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>"They each strike me as a collectives of units each behaving selflessly"They don't behave "selflessly", selfless means "concerned more with the needs and wishes of others". If they are selfless they would not go on to hurt and engulf others, I think you want to say "mindlessly" and may have been muddled because this discussion is being dragged into a strawman of "whether self exists" and "whether everyone is a Hitler just by recognizing the self", when all this article suggest is there is no need to glorify and give importance to it.

I think we might be divided by a common vocabulary. I didn't mean mindlessly, I meant selflessly. I could have said mindlessly but I wanted to drive in the point that all things that are mindless are selfless.

"Concerned more with the needs and wishes of others" is a definition that can only only apply to things that are capable of being concerned. A cancer cell acts selflessly because it is incapable of reflecting upon its actions. It cannot be concerned with its own needs because it's incapable of forming that concern. A tidal wave is selfless—it has no sense of self.

The root definition of selflessly is "without regard to self" and that does not require a conscious choice. In the absence of a conscious mind, there is only selflessness. There is selfishness in a conscious mind—even one that exists in a pantheistic universe because there are selfish needs and selfish qualities to the conscious experience.

We can recontextualize those needs by looking at ourselves solely through the context we are part of a greater whole—but it seems intuitively harmful to deny one aspect of nature in favour of another when we can reconcile them. Why seek domination when harmony is possible?

>"Self" is broadly a coherent unit of things that have a common thought and goal. e.g., how your immune system recognizes self and non-self is by the different goals of pathogens and your body cells. That's why the 20-years-ago you seem like a stranger - because you have different thoughts and goals.

Self generally refers to the concept of self awareness. The self mediation of a thinking being that seems to exists in an external world but can only perceive that external world through an internal representation. Your immune system has no sense of self. It has no concept of concern-it only has triggers. It has no concept of goals-it has actions and limits. You might have the wrong word for what you're trying to get across.

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>I think you have also confused the image of self (that is now owning your goals/thoughts/monologue) as your consciousness and that's why you think intelligence or responsible behavior must be born from that certain idea of self (e.g., believing that I am a moral person), when you can go the pragmatic way and be conscious with the consequence of your actions directly. That you are conscious about actions is more powerful than you are conscious about a certain idea of who you are.

I haven't, I just see them as inseparable due to the nature of how we physically work. I don't even believe we're individual beings. I'm a traditionally pantheistic Stoic and I see us as manifestations of a single universal being. My morality attempts a cosmic perspective. But we also manifest as individuals—and while I believe our actions should be guided towards selflessness—we experience a sense of self. If the universe has created individual awarenesses, each with a sense of self, it's natural and right to revel in our sense of self just as it's natural and right to revel in the reality that we are made for cooperation. Both are natural miracles.

To act correctly we must accept all that is true, and that includes our current nature. I cannot pick up a glass without knowing my body. I cannot guide my future self to act effectively without knowing my current self.

Again, I suspect we might be divided by a common vocabulary. I sort of pick up what you're saying and I don't think it's too different from what I believe-you just get there through a different context. Cheers!

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It is not a "leap" to accept that paying bills keeps you warm and dry. There might be a infinitesimal sliver of faith required but that is the level of faith required with all truths.

If you know all about incompleteness then you know incompleteness is the fact that we cannot construct a formal logical system that can prove all true statements.

It’s as interesting as it is clear that this concept of self the article and OP are grappling with is a western idea trying to divorce itself from a western perspective that it clearly can’t escape. It’s a shallow interpretation of the self as well (as shallow as any attempt to intellectually invoke Hitler in a conversation about the Self ffs)

The self, the individual, is an integral part of the whole. We don’t exist in a vacuum, however the whole can’t exist without the individual.

I think the heart of this argument has more to do with the way neoliberalism and hyper consumerism has created a culture (and as a symptom then, a personality of the individual) that is inherently anti-social. The “image” of “self”. Which is valid. In this way, the “image of self” becomes a form of escapism

But taking time to cultivate the self outside of the context of consumerism ultimately leads us back to the whole

I pay my bills because evidence supports the idea that it's what keeps me warm and dry, but that's still a leap of faith I'm making, I don't actually know it to be true.

I know all about the incompleteness theorem, I'm not sure what you mean by unprovable truths, maybe my definition of truth is too rigorous for this conversation.

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In Indian philosophy, “Samskaras” are emotional biases we hold on to due to past experiences. Samskaras essentially skew our perceptions of reality. Therefore, the practice of a Yogi is to let go of Samskaras in an effort to be present with what’s actually taking place bring one closer to pure awareness.

I’m not Indian or a yogi, but this idea brought me a lot of clarity and is a good reason why I am in an effort to not judge the world based on my knee jerk emotional state.

It's just not that simple.

Eating something that destroys my guts reduces my serotonin levels to depression levels. The serotonin levels control my emotions.

This in turn changes how I experience the same exact sensory input.

So, it's both. Not one or the other. There's no theory here. There's only pretending to interpret reality through one of the inputs that lets us experience life.

There is no such thing because you could always be in the Matrix or whatever. It's a stupid thing to take seriously and I doubt many people do.

Let me know when "you" stop paying your bills because objective reality isn't provable. You should check out the incompleteness theorem if you're interested in unprovable truths.

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I don't know that there is such a thing, that's why I ask

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What would proof of objective reality look like to you?

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Then what did you mean by that quote? Are you simply assuming there is an objective reality?

Yeah, the argument seems to be that a mind cannot exist without a universe to contain it but that assumes we know the nature of the mind/universe, unless I'm missing something.

This doesn't look to be what the article is arguing about at all. The thesis is not about having or not having a self, it is about whether that idea of self projected from your brain is important and deserves to be cared for. There is this pervasive misunderstanding that not caring about the self so much equals to being mindless or having no self-awareness.

A genuine question for you, how do you know you are not mindlessly behaving if all you have is your confident self?

Also, I have bad news for you if you think cells/plants don't have cognition or self-awareness, whatever it is. Check out Michael Levin's work and see if you would come back to say the same things with such confidence.

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Interesting I wasn't aware I said there was proof of what objective reality is like to compare to something other than models.

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