I have been doing Harriss tests on myself. Self consciousness is a test he provides for how we know we have a sense of self that is separate from the physical body. He says when we look directly into the eyes of another person, we experience a moment of discomfort, of worry about what others think of us, of wanting to protect the inner self we feel behind the eyes. He says people feel this self to be located there in the head, somewhere behind the eyes. He provides a further test of the reality of that self by asking us to look carefully for it and when we look carefully behind the eyes or anywhere else, it vanishes. We can’t find it. Though Harris speaks about mind, consciousness, and experience as if he thinks they are real and important, by the criteria of his test, these phenomena all vanish when I look carefully for them. Mere fleeting perceptions that disappear the moment we try to locate them. All things beyond the physical have this character. The tree I see outside my window is objectively real. My subjective perception of the tree is an illusion. My perception of the thing is not the thing, any more than a map is the terrain it represents. Yet I need my perceptions and my sense of self in order to know anything at all. I can identify weaknesses in my sense of self and my thinking that produces my own suffering, but I also know of strengths that produce experiences of happiness, beauty, wonder, love. I would rather work to strengthen my illusion of self than to get rid of it. As the mother of a son diagnosed with schizophrenia (see moorebowen.wordpress), it strikes me as cruel and potentially dangerous to suggest to someone with a fragile and confused mind that his self is an illusion. Wouldnt it be better to help him see himself as a better, stronger, happier self? samharris.org/waking-up
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 20:57:33 +0000
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