The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 113 of 254
Four claims about the self
My argument so far supports four main claims: First, there is no thing or part of you which contains your essence. Your body, your brain and your memories are all very important for who you are, but none of these is the pearl of self in which your identity resides. Second, you have no immaterial soul. Whatever stuff you are made from, it is the same kind of stuff that everything else is made of, be it plankton, cabbages or orang-utans. Third, given that the pearl view is to be rejected, this means that your sense of self must in some way be a construction. If there is no single thing which makes you the person you are, then you must be the result of several parts or things working together. Fourth, the unity which enables you to think of yourself as the same person over time is in some ways fragile, and in others robust. So although we may not be unified in the simple, strong way the pearl view suggests, that does not mean that we go wrong when we think of ourselves as integrated individuals. We may be more internally fragmented than common sense assumes, but that does not mean we are radically multiple, and should give up thinking of ourselves in the first-person singular. Our sense of self may well be strongly affected by the social world we inhabit, but the sense itself remains inner, psychological.