self interest – Page 3 – The Phantom Self

February 26, 2010April 7, 2010

What We Are

What are we, if we are informational entities?

Like most people (and unlike some philosophers) I will stick to the view that we are persons. In this post I will try to state clearly what persons are according to the theory of persons I recommend, which I call the Information Theory. I will begin to flesh the theory out, by drawing out some of its consequences.

The Information Theory

Here are some claims of the Information Theory of Persons.

Persons are entities that can be multiply instantiated, like tunes, dances, literary works, electronic files, computer programs, and genes.
Like all those things, persons are entities that can be expressed as information. A person can cross a spatio-temporal gap in the form of information carried by any convenient medium, such as electronic files.
Persons are distinct from the living biological organisms they depend on, as software is distinct from the hardware it runs on. Continue reading “What We Are”

February 16, 2010March 30, 2012

What We Are Not

We are not Cartesian egos. We are not biological organisms either.

Not Cartesian egos

A Cartesian ego is a kind of mental or spiritual thing that is thought to inhabit a human body and give it life. Many people believe we can exist independently of a human body – that we survive the death of our bodies, continuing to have experiences either without a body, or by being reborn in another body.

I hardly need to argue against Cartesian egos. The idea is in widespread disrepute without any assistance from me. It is hard to reconcile with a scientific view of the world. We have no convincing evidence that such things exist. Until we have, we should use Occam’s Razor for its intended purpose to prune them from our conceptual scheme. Leaving them in creates clutter and awkward problems.

One problem comes from split brain research. When the corpus callosum connecting a patient’s two cerebral hemispheres is cut, two centres of consciousness appear where there was one before. Should we conclude that the surgeon’s knife divided a spiritual substance? Instead of deepening our understanding, this multiplies mysteries.

Despite its academic unrespectability, the idea that we are Cartesian egos is embraced by billions of people. It is deeply involved with emotion, as this passage from Umberto Eco’s novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana illustrates:

One evening the spiritual director stood in front of the altar balustrade, illuminated – like all of us, like the entire chapel – by that single candle that haloed him in light, leaving his face in darkness. Before dismissing us, he told us a story. One night, in a convent school, a girl died, a young, pious, beautiful girl. The next morning, she was stretched out on a catafalque in the nave of the church, and the mourners were reciting their prayers for the deceased, when all of a sudden the corpse sat up, eyes wide and finger pointing at the celebrant, and said in a cavernous voice, “Father, do not pray for me! Last night I had an impure thought, a single thought – and now I am damned!” Continue reading “What We Are Not”

February 1, 2010February 18, 2013

The Self Illusion

To find the right answers, ask the right questions. I have skated around the question, “Is there a rational justification for self concern?” without coming up with a solid argument that settles it one way or the other. But there is a related question which can be answered.

Two Views of Teleportation

As we have seen, teleportation by means of information transfer can be viewed in two ways. The facts of the case are: I am scanned in North Vancouver and my information is sent to Omaha, where it is used to construct a living replica of me. Meanwhile, the original in North Vancouver is destroyed. Two views of these events are:

SURVIVE: I am transported from North Vancouver to Omaha.

DIE: I am killed in North Vancouver, and someone else – my replica – is constructed in Omaha.

People who think about teleportation disagree about whether SURVIVE or DIE is an accurate description of the case. How can it be settled which view is true – or whether neither is true?

People who disagree about SURVIVE and DIE do not disagree about the facts of the case. The facts are not in question. No scientific experiment can be devised to settle which of SURVIVE and DIE is an accurate description of the facts. Continue reading “The Self Illusion”

January 14, 2010September 27, 2011

Gappy Things That Branch and Change

Imagine, in the early days of books, a small library consisting entirely of original manuscripts. Some of them are very old, and have been attacked by mice. Some have deteriorated so much that their pages crumble to dust when the custodian of the library tries to read them. He mourns the loss of these books, and contemplates the inevitable decay of the remaining books with sorrow. To be sure, new manuscripts are occasionally added to the library, but they cannot replace the volumes that are lost forever. This goes on until, one day, the young assistant librarian has an idea. “This book will be unreadable in five years,” he tells his elder. “But I can read it now. If I copy the words of this book onto sheets of new vellum, and bind them in a strong new binding, we will be able to read it for many decades to come.” The old librarian tenderly strokes the cracked spine of the crumbling volume, and shakes his head. “What good is a copy? It wouldn’t be the same book.”

