From: "Ben Young" <PHIBYP@srv0.arts.ed.ac.uk>
Organization:  Arts
To: elmorian@zetnet.co.uk (Lucas)
Date:          Thu, 21 Nov 1996 18:28:28 +0000
Subject:       Re: X philosophy
Priority: normal



>>>Now I'm goig to link our idea of a conseptual scheme with teh idea of
>>>entity we cam up with ages ago, the conceptual scheme is part of our
>>>entity.
>>
>>
>>>Entity = conseptual scheme + whateve else.
>>>
>>>Now when I think about it, what is the difference between entity and
>>>conseptual scheme? I think it has something to do with time and experience.
>>>At any one time we have our conseptual scheme, but because we exist though
>>>time we are more. We are different one day from the next, it's not JUST
>>>that out conseptual scheme  has altered, although I'm sure it has, it's
>>>more. Or so I think. Assuming this the entity = conseptual scheme + what
>>>has happend (that's our exp.)
>>
>>I'd li8ke to condier the related idea, pretty much due to Gurdjieff,
>>that "man has many "I"'s".  
>I'm very hesitant to disect myself, beacsue it may take apart entity, which
>I feel exists. But I'm very willing to go into our entity and look at what
>we are. Perhaps another reason I cringe is that if we have different selves
>then we have no real personality, this scares me. But at the same time I DO
>act differently at different times. Another thing I dislike about the idea
>of diferent selves is that it sounds to me like we're chikcening out, we
>say 'Oh, I wasn't myself' We should face what we do as if we are one person
>otherwise we don't do anything about anything.
>
>No, The very idea of entity means that I am one. Although I may behave
>differently. The only reason I can see for multiple I's is in an attempt to
>understand myslef better, but I don't think It's acturate to think in this
>way normally - only when under serious objective self observation.
>
>(am I being negative?) :)

Nope.  This is one of the most interesting dialectics in philosophy.  
David Hume pointed out that when we introspect, we never come acrss 
any partular thought or expeience of which one could say:  "That is 
ME!"- what we find are different experiences of THINGS- light and 
shade, happiness, sadness, etc.  He concluded that the idea that we 
have a continuous "self" is a convenient illusion, something we 
believe through force of habit, but not something which philsoophers 
could ever establish.

Now there's one crude response to this, which I heard made in a 
tutorial this morning by someone who ought to know better, by this 
stage in history.  He said that we might not have an experience of 
the self, but couldn't we identify the self as that entity which has 
all these internal experiences- afterall, something is doing the 
introspection in the first place, and surely that must be me!   

I think there many things wrong with this idea: eg: that it 
doesn't make sense to say that something experiences all my 
experiences- the idea is analogous to saying that there's a little 
man inside us who does "seeing" for us, or does "hearing" for us-- 
but the same question, namely "what is is for this thing to 
experience" can be posed for the internal thing (the "homonculous"), 
and so we have an infinite regress.
Also- we just don;t NEED to say that there must be something, some 
self-consciousness, which experiences everything of which we are 
conscious-- instead, we could work on ways of understanding the idea 
that it is just the thoughts themselves which do the thinking.  
Though this idea DOES involves abandoning the idea of entity, which I 
know you don;t want to do.   I think I am trying to argue you 
out of it, and in fact----- sorry about this---- you're right, that 
the consequences of abandoning the idea ARE unsettling, having 
various existential, religious, moral etc aspects. 

