Self
October 17th 2006 08:46
I'm beginning to think the question should be reformulated. You shouldn't ask about the existence of self, which is nebulous, and leads inevitably to the realm of the unsayable. Rather, you should talk about the sense of self -- which is also nebulous, and which may privilege first-person observations, but which at least is something that people can, vaguely, understand. That table is not me, but this arm is.
It may well be that sense of self is culture- or person-specific, or a matter of the language you grow up with. There are definitely a lot of grey areas. I can look at an object or a person I feel *attached* to and consider them, in some sense, part of me. I can feel a film, or a song, or the ground I'm walking on, or nebulous things like "community" or "nation", to be part of me.
Notes
-- Tuesday 16 October 2007: I wrote the above years ago, before I'd actually read anything on the matter. But now I'm thinking, among what I had in mind was what Donna Harraway means by cyborg, and what Heidegger means by ready-to-hand. We're intimately connected to our environment. We're butterfly-effected by what happens elsewhere in our society and world. Our brains change depending on the people around us and our perceptions of the objects around us. We co-evolve with dogs (for instance, some dogs have evolved to require c-sections) and plants. We are part of the bicycle we ride, the glasses we wear. We have pacemakers and prosthetics. We are changed by the rise of the computer -- shaped to work in harmony with the machine. We are changed by our online life. We adapt to suit our tool environments. And our consciousness and capabilities extend vastly beyond the boundaries of our skin -- in terms of how we sense, what we can touch and affect, what can touch and affect us.
-- Thursday 15 November 2007: Perhaps instead of speaking of a "sense" of self -- and thereby diving into the phenomenologically obscure -- one could focus more narrowly on language. One direction to go would be to look at claims made involving the first person pronoun -- "When you hurt my family, you hurt me", etc -- to collect all of these, and thereby delineate what a "self" is (assuming a "self" is the sum function of the beliefs expressed with the first person pronoun). Now, would one conclude from such formulations a causal relationship (you're intimately bound to your family), or a constitutive relationship (your family is part of you, or vice versa)? -- Well, I don't know that there's ultimately a clear-cut way to divide the two.
It may well be that sense of self is culture- or person-specific, or a matter of the language you grow up with. There are definitely a lot of grey areas. I can look at an object or a person I feel *attached* to and consider them, in some sense, part of me. I can feel a film, or a song, or the ground I'm walking on, or nebulous things like "community" or "nation", to be part of me.
***
Notes
-- Tuesday 16 October 2007: I wrote the above years ago, before I'd actually read anything on the matter. But now I'm thinking, among what I had in mind was what Donna Harraway means by cyborg, and what Heidegger means by ready-to-hand. We're intimately connected to our environment. We're butterfly-effected by what happens elsewhere in our society and world. Our brains change depending on the people around us and our perceptions of the objects around us. We co-evolve with dogs (for instance, some dogs have evolved to require c-sections) and plants. We are part of the bicycle we ride, the glasses we wear. We have pacemakers and prosthetics. We are changed by the rise of the computer -- shaped to work in harmony with the machine. We are changed by our online life. We adapt to suit our tool environments. And our consciousness and capabilities extend vastly beyond the boundaries of our skin -- in terms of how we sense, what we can touch and affect, what can touch and affect us.
-- Thursday 15 November 2007: Perhaps instead of speaking of a "sense" of self -- and thereby diving into the phenomenologically obscure -- one could focus more narrowly on language. One direction to go would be to look at claims made involving the first person pronoun -- "When you hurt my family, you hurt me", etc -- to collect all of these, and thereby delineate what a "self" is (assuming a "self" is the sum function of the beliefs expressed with the first person pronoun). Now, would one conclude from such formulations a causal relationship (you're intimately bound to your family), or a constitutive relationship (your family is part of you, or vice versa)? -- Well, I don't know that there's ultimately a clear-cut way to divide the two.
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Comment by JakeDanger
The Matrix
"There is only one sentient being in the universe - ME. I am like God, except without the ability to create other sentient beings. So I created the whole universe as an illusion to distract myself from my unbearable eternal loneliness. You, sir, do not exist. You are a only figment of my imagination, like a character in a dream. So, get me a glass of water..."
I was talking to another solipsist the other day and the arrogant little figment had the nerve to say the above to me...unbelievable.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog