Anatta - Anatta in Contemporary Philosophy

Anatta in Contemporary Philosophy

The western approach to the self has various proponents, none more famous than perhaps René Descartes in his famous “Meditations on first philosophy” where the cogito; I think therefore I am was drawn as a necessary conclusion. Descartes aim was to find epistemological certainty (certainty in knowledge) and part of his project was to prove the existence of an immaterial soul. However, virtually all modern philosophers have noted that not only is Cartesian Dualism untenable since the interactionism problem breaks the causal closure of the physical, but the cogito itself is logically fallacious. As Nietzsche points out, it presupposes an “I” to think without offering empirical evidence to back this assumption. As It has also been pointed out that the only thing the cogito can tell us is that thinking entails existence and no more. John Cottingham stated the only thing the cogito tells us is that there is something thinking.

David Hume in his 1739 “Treatise of Human Nature” concluded that he could not perceive a self.

'After what manner, therefore, do they belong to self; and how are they connected with it? For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist' (Hume, 1739)

Hume states that philosophers who argue for a self that can be found via reason are confusing "similarity" with "identity". Instead Hume invites us to introspect our experience and see if we can find a self within our experience. What we discover is that there are only perceptions and no self that we can find within our experience. This leads Hume to conclude:

'The identity ascribed to man is nothing more than a fiction' (Hume, 1739)

Other notable philosophers in the problem of selfhood or as it is technically known - personal identity – include Derek Parfit, Thomas Metzinger, Julian Baginni, Bernard Williams and Sam Harris. Neuroscientists and philosophers of conscious have started incorporating the notion that there is no self in to current theory with Daniel Dennett being a well known advocate of this position in his theory of consciousness.