Pet theory about meditation: Lots of people say that if you do enough meditation that you will eventually realise that there isn’t a self. Having not experienced this myself, I am intensely curious about what people observe that persuades them to conclude this. I guess I get a sense that many people are being insufficiently skeptical. There’s a difference between there not appearing to be such a thing as a self and a self not existing. Indeed, how do we know meditation just doesn’t temporarily silence whatever part of our mind is responsible for self-hood?
Recently, I saw a quote from Sam Harris that makes me think I might (emphasis on might) finally know what people are experiencing. In a podcast with Eric Winstein he explains that he believes there isn’t a self because, “consciousness is an open space where everything is appearing—that doesn’t really answer to I or me”. The first part seems to mirror Global Workspace Theory, the idea (super roughly) that there is a part of the brain for synthesising thoughts from various parts of the brain which can only pay attention to one thought at a time.
The second part of Sam Harris’ sentence seems to say that this Global Workspace “doesn’t answer to I or me”. This is still vague, but it sounds like there is a part of the brain that identifies as “I or me” that is separate from this Global Workspace or that there are multiple parts that are separate from the Global Workspace and don’t identify as “I or me”. In the first of these sub-interpretations, “no-self” would merely mean that our “self” is just another sub-agent and not the whole of us. In the second of these sub-interpretations, it would additionally be true that we don’t have a unitary self, but multiple fragments of self-hood.
Anyway, as I said, I haven’t experienced no-self, but curious to see if this resonates with people who have.
Pet theory about meditation: Lots of people say that if you do enough meditation that you will eventually realise that there isn’t a self. Having not experienced this myself, I am intensely curious about what people observe that persuades them to conclude this. I guess I get a sense that many people are being insufficiently skeptical. There’s a difference between there not appearing to be such a thing as a self and a self not existing. Indeed, how do we know meditation just doesn’t temporarily silence whatever part of our mind is responsible for self-hood?
Recently, I saw a quote from Sam Harris that makes me think I might (emphasis on might) finally know what people are experiencing. In a podcast with Eric Winstein he explains that he believes there isn’t a self because, “consciousness is an open space where everything is appearing—that doesn’t really answer to I or me”. The first part seems to mirror Global Workspace Theory, the idea (super roughly) that there is a part of the brain for synthesising thoughts from various parts of the brain which can only pay attention to one thought at a time.
The second part of Sam Harris’ sentence seems to say that this Global Workspace “doesn’t answer to I or me”. This is still vague, but it sounds like there is a part of the brain that identifies as “I or me” that is separate from this Global Workspace or that there are multiple parts that are separate from the Global Workspace and don’t identify as “I or me”. In the first of these sub-interpretations, “no-self” would merely mean that our “self” is just another sub-agent and not the whole of us. In the second of these sub-interpretations, it would additionally be true that we don’t have a unitary self, but multiple fragments of self-hood.
Anyway, as I said, I haven’t experienced no-self, but curious to see if this resonates with people who have.