Quote of the day: “What you are inside doesn’t count; it’s what you do that counts.” (Rachel to Bruce in Batman Begins) Thus does she get rid of the idea of a true inner self, refocusing our attention on actions.
David Hume — another of those famous Scots — already eliminated the Self in the eighteenth century by noting that no matter how hard he examined his experiences in the search for an experiencing self, all he could ever find were the experiences. The self, then, is not an entity, but more a ‘bundle of sensations’. Susan Blackmore’s Consciousness (OUP, 2005) provides an excellent ‘very short introduction’ to recent research and thinking about a range of issues related to consciousness, including the idea of a unified, continuous self.
