> Grimm observes that this rambling dialectical inquiry yields a result that coincides with Schopenhauer’s opinion that the self is a point whose immobility is useful for discerning, by contrast, the heavy-laden flight of time. This opinion translates the self into a mere logical imperative, without qualities of its own or distinctions from individual to individual.<p>I find it difficult to reconcile this with a modern understanding of neurobiology and psychology.<p>> Are desire, thought, happiness, and distress my true self? The answer, in accordance with the precept, is clearly in the negative, since those conditions expire without annulling me with them. Consciousness – the final hideout where we might track down the self – also proves unqualified. Once the emotions, the extraneous perceptions, and even ever-shifting thought are dismissed, consciousness is a barren thing, without any appearance reflected in it to make it exist.<p>I would in fact go in the opposite direction. The self is an amalgamation of all these things, layered upon each other and infinitely interwoven over time. In the same way an electron can be seen as more as a "cloud" with no definite position until measurement, we are a cloud of experiences and thoughts and emotions that happens to take one configuration or another based on external "measurements".<p>There is no thought or emotion I can have right now that isn't in some way influenced or shaped by what I may have experienced a few minutes ago, or an hour ago, or a week ago, or a year ago, or a decade ago. If I strip away the emotions, the thoughts, the perceptions, all I have is a functionless mirror.
“The human body is the best image of the human soul”<p>I think this essay gets overly bogged down in thinking that personality is some thing that exists in the brain. Obviously it does to some extent. But instead of trying to self investigate your own personality or your own consciousness, meditate on the people that are close to you. Especially the ones that you love and the ones that annoy you. It’s so blindingly obvious that there’s giant differences between people, but those differences aren’t just in some abstract corner of their brain. People walk differently. They smile differently. Their attention is drawn to different things. What it means for someone to love you is completely different depending on who that someone is, they go about it in their own special way.<p>Interacting with other people is also your best window into your own personality and your own consciousness. Who are you comfortable with? Who shines brightly in your memory? What things do you miss about a lover when they’re gone? In solipsism our personality doesn’t mean much and our consciousness might as well be a brand floating in a vat. But in community we are as differentiated as can be.
When I travel, I find myself wondering if there is truly much difference between myself and the millions of people that are living their lives in the giant megacities.<p>If I were instead born in a foreign country, with the same mind but looking more like the locals, would I act much different?
>There is no whole self.<p>What makes anyone think there is a self at all? Materialism/physicalism is a more logical way to look at it. From quantum fields to atoms to molecules to biological systems, it's all random.