a man amidst mankind: back again to dasein

I was just reading this Philosophy Now article:

“Analytic Philosophy, Continental Literature?”
Marc Champagne argues that the supposedly ’professional’ style of the analytic tradition does not ensure professionalism, nor indeed, clear-mindedness.

In it, I came upon this passage:

And, sure, the manner in which I construe the meaning of the small-d “dasein” in my signature thread is probably construed by many “serious philosophers” as mediocre at best. While even a heavyweight thinker like Heidegger can be mocked in one or another “intellectual contraption” of this sort.

But: “being” here is just that. An “intellectual contraption” word that in no way, shape or form relates to the lives that we actually live.

Right?

Again, I am less concerned with whether as an intellectual contraption, this is funny or not. If you harbor a sufficient enough disdain for “continental philosophy”, it’s probably hilarious.

But what do the analytic philosophers have to tell us about any particular “I”, being “here” and not “there”? Being “now” but not “then”? As this relates to the historical, cultural and experiential interactions of flesh and blood human beings?

Instead, all this defender of the continental tradition can do is to take the “debate” back up into the clouds:

And it is certainly my contention that only to the extent that any school of philosophy is able to intertwine words and worlds, is there any possibility to explore in turn the extent to which in using the tools of philosophy we can grope to understand what may well be beyond the reach of “clear-mindedness”.

A New Look At Personal Identity
Michael Allen Fox argues that old approaches to the problem don’t work.

But what we don’t know is whether there is a scientific and/or philosophical and/or theological dividing line between that which DNA explains wholly and that which is still embedded in the mystery embodied in the evolution of matter into life forms evolving into brains evolving into minds like ours. Is it all DNA here?

That has to remain the profoundest of mystery of all. And yet we are left with no choice but to pursue questions like this largely ignorant of what that final solution is. Or by simply taking an intellectual leap of our own and basing our conclusions on our own set of assumptions.

Thus…

Most of us of course do not have either the education or the background to understand this in any really sophisticated manner. Instead, we have to accept that those who do know about these things [and are subject to peer review] know what they are talking about. And, if the above is in fact true, what does it tell you about your own identity?

And then there is still the part I focus on. The either/or “I” presumed to have some measure of autonomy grappling to understand why he or she chooses one set of value judgments over another. And how the species as a whole goes about determining which sets of behaviors reflect the most rational and/or virtuous manner in which to behave.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

Think about it. At this particular moment in time and in this particular place across all of space, there is a “self” that you are able to talk about more or less with some degree of specificity and certainty.

But how in the world would you ever manage to catch the whole thing? In fact, I distinguish myself from others in regard to just how immese I perceive that gap to be.

Going all the way back to, well, you know where. :wink:

This is why I always start any exploration of human identity with psychology rather than philosophy. After all, could there be a more crucial “psychological defense mechanism” then the ability to think yourself into believing that one can catch the whole thing. And that, in fact, you know this is so because you already have.

Or, the description I most come back to:

“I recognize that I put structure into my world…There is no ‘real’ world out there, given, intact, full of significance. Consciousness is constituted by random, virtually infinite barrages of experience; these experiences are indistinguishably ‘inner’ and ‘outer’…Structure is put into experience by culture and self, and may also be pulled out again…The experience of nothingness is an experience beyond the limits of reason…it is terrifying. It makes all attempts at speaking of purpose, goals, aims, meaning, importance, conformity, harmony, unity----it makes all such attempts seem doubtful and spurious.”
The Experience of Nothingness—Michael Novak

Yet look at Novak today! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Novak

The Experience of Nothingness is not even mentioned!

See how identity works as an existential contraption? It’s just that for some they are compelled by their own psychological propensities to become objectivists – whether theologically, morally or politically.

Or, as with Novak, in all three domains.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

And yet in regard to certain biological/genetic aspects of human identity, we are no less shaped and molded by the laws of matter than any oak tree. Our bodies and our brains are packed with “things”. Organs, blood, bacteria, chemical and neurological interactions which shape and mold our options in many profound ways. And there is only so far that even modern medicine can go in reacting to the parts that break down.

What separates us from from oak trees of course are minds. The most mysterious matter of all when it is actually able to become self-conscious of all the things it needs to know in order to conduct exchange like this one. At least in regard to our species on this planet.

