What is the self? As with any complex and slippery concept, we can draw on literally thousands of years worth of philosophical discussions in both the eastern and western traditions to address the question. But perhaps it will be simpler to begin with two contrasting definitions from a dictionary:
In philosophy:
The ego; that which knows, remembers, desires, suffers, etc., as contrasted with that known, remembered, etc.
The uniting principle, as a soul, underlying all subjective experience.
Setting aside metaphysically questionable talk of "soul," it should be obvious that there is such thing as the self. We do "know, remember, desire, suffer, etc.," and we do have unified subjective experiences. Whatever turns out to make that possible is the self.
This, however, doesn't mean that the self is a stable entity, or a specific thing located somewhere inside our brain. Nor, certainly, is there any reason to believe that -- whatever it is -- it will survive our physical demise.
The most "skeptical" conception of the self in western literature is usually attributed to David Hume. In his A Treatise of Human Nature he famously wrote: "I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement."
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