I recently read an extended extract from a peculiar book called The Self Illusion, reviews of which can be found here- The Self Illusion: Why There is No 'You' Inside Your Head [Extract] by Bruce M. Hood

Just wondering if this is accepted by science or if it's one guys pet theory, not taken seriously by everyone else.

Thank you.

I haven't read the book and judge only by the review you provided and comments below, which however might not provide me the whole idea the book was about, but I think the concept or the book is nothing new. Our selves are formed on the base of our genetic background with more or less respect to the environment we are growing up (and living) in, the people we interact with etc. We (our selves) are formed by the interaction with the real world.

In fact our whole concept of the world is just an "illusion", made by our brain. It's just some kind of coding, the brain interpreting some physical properties of the "real" world outside. Certain wavelengths of EM are interpreted as some colours, mechanic vibrations as sounds and all these sensations are actually only some electrochemical changes in the brain. All of the feelings, the dreams, the "self" is just a sum of these complex electrochemical changes. I think this is well acknowledged throughout the scientific community (But in no way I can speak for the community). So yeah, from this point our perception of the world and also the self is just an illusion. As I already said, from the review of the book, I don't see any epochal novelty the book is supposed to bring.

 

What I find a bit more interesting question however: Even though the self and our perception of the world is just an illusion of our brain, does it make any less real?

Edited June 7, 201510 yr by Matthew Blackhand

Why are some people attracted to 'self as illusion'? Personally, my self is no illusion. The evidence for this is that I'm talking at you. Do you consider this post an illusion? DE

Why are some people attracted to 'self as illusion'? Personally, my self is no illusion. The evidence for this is that I'm talking at you. Do you consider this post an illusion? DE

Do you think your post (or anyone else's) is 'real' to some animal or insect? Of course, it's an illusion; we see what we want to see.

 

Brain activity predicts decisions before they are consciously made.

Kerri Smith

 

Your brain makes up its mind up to ten seconds before you realize it, according to researchers. By looking at brain activity while making a decision, the researchers could predict what choice people would make before they themselves were even aware of having made a decision.

The work calls into question the ‘consciousness’ of our decisions and may even challenge ideas about how ‘free’ we are to make a choice at a particular point in time.

“We think our decisions are conscious, but these data show that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg,” says John-Dylan Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, who led the study.

“The results are quite dramatic,” says Frank Tong, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Ten seconds is "a lifetime” in terms of brain activity, he adds.

 

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html

 

These kinds of experiments, I suspect(or do I?). I've also seen it described as the brain telling you a story. That "you" decided to do this or that.

Why are some people attracted to 'self as illusion'? Personally, my self is no illusion. The evidence for this is that I'm talking at you. Do you consider this post an illusion? DE

I am always delighted when I find I have imagined posts like this on an fanciful internet on a fictitious planet in a virtual universe.