One of the key themes in Jay Garfield’s book Losing Ourselves is the distinction he makes between a self and a person (built on the thinking of Candrakīrti and Hume). Garfield describes how the idea of a transcendent self:
should convince us that we are talking about the self because it perfectly captures that idea of the subject that stands behind mind and body as their possessor, that to which we seem to be so atavistically attached. That is the self, not the person. It should convince us that something has gone terribly wrong because, when we reflect carefully, it does not seem at all plausible that we really exist outside of space and time and distinct from our psychophysical embodiment.
– Garfield, Losing Ourselves, Chapter 4
It is not that this self isn’t useful to we humans, but more that it is an illusion (or “apparent integration” — also in Garfield) that reifies agency and control.
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