The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 32 of 254
Damasio: a changing self and a permanent self
Damasio believes that his view ‘resolves the apparent paradox identified by William James – that the self in our stream of consciousness changes continuously as it moves forward in time, even as we retain a sense that the self remains the same while our existence continues’. His solution is that ‘the seemingly changing self and the seemingly permanent self, although closely related, are not one entity but two’.11 That is to say, what seems permanent is the autobiographical self, and what seems to be changing is the core self.