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.
Brains, Minds, Selves
Raymond Tallis uses all three to show that he has all three.
Same for me. There are simply far, far too many factors and variables embedded in the interaction between a self and the world around it, to realistically suppose that, in the either/or world, “I” is an illusion.
For that to be true, you are out on the deep end of the metaphysical limb. There “I” can be anything that one is able to imagine it to be. Call it, say, the Matrix Syndrome.
Here though we are equally all stuck. We can propose any number of things that explain why and how we have awareness. But exactly how to connect the dots between the evolution of biological life on Earth and the existence of human psychology reacting to that is still [presumably] a long way from being fully understood. And, sure, the more we try to grasp this “technically”, as those in any number of scientific fields attempt to, the easier it is to lose sight of that which can be known about what we are actually aware of itself at any particular time, in any particular place.
Which he basically demonstrates for us here:
Now, you tell me. In regard to any particular awareness that you have had today – one that stands out – how would you use this assessment in order to capture it more fully? What aspects of your awareness would make it more or less likely to construe your self as more or less an illusion?
How would you make a distinction between what you are convinced you are aware of insofar as that is not actually the “real world”?
Brains, Minds, Selves
Raymond Tallis uses all three to show that he has all three.
That may be applicable to any number of subjects that philosophers choose to explore. But who here can consistently make important distinctions between “disguised nonsense” and “patent nonsense” when it comes to explaining why any particular “I” chooses to do any particular thing at any particular time and place instead of choosing to do any other particular thing.
Given situations in which others will judge what they do as either moral or immoral. Is pragmatism here an example of “disguised nonsense” while objectivism reflects “patent nonsense” instead?
I certainly think so. But then my own arguments are deemed by others to be either disguised or patent nonsense.
So, is this closer to disguised nonsense or patent nonsense? After all, who here is able to establish beyond all doubt where the brain ends and the conscious mind begins. Or where the conscious mind ends and “I” as an autonomous individual able to assess this begins?
Here, as is often the case, I come back to dreams. My dreams in particular. What boggles my own brain/mind is the fact that in my dreams new realities/contexts seem to be created. In other words, suppose my dreams merely repeated the things that I said and did on any particular day. That might seem entirely more reasonable. Instead “I” find myself in “situations” I have never been in before. A whole other world is created in which I am interacting with others such that in the dream it all feels like what I experience when I am not asleep. Unless my dreams are completely different from those of others.
And, in fact, in one way they are. My dreams are almost never, ever “way out there”. Almost every time the dreams revolve around more or less real situations that reflect on experiences that I have actually had.
But: My brain is doing this…right?
Well, who is say that somehow my brain isn’t also totally in command of my experiences in the waking world?
Others clearly shrug this off more far more easily than I can. But how exactly do they explain their brain creating these new worlds…worlds only more or less in sync with the world when they are awake?
DNA & The Identity Crisis
Raymond Keogh has a science-based take on personal identity.
Imagine then someone coming up with a definition of “personal identity” and then grappling with the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein. Which is basically the challenge I make in distinguishing between the either/or I and the is/ought “i”.
Okay, I suggest, tell us what your definition of “personal identity” is and then note how that definition intertwines both those aspects of the self clearly embedded out in the empirical world necessarily embodying the laws of nature, and those characteristics which shift and change over time as, for example, your value judgments or aesthetic “tastes” shift and change over time.
What stays the same because it is integral part of the demographic, biological self – the verifyiable, falsifiable self – and what has changed insofar as how you have come to understand yourself out in the world reacting to the behaviors that you and others choose over time given new experiences.
What accounts for “staying the same” and “changing” given those aspects of your personal identity that you are able to make this distinction regarding?
And, in regard to DNA, if the conditions include total adherence to the laws of matter in a wholly determined universe, than “I” persists as it does because there was never any possibility of “I” freely choosing to persist another way.
DNA & The Identity Crisis
Raymond Keogh has a science-based take on personal identity.
Right.
Like, for all practical purposes, that is actually something to concern ourselves about. Other than out in the deep end of the philosophical pool in places like this. Our biological self manages to keep itself reasonably intact from the cradle to the grave. Until, over time, the biological clock starts to tick tock to its inevitable dismiss. Though, for some, any number of brain afflictions can also have a profound impact on the mental, emotional and psychological components of “I” in turn.
