a man amidst mankind: back again to dasein

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Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

Concerning the identity of the person themselves – the thinking being – perhaps surprisingly for his time and culture, Locke claims that personal identity is not tied up with the soul. This is because he thinks that the same soul could in fact play host to different consciousnesses. It is your consciousness which makes you the same person over time; specifically it is the continuity of your memories.

The soul. On the other hand, what is the point of connecting the dots between "I" and a "soul" if there does not appear to be a way [philosophically or otherwise] in which to pin down what a soul/the soul/my soul is?

It's just another configuration of God, for all practical purposes. As for the conscious self going back to the cradle and forward to the grave, my own arguments still seem entirely reasonable to me. Some things we become conscious of are there for all rational people to become conscious of in turn. While other conscious assessments never seem able to get much further than personal opinions. And Locke's personal identity here would seem no less problematic than yours or mine.

The continuation of personal identity through memory is crucial for justice. For instance, in order to properly see the consequences of our actions and maintain our full responsibility for them, we must be able to contemplate our future selves as connected to the person about to carry out an action now, and we also must remember an action for it to qualify as really being ‘me’ who did it.

Yes, technically. But if different "souls" can't agree on what either does or does not constitute, say, social and political justice, how do they manage to configure their individual memories into one frame of mind in which those disagreement dissipate and then fortuitously are subsumed in the best of all possible worlds?

Again the part that most "serious philosophers" authoring articles like this, almost never seem interested in exploring.

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Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

The implication of Locke’s memory criterion for identity seems to be that my identity changes over time as my memories fade, or perhaps reappear after a period of absence.

Obviously: how we think about ourselves changes over time as new experiences and new relationships create new memories. For example, we might do things today that might have been thought inconceivable or thought to be atrocious ten years ago. The biological self changes in accordance with the human body that all of us come into the world with. But the moral and political self is considerably more problematic. Memories as chemical and neurological interactions in my brain are the same as in your brain. But the memories themselves are wholly dependent on lives that might be very, very different. You remember what you do and as a result of that you choose one behavior...while my own memories prompt me to choose a conflicting behavior.

Then what? What can we come to agree about regarding this memory induced dissension? Whose memories are the most rational?

Though that's not the direction the author goes:

One famous objection to Locke’s view along these lines was from Thomas Reid (1710-1796). I’ll give an adapted version. Suppose that as a ten year old I am given a bike for Christmas. When I am thirty, I am given an iPhone for Christmas, and I can remember being given the bike. When I am eighty, I can recall being given the iPhone, but have no recollection of being given the bike. The argument is that according to Locke’s memory criterion, the eighty year old ‘me’ is the same person as the thirty year old ‘me’ but is no longer the same person as the ten year old who received that bike. The thirty year old is the same person as the ten year old as they can remember the bike. However this cannot be true according to the rules of logic. The eighty year old (A) is identical to the thirty year old (B) and the thirty year old (B) is the same as the ten year old (C), but the eighty year old (A) is not identical to the ten year old (C). But the laws of logic state that if A=B and B=C then A=C. So Locke must be wrong.

Wrong about what?

Sure, as we get older, memories fade. Some get obliterated altogether. But the facts here don't change. You either received a bike for Christmas when you were ten or you did not. That you have forgotten this doesn't change the fact of it. Someone might have taken photographs of you on the bike on that Christmas morning. This may or may not jog your memory.

But: The rules of logic? How does that -- as a "technical" issue? -- really pertain to the facts here? I'm missing an important point obviously.

Instead, what I always focus on are the memories that, over time, prompt us to embrace one set of moral and political values rather than another.

For instance suppose a ten year old is indoctrinated by her parents to embrace a liberal/left wing understanding of the world around her. She remembers that clearly. Then at thirty her experiences and her thinking have convinced her to embrace a conservative/right wing understanding. Though she still remembers her liberal childhood views. Then at eighty she is still very much a conservative but she has completely forgotten being indoctrinated by her parent to think as a liberal thinks.

Again, the facts here are what they are. Someone can have an extremely faulty memory in regard to them while another remembers everything exactly as it unfolded from childhood on.

But the memories themselves linked to the creation of a Self linked to either liberal or a conservative worldview doesn't enable us to establish whether or not one frame of mind rather than another is the more reasonable.

Or, rather, so it seems to me. Particular memories are just another manifestation of dasein in my view.

