Meditation

[JustinCEO]

@AnneB

Suspecting that I have a different idea of “self” than Harris does, I looked up “self”.

Merriam-Webster has two definitions that I think are relevant:

1 a (1) : an individual’s typical character or behavior

I think this is what you (ingracke) mean when you say

Seeing your “self” as a creation of your mind can make it easier to break out of old habits, easier to change and be a different type of person. The idea you have of who you are is just an idea (or, a group of ideas): it is not who you are.

The personality we think we have, the way of typically acting that we think we have, is just a set of ideas we have in our minds. And ideas can be changed. This is a helpful way of looking at it.

But even if with this definition of “self”, it seems confusing to say, as Harris does, that the self is an illusion. The part that’s an illusion is the idea that our personality and character are innate and unchangeable. But it’s not an illusion that we have habits of thinking and acting that can be labeled a personality or character or self.

The self being an “illusion” seems like too strong a statement to me if you interpret the statement in a philosophically rigorous way. But I think maybe lots of people wouldn’t understand it as well if you said that their sense of self was just another “idea” or “concept” or something like that. I think “illusion” might better communicate a contradiction of certain standard ways of viewing the self, at least to a general audience. Not sure.