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Letters
Letters
Illusion of an Illusion • No-Buddhism • Artificial Unintelligence • Machiavellian Intrigues • A Variety of Universal Moral Laws • Can’t Keep a Good Zombie Down • Natural Philosophy • Why Did The Philosopher Cross The Road? • Condensed Thoughts
Illusion of an Illusion
Dear Editor: I query the arguments of Sam Woolfe’s article ‘The Illusion of the Self’ (PN 97). At one point he calls the self an ‘illusion’, and at another a ‘hallucination’, in both cases implying that it does not exist. ‘Hallucination’ is the more precise term, and my dictionary defines it as “a seemingly real perception of something not actually present.” His analogy is to the supposed illusion of a triangle which is not really there; but in the illustration most of it is there, and I dispute that this is an illusion, still less a hallucination, if these words mean ‘something which is not there’. What Woolfe should be arguing is that there is not a single or simple or complete thing called the self, just as many objects like triangles may not be quite all there or quite perfect.
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