There is no unchanging, separate self.

Pro Arguments.Well you didn’t give a single argument or reason in favor of your own position. Anyone who makes a claim about what objective reality is, has a burden of proof to give evidence and reasons to back up that claim. So I claim there is a soul, and I now have the responsibility of giving reasons why that claim is true (as I have attempted to do so). You are making the opposite claim that there is no self or soul, so likewise you have burden of proof to show why your claim is warranted. As of now you have not given any arguments or reasons why we should think there is no self. Even if you do successfully knock down the three arguments I gave (and I don’t think you have), that doesn’t prove your case. At best that would leave us with a kind of agnosticism about the existence of the self. If we have no reasons to think it doesn’t exist, and I am unable to give any convincing arguments that it does, then we would simply have to conclude that we don’t know if there is a self. So I would really like you to provide some arguments, evidence or reasons for the nonexistence of the self or the soul. You need to do so to establish your claim.Experience. I strongly suspect that I’m misunderstanding what you are arguing about experience. I think it would be very helpful if you could lay that argument out in a structured, logical fashion like this; 1.If A then B. 2.A. 3.So B. This would make your premises and the logic of your argument easier to see and help me to understand what you mean. I’ve read through that section several times and as I understand it now I don’t see how it responds to or relates to the first philosophical argument I gave. It seems that you are attempting to show that we all experience the world through our cognitive facilities (which is certainly true) and that our experiences are subjective (also true), but I don’t see how that address or relates to the argument I gave. It also seems that you then go on to say that it doesn’t make sense to posit experiences without someone to experience them (again that is certainly true), but that seems to argue for the position I am taking, not yours. 1.If there are experiences, there must be an experiencer. 2.There are experiences. 3.Therefore there is an experiencer i.e a soul or a self. So I would really appreciate it if you could present your claims there in a more structured fashion as I’m pretty sure you didn’t intend the things I read. If I did read you correctly you are undermining your own position and asserting things that have no relevance to the issue at hand. So please explain what you mean.The mind body connection problem . . . well not really You also throw out the tired old objection that it’s not clear how a self or soul would interact with the body, therefore these is no soul. No one seriously thinks there is no connection or correlation between the self and the body. I do know why you are mentioning that ridiculous idea. But his is simply a God of the gaps style objection that attempts to make a claim by appealing to ignorance. Just because we do not know how something works or could work, it doesn’t follow that that thing isn’t there. I have no idea what mechanisms, if any, the self uses to interact with the body, but it in no way follows from that that there is no self. At present no one truly understands the mechanism of quantum physics (there are 10 different interpretations of quantum physics and anyone of them could be right), but it certainly doesn’t follow from our ignorance that there are no such mechanisms or that quantum physics is false. Likewise the fact that we don’t know how the self and the body interact it doesn’t show that there is no soul of self. That’s just bad logic.Determinism What you are claiming about Determinism also seems to miss the point. You seem to be positing that it could be that various parts of the brain account for various different things people can and do. Sure. But that in no way counters Determinism. It simply pushes the problem back a step or two. The brain states in those individual parts of the brain that enable me to see and think would still be cause by factors and conditions that are independent of myself, because there is no self. It doesn’t even make sense to describe anyone or anything as being compelled under Determinism. To be compelled to do something means you had no choice. Under Determinism there is no such thing as a choice. There is only a lot of cause and effect. You also seem to be falling into the God of the gaps error again here as you are essentially claiming that I cannot prove to you that consciousness could not arise from brain states, therefore it does. Even if I granted you the first part the second doesn’t follow. I think you are missing the point here as I am simply claiming that without a self, there is nothing going on with me, you, and everyone else other than a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions. That is Determinism. Because there is no choice, thought or free action under determinism no one can rationally affirm determinism and hence no one can rationally affirm the non-existence of the self. Scientific Evidence You missed the point of my appeal to scientific evidence. It’s irrelevant to the issue at hand what worldview those people take or what they claim the afterlife was like. It’s incredibly relevant that a patient was dead, and upon being revived describes events that transpired while he was dead. If that actually has happened it proves there is a self that is distinct from the body. The body was unable to observe anything (it was dead) but the person did still observe things. That shows there is something about the person that is distinct from the body. That’s what’s important here. It’s actually inappropriate to refer to these claims as near death experiences. These people didn’t nearly die, they did die. They were only revived thanks to the expertise of the medical personal there. It makes no difference to the issue at hand (is there a self or soul?) if the people who have had such experiences report things that are more consistent with Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism or if their experiences are more consistent with Western religions like Christianity. The point is that if anyone has actually had such an experience, that proves the existence of self that is separate from the body.Conclusion. So to conclude you did not give us arguments in favor of your position and your response to my own arguments do not address them or missed their point. I would very much like you to clarify what you mean about in your section about experience as I’m quite sure I’m misunderstanding you there.