The soul
That unfalsifiable nebulous hand-wavey concept that seems just so convenient when you’re introduced to it as a child until you think about it for just a minute
The self equally defies all precise definition - so engrained in our grammar that “selves” don’t stop to consider how any source of thoughts infinitely retreats from the possibility of being thought about - to the point of impossibility.
What this guy says makes far too much sense after a minute of thinking past its seeming counter-intuitiveness:
And then what Mad Man P quips about valuing “the self” being only for the sake of others - that hits the nail on the head.
Like all words and concepts, they develop socially, and only within a social context. There’s no need to think in words if not to communicate them to others, so without others they don’t develop. It’s only with an audience that the need arises to distinguish the communicator from the recipient, and thus “selves” arise functionally rather than ontologically.