On Aug 16, Jundo discussed the sense of separate self: do we exist indpendently or not. This is a very old philosophical question. Can anyone tell me what the word is in philosohpy for this question? I'm interested in reading up on what non-Buddhist philosophers have to say about it. I know many of them come to the same conclusions; there was a famous thought experiment by one of the Greeks, whereby he said if you took a piece of wood from a boat and replaced it, the boat would still be the boat. If you replaced another piece, it would still be the boat. How many pieces would you have to replace before the boat was no longer the original boat? If you replaced all the pieces, one after another, over time, would it still be the same boat?

Kurious Kirk