The Self: Reality and Illusion

January 2, 2013 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

This is a comment on Susan Blackmore’s talk, The Self Illusion, given at the Science and Nonduality Conference 2012 in The Netherlands. It might be helpful, though perhaps not essential, to watch her talk first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb_0dCgVnFI

Her contention is that the self is an illusion, and that our experience of being a self, having experiences, is an illusion. I disagree, and this video is a brief summary of my reasons.

Tom Clark’s website, which I mention near the end, is www.naturalism.org

When I realized that the idea of god was a joke, I thought that was the end of the story. Later I found that Christianity had shaped my values, and while some were worth keeping, many had lost their foundation—the meaning of life, for example. Something similar happened when I realized that the idea of free will was a joke, and I’ve spent the decades since both those realizations discovering and editing what Julia Galef calls the “orphan beliefs” they left behind. It’s a tricky business, and this blog has been a chronicle of my efforts to puzzle it all out, including reviews of related books. I hope you find it helpful.

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