as
wise as people claim him to be, he cannot have committed the
crime of which he is accused because, if he had committed it,
then he could not be considered wise. The principle from which guilt springs—if one can speak of guilt—is not
“evil will,” but ignorance. People do not act because they want to
act, but because they know what is good for them, and what they
know, they can also do.

https://anarch.cc/uploads/giorgio-agamben/karman.pdf
 
Cypress said:
I think the author is writing in generalities. The western tradition has generally always focused on the individual self as the ultimate psychological reality. Descartes hung his hat on that premise. The Buddhist and Daoist traditions famously see attachment to the self as an illusion which obscures reality.
Click to expand...

I think part of that is based on Christianity; the idea of God planting a soul into each person. The soul being the “I”, the ego, the individual.

Even if the Eastern philosophers were 100% correct, to function, human beings need a reference point for orientation in the Universe. Figure-Ground reference is used in psychology to for perception. Our basic reference point is the self with an orientation to family, friends, neighbors, state, country, culture, etc.

In keeping with Eastern philosophy, it’s good to remember there is a greater existence than the self. Using 1/6 as a reference, there where a whole lot of “I’s” out there, what’s best for themselves, and very few who thought about what’s best for the nation.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-figure-ground-perception-2795195
Figure-Ground Perception in Psychology
 
We are so accustomed to refer the problem of action to the will, that it is not easy for us to accept that the classical world thought it almost exclusively in terms of knowledge. One could say that for the Greek person “as soon as the good is known, freedom of action, which is for us in the last analysis the decisive thing, is abolished.” In the Gorgias, Plato can thus write that the intention expressed by the verb boulesthai is not directed toward action, but toward its object, and that “a man doesn’t want this thing that he is doing, but the thing for the sake of which he’s doing it , which as such can be nothing other than a good, real or supposed."

People do not act because they want to act, but because they know what is good for them, and what they know, they can also do.

https://anarch.cc/uploads/giorgio-agamben/karman.pdf
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top