Hmm, not sure what to say here. To check, when I write that
In my daily experience, it generally feels like there exists a distinct “me”. There is someone, an “I” who sees what I see, hears what I hear, feels what I feel. It feels like I can generally make choices, consider information, act according to my best judgment. It feels that there’s a meaningful sense in which the same me existed yesterday, and will continue to exist tomorrow. If you were to make a copy of me that was atom-to-atom identical, I might intuitively feel that there would exist a distinct difference between the original me and the copy. We might be exactly identical and act exactly the same, but there would still be a different experiencer.
My main point of disagreement is the way you characterize these judgements as feelings. With minor quibbles I agree with your paragraph after substituting “it feels” with “I think”. In your article you distinguish between abstract intellectual understanding which may believe that there is no self in some sense and some sort of lower-level perception of the self which has a much harder time accepting this; I don’t follow what you’re pointing to in the latter.
To be clear, I do acknowledge to experience mental phenomena that are about myself in some sense, such as a proprioceptive distinction between my body and other objects in my mental spatial model, an introspective ability to track my thoughts and feelings, and a sense of the role I play in my community that I am expected to adhere to. However, the form of these pieces of mental content is wildly different, and it is only through an abstract mental categorization that I recognize them as all about the same thing. Moreover, I believe these senses are imperfect but broadly accurate, so I don’t know what it is that you’re saying is an illusion.
Hmm, not sure what to say here. To check, when I write that
Then does any of that match your experience?
My main point of disagreement is the way you characterize these judgements as feelings. With minor quibbles I agree with your paragraph after substituting “it feels” with “I think”. In your article you distinguish between abstract intellectual understanding which may believe that there is no self in some sense and some sort of lower-level perception of the self which has a much harder time accepting this; I don’t follow what you’re pointing to in the latter.
To be clear, I do acknowledge to experience mental phenomena that are about myself in some sense, such as a proprioceptive distinction between my body and other objects in my mental spatial model, an introspective ability to track my thoughts and feelings, and a sense of the role I play in my community that I am expected to adhere to. However, the form of these pieces of mental content is wildly different, and it is only through an abstract mental categorization that I recognize them as all about the same thing. Moreover, I believe these senses are imperfect but broadly accurate, so I don’t know what it is that you’re saying is an illusion.