Yesterday I was talking to someone who read my page on free will. They told me that I had made some compelling arguments but that they were sure they had a self.
Well I have to admit I found this a bit frustrating. Even though I didn’t want to be frustrated, I was.
So what do I mean when I say that “you” doesn’t exist? Perhaps I didn’t make it explicit in my page about free will but the self and free will are linked concepts. They can be approached separately but you will realize that there is no self without free will and no free will without the self. They are one in the same.
Perhaps a better question to ask is, how do you know “you” exist? What is the signature of yourself?
My friend told me that “the knowledge that no one else was experiencing her consciousness” was what gave her the sense of self. But what is the signature of knowledge? From a matter of experience knowledge is just a thought. What is a thought? Where is a thought? Thinking that you exist, is not existing.
There is a feeling associating with what most people consider to be themselves. But this feeling is not evidence for a self. Upon examination of any of those feelings, whether they’re tied to vision (feeling like we’re riding around in our heads) or thoughts (feeling identified with the strings of thoughts that spontaneously appear and disappear) they never actually show any trace of a “you.” A thing to which things are happening or a thing that is producing anything. From a matter of experience, “you” don’t do anything and nothing is happening to you. Everything is just spontaneously appearing in this undefined space of consciousness (that has no shape or size or location).
Like free will, definitions are a problem. My friend and I went back and forth just arguing definitions which can feel like you’re getting no where. Here is one attempt: “you” is the feeling that there is a separate object from conscious experience. There is everything you are seeing and hearing now and separate from that there is the self, which is hearing and seeing object.
I guess I’ll have to try out this new definition with my friend and see how it goes.