And then where I take this line of reasoning: “I” in the is/ought world. At least waiters can be thought of as “things” in that there are behaviors that they perform that all of us recognize as being things that waiters do. Here “bad faith” might revolve more around a waiter approaching your table in a restaurant and dealing out poker hands. Here he or she could be said to have betrayed the manner in which we all agree waiters should behave or are expected lo behave.

Here things get all that more convoluted once we move into the is/ought world. In regard to value judgments, political prejudices and aesthetic tastes, what on earth does it mean to speak of “ontologically” at all? Still, we choose the behaviors that we do here without giving much thought to all of the things we are not. All of the experiences we did not have. All of the relationships we did not form. All of the information and knowledge we missed completely. Instead, we are “stuck” with reacting to our behaviors and the behaviors of others based only on that considerably more narrow thread of experiences, relationships and ideas.

But, come on, how many of us ever really stop to think that part through?

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

Come on, to the extent that postmodernists allow their own assessments to revolve largely around intellectual contraptions predicated on a particular accumulation of jargon, their own approach to the self bears almost no resemblance to the manner in which, from day to day, most of us recognize – in fact live – our own lives.

After all, what cares the biological, demographic and experiential I/“I” for “node[s] in a network of symbols and signs.” Love exists because, given the evolution of life on earth, our own species has come to embody the potential to feel love in all manner of complex and convoluted ways. Ways that clearly manifest themselves uniquely in different historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts.

Or are we to actually believe that the intellectual glop – gibberish? – that some of our more illustrious “postmodernists” spew out in almost unintelligible articles and books have any truly substantive relevance at all to those of us who, here and now, think of ourselves as being in love?

Sure, maybe. But only if and when they bring their words out into the world.

Realistically, however, how can the distinction here not revolve around I in the either/or world and “I” in the is/ought world? “I” may be a subject in any number of contexts, but the contexts themselves are bursting at the seams with the components of what we all agree is an objective reality. Again, unless we go all the way out on the reality limb and introduce things like solipsism, sim worlds, dream worlds etc.

Yes, “memetically”, “I” [in many important respects] is clearly a social and a political construct sustained in any particular community out in any particular world for any particular length of time. But to suggest that “the sense of being a substantive ‘subject’ or independent point of departure” is “merely a bourgeois illusion”?!

Who really believes that unless they reside in a pedantic la la land.

Okay, the other Dasein:

From wiki:

Sure, this makes sense to me. “Being there”. But being there in a particular, immediate world. A world that historically, culturally and experientially others share with you. But never in exactly the same way. And certainly ever further removed from the particular, immediate world of those who are “being there” across the vast span of human existence down through the centuries and across the globe. Or in regard to intelligent life forms on other planets.

We all share in common the “being there” part. And, in the either/or world, given that all beings exist and interact within the confines of “the laws of nature”, there are any number of things and relationships that are applicable to all of us. The part where the world does take priority.

But that’s not where I go given my own understanding of dasein. I go to the places in which “I” does in fact evolve over the years into different assessments of human interactions given particular social, political and economic contexts.

This part of course gets especially tricky. In a broad general sense one can argue that to the extent that one subsumes his or her own individual self in one or another set of community standards [re religion or race or ethnicity or ideology etc.] one is being “inauthentic”. But from my frame of mind this presupposes that if one does not do so, he or she can then come to embody a more “authentic” self.

But here [for me] “I”, while [existentially] becoming more problematic, is not any more or any less authentic in regard to that which he or she professes to embrace with respect to their own “individual” moral and political values.

Here the components of my own rendition of dasein come into play. The part where if how I view “I” here is reasonable there does not appeasr to be a way in which to avoid feeling “fractured and fragmented”.

see this kind of stuff is misleading although we do get a feel for what he’s trying to say. where he goes wrong is to propose that there are always individuals who are sacrificing anything about themselves when they become immersed in the ‘theyness’ of public life. as if everyone had that special depth of person that would be compromised by doing so. i deny that they do… and even go so far as to say some people are so unbelievably shallow that they would not exist without being part of the ‘they’. such people lack any possible depth because they have neither the intelligence nor the experience to be able to grasp the superficiality of their being. that being the case, they are literally unable to experience that existential crisis at the lose of their individuality.

