Comments on Three

We have already seen that empty nature of the "five aggregates" means that our various ways of conceptualizing selfhood are inaccurate, and that no matter how we define the "self" it is fuzzy at the conceptual edges. Indeed, I am constantly changing, and each mental state I experience is unique. In a very real and palpable way, I am not the same person I was. Most of my idea of self-hood comes from my identification of self with body, and with the construction of my brain. It latches on to each new moment, and as it does so, it maintains the idea that I am the same person. One could imagine a being, perhaps a Martian :), whose brain does not maintain this constant sense of identity, and for whom the idea that one can be identified with one's earlier selves would be a difficult abstract concept. We might try to explain to this being that his brain builds on the memories of the former beings, and that these former beings all occupied the same body. This being might respond by saying that it shares memories with a lot of other beings, so why not identify with those beings as well? Also, in what sense is the body the same? It has changed. It has grown. The cells comprising it are not the original cells. The molecules that comprise it are not the original molecules? How is the body the same?

Such mental exercises are easy for me to believe intellectually, and as I think about, i do strongly believe that our concept of self is not an absolute truth, but is a concept peculiar to our brains, as shaped by evolution. The notion of self-hood is quite useful to get those genes passed along. Thus the concept of self is not an arbitrary fabrication. Nevertheless, it is an illusion. We think we have self-hood because our brains evolved to tell us so.

To accept that my whole conceptual structure for perceiving the world is shaped at a very deep level, not by absolute reality, but by the need for my genes to persist, is not easy for me at the gut level. (What is the gut level anyway?) I can clearly see that my concept of self is illusory, but I still feel like me, and I still identify myself with the person sitting here typing one second ago. And that, I suppose, is not unusual at all.

Ta ta for now...