YES! Finally, an actual argument! And like always (or at least how I used to do it), I'm going to go against the majority here (for the most part).
Normally, I would hate myself for bringing religion into an argument of this nature, but I think it is very relavent, and quite ironic that we are rehashing something that has been discussed thousands of years ago. Check
this out. This is basically the same metaphor that several people have brought up before (Sam, Flisch, probably someone else...), but it comes to a much different conclusion than what's being discussed here. And while that article seems to be avoiding many different things by concretely stating nothing, it does bring up some excellent points.
First off, it seems that we've come to a rut by believing that 'we' actually exist. Everyone automatically assumes that there is an 'I' (thanks to Descartes, no doubt), but how can we establish this? We can't. Either we haven't reached that level of technology yet, or the concept of being and existing is so far beyond our grasp that we may never understand it. On the other hand, seeing that we have limitations in this area, we can assume that 'we' do not actually exist and are actually part of something greater (as in the universe). This has some scientific backing, knowing that matter cannot be created nor destroyed, and seeing as we do not have a great deal of knowledge about the metaphysical world, we should not draw too much from it. The existence of a soul or something similar can be argued back and forth, but I think that misses the point and detracts from the argument. Even if a soul
does exist, that doesn't necessarily argue for the fact that a 'self' exists, just that there may be something that survives after death. And yet, there are plenty of things that survive after death. Every bit of our body exists after death. It's just that there is no life in it.
Even as we sit here and argue about this, there really isn't any true idea of 'us' that exists. Sure, we use terms such as we, I, you, them, him, her, etc. (I've already used them 31 times and I've cringed every time) as it makes things easier to understand. Try playing a game of
Waterfalls (or whatever you call it), and make one of the rules "No Pronouns." Couple that with a "No Cussing" rule and the game ends pretty quickly.
So can anyone offer a valid argument for the existence of a 'self' or something similar? I know, I probably pissed a lot of people off by switching the argument like this.