sartre also shared this concept of inauthenticity… once using a waitress as an example. her composure, movements, gestures and speech, were all too scripted to be authentic. she was ‘acting’ in every sense of the word. though he called this an example of ‘bad faith’ and worked out an argument to say she was avoiding her freedom by playing the role of the waitress. two things here; first, there’s no freewill, so she’s not avoiding anything. second, if anything peculiar at all is happening here, it’s not necessrily that she’s playing the role of the generic waitress (that’s her job), but that she doesn’t recognize or feel something fake about her character when doing so. this waitress can be used as an example of what’s happening on a much larger scale with ‘public discourse’ in general… how we mimic the behaviors we subliminally incorporate into our selfhood through the bombardment of all manner of indoctrinating forces. commercials, especially, that show us how we are supposed to be, what we are supposed to need and want, how we are supposed to talk, etc. so much so that to say these people are individuals who are missing something unique about themselves that is lost through the public discourse, would be an overstatement. there is nothing about themselves that is unique so that one could say ‘i’d like to recover myself from this public theyness.’ recover what? that’s what you are; a copy of a copy of a copy.

and it’s so bad that even the idea of ‘finding oneself’ is scripted and contrived. if you want to find yourself, you’re supposed to do what people do when they want to find theselves… and you follow a formula.

what we are submerged in today is like a single autopoietic organism that consists of selfless individual cogs programmed to play some role or another that happened to find them. like it’s so bad, you can’t even be fake without being fake. that shit is scripted, too.

anyway what your boy martin was feeling when he said that was just that everybody around him was dumber than he was. he then mystified (like everything else he touched) something unique he thought he had, and then proclaimed himself the exemplary of the true existential individual against the ‘herd’. but there was nothing different about martin, save perhaps his extraordinary philosophical vocabulary. this fellow hadn’t even begun to grasp the true uniqueness of the individual. that’s something only stirner could hold without burning himself.

Late entrance:

Dasein cannot be demonstrated for example, it is the core where by all examples go toward further demonstration.

As an example of THAT, an abortive attempt may be stretched , constitutive , without sacrificing the economy of meaning. Duplicity does have an intensional reason, without sacrificing it’s original meaning. That is pertinent,
for otherwise , it would nit permit revision containing meaning within differing boundaries.

Wittgenstein negates Marx’s interpretation, that history be not merely be analyzed , but changed.

Contemparenity as well as the post modern, possess this weakness.

It can not retain change as well as the more profound challenges which intentionality can properly defend.

That is the lasting value of Dasein, whereby the more encompassing general forms have over.those which makes less impression.

Authentic forms become by necessity , more binding.

God exists by a necessity regardless of loss of epistemological probability.

Giving Biggy the edge , at least in this respect. The thing is, in the opposing view, there is an absolute disconnect, while the other connects with an intentionally hidden transcendental necessity.

Hint: there is a hidden tradeoff between the two epochs, points of.view, even of one is a perceived (precedential), non relative.

It does not, can not defeat one or the other, only if , both are revised , literally. The winner ought not be , bit is Wittgenstein, but only within a short order objective.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

Of course when something in science is said to be “popularized” it is often viewed derisively by those who insist instead that it is being “dumbed down” for folks like us. The science of the “self” being no different. “I” is in the brain somewhere – next to the “soul”, perhaps? – but it will only become really big news when it is finally pinned down where. And by those with backgrounds sophisticated enough to be taken seriously.

Here though I always come back to the distinction one can clearly make between “I” in the either/or world and “I” in whatever reality consists of in all the rest of it. Basically, you take a leap of faith to some measure of autonomy in the evolution of life on Earth and then explore your sense of identity in a particular “situation”.

“I” here and now thinking this, feeling that, saying something in particular, doing something in particular. What constitutes the “right kind of enitity” in the “right place” for pinning down “I” then?

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

What do these words amount to? Well, they are, in an important respect, the culmination of matter evolving on planet Earth into life; and that life then evolving into matter conscious of itself as “I”.

But the words are still far removed from pinning this “self” down. Either ontologically or teleologically. Given the gap between all the variables involved in human perception/conception and the relationship between the “human condition” and a fundamental understanding of existence itself.

What exactly can we point to when we speak of this “I”? The closest we seem to come is in the eyes. The mouth speaks the words that I think and feel but when I look in the mirror it is in my eyes that “I” seems most real. Same with others. It is when looking into their eyes that we seem to come closest to engaging their “self”.

