>>14416956>Don't some Indian tribes have a more specific choice of words when it comes to such definitions?I wouldn't know but my hunch would be that they are not equivocal, which would be a good thing.
> I am not sure if they have words closer to what could potentially define the human notion of self,That's irrelevant to defining consciousness if you ask me.
There is nothing mysterious about the 'self' - it's a symbol. A label. Nothing more.
>Language has its own shortcomings when it comes to this subject,Self is a symptom of language if you define 'language' as being at it's core the capacity to think symbolically. I point to my chest - that means "me", I point to your chest that means "you". There is the genesis of 'self' as a symbol right there. It's related to what that hack Lacan calls the ''mirror stage' at some point every human child creates a symbolic representation which we call the 'self', the thing that is signified by pointing to my chest, or by using pronouns like "I' "me" or using proper names or even pseudonyms like "anon".
It's not mysterious and it's all very functional. In the same way we come up with words for things we see. I remember Joanna Lumley of all people explaining it more simply than Later Wittgenstein: that we need words and names to describe things, and she gives the example of a Scottish sheep herder, who will give names to all the different hills his sheep grazes on. These labels, the most basic element of geography, are mental symbols that allow him to distinguish one point in space form another.
And the "self" is just another one of those types of symbols.
Language is the capacity to use sounds or visual signs to represent things they don't represent. "Self" is not a shortcoming of language, it is a product of language.
