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.