The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 114 of 254
Unified, material constructions
by themselves, these truths leave a lot of unanswered questions and problems. Together, they tell us we are unified, material constructions. Each one of these words is problematic. The degree to which we are unified is still vague. We say we are in some sense constructions, but it is not clear how we are put together. We know that bodies, memories and society all play a role, but how does a strong sense of self emerge from their interaction? And the extent to which we are material is also puzzling, given that our mental life gives us the strongest sense of who we are, not our bodies. That is why transgendered people can know who they are even when their bodies are wrong or change, and why we often feel loved ones with dementia have left us, even as their diseased bodies continue to live. In this chapter, I’m going to try to answer these questions and flesh out what I think the correct view of our selves should be. I will be building on and synthesising arguments given by a string of major thinkers in eastern and western traditions.