Kant had a more sophistcated reponse to Hume's problem.  Instead of 
saying that there must be something which experiences all the 
thoughts that I experience, he said (I think) that in posing the 
question about whether or not I have a Self, I presuppose the idea of 
a self in order to call it into question.  Therefore, the concept of 
a self is not something we can ever get away from- it is a 
precondition we bring to experience, or rather, we expeirience 
reality through a framework that divides it into Self- and Other 
(this is what I THINK he was saying- I'm guessing a bit).  But this 
doesn't mean that there must be a SELF.  It just means that we look 
at the universe as if there was one.  What we experience of 
ourselves, the Empirical self, is exactly as Hume described it- just 
a mess of uncinnected semi-random thoughts.  But we have a concept of 
self boult into the conceptual scheme (hmmm- that could be an 
important link) though which we make sense of experience- and Kant 
also said that logically there must be a non-empirical self, a self 
that could never be experienced, and out of which the empirical self 
and the universe stem.  But he also said that we can't say anything 
about this "self", and to try to do so is to fall into philosophical 
and even linguistic error.  This transcendtal self is an unknowable, 
supralinguistic being which is a condition for the universe to exists 
at all.  God, I suppose.  But I think I've got Kant wrong on this 
point, as he specifically states that the existence of God can never 
be proved (you can't prove anything about things which exists 
outseide experience- you can't even say "they exist"--- so I;ve made 
a mistake somewhere as I;ve been representing Kant as if he WAS 
saying comething about them.

So we have the idea of a Self-Other distinction which forms part of 
our conceptual scheme, the idea of a transcendental self which acts 
only as an unknowable condition for anything to exist at all, but 
nothing corresponding to an entity which binds together all 
mysucessive personal states into one being.  

I think the idea of entity can be tackled from two directions.  First there is the 
logical or linguistic question of how we use word "I", and under what 
conditions that word is used correctly.  So "I" does have a 
legitimate USE- but we can't move from that to saying that there is 
an entity corresponding to it.   I think we use "self" in three 
distinct ways: to refer to our physical body and prized possesions; 
to refer to our social status (maintained by other people's 
relationships with us, and hence vulnerable to their changes in 
attitudes), and to refer to the procession of our thought,a nd our 
internal life.  I don;t think we can reduce any of these to any of 
the others, without losing something important.

Second- I don;t know.  But there must be something more to this.
Damn- I want to write more but I;m being email attacked from across 
Britain and I nedd to go home NOW and give some food to my flat mate 
who;s waiting to cook.

I;ll continue this Sooooooon.

Ps- my new flatmates are hoorible.  When are you moving to 
Edinburgh??   Okay- well they're not horrible tooo much- but enough 
for me.  Would you dtill be interested in living together?   I 
fantasise about an ideal household- one to have wildest dreams about. 
 
Will write more, soon..


>But the idea is to understand what we are, so out with the scalple!
>
>
>>Thus- I have both a "benign Intellectual" self, who loves to talk and
>>discuss, and that;s the self that is wriitng this; I also have a
>>"chill- out Lover" self, who deals with most of my relaxation and
>>relationships; and I have a "Sadistic Destroyer" personality, who
>>steps in from time to time and tries to wreck everything.  I'm
>>conscious that this is very superficial,: its at most a first step on
>>the road to mapping myself and my mind.  Freud had a related idea, in
>>hos doctrines of the Id, Ego, and Superego- each of these plays a
>>different role in our feelings and actions, and each has a different
>>agenda concerning the way our lives should be led.  I'm not sure
>>which of the two theories is best as a starting point-- my polan is
>>to observe myself, try and fit everything into a pattern, and work
>>out what role consciousness has in this picture- as we are not
>>conscious all the time, and consciousness seems to be realtively
>>independent of the actions of the various selfs.
>
>I just want to clareify we are on the same ground: We aren't equally
>conscious all the time. But we are, to a degree, conscious all the time.
>
>
>>  I;ve just been
>>discussing, ina tutorial, the doctrine of "consious inessentialism"-
>>which basically saya that all human cognitive functions could take
>>place without the presenceof consiousness, and there certainly seems
>>to be SOMETHING rioght about this.
>
>This get right down to the definitionm of consciousness. Is consciousness
>the awareness of existance? If so yes, when we sleep we are not aware of
>our existance in what we considr reality, but our body continues.
>
>
>>What do you reckon?
>
>As I said, I initially dislike the idea of many selves, but I can make it
>berable by considering different states of consciousness, or different
>personalities at different times, but I still think I'm one entity.
>
>