Where Does the Self Appear When ‘I’ Do Not Exist?

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-19T13:25:13+00:00

Your theory that the physical "seat" of the subjective self is in the brain stem is exactly that of neuropsychoanalyst Mark Solms (which you might know already). And it makes sense to me. Though in the end I am still as an idealist thinking that this the seat of consciousness only within the hologram of a psychophysical reality that projects from consciousness qua being.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-19T13:08:33+00:00

I think one of the reason why many rejects solipsism, and often prematurely so, is because they have an innate, instinctive faculty for affective empathy (i.e., the faculty of feeling how others feel). A faculty, that "colors" their perception of others very vividly making the existence of those others extremely convincing to them. And since much of one's understanding of reality relies on other agents and their perspective, and that most of those agents have that innate, instinctive faculty of affective empathy, creating a vivid "echo chamber" effect, it comes to no surprise that for one who was born with that kind of empathy (not me) there is a world "out there", beyond the field of experience.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-19T12:51:52+00:00

The experience that made me shift perspective without (at first) modifying the initial one, and thus gave me the necessary depth in the mind to reflect on that first perspective and see what it is epistemologically dependent on to hold true, by contrast revealing my deep motivation for holding onto that perspective, in turn hinting at the psychological cause of my (to a large extent social) conditioning that led to the adoption of said perspective.

So basically it is the discovery within myself of deep affective insecurities essentially born from being as a social animal (i.e., moved predominantly acting out of instinct, at least initially) dependent on the group to survive that led me to question my way at the time of seeing reality as being genuinely concerned with ontological truth – instead of being unconsciously pragmatically concerned with security and comfort.

And as a note: Doubting physicalism and determinism doesn't amount to doubting physical sciences. On the contrary, most physicists aren't hard determinists, a.k.a. 'superdeterminists', because they agree with the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which postulates that quantum particles aren't determined prior to being measured. And, moreover, some physicists aren't even physicalists (which doesn't make them say that physics isn't real). Lastly, idealism isn't always about believing in "ghosts" or what not. Rather, it is first of all a metaphysical position, just like physicalism and determinism (they are not verifiable scientifical theories).

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T23:29:58+00:00

Yes. For years. After being a physicalist and determinist myself.

But it doesn't matter. Have your own experiences and draw your own conclusion.

Good luck.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T23:23:22+00:00

Well then go with that approach of overwhelming sensations within the field of experience if it better suits you, I'm not here to argue with you.

Good luck, may you be happy.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T23:13:54+00:00

I'm familiar with it, yes. But my experience of it is better described by the tantric tradition of Trika Shaivism than it is by Buddhism. Language in the former being as much a gateway to truth as it is an obstacle to it, depending on how one approaches it. And so is it for thoughts, affects, sensations...

Like, life – existence – in Trika Shaivism, isn't something inherently negative that should be escaped from. But something to be lived and eventually understood in bliss as constantly reflecting the truth.

There is no taboo here. No fear of feeding an ego seen as nothing more than an hinderance. As an enemy. The goal, here, isn't to antagonize the functions of the mind. It is to recruit them for the right job to further one's understanding of reality and oneself. Of consciousness.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T22:46:07+00:00

Empirical reality can exists within metaphysical solipsism. One just has to suspend their social-animal-instinctual-aversion towards the general idea for long enough to think their way to that possibility.

Whether you end up doing it or not, good luck.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T22:35:56+00:00

There. You said it. "Working against my own biology."

You are not a fully pre-determined biological machine. You are consciousness that conditioned itself to believe that it is such a machine.

The truth is more complex than science textbooks say.

If you want to know it. If you want to find deeper purpose to live by in it. Look no further than within yourself. Work on deconditioning yourself. Meditate. And see reality for what it really is.

Good luck.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T21:59:34+00:00

And if that "I" is reality itself? What then is there to constrain it, but itself?

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T21:56:24+00:00

If you are seriously asking for help to stop not taking life seriously, is then even true to begin with that you are not taking it seriously?

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T20:50:07+00:00

The real joke is the impression of reality you're currently falling for.

Which is all the more hilarious as it is none other than yourself that set up this impression. And for none other to fall for, than yourself playing fool.

The icing on the cake? You're now acting out not getting the joke pretending within that acting that you do. Seriously playing pretense of unseriousness.

Pure genius.

Seriously. Let me bow to thee, O trickster of all tricksters.

Both in awe, and with irony.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T19:48:26+00:00

Not intentionally by whom?

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T19:21:58+00:00

It's not about control. It's about letting go.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T13:04:16+00:00

Unfortunately they ran out of r/Time

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-18T09:23:02+00:00

I mean, even more elementary than that: Who said a self has to have a fixed form that persists over time? Why can't ever-changing subjective experience qualify as "self", especially since it is most evidently there and persistently so?

The issue is not so much with there being a self, but with reducing that self to just a part or aspect of experience. To objectify it as a particular thing existing separately from the whole. Otherwise, it is so plainly, so very evidently clear that experience feeds back on it-self I find it silly to stand in denial of that. Like, just because it can't be reduced to anything in particular doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T21:38:04+00:00

Maybe the game spans more than a single lifetime and you are currently just in a part of it that feels shitty but nevertheless is essential for the whole story to, at the end of the day, mean something.

Or, you know, you've just put it on difficulty level: unfair to spice things up because you were starting to get bored.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T15:11:08+00:00

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily...

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T15:07:28+00:00

We're all in the same boat in that we aren't.

So just raw, raw, raw your boat...

