Is it really true, as people such as Gnu Atheist Alex
Rosenberg and a person on Twitter claim, that there is no such thing as an I?
I think not.
I've long believed that Dan Dennett was on the right track,
if not necessarily fully right, on subserves and consciousness "bubbling
up." I have believed with Daniel Wegner that this means (without
supporting determinism) that free will as classically defined by a Cartesian
free willer doesn't exist any more than a Cartesian self-meaner. I've accepted
any selfhood we have is changing, as well as fleeting to grasp. And, I've long
held fast to the validity of David Hume's "whenever I try to grasp
myself" idea.
But, the degree to which nailing down an "I" is a
hard problem doesn't mean that an I is nonexistent, and contra Rosenberg, it
sure as hell doesn't mean that Kandal and other neuroscientists have proven it
doesn't exist.
Reality?
It's more subtle than that. No surprise.
It starts with consciousness as embodied cognition. Contra
Rosenberg, consciousness doesn't exist in brains but in bodies. Per Dennett's
heterophenomenology, I grasp the "I" that is you by seeing you in
action. I impute agency by seeing you in action, even if I also accept that the
creator of that agency is fluid. The existence of agency is different from the
staticness of it.
Ditto, you grasp the "I" that is me in just the
same way. And, we accept the reality of these heterophenomenological
determinations through social interactions.
For people who claim no "I" exists, like this guy?
If you knew me yesterday, you no longer know me anymore. I grow daily.#Change https://t.co/X7WWBqjwyC— Psychology ۞ Pнιℓσѕσρнυѕ ۩ (@PsychologyDoc) November 28, 2018
Wrong.
If this were literally true, the following corrolaries:
1. There would be no "I." (Arguably, there isn't a
unitary I, but ... )
2. "You" couldn't know "yourself"
3. We'd arguably be living in a world of mass solipsism
4. None of this is new. See Heraclitus, Hume & Nelson
Goodman.
Ultimately, this, like some things, may not be provable by
science, but even before this point, Rosenberg is into the waters of
scientism.
And, we don't live in a world of mass solipsism, because we
are social animals.
This is another thing that modern neuroscience also misses.
After all, you can’t put a family, a Friday night poker game, a Tuesday morning
kaffeeklatch or other social groups all in one ginormous MRI machine.
In turn, this is why philosophy of science, or even more,
philosophies of individual sciences are needed. That’s why good (better than
Dennett) cognitive philosophy or philosophy of mind is needed for cognitive
science and neuroscience.
But, Alex Roseberg is like a self-discipline hating
philosopher. (He’s not the only one; they do exist.)
The reality, as I see it, is what I was hinting at above.
Selves do exist. They exist as individual, embodied-cognition consciousnesses
interact with and define each other, and as subselves within those
consciousnesses interact with each other.
Not a glitzy definition, but it’s as simple and as
straightforward as I can make it.
No comments:
Post a Comment