Just when I thought I had my subject figured out, I came across another researcher whose work has shaken my perspective on several points I thought were settled. Shaken, but not destroyed; rather, Michael Levin’s insights cast light into some of the murkier corners, and offer support where support was needed. Since I am presently twelve chapters in to a book on personal identity and the human experience of self, it is unsettling to realize that I will need to go back and revise biggish parts of it—but it is reassuring that these changes point in the direction of a stronger theoretical foundation for conclusions I had already reached.
Levin is a thinker who makes my head explode. He offers a fundamental paradigm shift in thinking about the units of life. The defining principle of a living entity is its orientation to the homeostatic goal of maintaining its own living conditions: self-regulating its temperature, its oxygenation, its nutrition, its safety, etc., within the range optimal for growth and reproduction. Significant deviations from these homeostatic norms are stressors; the entity seeks to reduce stress.
I say “I” hesitantly, given the context. Anyway, this self-same bundle of attributes, having lost and gained more than a few (attributes) over the years, persists with enough continuity to be recognized as the same person.
I did not die of melanoma. With the help of state-of-the-art immunotherapy, my immune system made short work of the cancer. But my ramped-up, unleashed immune system also destroyed my thyroid, and my thyroxine levels fell to levels that are clinically rare. Thyroxine controls the body’s metabolic rate, and therefore everything. I was treated for hypothyroidism, but not before falling into a deep depression, which left me unable to write, or think, or even compose a simple email without revising it for hours. Here is a fragment of writing from that time I found this morning in an old file:
Yesterday I thought I could perhaps write again, another blog post. But the attempt seems to have cast me into the pit of despair. I wanted to do something simple and clear, something I could be proud of.
Anyway, that explains my absence. The road to recovery was long,
involving physically-demanding tasks far removed from the philosophy of
personal identity. This past summer, I finally
began to think about taking up this project again. Then I got an email out of
the blue (or whatever colour cyberspace is).
It started out
Hi Gordon, I want to thank you for so clearly and plainly explaining this idea of self-concern in your illusion of survival post. Before I found it I had been searching for a way to positively conceptualize the possibility that Parfit's extreme claim was real. I've now read that post many times and a number of your other posts from the blog. I've shared the illusion of survival post with many of my friends but it seems it doesn't fascinate them as it does me.
That hooked me. I have friends like that too. The email was from Scott Emerson. Scott said he wanted to “somehow make the illusion of survival post into a video for people who aren’t interested enough to read very much.” We started corresponding, met on Zoom. Scott’s video went through several drafts. This week he published it on YouTube.
It’s interesting and rewarding to see someone else’s sympathetic take on ideas you have worked with a long time. Scott’s lens is not my lens; he says things I wouldn’t say, and says things I would say in ways I wouldn’t think of saying them. That is to be expected. We are different people, with different backgrounds. Variation adds depth to the topic, and broadens its appeal. Scott’s video grew from seeds planted by Parfit, by William Hazlitt, by Nagarjuna, seeds of the same lineage that sprouted as the Phantom Self blog. The existence of Scott’s video proves that the seeds remain viable; this is a life form that can survive and thrive in the competition of ideas. I invite you to watch it. It is also in text form here. As always, both Scott and I welcome your comments.
Someone with the Capgras delusion has the stubbornly ingrained belief that a person or persons close to her—her spouse, her parents, her child—is someone else, a stranger, an imposter.
Although rare, Capgras is of interest because understanding it could shed light on the normal processes by which people recognize people. To decide that you are in the presence of your wife, not a stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to your wife, is to make a personal identity judgement. We make them all the time, usually automatically and effortlessly with people we know well, sometimes with effort when we struggle to place a familiar face encountered in an unusual setting. An understanding of how beliefs about personal identity can go so spectacularly wrong in Capgras and related disorders may afford insight into the ordinary intuitions we rely on to recognize other people and ourselves. Continue reading “Questioning Capgras”
