Where is the self? How can dualism stand if it's just a fiction?

Come on, Frank. Did you even try to understand my point?

Let's be honest Frank, if people don't agree with you, you most often think they are wrong.

I'm not saying you are close minded, but we all have strong opinions on this bus.

I have to admit that I do tend to share your irritation with those who claim to be Buddhists and attempt to prove it with a lot of incoherent gibberish. How great is it to say whatever comes into your head and when called on it, to simply flash an enigmatic smile and respond that your critic just doesn't get it?

There doesn't seem to be anything less Buddhist than the urge to tell everyone you are a Buddhist and you get it.

Yes

Maybe because every time someone makes a point you say it is a guess.

Actually, Frank, I think that is your position. All of us have said it is ok to not accept our propositions about Buddha's teachings. All we said was that you do not 'see' the conclusion. That does not imply any fault. You are saying that believing Buddha's teaching is an acceptance of dogma, which has a bad connotation of blind belief. My belief in the teaching of the Buddha is out of awareness, not blind faith.

Certainly, a bad aspect of any 'belief' is an arrogance of superiority. That does not have to be based upon religious belief. Arrogance is bad in any form that leads to a closed mind. In Buddhism I have found knowledge that helps me understand who I am and I think makes me a better person in my relationships. I don't know any Buddhist that says it is the only way. But wanting to share an understanding is natural. Atheists can be very arrogant. They say - Look fool, don't you see what you believe is poppycock? Arrogance is a very strong human motivator, it is very much in place here.

Yes, wanting to share a belief that has brought you some measure of satisfaction is perfectly natural and in no way problematic until you (or anyone else) won't take no for an answer, or, even worse, mock or dismiss those who won't listen.

This sort of arrogance (as you rightly identify it) is not limited to believers or non-believers. However, it is an indication, when present, among people who profess to be believers that they are far less sure of their beliefs than they would like us to think.

Atheists have a leg up in this debate because superstitious religious beliefs are legion. Of course such beliefs actually say nothing about the core teachings of a religion, but they are easy targets. This doesn't mean their baser arguments have credence, but it gives them comfort.

I put it to you that "unity of self" is a social concept sustained by the abstract persistence of words which function as cognitive markers in our planning strategies, and our societal functioning as "mutually responsible entities".
What supports this view ? ....the fact that "no thing" sustains its same
"molecules" from instant to instant...no "mind" stays "the same" from moment to moment....our changing personalities(the masks worn by ancient Greek actors) are often associated with our various functional names ..Jimmy...James....Mr J. Smith... Professor Smith....Father Smith etc etc, Schizophrenia exemplifies the extreme of this fragmentation .
The only firm evidence for "unity" is individual memory whose i central feature is concerned with "pattern recognition", i.e, the establishment of functional consistencies relative to cognitive functioning.

Lets say I agree with most of what you said except its a social concept (instead it has social utility)...I rather think of it as an evolutionary process on "identity" a coordination effort on a pallet of personality's and potential cosmogony's ...and so what ? if anything that reinforces the view on why a central coordinator called "self" makes sense ! What your saying is similar to deny society as an entity because there are individuals and substantial differences among them...I am intrigued what you think group culture is if not the expression of a "social self"...(literally the self of society)

The process of extrapolating on the concept of " unity" ultimately stops at some sort of "absolute" or "holistic entity" unless we allow for infinite nesting.
Such extrapolation is rightly defined as "ineffable" and is by definition beyond the requirement of communicability (since "who" is left to communicate with ?)

"Self" is just centralized jurisprudence...its not about being the same, but rather about an ongoing same process...personality's are play roles borrowed from social recipes with adaptive success...but the central coordination per se, not the content of it, is a mechanical system, a function of the brain, a necessary wholism !

There is a possibility that I did even more than that, JL. There is a possibility I did understand it...perhaps more than you. Let me dissect it...and perhaps you will see that.



That part I agree with! Enthusiastically.



