Are You an Illusion

London Event

The notion that there is no self has won over philosophers and scientists since Hume argued that the self is "nothing but a bundle of perceptions. But those very philosophers and scientists, along with the rest of us, seem to continue to act as if there very much is a self and that we own our actions and thoughts and are responsible for them.

Is our experience of a unified, continuous self merely illusory? If so, to avoid hypocrisy, do we need to re-configure our understanding of experience and responsibility? Or is the denial of the self, an implausible claim driven by a desire to uphold a purely material, scientific account of the world? 

Transhumanist research Anders Sandberg, philosopher of psychology Lisa Bortolotti and author of Self and Other Dan Zahavi investigate whether the self is an illusion.