/lit/ - Literature

>>18265766
First read up on Kant. He basically solved epistemology, and made a map of the human mind, with the exception of one missing puzzle piece. The source of self consciousness. Its good place to start.

>>18265766
Yes, there is a self, it is the presence to which everything else is presented, the unchanging awareness amidst the changing phenomena. It is proves itself because its existence is self-revealing, i.e. it reveals itself to itself as the foundation of all experience, the light by which other things take place. We can tell that this foundational awareness or presence is self-revealing, because if it wasn’t self-revealing and all knowledge or awareness needed to verified by another awareness it would lead to a regress which would prevent us from knowing anything because the knowledge in question would have to be cognized by another to be known, and that by another and so on ad infinitum, there would never be a point at which it would actually be known, Citsuka (~1200 AD) points this out in his work Tattva-pradīpikā.

Whether this entity consisting of self-revealing presence is the soul is a metaphysical position which cannot be proven, although it’s the reasonable and correct position to accept this as true.

>>18266388
>t. philosophy tube

>>18266661
>t. assuming faggot

>>18265766
>is there a self? a soul?
yes
>prove it
I feel like it

>>18266654
>It is proves itself because its existence is self-revealing
Blatant sophistry

No self, no soul. Sense of interiority produced by perception is completely illusory. No good reason to believe otherwise

>>1826842
>sophistry
In what way? I provided an argument and all you did was assert your position as the truth without providing an argument for why it’s correct.
>Sense of interiority produced by perception is completely illusory.
This doesn’t make any sense, because illusions don’t experience themselves. Illusions have no sentience or self-awareness. Illusions can only be perceived by an existing consciousness or awareness, absent any existing sentient entity there is nobody who can perceive any illusions.
>No good reason to believe otherwise
Except that if there was no separate observer from perceptions like a self there would be no way for them to be integrated into a continuous experience like we have since perceptions can’t perceive one another, the sense of smell from your nose cannot see what the eye sees and so on, so the fact that multifaceted perceptions enter into and leave the same space of awareness shows that our awareness or self is different from those perceptions.

>>18268424
see >>18268635

>>18266388
Kant’s epistemology is basically innate categories no? That means distorted platonic epistemology. But Kant ends up asserting knowledge is not possible right?

>>18266654
>unchanging awareness
but we die, thus even this "general awareness" changes/ends

>>18269343
>but we die, thus even this "general awareness" changes/ends
You are supposing without proof that awareness is created by the body and dies with it, but there is no empirical evidence of that which can be provided to substantiate this claim. If awareness or consciousness is eternal and continues on after the body dies then it would indeed be unchanging.

>>18269518
but we are born, thus even this "general awareness" changes/begins

>>18269553
but I'm sad

>>18269553
>but we are born, thus even this "general awareness" changes/begins
“being born” is just a type of content that is presented or revealed to awareness, so that’s not actually a change in awareness or consciousness as such. At a certain point, the sensation of being born was presented to your awareness as an experience which was and is different from that awareness which registered it. The fact that your memory does not extend to before this particular content was presented to your awareness does not establish that either a) this was the beginning in time of your awareness, or that b) the presentation of this content to your awareness involved your awareness itself being subject to any modification whatsoever.

>>18268424
>Blatant sophistry
>Sense of interiority produced by perception
Blatant sophistry. Perception is itself a sense. There ought to be a subject where perception is percepted. That is the self, the awareness.
To believe otherwise is to miss the point of "perception", "thought" and even the term "subject".

>if so how can [w]e prove [the self]?
Prove it to whom? To ourselves? Focus on the thing that remains the same when your moods, thoughts, sensations and desires change. In other words, turn the awareness on itself. Prove it to others? You can't.

>>18269343
>>18269553
>"general awareness" changes/ends/begins
You don't know that. All you know is that the contents of the awareness change and that the content we call memories only reaches back to a certain extent. All else is speculation.

>>18265766
This question is basically a confusion about language rather than a real problem with potential solutions.

>>18265766
See Nagel

>>18269643
>You don't know that. All you know is that the contents of the awareness change and that the content we call memories only reaches back to a certain extent. All else is speculation.

the same can be said the other way around, you don't know consciousness is unchanging, you can only speculate, since those changing memories are the only think that give you the "proof" consciousness exist to begin with

>>18269599
that's an unpersonal type of awareness tho, it has nothing to do with "the self" since lacks any form of individuality, such a general type of awareness almost denies the idea of self and goes in line with the interbeing theory in wich we're all the same consciousness experimenting itself in different ways, pretty much the mahayana school of tough

>>18269653
pretty much this

>>18270254
>the same can be said the other way around, you don't know consciousness is unchanging
That's not true, we do know that consciousness is unchanging because it infallibly reveals itself at every moment as the self-revealing ground of one's experience. No matter what happens, no matter what perception presents itself, no matter what thought one has, all of these things are presented to an awareness who precedes that thing and who remains when it passes, allowing each of the particular things to be known in turn; in each of these cases awareness simply reveals itself as the presence by which other things are known without differing in itself. Since this awareness is always there as the foundation of our conscious experience, and since in every instance it functions the same way (viz. revealing other things by its presence) without noticeably differing from instance to instance, we can tell that it's unchanging.

>you can only speculate, since those changing memories are the only think that give you the "proof" consciousness exist to begin with
Memories are not the only proof that consciousness exists, that consciousness exists is proven by the fact that I am sentient of this very moment taking place right now in the present, not in the past as memory but as a presently-experienced reality.

>>18270300
>that's an unpersonal type of awareness tho, it has nothing to do with "the self" since lacks any form of individuality,
It only doesn't resemble the western conception of the self (which is often simply the ego or sense of individuality), but it perfectly corresponds to the conception of the Self or Atman taught by the Upanishads and Advaita Vedanta, which is the correct definition of the Self. The Self of Advaita is non-individual, and it is the light by which "personal" traits like personality characteristics are known, it is the innermost presence and light compared to the "outer" things which it knows, it is the innermost Self to which all else is presented as objects. That Advaita and the Upanishads have the correct definition of Self is shown by the fact that if you regard the ego or "personality" as the self then since those are inevitably known by an awareness who differs from them, this western conception of self amounts to saying that there is a presence inside you (awareness) who is not you (as it is not your self, being 'impersonal' and so it's foreign to you) but which knows your self as its object, this is obviously completely incoherent since the self should be the fundamental core or essence of the being instead of a mental object known by some alien foreign entity who is inside you observing you for some reason despite not being you.

>such a general type of awareness almost denies the idea of self and goes in line with the interbeing theory in wich we're all the same consciousness experimenting itself in different ways, pretty much the mahayana school of thought
This is actually the position of Hinduism, although Mahayana was influenced by Hinduism it still largely rejects this position. Nagarjuna denied that there was a self-revealing awareness at the core of living entities. Asanga accepted that there was, but later Yogacharins like Dharmakirti and Dinnaga rejected this and instead came up with an incoherent theory of self-knowing thoughts/sensations but without any separate self or consciousness who knows them (this was refuted by Shankara). Later Mahayana/Vajrayana schools mostly reject the position of Asanga and often even the later watered-down version propounded by Dharmakirti. When Mahayana and Vajrayana schools speak of a general/infinite/non-dual consciousness they usually interpret it as symbolically denoting the lack of intrinsic existence i.e. the sunyata or voidness of consciousness since their anti-foundationalist autism usually prevents them from affirming the reality of the most self-evidence thing ever, their own consciousness.

>>18265766
The soul is the from of the body