This book is worth reading for many reasons; one of them being the beauty and precision of Ms. Adbahari's academic prose... Here, for example, her explanation of the word 'sense' makes all further references, of which there are many, clearly understandable.
2.2 What is meant by 'sense' in 'sense of self'? "Now one may wonder at the choice of terms used to describe this deep subjective allegiance to the self's existence. While I have chosen the term 'sense' to be primary, my usage of other terms such as 'belief', 'assumption', and 'feeling' is meant to convey that the term 'sense' in this context is more complex than in some other contexts. The reason for allocating the word 'sense' as primary is that the turn of phrase 'sense of self' is already in vogue and, while lacking ideal precision, it captures the general gist very well. What, then, do we mean by 'sense' in this context? Let us distinguish it first from that associated with the five sensory organs, as put by the 'Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary' (2006): 'specialized animal function or mechanism (as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch) basically involving a stimulus and a sense organ'. This is not the notion of sense we are concerned with, for the self, purporting to be a kind of subject rather than objec t, does not purport to be the kind of thing that could be detected via any of the five (object-tracking) sensory organs. The same dictionary offers, however, another definition that is more to the point: 'a definite but often vague awareness or impression <felt a 'sense' of insecurity> <a 'sense' of danger>'. One can have a sense of danger or insecurity without obvious input from a particular sense organ --- which well suits the case of the self in question. The notion thus captures something more cognitive (as opposed to perceptual); a subjective or conscious impression of some sort. This notion of 'sense' is moreover not a success-term: to have a sense of X does not imply that X exists. For example, if one has a sense --- or conscious impression --- of danger, then there need not be danger that is sensed. This notion of sense, as a conscious impression, will thus apply well to the 'self' whose existence may be under question. "As a kind of 'a definite but often vague awareness or impression', the term 'sense as applied to 'self' has a further advantage. It manages to convey a subjective experience: that there is, in Nagel's famous phrase, "something it is like", from the first-person perspective, to have or undergo a general conscious impression of X. ..." (Albahari, Miri, 'Analytical Buddhism: The Two-tiered Illusion of Self ', p.18) ___ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
