IB Philosophy 1.2.1 Self/non-self Notes

The Structure of the Debate on Self

1. The questions explored in Section 1.1 (personal identity, identity over time, and cultural identity) assumed, at least provisionally, that there is a self to be identified. Section 1.2 now turns to a more radical challenge: is there such a thing as the self at all?
2. This question has a distinctive philosophical depth that separates it from ordinary empirical inquiries. We cannot resolve it by looking inside our heads for a self-part.
3. Two broad answers dominate the debate. Substantialist accounts (common in Western philosophy) hold that there is a genuine, unified self underlying experience.
4. Deflationary accounts (prominent in Buddhist and some analytic philosophy) argue that the self is either reducible to simpler processes or does not exist as a distinct entity.
5. These positions connect directly to upcoming topics. Solipsism (1.2.2) represents the opposite extreme from anatta: rather than dissolving the self, solipsism inflates it to the point where only the self is real.
6. Consciousness and the self (1.3.1) will examine how conscious experience relates to questions about selfhood.
7. Understanding this debate also has practical stakes. If there is no persistent self, accounts of moral responsibility, legal accountability, and the coherence of long-term projects all become philosophically problematic.

Philosophical Stakes and Methodology

1. The self, it turns out, is doing a great deal of work in how we structure our lives and institutions.
2. Instead, we must ask what kind of evidence or argument could settle such a question.
3. The overarching question of Unit 1 (What does it mean to be human?) is directly implicated here. If the self is an illusion, then claims about human dignity, personal responsibility, and the significance of individual experience require rethinking from the ground up.
4. Philosophical methodology is itself at stake in this debate. Buddhist, Indian, and Western traditions have reached very different conclusions about the self, which suggests that our gut feeling that we have a self is shaped by the philosophical and cultural traditions we grew up in, not just by neutral observation of the facts.
5. As we will see, the Buddhist doctrine of anatta (not-self) offers a systematic argument that personal experience is not anchored in any permanent underlying subject, while contemporary philosopher Jonardon Ganeri proposes a relational account that preserves the reality of the self without positing a metaphysical substance.
6. For IB Philosophy students, this topic introduces a key exam competency: the ability to articulate and evaluate fundamentally different metaphysical positions, drawing on non-Western as well as Western philosophical traditions.

The Buddhist Doctrine of Anatta

The Bundle Argument and Its Implications

1. The teaching of anatta is one of the three marks of existence in Buddhism, alongside impermanence (anicca) and suffering (dukkha). It is not a minor claim but a central pillar of Buddhist philosophy, touching both its theory of reality and its path to liberation.
2. Vasubandhu, the fifth-century Buddhist philosopher whose work featured in both 1.1.1 and 1.1.2, provides the most rigorous systematic philosophical defence of anatta within the Abhidharma tradition.
3. On Vasubandhu's analysis, what we call the self is in reality a collection of five skandhas (aggregates): form (rupa), sensation (vedana), perception (samjna), mental formations (samskaras), and consciousness (vijnana). None of these aggregates, individually or collectively, constitutes a self.
4. The bundle argument is central to anatta: if you examine each aggregate carefully, you find no self within it. The self is not identical to any one aggregate, nor is it the sum of them, since nothing unifies them from the outside.
5. There is no additional self-ingredient to be discovered.
6. According to this view, believing in a permanent self is a cognitive error (in Buddhist terms, moha or delusion). We mentally construct a sense of a unified 'I' from what is actually an ever-changing flow of experiences with nothing at the centre to hold them together.
7. The practical implication of anatta is significant: if there is no permanent self, then attachment to a fixed identity is the root cause of suffering. Liberation (nirvana) involves dissolving this cognitive error, not destroying a real entity.