 Nāgārjuna’s criticism of substance does not just apply to the world of objects, to the phenomena around us, but equally to the world of subjects, that is our own and other persons’ self. This is very much in harmony with the Buddha’s own conception of a person that rejected a self existing with svabhāva. Such a self would have to be conceived of as distinct from both our body and our psychological states, as essentially unchanging, as a unifier of our diverse beliefs, desires and sensory impressions, and as an agent that makes the decisions that shape our lives. The alternative presented by the Buddha is a view of the self that regards it as a continuously changing array of five psycho-physical aggregates (the physical body, sensation, perception, intellect, and consciousness) without an inner core. Many of the arguments Nāgārjuna presents when rejecting the notion of a substantially existent subject bear a close resemblance to those brought forward by the Buddha himself. (See the entry on  Buddha.)   Nevertheless his works also provide us with some arguments with a distinctly Nāgārjunian slant. In MMK 18:2a the opponent wonders: ‘if there was no self, where would the self’s properties come from?’ The worry behind this question is that the undeniable fact that there are properties of the self—since the Madhyamaka does not want to deny that seeing, feeling, tasting and so forth takes place — implies that there must be a bearer of such properties, i.e. a self. Since properties depend existentially on something that instantiates them a self must be postulated as the instantiator of all the mental properties we observe. It appears as if we need a substratum for the psychological states, desires, beliefs and so on. However, the body, because of its continuously changing nature, cannot be regarded as adequate for such substratumhood.  Therefore some kind of self has to be postulated.