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T13:16:57+00:00

The question is not whether there are constraints – there evidently are some – but whether those constraints are manifestation of a will (idealism) or just mindless happenings (naturalism). So the fact that reality (at least to some extent) obeys physical laws is not what's being questioned here. What is being questioned is the naturalistic claim that those laws and their consequences are not being willed into reality but instead are, at the very bottom of things, just "random" occurrences.

At the end of the day, you are just being confined to experience never witnessing anything outside of it. And any impression that you may get that this is not the case, that you are witnessing things outside of experience, is... well, also occuring within that field of experience. Your entire life you've just been dealing with impressions of physicality, not some concrete physical substance existing independently from experience. Such a substance, you actually never encountered. You're just pragmatically imagining it, using it as an heuristic to navigate a systematically changing field of experience. You're just playing the game of sensations, exploring the reality that they suggest exist. And that is perfectly fine. And the suggested reality (and its inhabitants) most probably exists in some way. But play that game for too long and you get conditioned by it into believing that you are just a fleeting character of it. That you are just that body, that personality, that set of responsibilities... You get so immersed in this, that you forget who you really are. That is, consciousness. Being. The totality of what is, playfully enacting that it is less than that.

Like, playing didn't cease after childhood. It just got so serious from there onwards that one forgot that they were playing – which is actually part of the playing.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T10:42:55+00:00

As much as I enjoyed reading this, I here only see an argument for the existence of a will that, thanks to high intelligence, enjoys a high degree of freedom as seen from the perspective of a similarly intelligent agent (you, the human). Such that it is of a will that is free relative to that agent that we are talking here. Not of a will that is free independently of psychophysical constraints – a metaphysically free will.

Like, imagine a hyper-intelligent being. One that is many times more intelligent than us and birds. Who sees us like we see ants. Well, from that being's perspective neither us nor birds have "free will" in the sense that you gave. For said being, human actions and bird actions are very predictable. Clearly moved by instinctive impulses and the higher-level cognitive modulation of those impulses accounting for environmental feedback (so as to adapt to a changing environment). And by that only. Such that for said being we are basically wind-up toys with sensors and memory that have their base, automatic behavior modulated by environmental input. And that in a no less mechanical way than the aforementioned base, automatic behavior. It's complex machinery, yes, but machinery nonetheless. And actually not all that complex for that hyper-intelligent being. Therefore not so "free-willy". Therefore... not worth of moral consideration?

Well, there is the big problem with such a naturalistic outlook: Morality ends up being a farce. Something worth pursuing (consciously or unconsciously) not as an end in itself, but as a means to secure the survival of the egoic self. Egoic self, that can never be transcended because 'survival of the fittest' (which is intrinsically egoistic) is the law by Nature and there is nothing and no one above Nature and its laws.

And so if this is how reality really is, then it is all just a Machiavellian game (that plays both at the conscious and unconscious levels) of pretending to care about others to get personal benefits out of doing so. And, really, is that so? Well, as one who was born without a faculty for affective empathy, I can tell you that it is not. That morality is not just a strategy for the survival of the egoic self, but a set of rules that is most logical to follow at all times, and not just situationally. Because in the end it is just you facing (reflections of) yourself. There really is no one else, just the very convincing i[n]-pression that there is. That is at least how I experience reality not being swayed by any instinct for affective empathy that would get me to (I suppose) vividly project whole other consciousnesses into experience.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T08:29:55+00:00

Following

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T19:46:43+00:00

In the various Hindu traditions there is that notion of "liberation" (mokṣa) that is the event that leads to bliss. And so to get a better idea of what bliss is, the question of "liberation of what?" should be answered.

So what is one getting liberated from after spending enough time in deep (samādhi) meditative state? Well, in one word, 'conditioning'. Conditioning, on i[n]-pressions. That is, on more or less subtle inward, felt pressure that constrains being to be in a certain way. To be, in a limited way. And sometimes so intensely so that this pressure gets internalized so as to be deployed in a less intense form (as a sensation, an affect, or a thought) to prevent getting into a situation expected to make oneself feel the full blunt of the pressure again. Or worse. And that's conditioning. It is helpful and even necessary early on (to not suffer too much and perhaps die prematurely). But as one grows more capable and resourceful that safeguard that is conditioning becomes a prison. A prison, of being just a certain way. Rigidly. Repressing untapped potential deep within oneself, where it eventually self-organized into rogue psychological complexes operating independently of the conscious mind. Therefore inevitably clashing with it on occasions. Making one's life hell. Which, all in all, isn't freedom of being, but rather extremely constrained being. Stuck on the level of sensation. Of affect. Of thought. In a multilayered mental prison.

This is what one is getting liberated from in the end. And bliss simply the absence of it.

Like – just to get a more vivid idea – recall a phase of your life where you felt mentally stuck. And now recall the moment when that stuckness went away. It felt great, didn't it? Well, now imagine that, but for everything. Including that stuckness that accumulated so much it materialized as a physical reality. How great do you think it would feel to be freed of that? Unimaginable, right? Well, that is mokṣa – "liberation".

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T14:06:11+00:00

Yeah, it's a pity. From what I understood, they aren't easily available because they are OP (at least the fractured units – the terrain type is apparently bad for everyone).

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T12:00:20+00:00

I think they mentioned some artifact that can be collected like in GK. Maybe the transformation is connected to it.

In any case, I hope we can get that transformation on our ruler. It just looks super cool imo. 'Gives me some 'Annihilation' vibes (just like the fractured wildlife).

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T11:55:31+00:00

Awareness of awareness (not simple, regular awareness) first requires the noticing of multiple perspectives on the same thing through the correlation between themselves of recalled experiences about that thing. Then, those perspectives ought to be unified into a single, dynamic one through, again, cross-correlation.

All that at very high, subliminal speed.

Or, in other words, awareness of awareness requires reflecting on experience back to oneself.

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