But the eyes are only connected to a brain in a way that we are still far from grasping. At least insofar as how all those chemical and neurological interactions embodied in all of the biological imperatives create a “self” which, for most of us, are interacting with many, many others in much the same boat.

Therefore to speak of Hume’s “error” is only to subsume whatever conclusions we have come to “here and now” in whatever particular way in which we have ourselves come to understand all of this.

Again, the “serious philosopher” agglomerating language technically into a didactic, academic “assessment” that is no less circumscribed – at times circumvented – by all that is simply not known about the evolution of life on Earth.

Are his points true? Well, to other philosophers who either share or do not share the definitions and meanings that he gives to words of this sort placed in this particular order, they either are or they are not.

But when it comes down to taking an analysis of this sorts and using it to explain why in the course of living your life from day to day you think, feel, say and do this rather than that…?

And only then coming to the part that is of interest to me: “I” in the is/ought world. How this self is on an entirely different order from the “I” in the either/or world.

Given human autonomy of course.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

And yet there is no getting around the fact that in many crucial respects the self is a thing. A biological thing embedded in the evolution of life on Earth. Indeed, here, the mindboggling aspect being that it may well be only a thing. A thing no less determined by the laws of matter than the things we call rocks and mountains and moons. The “effort” we make may or may not be of our own autonomous volition.

Thus, the following assessment is all just an assumption he makes about what ultimately propells the self to fashion itself one way rather than another. Rather than being compelled to by nature.

Therefore, only in pinning down a “self” in an intellectual contraption like this can he avoid actually demonstrating that this is true going all the way back to the explanation for existence itself. In other words, philosophy at its least convincing.

But then, really, who am I to complain when I am myself no less reduced to reaching the point where I am in turn unable to go beyond the words I choose themselves.

And, thus, as well, “I” may be essentially or wholly caught up with/in/through the material body. But even to the extent that we have the autonomous capacity for options here in regard to the things we think, feel, say and do, how is the distinction made between appropriating things objectively or appropriating things subjectively when we are attempting to encompass “I” in a particular set of circumstances choosing the behaviors that we do.

What is “for sure” for all of us and what is “in my own opinion” instead.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

Which explains why so much written by those who embrace such intellectual disciplines and deconstruction and semiotics sounds like just so much pedantic gibberish. At least to most of us. They are so focused in on exploring how language can be probed through endless layers of complexity, they tend to forget that, given most of our interactions, words and worlds have a long standing relationship that predates the invention of philosophy itself. Let alone “language studies”.

There are countless conversations and interactions regarding the questions, “who are you?” and “who am I?” that can be sustained for hours, for days without anyone being the least bit confused about what is in fact being communicated. The meaning can be very, very general or very, very specific regarding any number of things and relationships, without someone suspecting hidden meaning or irony or political implications.

Though clearly there may well be contexts in which a simple introduction is loaded with all manner of hidden meaning, irony and/or political implications. We may see the encounter in an entirely unclouded manner, while the person coming into our lives through the introduction may have all manner of ulterior motives. Some of which even he himself may not be fully aware of.

But as a post-modernist, to speak of the self or of human identity as an “illusion” is, in too many concrete ways, simply preposterous. Instead, we are ever tasked with probing our exchanges with some in order to detect any possible subterfuge. Or to analyze the extent to which certain behaviors are rooted merely in social prejudices rooted in things like political and economic power.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

Tell me this is not downright “spooky”? There you are poking around inside the brain or probing it in real time, functioning through fMRI images. And who knows what new technology the neuroscientists either have or will have at their disposal.

But it’s not like they have ever reached the point where, while performing their experiments, probing their images, they actually make contact with the “I”. The part of the brain able to be separated out from the purely biological functions of all the parts.

Imagine that conversation!

See? As soon as you start in on the actual interaction between brain scientists and any one particular brain, you’re back to the chemical and the neurological interactions that can be documented and encompassed as in fact true objectively.

At best we can note the biological parameters involved and then point out how this particular brain in this particular head in this particular person is intertwined with all of the other things that we are reasonably certain about regarding the historical, cultural, and interpersonal “I”.

Without coming into contact with that “stand alone bit of the brain”, we are back to square one.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

Okay, as an intellectual scaffold, this all makes sense. There are clearly facts in your past precipitating facts about your present that will propel you into the facts embedded in the future that either exist “in reality” or reality itself is on par with a sim world, a dream world, a world in which what you think is true about the past, present and future is really just an illusion. Or wholly embedded in a determined universe.

