I wanna play. Auraist () recently wrote:
Do you know a valid (non-circular) justification for the existence of the self? In other words, can you prove that you exist? If so, send that proof in reply to this email and if it is indeed non-circular we’ll publish it, inform the world’s philosophers and major media, and send you a complimentary lifetime paid subscription to Auraist.”
Here’s my answer.
A Non-Circular Argument for the Existence of the Self
I may not exist. My world may not exist, and this non-existing world may be experienced through the context of this non-existing self. Yet, even if a non-entity hallucinates a non-entity, the reality it proves is the existence of the hallucination—the thought.
The thought exists but perhaps not the “I” who thought it.
Therefore, thought is real, and we’ll define thought as the experience of the self and other, whether or not these things exist. Thought becomes the active subject. It is aware, whether the subject and object of its awareness are real or not. We’ll define this thinking awareness (which experiences the presumption of self and world) as consciousness. Consciousness is therefore real. Everything of which it is conscious may not be.
The experience of consciousness is the sum total of reality if nothing else is real, and it is the sum total of subjective reality if everything is real.
One might try to argue that the experience of consciousness is the sum total of subjective reality even if the world is real and the self is not, but that reasoning cannot hold. If the self exists in no other way, it would then exist as the subjectiveness of the experience of consciousness, the self as a projection of consciousness, as opposed to the self possessing consciousness. There’s no meaningful difference between the two concepts, only the acknowledgement that two are linked so that when one ceases to be, so does the other.
It is different with the world.
“My” relationship with “my” consciousness can be that complicated, enmeshed relationship without it changing anything. Even if we presume the existence of the self is some superficially corporal way, allowing for the reality of the body and the brain, these things alone would not produce the existence of “myself” any more than any other random body and brain. Whatever the chicken-and-egg of brain and the thought may be, it remains reasonable to argue that the experience of consciousness projects the existence of self.
If the world is a projection of consciousness, however, that is relevant. Then, the world would also cease to exist when consciousness ceases. The others whom consciousness experiences would only be a projection of itself. These are two vastly different outcomes, and this argument has not distinguished between them.
Yet, the experience of consciousness has direction from a perceived interior to a perceived exterior. In other words, it has orientation. In that orientation is the experience of the self, and self need not be anything more than its own experience. We need not imagine self as a homunculus at the other end of the mechanism that is this orientated consciousness. Self is not the homunculus but the mechanism, and the mechanism is real.
Whether the world is real or illusory, the self is real according to any relevant measurement. Thought exists and is perceived from a particular orientation that is the experience of the self.
Self is the orientation of conscious perception; therefore I am.
Until I cease to perceive,
I’m Thaddeus Thomas.
Your essential claim is:
“We need not imagine self as a homunculus at the other end of the mechanism that is this orientated consciousness. Self is not the homunculus but the mechanism, and the mechanism is real.”
This is an ingenious insight, i.e. “clever, original, and inventive.” It may well be the foundation of a corrective understanding of “self.” I think we probably need to add the capacity of memory to account for a sense of a persistent, unified self.
In any event, it is, I think the ingenuity of this argument that enables its success. Yet the Auraist, in acknowledging your success, also partly diminishes it by adding,
“This understanding of self, it must be said, is not how that term is commonly understood. So the challenge for Auraist readers now becomes: Do you know a valid (non-circular) justification for the existence of the self, as that term is commonly understood?”
What if the common understanding is a misunderstanding? Your argument serves not just as an argument but also as a reorienting insight into the nature of the self. It even accommodates the transcendent perception that the self (as a singular “it,” or absolutely discrete identity) is illusory.
To respond to your argument by partly disclaiming it as offering a “nonstandard” understanding and then seeking valid arguments for the “standard” understanding serves what purpose? To seek valid and but potentially misguided and unsound arguments?
Better, I think, would have ben to seek such arguments that were now required to engage your augment, so that the discussion has some bearing beyond the gamesmanship of winning a lifetime subscription. (Congratulations!)
I would have said all this at the Auraist’s stack, but, “alas,” comments were disabled.
Unfortunately my Buddhist and Stoic worldviews will not allow me to acknowledge the self. I spend all the time I can each day, denying that my lack of ability to perceive objectively or that I understand the thoughts and struggles of other living beings.