The Phantom Self

December 10, 2009October 14, 2011

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”

October 15, 2009November 11, 2010

Progress in Replication Technology

All that’s needed to make a case for radical reform of the idea of self is a thought-experiment with a clear and compelling outcome. However, the world is full of people who pay no attention to thought-experiments, however revealing they may be in exposing inconsistencies in everyday ideas, because thought-experiments aren’t ‘real’. These are people from Missouri, as the saying goes, who demand to be shown. And I have nothing to show, yet.

But even people from Missouri can be convinced to take a possibility seriously if there’s enough evidence that, although not here yet, it’s coming fast, probably not very far away, not in front of the house yet but closer than the next county. Like the second Al-Qaeda attack on American soil. Something worth thinking about.

This post examines the possibility whether we will one day have the capability of replicating a living human being, and if so, when might that be? Continue reading “Progress in Replication Technology”

September 10, 2009February 4, 2013

The Phantom Neuroscientist

In recent weeks, I have been devouring V.S. Ramachandran’s books and videos on what can be learned about the brain by studying patients with neurological damage. To clarify my title, Ramachandran is not a phantom himself, but a doctor of phantoms – actually a ‘phantom-buster’. He is famous for curing phantom-limb syndrome – an amputee’s stubborn, often debilitating, physical awareness of a limb that has been surgically removed – by an amazingly simple, low-tech trick with mirrors.

The ‘Phantom-Buster’ Mirror Trick

One of Ramachandran’s patients was desperate for relief from pain in his phantom arm, which he felt to be cramped and paralyzed. As described in A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness:

We propped up a mirror vertically on a table…so that it was at right angles to his chest, and asked him to position his paralyzed phantom left arm on the left of the mirror and mimic its posture with his right hand, which was on the right side of the mirror. We then asked him to look into the right-hand side of the mirror so that he saw the mirror reflection of his intact hand optically superimposed on the felt location of the phantom. We then asked him to try to make symmetrical movements of both hands, such as clapping or conducting an orchestra, while looking in the mirror. Imagine his amazement and ours when suddenly he not only saw the phantom move but felt it move as well.

Continue reading “The Phantom Neuroscientist”

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”

July 10, 2009October 14, 2011

Journal Excerpt – Multiple Personae in Ordinary Life

Our organisms can harbour and support multiple personae – like several software applications running on one computer. We may have quite different personae corresponding to our different roles in life. As a businessman, my goals, feelings, manner of speech, attitudes may differ greatly from my goals, feelings, manners and attitudes as a father, as an amateur photographer, or as an outdoorsman.

Our personae draw upon the shared resources of the organism, and even compete for them. Being torn between work and family is a familiar experience for many of us. Continue reading “Journal Excerpt – Multiple Personae in Ordinary Life”