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The Self

The Illusion of the Self

Sam Woolfe says that we’re deluding our selves.

In our day-to-day lives, it always appears that there is an I who is thinking, perceiving, and interacting with the world. Even the language we use assumes that there is a self – a distinct conscious entity: when we talk to each other we say, ‘I think…’, ‘You are…’ etc. However, appearances can be deceptive. The cognitive scientist Bruce Hood defines an illusion as an experience of something that is not what it seems. He uses this definition in his book, The Self Illusion: How The Social Brain Creates Identity (2012), arguing that the self is an illusion – and he admits that everyone experiences a sense of self – a feeling that we have an identity, and that this identity does our thinking and perceiving – but he says that beyond the experience, there is nothing we can identify as the self.

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