Still, these are clearly embedded in biological imperatives that to a greater or lesser extent doctors and medical professionals can account for when a “sense of self” begins to deteriorate. At least we generally have access to an explanation here.
Where things get trickier is when attempts are made to connect the dots between DNA and “I” acquiring, sustaining or changing moral, political and aesthetic values. Here the complexities embedded in memes intertwined in unique sets of personal experiences and relationships create endlessly existential permutations.
“…depending on the context”.
That sounds familiar. Unless of course there are philosophers here among us able to provide us with a precise definition of identity. And then note how they use this definition to explore, to examine and to encompass their own identity such that the manner in which I ascribe it [in the is/ought world] to dasein is not reasonable.
Given a specific context.
As for the “theoretical tradition”…what’s yours?
And yet we know that in any number of extant contexts in the either/or world, chaos and confusion are anything but evident.
It’s in how we bridge this gap in explaining our own behaviors that most interest me. Especially when those behavioirs precipitate conflict.
DNA & The Identity Crisis
Raymond Keogh has a science-based take on personal identity.
Okay, but where on the blueprint is the genetic material that allows us to grasp when brain matter becomes mindful of itself as brain matter able to become mindul of itself. Freely and autonomously, say.
Let alone the biological parameters of human moral and political interactions. Instead, for some, the more they come to know the more it becomes clear that there is still so much more to know.
I, as a biological imperative and “I” as a social, political and economic construct. Which combinations of deoxyribose, phosphate molecule and the four nitrogenous bases --adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine – combined with countless historical and cultural permutations embedded in memes accounts for why we choose one behavior rather than another? And why we react to those behaviors in so many conflicting ways?
Okay, how do we go from all of these things we are anchored to in the either/or world to all of the things that tear us apart in the is/ought world? Might it be either the manner in which I construe the meaning of determinism or the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein?
DNA & The Identity Crisis
Raymond Keogh has a science-based take on personal identity.
Then it comes down to where the line is drawn. Only there are no “simple terms” for that. Otherwise we would know by now whether this line is closer to the memetic “I” having significant control over the genetic “I”, or the genetic “I” being wholly in sync with biological determinism such that the memetic – historical, cultural, experiential – “I” is basically just an illusion embodied in a human psychology that is no less wholly in sync with the laws of matter.
Ever and always that same imponderable. Where, when, how, why does the brain become the mind become the self conscious “I” become that entity which chooses this behavior instead of that one?
Okay, you’ve made this crucial paradigm shift “in your head”. Now tell us how this explains in any definitive manner the way in which “I” seems to be broached, assessed, encompassed and then sustained by so many variables that are not manifestations of the human genome. Those material/phenomenal interactions that are broached, assessed, encompassed and the sustained in any number of complex and ever evolving social, political and economic interactions. How does it not still always come down to connecting the dots between what we think is true and what we are able demonstrate to others is in fact true for all of us? Those aspects of our identity which are actually questioned by others in regard to any number of things.
Just as teen age years need to navigate between childhood and adulthood , Wittgenstein had to navigate between Russell’s and Cantor’s paradoxes to create a feasible objective toward construct of a model . The ‘Vanishing Adolescent’ , David Riesman point to the vaster state induced; ‘The One Dimensional Man’. The problems the Dasein faces are apparently meshed with the problems of the entropic deconstruction of culture and society in general.
Without the 'Dasein diffentiating out toward the plenum, the construct can not overcome the big central gap, which becomes the pedestal that the model will be placed upon.
It’s setting, it’s situational or context, will not have space for it, ( Cantor’s interject , I believe.)- as a reverse function between linear and relative space/time
Reconstructions become more like the warped mirror images, rather then memorable qualifiers such as moral quantifiers becon to abstract.
The authentic and the inauthentic self will form analytical models thereby, and weighing one against the other will not serve either well.
The third man argument fits here, where phenominal amd nominal programs construct workable models, on utilitarian basis.
I think Wittgenstein did say this, and did not anchor an absolutely necessary rrules , which do work mainly on Democratic arena.
But as can be opined by current affairs, for most, similarity tends to signal a necessary use of common sense.
I do not think this implies merely that.
