Category: technology

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”

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”