{"id":114,"date":"2020-04-17T16:40:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T20:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/?p=114"},"modified":"2020-05-07T05:10:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T09:10:05","slug":"illusions-of-the-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/distillation-paper\/illusions-of-the-self\/","title":{"rendered":"A Double Rainbow: The Illusions of Self and Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Think of a memory you have from childhood. Maybe the first day of elementary school, or the first day of pre-k. Maybe you\u2019re imagining a framed photograph of your sweet younger self. But is this you? You obviously look different now, but is any part of that younger you, you in this present moment? Is the \u201cyou\u201d in this present moment even the same you as the one in the previous moment? These are questions that J. David Velleman explores in his striking philosophical paper, <\/span>So It Goes<\/span><\/i> (2006).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0We naturally think and feel that the person we imagine as us in our memories is the same person as us in the present. We may look at a baby picture and think, \u201cwow, I was so cute.\u201d When people tell us that we were so precious as a little baby, we may actually believe they\u2019re talking about us, the same self that exists in the present moment. It\u2019s the same name, right? \u201cMe\u201d has always referred to me, and I never saw a discontinuity in that. According to Velleman, this version of the self is called the \u201cenduring\u201d self. Furthermore, he argues that Buddhists believe this self to be an illusion and the root cause of suffering, and he agrees with them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Velleman interprets Buddhist philosophy to assert that the root cause of human suffering, or, what causes each individual\u2019s own suffering, is their personal belief in an\u201cenduring\u201d self. Some Western philosophers (Freud for example) believe that we must invent or construct the self, and that this is something to be proud of. For Buddhists, this is actually the root of our suffering and we must undo this habitual way of thinking. In <\/span>So It Goes<\/span><\/i>, Velleman, a contemporary Western philosopher, wants to see if we can understand this Buddhist-type idea in Western philosophical terms, in the hopes of grasping how we can ultimately be free from suffering.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Velleman also argues that there is another illusion that goes hand-in-hand with the illusion of the enduring self: the illusion of the passage of time. We experience time as the thing that links all of time, from our childhood until now, and our future, together. He claims that one must have a sense of the passing of time in order to have an enduring self. This causes suffering because time keeps ticking away from the moment we were born, and begins to tick even faster as we get older, and so we fear death, our running out of time, which causes us immense suffering. So, if you take away this belief in the passing of time, then you take away the attachment to the illusion of an enduring self, and suffering ceases.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Western metaphysics, there are two theories about how objects persist–or seem to persist– through time. In one theory, objects are said to <\/span>endure, <\/span><\/i>and in<\/span> the other they are said to <\/span>perdure<\/span><\/i>. Let\u2019s first look at the idea of <\/span>perduring, <\/span><\/i>which tries to describe things extending in time by analogy with how things extend in space<\/span>.<\/span><\/i> Think of a tunnel between two subway stops. You can pick any section of the tunnel and say it’s part of the tunnel, but the whole tunnel does not exist at that one section. This is to say that, spatially, with an object that extends in space like a tunnel does, the entire object doesn\u2019t exist at any one particular point in space, only part of it does. Similarly, speaking temporally, you, or anything, is never <\/span>wholly present<\/span><\/i> at one given time. What we call <\/span>you<\/span><\/i>, in time, consists of temporal parts. What is present at any given moment is only one temporal part of you, namely you at a specific moment in time. Just like the tunnel consists of parts that extend through space, the whole temporal <\/span>you<\/span><\/i> consists of different temporal parts, each of which exists at a different moment in time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, according to the more intuitively natural theory of objects <\/span>enduring<\/span><\/i> in time, an object persists as time passes. If you believe in the <\/span>endurance<\/span><\/i> of objects through time, then you would believe that you are always <\/span>wholly present<\/span><\/i> throughout the various moments of your life. The whole you is the sum of all of your spatial parts, and that whole you persists through all moments in time– until your time runs out. That is the enduring self. Velleman believes that this view is an illusion that is rooted in our first-person phenomenal experience, like a rainbow is an illusion–it doesn\u2019t exist anywhere outside of our own vision perception apparatus. He believes that the concept of a perduring self, one composed of different parts corresponding to different points in time, is more the true nature of the self.<\/span><\/p>\n

If we, like Velleman, believe the self perdures rather than endures, then we have a better chance of experiencing time as a succession of moments, in a moment-to-moment way. The realization that you only exist wholly in the present moment, can remind you to <\/span>be<\/span><\/i> in the present moment. Lots of suffering arises when you anticipate the future, or dwell on the past. You can anticipate the future from the present moment, but now you realize the future involves some other you, or some other part of you, not the part that is in this moment. You can think of the past from the present moment, but that no longer exists because those are just temporal bits of the self that have already passed. No matter how it seems, you are not the same person you were in that photograph, in any photograph from the past. Or more precisely, that person is a temporal part of something of which the you right now is also a different temporal part. It means that any bad memory you have from the past, you can have some relief by realizing that that person that experienced whatever happened in that memory, is not you now. You are not the same person you were a moment ago, that person existed in that moment, and this is a new moment, with a new person-part, temporally speaking. Let\u2019s try and take a look at or at least be curious about, what this self is, this temporal part, in this strange time that doesn\u2019t really pass \u201cyou\u201d by like a rushing river.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Think of a memory you have from childhood. Maybe the first day of elementary school, or the first day of pre-k. Maybe you\u2019re imagining a…<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingA Double Rainbow: The Illusions of Self and Time<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1489,"featured_media":217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-distillation-paper","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/phi345-sp20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}