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Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

A different problem with the memory criterion is that of false memories. It might seem that the very term is a contradiction: either we remember truly, or we don’t remember at all. But it is certainly possible to have a first person experience of remembering being present at an event when one was not present, and this could be indistinguishable from a ‘real’ memory.

Ask me about the most vivid "false memory" that I had.

But to the extent that a memory is either true or false in regard to one's sense of identity, the implications for dasein are no less embedded [for me] in the extent to which what you remember is able to be confirmed as in fact true. Whereas your memories of experiences involving moral and political value judgments can be unequivocally true or false...but that doesn't make what you remember anymore convincing as a value judgment said to be either demonstrably right or demonstrably wrong.

If I woke up with vivid apparent memories of being Lady Gaga and performing at Wembley, wouldn’t this make me Lady Gaga the person (if not the physical woman) according to Locke’s criterion of identity?

Come on, how can Locke's "criterion of identity" here not be just the sort of "technical" argument that has little or nothing at all to do with someone other than Lady Gaga being Lady Gaga.

Here we would have to invoke multiple universes or sim worlds or Matrixes in which, reality wise, practically anything goes.

Again, we can reply to this with a qualification. Perhaps the state of consciousness we are experiencing as a memory needs to have an appropriate causal relationship with the event being experienced for it to be called a genuine memory. So unless my ‘memory’ of singing at Wembley is caused by my actually singing at the concert, then it’s not a memory at all, and can’t be included in Locke’s theory.

Let's not forget though that memories unfold "in our head". And to the extent that either philosophers or doctors or neuroscientists do not fully understand what that entails, it's all going to be basically a "technical" examination of reality/"reality". Ending [for some] in the belief that even the technical discussions themselves are only as they ever could be in a wholly determined universe.

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The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

What counts as a person?

No, what really counts as a person? What is the most important factor to take into consideration when pinning down the philosophical parameters of "Know Thyself"?

We think we know our own beliefs, desires and sensations, but what kind of knowledge is that? And how secure is that knowledge?

Well, we all know where I draw the line here: between those things we describe about our self that are able to be confirmed as in fact true objectively, and those things about us that start with, "In my own opinion..."

After all, when push comes to shove, out in the world of actual human interactions, what else "for all practical purposes" is there?

These are big philosophical questions, and this collection of essays by eleven leading philosophers shows just how much our thinking about them has advanced in recent years.

If there is a theme through this book, it is that to understand the self we need to interweave several strands in our thinking: for instance, that the concept of the self has an ethical dimension, or that concepts of rationality have special roles to play, or that you only have beliefs and feelings if you are disposed to state them.

Well, that's good. Ethics is now my own primary motivation for pursuing philosophy: "how ought one to live?"

And rationality in "special roles" can only be explored substantively given particular contexts.

And I am certainly fully disposed to state my own beliefs and feelings. Not to mention deconstruct yours.

[Meno_]

The I am on your side guy says:


Construction is easy( err) deconstruction waaaay hard(err)

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The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

If there is a theme through this book, it is that to understand the self we need to interweave several strands in our thinking: for instance, that the concept of the self has an ethical dimension...

This becomes particular important for those who insist that morality and rationality are interchangeable. Ayn Rand and her objectivists ilk in particular. Here ethics becomes nothing less than a metaphysical certainty. That way the world can be divided the rational few and the irrational many.

Of course when the focus is on the "concept of self" then all one need do is to think up the one and the only conceptual dimension of ethics to go along with it. Your own for example. Indeed, that there are have been hundreds of them championed down through the ages is "proof" of just how crucial it is grasp this relationship philosophically. The irony here being completely lost on the objectivists.

...or that concepts of rationality have special roles to play, or that you only have beliefs and feelings if you are disposed to state them.

Concepts. Beliefs. Feelings. Stated or not in my view, what really counts must be the extent to which we can anchor them in descriptions of human interactions able to be defended beyond the concepts, beliefs and feelings themselves.

How about this then, I suggest: a particular context in which to explore them.

The first of these strands is visible in Carol Rovane’s essay, in which she makes use of her ethical criterion of personhood. For her, a person is not necessarily a biological organism: a person is an entity that pursues its own coherent projects as a single entity, with one set of thoughts. A group of people who all think individually, and who might disagree, does not count as a person on this criterion. But a tightly-knit team of people who thought and acted as one, could count as a person. One aspect of the ethical dimension is that we should respect peoples’ projects.

