The Embodied Mind [Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, 1993]

Ch. 4 The I of the Storm (P.59-81)

What Do We Mean by 'Self'?

• P.59 Let us give the voice for this to David Hume's famous passage: "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception." [Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I, VI, iv.]

Looking for a Self in the Aggregates

P.64 The five aggregates are

1. Forms


2. Feelings / sensations


3. Perceptions (discernments) / impulses


4. Dispositional formations


5. Consciousnesses

The first of the five aggregates is considered to be based on the physical or material; the remaining four are mental. All five together constitute the psychophysical complex that makes up a person and that makes up each moment of experience.

• P.65 Forms: This category refers to the body and the physical environment. It does so, however, strictly in terms of the senses - the six sense organs and the corresponding objects of those organs. They are teh eye and visible objects, the ear and sounds, the nose and smells, the tongue and tastes, the body and touchables, and the mind and thoughts.


• P.66 Feelings / Sensations Though feelings affect the self, no one would say that these feelings are the self.


• Perceptions (discernments) / impulses This aggregate refers to the first moment of recognition, identification, or discernment in the arising of something distinct, coupled with the activation of a basic impulse for action toward the discerned object.


• P. 67 Dispositional Formations This next aggregate refers to habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, perceiving, and acting - habitual patterns such as confidence, avarice, laziness, worry, etc.


• Consciousnesses is the last of the aggregates, and it contains all of the others. It is the mental experience that goes with the other four aggregates; technically it is the experience that comes form the contact of each sense organ with its object (together with the feeling, impulse, and habit that is aroused).

Rosch, Eleanor, Evan Thompson, and Francisco J. Varela. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. London: The Mit Press, 1993.