There is just no getting around how, in many crucial respects, “I” is anything but a figment of our imagination.

But how do we go about accounting for what we account for in others when the discussions shift into accountability as a moral judgment? We can point to something that someone has done and hold her accountable in the sense that she is responsible for the consequences involved. But if we can’t agree on whether the consequences themselves are necessarily, inherently good or bad then accountability itself becomes a subjective assessment rooted in, well, that which I suggest or that which you suggest.

Well, they will do pertaining to certain aspects of our interactions able to be pinned down as true for all of us. But other aspects are rooted in moral and political prejudices that are always subject to change given new experiences in our lives. Here expectations can be entirely problematic depending on the circumstances over time.

Here, for someone like me, the gap between this as an intellectual assessment of “I” and “I” out in a world bursting at the seams existentially with contingency, chance and change always puts the tautological “I” in a situation/state where it is ever poised to reconfigure with regard to that which is of particular importance in our lives: the behaviors we choose.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

The mind and the body endure, but if the enduring mind is not a soul it may well be but an ineffable extension of the brain inherently intertwined in the evolution of life on Earth going back to the explanation of existence itself.

What we know…as close to objectively as we may ever be able to get…is that both the mind and the body endure for, on average, 75 to 80 years.

Only philosophers [English speaking or otherwise] are not all that prone to examining “I” as, in part, a collection of physical/biological “things” going about the business of interacting in the either/or world from the cradle to the grave, and, in part, mental, emotional and psychological “states” [in an autonomous world] in which “I” is anything but comprehendible in full.

Try to think this through. Try to reach the point where you are comfortably convinced that you have come closest to the one true “you”.

Identity may “lay in consciousness” but what does that lay in? How are we to explain how the conscious “I” interacts with the subconscious and unconscious “I” intertwined [somehow] with the rest of the brain such that we can pin down with any degree of certainty why we chose this instead of that?

As though memory itself is not embedded in the same “soup” of ingredients…only somewhat within our grasp and control.

And that’s before you get to the “I” parts that most interest me in the is/ought world.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

You might even call this the “common sense” description of human identity. Most of us will read this and clearly understand what he is talking about. We can relate it to the lives that we live from day to day. Whether it was before the world ever heard of the novel coronavirus because it didn’t exist, or our understanding and reactions to it now, it still involves all of the components of “I” that allow us to sustain a discussion without it without people scratching their heads as though such a discussion were gibberish. And even for those who have not heard about it yet there are enough facts able to be communicated to bring them up to speed.

The only imaginable way in which to grasp “I” here otherwise is if one assumes we all exist in a simulated reality or in a dream world.

On the other hand, the memories that allow for continuity in sustaining “I” over the years are no less subject to distortion and subjective interpretation. And they are no less differentiating things that can in fact be demonstrated to have happened from things that cannot. And even if we were somehow able to acquire a perfect memory of every single thing from the day that we were born, it doesn’t make the arguments I raise about the is/ought world go away.

Or, rather, no one of late has convinced me of that.

Saving the Self
Raymond Tallis defends personal identity from those who say the self is an illusion.

And yet until assessments of this sort are used in descriptions of human interactions that most of us can relate to, what do words of worlds like this actually mean.

Again, you get into a discussion of the covid-19 pandemic. In particular the controversy that swirled around conflicting arguments that swirl around the governments response to it. Go back to normal and let the virus run its course or lockdown everything that possibly can be locked down to flatten the curve.

How might one’s “stand-alone psyche” be differentiated from a “body uninhabited by a psyche” here? Isn’t this sort of discussion imperative in order to illustrate the text in order to clarlify what “for all practical purposes” the two contending arguments are suggesting in regard to the lives that we live and the behaviors that we choose?

Secondary perhaps, but, in my view, regarding the self in the is/ought world, nothing is more fundamental than connecting the dots between “I” as a child and “I” in the here and now. There are just so many interactions and connections made in those “formative years”. After all, how can 10 to 15 years of indoctrination from others not have a profound impact on how you view yourself out in a particular world in a particular time and place.