Instead [of course] this particular context must first give way to philosophical assessments of this sort. We must pin down what it means for "an entity that pursues its own coherent projects as a single entity, with one set of thoughts" to become a part of a group of such individuals such that the task then becomes making a distinction between "I" and "we" and "them".

What the individuals may disagree about or come together as one and embrace must not become the main focus of "personhood" in examining the "ethical dimension". At least not "in the beginning".

Yes, these distinctions are not unimportant. And they are all over the map historically, culturally and experientially. But, in regard to an actual situation in which ethics becomes a major concern, what are the limits of any particular philosophical quest.

That's precisely why, in my view, we need to include contexts in the quest. From the beginning.

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The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

It is pretty radical for Rovane not to start with the biological body as the basic criterion of personhood. One reason why it is so radical is that thoughts are in the heads of individual bodies. Moreover, we naturally think of persons as individual bodies. But does that prove anything, or could we just be making a mistake in our natural intuitions?

What could possibly be more, well, categorical and imperative?

The biological brain has to be the point of departure. We only have an identity able to explore the "ethical criterion of personhood" either by way of philosophical pursuits or "natural intuitions" because the evolution of biological life on Earth has [thus far] culminated in the human mind.

So, the crucial juncture has to be in exploring the relationship between genes and memes. And while we all come into this world with pretty much the same biological hard drive the part that revolves around the nurturing we get from others and the nurturing we pass on to the next generation seems to be the source of any number of far more problematic...contexts.

Christopher Peacocke says that our thoughts really ought to prove something. He makes the point that how we think of ourselves as ourselves ought to give us a good general guide to what it is to be a self.

And for all practical purposes in the either/or world that's about it, right? We go about the day doing any number of things, either alone or with others, and it never occurs to us to ask, "who am I?"

He reflects on how we file and integrate our experiences, then goes on to rescue the self from David Hume’s famous challenge to the whole concept. Hume claimed in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) that when he looked within himself, he could find only perceptions, not a self. Peacocke argues that the self can exist as the subject of conscious states without itself being an object of perception.

Okay, "perceptions, not a self". But that takes us all the way out to the really big questions. The part where the interactions of object and subject need to be explained given the existence of existence itself. The part where, once again, in the either/or world none of that actually seems to matter.

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The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

Self-Knowledge

Moving on to our knowledge of ourselves, there are several possibilities. One is that we work out our beliefs, desires and sensations by observing ourselves. Another is that our beliefs, desires and sensations are automatically presented to us, so that we know we have them without our needing to deliberately observe or work anything out. So if you believe that Sacramento is the capital of California, or if you desire chocolate, or if you have a headache, you just know that you have that belief, or that desire, or that headache, without having to make any observations of yourself.

Needless to say the exploration into self-knowledge here gets bogged down in the "technical" minutia of how as biological entities we come to connect the dots between "I" and the world around us. The self here is presumed to exist in a world where we have "beliefs, desires and sensations " relating to either/or relationships such as state capitols, reactions to chocolate or having or not having a headache.

In other words, excluding hardcore solipsism or sim worlds of demonic dream world or levels of Matrix realities.

The part where I may or may not have the capacity to grasp and communicate knowledge about the Self in a technically correct manner myself but a world in which this is within the grasp of those sophisticated enough to grapple with such things as logic and epistemology more rigorously.

Think for example any number of posts here from those like Faust or Only_Humean.

Then just more of the same:

A third possibility is that if you sincerely express a belief or desire, that means you have a belief or desire. If I ask you about the shape of the Earth, and you sincerely say “I believe that the Earth is round,” then you have that belief. All of these possibilities, and more, are considered in this book, although the idea that we look at ourselves and then work out what we believe, desire or feel, gets short shrift. The range of options reflects the need to accommodate several points. We seem to have rock-solid knowledge of our own states of mind: you may not know the right answer to some factual question, or what you ought to want, but you must know what you think is the right answer, or what you do want. And it would be very odd to ask someone how she knew that she was in pain; so that kind of knowledge seems to be immediate and incontrovertible. On the other hand, we can sincerely say we think one thing, but act as if we think something else. Someone can sincerely say they believe that a volcano will never erupt again, but always avoid going within twenty miles of it.

Here there is what you think is the right answer and the extent to which there is a right answer able to be demonstrated as in fact the right answer for all rational men and women.

