On 20 July 2014 18:37, Kim Jones <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 20 Jul 2014, at 3:51 pm, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > It could be that language constructs the self (or perhaps more precisely > that using language allowed us to create the concept of a self as one > amongst many linguistic concepts). > > I don't grok this thing of the self 'evolving' like brains and thumbs. We > surely didn't create the concept of the self. The self did not evolve. It > switched ON. It awoke. There was a moment. It was a moment in history. Kind > of like the ape and the bone in Kubrick's '2001'. >
This is possible (though I don't see how it's testable). However I'm not sure that we definitely "didn't create the concept of the self". It may be possible to have a self without having a concept of it - without having concepts at all, perhaps. That would depend on what the self is. If it's a linguistic construct then it's basically the same as the concept of the self, in which case perhaps we did invent it. If it's something else, then it may have appeared - turned on, emerged or evolved - but we may still have invented the *concept*. Before we did so there would be no concept of the self, just the self itself. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