Similarly , the same goes for the memetic-genetic difference, but this goes to the heart of the paradigmn shift, and although it is intrinsically casual, but it’s determinancy is of secondary importance.
We are responsible for our actions regardless of whether they are willed autonomously, or are products of distant precepts.
DNA & The Identity Crisis
Raymond Keogh has a science-based take on personal identity.
Biological imperatives. Our collective identity as the human race. One big inclusive group.
Okay, so how then does one explain the manner in which individual members of this group then go about the business of creating myriad other groups? The ones based on race or ethnicity or gender or sexual preference or religious affiliation or political commitment?
Or is that too just a particularly mind-boggling manifestation of biological imperatives.
But, okay, let’s just assume there’s a juncture where biology gives way to human autonomy. We don’t know exactly when that happened, how that happened and why that happened, but [compelled or not] let’s just say that it did.
What then?
Memes. Social, political and economic. And isn’t this the factor that seems to cause all the fuss when it comes to identity? Different people in different communities at different points in time historically seem driven to create any number of groups in which someone is either one of them or they are not.
The rest then being history.
All I do is to focus in not on the groups that we choose to be a part of but why we choose the groups that we do. Once we go beyond the parts where biology is destiny. The role that dasein – encompassed in the OP – plays in our individual lives.
In other words, once we go beyond this:
Yes, for reasons we will almost certainly never truly understand, we were destined to be born, will be destined to die and now we have to deal with the part in the middle.
What then of “I”? Here and now. What can we pin down for sure about ourselves? And what is more or less just an existential leap rooted in dasein?
The part that, in my view, most will steer clear of once the exploration brings them in the general vicinity of my own point of view.
DNA & The Identity Crisis
Raymond Keogh has a science-based take on personal identity.
Okay, so let’s pin down with some precision that crucial distinction between the objective definitions you have accepted in regard to your own identity and the parts that I attribute to dasein. By, oh, I don’t know, focusing in on a particular set of circumstances in which you choose behaviors based on your assessment of yourself that come into conflict with others who, in ascribing their own sense of identity to value judgments at odds with yours, are ready to do battle with you.
Anyone care to go there?
Where, in my view, the implications are considerably more problematic. Let’s bring the author’s “intellectual contraption” above down to earth.
On the other hand, perhaps there is a biological component embedded in the “human all too human” tendency down through the ages to for all practical purposes make such demographic distinctions. After all, that might explain why they never go away.
Here I tend to make my own leap in the general direction of nurture. Nurture being able to shape and mold nature such that folks are found all up and down the ideological spectrum. But how to finally pin it all down once and for all? The optimal or the only rational manner in which to view such things as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation?
Yes, some day science and philosophy may well be able to grapple with it all objectively and provide us with that definitive assessment.
Or perhaps they already have. If so, links please.
That will almost certainly never happen until our genetic makeup is understood to the point that everything we say and do can be explained “scientifically” as a result of one or another combination of biological factors. And to the extent that, say, moral and political agendas are attributed to this is the extent which it becomes for all practical purposes “beyond our control”.
Unless of course I am not understanding his point correctly.
Kant & The Human Subject
Brian Morris compares the ways Kant’s question “What is the human being?” has been answered by philosophers and anthropologists.
Whereas I am more intent on exploring the part where, after coming to a conclusion about that, the focus then is on each of us as individuals out in a particular world at a particular time interacting with others of our own species in a particular context. The stuff I explore in the OP on this very thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Hear, hear!
And yet at the same time Kant is intent on encompassing human interactions by way of “categorical and imperative” moral obligations. Human “beingness” cannot be pinned down through rational thought but human ethics can be?
What am I missing here?
And an empirical examination of human identity will sooner or later bump into those parts of the self that are able to be established as in fact true objectively for all rational men and women and those parts that seems conducive only to “I” as an existential contraption subject to change given new experiences.
Iambiguous, I’ve told you repeatedly that proofs exist, they are not subject to opinion or disproof. It’s very narcissistic of you to claim that since your opinions have changed over time THAT YOU WERE EVER WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING!!! That everyone HAS to be wrong about something. They’re not!
I’m currently in a thread with John Bannan where I define space as otherness. It’s true beyond true beyond true. There is no other possible opinion to this! These are proofs. Humans have lots of proofs!