Of course as with the volcano there may be a right answer -- it either will or will not never erupt again -- but even the "experts" are unable to determine that beyond all doubt.

As for what we want or desire, here things become problematic in the is/ought world. We may want something that others insist rational men and women ought not want. Or we may want the same things but come to squabble over the means chosen to get them.

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Dasein And The Arts
So how do you apply philosophical principles to think about art? An example can be derived from an unlikely source. Reneh Karamians uses Heidegger’s philosophy as an illustration of how to understand aesthetic experience.

Martin Heidegger gave philosophy a new description of humanity. No longer was mankind defined in terms of mind distinct from the physical world, as in Cartesian thought for example, but rather as being-in-the-world. Heidegger described ‘being’ as the essence of humanity, and employed the term ‘Dasein’ (German for ‘being-there’) to describe our existence.

On the other hand, come on, philosophers can "describe" or "define" humanity in any number of ways if their conclusions ultimately come down to the descriptions articulated in a world of words.

Bottom line [one of them]: that, to this day, we still have no definitive, demonstrable argument that clearly separates mind from matter. Including the assumption that mind is but more matter wholly in sync with a determined universe.

And, again, being in what particular world? For example, when Heidegger's Dasein contends with my own dasein in the pitched battles that flare up over conflicting moral and political value judgments.

Or, sure, stay up in the clouds:

This idea of being as the essence of humanity is not difficult to understand. It’s the realization that the essence of human existence is not to be found in our corporeality, as it would be for a physical object existing in space and time, but rather, in a certain type of experience of existing.

And isn't this just a hop, a step and a jump to one or another religious dogma. Or to one or another ideological dogma. Like fascism.

Or even a combination of both: https://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows ... azi-occult

The Science Channel documentary: FORBIDDEN HISTORY The Nazi Occult

Therefore, when Heidegger refers to humanity as Dasein or being-there, he is referring to the human experience of existing rather than to a person’s physical location in space and time, which is irrelevant when discussing the essential nature of humanity. To clarify the term ‘being’, one might further say that being is the totality of experience during any given unit of time.

Needless to say, in regard to my own rendition of dasein in the is/ought world, I'm for going in the opposite direction.

Which is why the objectivists here among us are so intent on either excoriating me or "foeing" me. Their whole "philosophy of life" revolves around the psychology of objectivism which revolves around the belief that there must be an "essential nature of humanity". Why? Because, well, damn if they haven't discovered it themselves!

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Heidegger, Metaphysics & Wheelbarrows
Richard Oxenberg gives a poetic introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time.

In order to appreciate Heidegger’s thought it is necessary to see it in relation to the Western metaphysical tradition from which it has emerged. This would be true, of course, for any thinker, but it is especially so for Heidegger, because Heidegger’s thinking represents a radical challenge and correction to the tradition itself. Heidegger does to the traditional view of ‘Being’ and ‘the world’ what Marx is said to have done to Hegel’s dialectic: he stands it on its head. He stands it on its head – so he might contend – in order that we may finally see it right-side-up.

From my own frame of mind, however, an appreciation of Heidegger's thought revolves around the extent to which someone is able to bring his conclusions down out of the philosophical clouds and make them come alive in descriptions of actual human interactions. Which particular being out in which particular world doing which particular things "right-side-up"?

I merely narrow the focus all the more given the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein [existentially] in the OP that begins this thread.

The problem with the traditional view, from Heidegger’s perspective, is not that it fails to comprehend the most abstract and remote issues, the Alpha and Omega of Being, but that it fails to properly grasp what is most obvious, what is ‘everyday’, what is right before our eyes; what is, perhaps, so close that it is ‘uncomfortably’ close.

And, if Heidegger were still around, I'd note for him the manner in which dasein as I know it makes most others particularly uncomfortable. We could compare reasons why. I could make my distinction between I in the either/or world and "I" in the is/ought world. We could discuss this distinction in regard to, say, fascism in America today.

And in this failure it has institutionalized an interpretation of life and the world that is inauthentic and self-alienated.

Of course, from my own vantage point "here and now", it is the moral and political objectivists who have "institutionalized" their own "interpretation of life and the world" such that those who do not or will not share their own value judgments are deemed to be inauthentic by continuing to be alienated from the one true path.

Like for example, right here, obsrvr524's "Coalition of Truth".