If he had recommended it as a POSSIBLE means for achieving blah, blah, blah…it might have been worthwhile. But all meditation might be doing is creating an atmosphere of delusion. (Refer back to my extended conversation with SpadeMaster…in which he avoided acknowledging the POSSIBILITY of delusion.) Have you even considered the possibility that everything "derived" from meditation might be nothing more than delusion?



Well, it certainly appears to be that way. But have you read the many opinions regarding the POSSIBILITY that everything is an illusion. (Old Saw at work here: Prove to me with certainty that everything you consider your life didn’t come into existence just a second ago complete with illusional memories!) You are being too certain about the REALITY here...or to be more precise, you are too certain the Buddha was correct about the true nature of the REALITY.



Yeah, Christians often argue that about the need for a GOD…and their arguments leave me as cold as this one does, JL.



With all the respect in the world, JL…and I do respect you and the others here: This last sentence is the reason I wrote:

A much nicer way of saying: If you do not agree with my take on things, there must be something wrong with you.

Nicer...but just as silly, JL. You should be above this kind of thing.

Yes to everything you wrote in this post, Finn.

I'm just offering further reasoning for my disagreements with them. The alternative it to suppose there must be something wrong with them for not understanding and agreeing with me!

Okay...then my response to JL applies to you also, Frank.

I only call "points" that appear to be guesses...guesses.

FRANK, that is what Christians and atheists often tell me.

MY OPINION: It is blind faith.

Blind faith is even harder to see in one's self than stubbornness.

Sorry. I cannot commune with your words "mechanical" or "brain". You are looking for reductionist explanations by analogy with machines. Since modern physics has dumped such analogies it is unlikely they would be useful in studies of the cognitive system from which physics has arisen. So unless you are advocating a deity with a "goal", the word "co-ordination" is merely a human post-facto description of "a system" without "a designer". But that "system" has been "thinged" as such by a conscious observer who defines its limits and its functions.

I disagree. First Frank is guessing (wrongly) because he doesn't know all the teachings of the Buddha. JL studies a form of Buddhism that ignores the logical arguments and prefers to simply meditate.

Sorry, chaps but that's how I see it because there are teachings that show a truly existent self is a form of fallacious reasoning, the result is that it is possible to feel confident that there is no truly existent self; that the self is imaginary but useful because it allows for dualistic thinking and communication. The same with there being a creator god that is also shown to be fallacious.. logically shown using the Buddha's teachings. Then based on that one examines using one's own critical reasoning and finally one meditates.

This all leads to growing confidence but not to an 'absolute' proof. My form of Buddhist meditation is only really effective if one can let go of the notion of a truly existent self and the notion of a creator god by developing critical reasons for confidence that this is the case because it undermines doubts arising during meditation... blind faith will never remove/undermine doubts.

An assumption of someone's motivations.



Not necessarily.



It doesn't mean they don't have credence either. Any comfort I get is from an awareness, which, at least to me leads to improved decisions.

Fil, this is an example of what I referred to as your improved use of English--good writing--but you must have meant "cosmogonies".
Now let me suggest that the dualistic notion of "self" (versus others) has utility because societies could not operate without them, (Ego is "universal" despite its variations cross culturally: a non-dualistic perspective has spiritual accuracy but it is useless regarding the "functional requirements" of social systems. Society is a "unity", in the sense of being a collection of individuals whose interactions enjoy some co-ordination regarding norms and themes, but, according to "methodological individualists" in Sociology, only the individual has ontological reality as opposed to the purely abstract quality of "society." Looking at the pluralism characterizing our (otherwise "thinged") society we can see that neither position is completely adequate.
With respect to your question to Fresco regarding the "self of society," I would suggest that society's "group culture"--and keep in mind the cultural pluralism of most complex societies--as functioning with respect to norms (e.g.,values, laws,and understandings) that are shared to a degree, but rarely completely. With that reality in mind, we might refer to our society has having a "collective culture". Our mythical but functional "social selves" * best refer to the fact that each of us is more or less successfully socialized or enculturated into the dominant normative system our society. With that in mind can we say that we are both inside society and society is (more or less) inside us?
*you suggested "social self" as a synomyn for "group culture".