Imagine how profoundly impacted the subconscious and the unconscious mind must be with others consistently shoving their own reality into your brain. Here there are simply countless variables either beyond your fully comprehending or controlling. Think about it: How many children actually give much thought at all to how this is unfolding through such components as dasein, conflicting goods and political power. Did these things cross your mind much in your own formative years? They certainly didn’t cross mine. And while there are clearly distinctions to be made between the psychological “I” and the biological “me”, “ownership” in the realms most important to me seem clearly to be more an existential contraption than something that can be pinned down by philosophers and ethicists.

In any event, it is invariably intellectual contraptions of this sort that make discussions of identity obtuse to me. There are those parts of “I” that fit more snuggly in the either/or world. And those parts that are considerably more problematic when how we construe what the world around us is comes into conflict with those who construe it differently, precipitate behaviors that come into conflict in regard to either the coronavirus [e.g. the role of government, ethical dilemmas, personal choices etc.] or any other conflicting good.

Brains, Minds, Selves
Raymond Tallis uses all three to show that he has all three.

Of course all that this reminds one of is those who prophesized that with “the death of God”, religion in turn would wither and die.

As though there is any real substitute for religion when it comes to morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side.

Same with the “self”. How could it be that in any epoch at all, “I” will draw to a close. After all, you need a self to make the claim itself. Ironically enough, if anything, the “me, myself and I” mentality has spread around the globe more and more as the internet reconfigures pop culture, consumption and celebrity into “social media”.

On the contrary, the fabrication of “I” as children and then the refabrication of “I” given the unique trajectory of experiences, relationships and access to ideas that one has as an adult, is still being carried out by actual flesh and blood human beings.

Autocide? My dictionary defines that as “the act of suicide committed by crashing a car.” Or, in an “obsolete, rare” sense, “a suicidal person”.

But “I” itself?

Again, there are clearly aspects of a self, the self, my self that are rooted in biology, demographics, and empirical fact. I exist. Here and now. Doing this and that.

All one assumes here is that “I” is not just a manifestation of a sim or a dream world…and that we have at least some measure of autonomy.

In other words, this is what happens when you take philosophy all the way out to the end of the technical limb and try to grapple with “I” wholly in a world of words. The attempt to capture the one true “I”. Like looking at yourself in the mirror and concluding that the closest you come to this is… in the eyes?

Brains, Minds, Selves
Raymond Tallis uses all three to show that he has all three.

How does he figure that? In fact, neither theologians, scientists nor philosophers have [to the best of my own current knowledge] been able to actually go beyond what “in their heads” they “accept” about dualism and the soul, in order to pin down what all rational men and women are obligated to think about them. Let alone then moving beyond this in order to direct “I” toward the most rational and virtuous behaviors.

This is all just speculation and conjecture until the facts are finally pinned down. If the human mind is even capable of accomplishing that.

Okay, but is it entirely possible to demonstrate that any of this is unequivocally within the grasp of his own autonomous mind? Is it possible to demonstrate that nature is not wholly behind everything he wrote there and then and everything that we are reading here and now?

And what about the nature of human “reality” explored in films like The Matrix, Total Recall, Ex Machina and Inception? Or reality in Westworld.

Sure, if you are focused in entirely on human interactions in the either/or world. Right now the world is awash in any number of demonstrable facts about the coronavirus pandemic. For example the fact that “Trump halts WHO funding over handling of coronavirus”.

But what of our conflicting political reactions to that? Which “I” here comes closest to encompassing and embodying the most rational reaction of all?

Brains, Minds, Selves
Raymond Tallis uses all three to show that he has all three.

And we know how far back this notion can be taken. To this point: That I am typing these words and you are reading them only in the manner in which nature compels us going all the way back to an explanation of why there is matter at all; and why it behaves as it does and not in some other way.

Now, if there is anyone here who can unequivocally demonstrate to us whether or not the self is an illusion created by the brain then, by all means, give it your best shot. On the other hand, what if your best shot is in turn…

Or course he is no less in the same boat here as the author and all the rest of us. He himself would need to demonstrate unequivocally that his findings, derived from his brain, are not in turn merely an illusion built into human psychology by nature itself.

And that’s before we get to the profoundest mystery of all: Why?

Why would a nature, the nature, our nature create these laws of matter able to evolve into a “self” conscious material brain actually capable of pointing this out? Of examining and explaining it?

Is there a meaning, a purpose, behind it all?

And, indeed, when the self-conscious “I” interacts in the is/ought world, that becomes all the more important. After all, that’s the part where the brain brings, among other things, God into existence.