In his Treatise (Book 1, Part 4, sec. 6) David Hume suggested that the idea of an enduring discoverable self was unfounded. Introspection revealed "nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement." Many people have noticed the similarity between Hume's position here and Buddhist discussion of the self. Listen also to podcast: http://traffic.libsyn.com/philoso... Gopnik is a psychology professor at Berkeley. - Adriano