In the previous post, I summarized one of Derek Parfit’s main arguments that personal identity – being the same person over time – is not what matters in survival.

Human fission – one person ‘splitting’ into two – is clearly imaginable. It is physically possible, and is not far from being technically possible. Parfit argues compellingly that fission would preserve what is important in survival. Specifically, if Parfit knew that both of his cerebral hemispheres were about to be separately transplanted into two separate bodies, he would have the same rational justification for anticipating the experiences of both of the post-op survivors as each of us has for anticipating his or her own future experiences. This, despite the fact that the original Derek Parfit ceased to exist when he was divided. In this case, ceasing to exist is very unlike ordinary death. Ceasing to exist just consists in the fact that the two post-op survivors are different persons from one another, and neither one is the same person as the pre-op Derek Parfit. Loss of identity of this kind does not matter. Continue reading “Gappy Things That Branch and Change”

January 1, 2010October 14, 2011

Parfit on What Matters

Part Three of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons is titled “Personal Identity”. One of its central claims is what Parfit calls the Reductionist View: that persons are not “separately existing entities” over and above their brains and bodies. What is important about being the same person at different times consists primarily in psychological continuity and connectedness.

Another, related claim is that being the same person is not in itself very important. In particular, it is not a rational justification for self-concern. If I know that someone in the future will not be myself, that is not a good reason not to anticipate having that person’s experiences. What is important are the underlying, real relations of psychological continuity and connectedness. And even they do not have exactly the same importance that we tend to believe personal identity has.

Part Three of Reasons and Persons contains 150 pages of closely-reasoned arguments which are by and large original, compelling, and illuminating. I will not try to restate all of Parfit’s arguments, or to comment on them all; instead, I strongly recommend his book to anyone interested in this subject. In this post, I will review one of Parfit’s more important lines of argument in Chapter 12, “Why Our Identity is Not What Matters.”

Brain-Splitting

Parfit begins this chapter by making a refreshing break from the philosophical practice of thought-experiments, building instead on actual cases documented in medical literature. These are the famous ‘split-brain’ cases, in which surgeons severed the corpus callosum, the main bundle of nerve fibres connecting the left and right hemispheres of the human brain, as a treatment for epilepsy. Cutting the connection reduces the severity of epileptic attacks by preventing seizures from spreading from one hemisphere to the other. But there are side-effects.

The effect, in the words of one surgeon, was the creation of ‘two separate spheres of consciousness’. (p 245) Continue reading “Parfit on What Matters”

December 10, 2009October 14, 2011

The Phantom Self

Parfit’s Glass Tunnel

In the Introduction to this project, I said:

It’s the strong – and I believe, irrational – hold that the idea of the self has over us, and particularly its role in motivating action, that led me to characterize it as the ‘phantom self’. Like the Phantom of the Opera, the self has a powerful voice that demands to be obeyed. Like an amputee’s phantom limb, it is a vividly felt presence – but there is nothing really there.

It is time to flesh out that characterization.

No contemporary philosopher – perhaps no philosopher ever, in the West – has done more to break the phantom’s grip than Derek Parfit. In Reasons and Persons, Parfit argues persuasively that, although we are strongly inclined to believe that our continued existence is “a deep further fact, distinct from physical and psychological continuity”, that belief is not true. He goes on to describe the difference this philosophical conclusion made to his own life.

Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was such a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others. ^{(RP p 281)}^{Continue reading “The Phantom Self”}

November 30, 2009January 16, 2026

Evolution of the Self

Thought-Experimental Results, and More Questions

In my story Forking, Elliot Otley is accidentally duplicated. During part of the story, each Elliot regards his counterpart as another man. Later, he comes to regard the other Elliot as himself. The difference between those two attitudes is dramatic.

When he thinks of the other Elliot as a different person, it is as a rival for his property, career and family, everything that he holds dear. The relationship is one of competition and animosity. When he starts to think of the other Elliot as himself, the animosity vanishes, replaced by sympathy and understanding. The relationship becomes cooperative.

When Elliot first learns of the other Elliot’s existence, he responds with hatred and fear, as to a dangerous competitor. Later, the two Elliots stop competing, and are fully cooperative. Yet their beliefs about the relevant facts of the case have not changed. Throughout the story, Elliot knows how travel-by-information works, and what went wrong that led to his duplication. What changed Elliot’s mind about his relationship to the other was not new factual information. Continue reading “Evolution of the Self”

August 21, 2009August 21, 2009

Overview of the Argument

This post is an overview of the Phantom Self project, as I conceive it at the outset. It presents an overall structure of my case for conceptual reform. It does not state the entire argument, as most supporting detail will be left to subsequent posts. It is a plan and a rough map, not the journey itself, in the course of which there will certainly be unscheduled detours.

I will recommend reform of the concepts of self, person, and related ideas. These concepts are important; they play a prominent role in how we think and feel about the world, in our decision-making and action. There are dramatic differences in emotional colouring between things I think of as mine or not mine, as self or other. The concept of person is central to morality – to responsibility for actions – and to the ideas of justice, reward and punishment which underlie our laws. The reforms I will suggest are not trivial, and should not be dismissed as ‘just semantic’. Continue reading “Overview of the Argument”

July 17, 2009August 21, 2009

Old Age, Death and Love

An exchange of letters between Ian Brown and Jean Vanier was published in the Globe and Mail of Feb. 21, 2009, under the headline, “Am I fearful of death? No, I cannot say I am’.

Ian Brown writes about his father, age 95, who lives an active life – still going to the office! – but is increasingly limited in his powers. “What I have noticed is not his aging…so much as his dislike of aging. … His physical performance shames him.”

Brown then turns to his own prospects.

Looking at it from the age of 55…getting older looks like a discouraging journey into loneliness. … I can’t imagine getting older, therefore weaker and lonelier, without resenting it. The slightest health scare makes me anxious and the anxiety makes me cranky and the crankiness makes me feel bitter, even mistreated. … Last night, a still-lively 80-year-old gave me his formula for enthusiastically living in the world as you get older: “Active engagement with the future,” he said. “That’s the secret.”

Which sounds right…. But if you physically don’t have much future left, what motivates you to engage actively in it?

Brown’s line of thought is steeped in personal ‘identification’ with his living organism. The prospect of decrepitude and eventual death causes psychological suffering. Continue reading “Old Age, Death and Love”

July 14, 2009March 10, 2011

Introduction

When planning this project, I felt eagerness mixed with apprehension – which is one way we typically feel when future events loom in our lives. I think about other people’s futures with more equanimity. I have great difficulty feeling the same way about your future as about my own. It is like trying to imagine that my left arm belongs to someone else – a bizarre, difficult feat of the imagination – yet there are cases in neurophysiology which report that experience in otherwise sane individuals.

We are attached to the saga of ourselves as ongoing subjects of experience. We readily imagine we will somehow continue to exist, to have experiences, even after the death of our biological organisms. Many of us who do not believe in an afterlife nevertheless have no trouble imagining one. I picture myself floating up, out of my body. I see grief-stricken family and friends around the bed. I hear their conversations – I try to take part and realize I cannot be heard. Later, I leave the earth and find myself in some other place – hopefully a pleasant one – where I may again meet people who were my friends when I was alive.

Such ideas are impossible to disprove. But there is little or no scientific evidence for them. The notion of an afterlife strikes me as wishful thinking. Continue reading “Introduction”