WHAT is the self? Rene Descartes encapsulated one idea of it in the 1600s when he wrote: "I think, therefore I am". He saw his self as a constant, the essence of his being, on which his knowledge of everything else was built. Others have very different views. Writing a century later, David Hume argued that there was no "simple and continued" self, just the flow of experience. Hume's proposal resonates with the Buddhist concept anatta¯, or non-self, which contends that the idea of an unchanging self is an illusion and also at the root of much of our unhappiness.
Today, a growing number of philosophers and psychologists hold that the self is an illusion. But even if the centuries-old idea of it as essential and unchanging is misleading, there is still much to explain, for example: how you distinguish your body from the rest of the world; why ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
