A Non-Circular Argument for the Existence of the Self

I may not exist. My world may not exist, and this non-existing world may be experienced through the context of this non-existing self.

I wanna play. Auraist recently wrote:

Do you know a valid (non-circular) justification for the existence of the self? In other words, can you prove that you exist? If so, send that proof in reply to this email and if it is indeed non-circular we’ll publish it, inform the world’s philosophers and major media, and send you a complimentary lifetime paid subscription to Auraist.”

Here’s my answer.

A Non-Circular Argument for the Existence of the Self

I may not exist. My world may not exist, and this non-existing world may be experienced through the context of this non-existing self. Yet, even if a non-entity hallucinates a non-entity, the reality it proves is the existence of the hallucination—the thought.

The thought exists but perhaps not the “I” who thought it.

Therefore, thought is real, and we’ll define thought as the experience of the self and other, whether or not these things exist. Thought becomes the active subject. It is aware, whether the subject and object of its awareness are real or not. We’ll define this thinking awareness (which experiences the presumption of self and world) as consciousness. Consciousness is therefore real. Everything of which it is conscious may not be.

The experience of consciousness is the sum total of reality if nothing else is real, and it is the sum total of subjective reality if everything is real.

One might try to argue that the experience of consciousness is the sum total of subjective reality even if the world is real and the self is not, but that reasoning cannot hold. If the self exists in no other way, it would then exist as the subjectiveness of the experience of consciousness, the self as a projection of consciousness, as opposed to the self possessing consciousness. There’s no meaningful difference between the two concepts, only the acknowledgement that two are linked so that when one ceases to be, so does the other.

It is different with the world.

“My” relationship with “my” consciousness can be that complicated, enmeshed relationship without it changing anything. Even if we presume the existence of the self is some superficially corporal way, allowing for the reality of the body and the brain, these things alone would not produce the existence of “myself” any more than any other random body and brain. Whatever the chicken-and-egg of brain and the thought may be, it remains reasonable to argue that the experience of consciousness projects the existence of self.

If the world is a projection of consciousness, however, that is relevant. Then, the world would also cease to exist when consciousness ceases. The others whom consciousness experiences would only be a projection of itself. These are two vastly different outcomes, and this argument has not distinguished between them.

Yet, the experience of consciousness has direction from a perceived interior to a perceived exterior. In other words, it has orientation. In that orientation is the experience of the self, and self need not be anything more than its own experience. We need not imagine self as a homunculus at the other end of the mechanism that is this orientated consciousness. Self is not the homunculus but the mechanism, and the mechanism is real.

Whether the world is real or illusory, the self is real according to any relevant measurement. Thought exists and is perceived from a particular orientation that is the experience of the self.

Self is the orientation of conscious perception; therefore I am.

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Until I cease to perceive,

I’m Thaddeus Thomas.