QuestionsWho am I, really?None of the five aggregates is a "self"
Who am I, really?No fixed self

None of the five aggregates is a "self"

The not-self discourse (anatta)

Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) c. 480 BC · c. 400 BCTeaches that what we call "self" is made of passing elements, with no permanent self (anatta). His exact dates are debated.
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What it claims

None of the five aggregates is a self: "this is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self".

Why

What keeps changing and does not obey us cannot be our "self": and the body, feelings and consciousness are like that.

The same idea through history
Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha)450 BCThe not-self discourse is attributed to the Buddha, to his first five disciples, shortly after his awakening. The texts were written down centuries later.
Nagasena100 BCKing Milinda's chariot: the best-known later restatement, showing with an image that "person" is a convenient name for an assembly.David Hume1739Hume, twenty-two centuries later, finds only perceptions in himself and no separate "self".
In short

"None of the five aggregates is a "self"" is an argument by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) (Anattalakkhana Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 22.59, 450 BC) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: no fixed self). Its claim: None of the five aggregates is a self: "this is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self". According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P1, P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Anattalakkhana Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 22.59
Valid with an implicit premise

The Buddha speaks to his first five companions. He lists what makes up a person: the body, feelings, perceptions, dispositions ("choices") and consciousness. For each, he asks two questions: is it permanent? Does it obey us? If what we call "self" were one of these, we could command it: "may my body be like this, not like that". But we cannot: these elements age, fall ill and change against our will. And what is impermanent and a source of suffering does not deserve to be called "this is me". The text does not say that the person does not exist; it says that none of these elements is a self. It is a text of the Pali canon, written down centuries after the Buddha to whom tradition attributes it.

P1 · implicit premiseA person is made of five elements only: body, feelings, perceptions, dispositions and consciousness.
P2If an element were a self, it would not cause us affliction and we could command what it should be. But each of these elements brings affliction and escapes our command.
P3Each of these elements is impermanent, hence suffering, hence perishable; it is not fit to be regarded as "this is mine, I am this, this is my self".
P4 · implicit premiseWhat is neither permanent nor controllable cannot be a self.
None of the five aggregates is a self: "this is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self".

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Analogy.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

T
The Pudgalavadins (Vatsiputriya school) 250 BC · attacks premise 1

This early Buddhist school thinks the text does not say everything: one must admit a "person" (pudgala), neither identical to the five aggregates nor wholly other. Without it, they ask, who carries the fruit of actions and who is reborn? For them, the five aggregates are not the whole person.

a defender replies
Vasubandhu (Abhidharmakosa, ch. 9) defender of the argument · 400
Vasubandhu asks whether this "person" is a real thing or only a name. If it were real, it would have to be either identical to the aggregates or distinct from them; if it is "neither", it is a name given to the assembly, like "milk" or "army". The chain of causes, from one moment to the next, is enough to account for actions and their fruits.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the disagreement is old, among Buddhists themselves. It concerns what the text leaves open (a person "neither same nor other"), not the text itself.
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Nyaya (Gautama, Nyaya Sutra, III.1) 150 · attacks the conclusion

The Nyaya logicians, starting from the Nyaya Sutra, hold that there is a self distinct from the body, the senses and the mind, of which cognition is a quality: we remember what we saw, we recognize an object seen before, and this requires one same subject that keeps the trace. What changes could not link yesterday and today.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Buddha) in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: the discourse itself does not answer this memory objection. Later Buddhist schools answer with the causal continuity of moments of consciousness, a reply that remains debated.
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Thanissaro Bhikkhu (The Not-self Strategy) 2013 · attacks the conclusion

This American monk and translator reads the discourse differently: the Buddha always refused to say whether there is or is not a self. "Not-self" is a strategy: do not identify with what changes, in order to let go. Reading the discourse as "no self exists" would go further than he did.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Buddha) in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: this reading is itself debated. What is sure: the discourse concludes "this is not my self" for each element; it does not say explicitly whether there is a self elsewhere.