Self: Philosophy In Transit

Philosophy in Transit #3

by Barry Dainton

In the third in a new series of short, provoking books of original philosophy, acclaimed thinker Barry Dainton takes us through the nature of Self

When you think 'What am I?', what's actually doing the thinking? Is it a soul, or some other kind of mental entity separate from your body, or are 'you' just a collection of nerve-endings and narratives? In the third in a new series of short, provoking books of original philosophy, acclaimed thinker Barry Dainton takes us through the nature of Self and its relation to the rest of reality. Starting his journey with Descartes' claim that we are non-physical beings (even if it seems otherwise), and Locke's view that a person is self-conscious matter (though not necessarily in human form), Dainton explores how today's rapid movement of people, and information affects our understanding of self. When technology re-configures our minds, will it remake us, or kill us? If teleportation becomes possible, would it be rational to use it? Could we achieve immortality by uploading ourselves into virtual worlds? Far-reaching and witty, Self is a spirited exploration of the idea that in a constantly-changing world, we and our bodies can go their separate ways.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology

220 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 24, 2014

Reviews

[Toh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gripping account of selfhood, Dainton's 'Self' exemplifies a rare genre of philosophical texts written perfectly for the uninitiated philosophical enthusiast like myself: a short text of remarkable clarity, with creative metaphors, analogies and ideas to keep us on the edge of our seats.

Dainton provides a complete account of the 'self'. He provides his insights into what defines selfhood (the biological theory, psychological theory and his pet theory: the C-theory of the self), what is the nature of the 'self' (substance/Cartesian dualism, physicalism, naturalistic dualism and Russelian monism) and what the future holds for the 'self' (possibility of an everlasting life, transportation, inhabiting in a virtual world etc.)

Though one may object to his rather heavy reliance on thought experiments and intuition to propel his argument,one must admit that the representation of his ideas and the arguments which he has put forth are worthy of every second of our attention.

As an aside, I find his brief epilogue titled 'On being moved (or not) by time' to be life-changing. He succinctly and lucidly expresses the three philosophical positions held (presentism, the growing block and the block universe) and shows us why the 'block universe' theory is in vogue amongst scientists today. His terse and pointed discussion made me understand the world from a different perspective, that the past, present and the future are but, in Einstein's terms, 'forever part of an eternal four-dimensional cosmos'. A truly riveting text.

[Oliver Ho · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent and dense-yet-accessible overview of the philosophy of self, consciousness, and even time and reality. I loved how all of the insights and ideas are based primarily on thought experiments, rather than hard science (although both methods are important and intertwined), which makes for thought-provoking and occasionally trippy reading.

Here's what I highlighted:

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Although most contemporary philosophers reject Descartes’ dualistic view of mind and body, most would also agree that the problems he raised for understanding how beings which possess conscious intelligence can be a part of the material world have yet to be solved.

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In the terminology that John Locke would make standard in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), features such as mass and shape are primary properties, whereas colour, sound and texture (as felt), are secondary properties.

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What we know as sounds, colours, itches, pains and tingles are now called phenomenal properties, or qualia.

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many of the properties that we naturally assume are to be found in the external environment – e.g. in the case of colours, on the surfaces of physical things – are in fact to be found only in our own minds.

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It’s true that our brains are very complex. But, like the rest of our bodies, they are entirely composed of perfectly ordinary physical particles. Since these particles only possess primary properties, our experiences cannot be properties of these physical things either. So it looks as though we have no option but to conclude that our experiences are simply not part of the physical world.

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If experiences are not parts or properties of the physical world, the substances to which they belong can hardly be part of the physical world either. Since we know that our experiences are things which belong to us, it is natural to conclude that we are those substances. We are thus led to the conclusion that we are non-physical or immaterial things.

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For Locke a person is anything which has the mental capacities he lists: the ability to have experiences, to feel, to think and reason intelligently, and to be aware of oneself as a conscious subject which has existed for some time, as one that has a past.

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Locke also held that our understanding of our own natures and the physical world is very limited, and he was open to the notion that matter, suitably configured, might possess the capacity to be conscious.

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Locke insists that, if your mental life continues, but in doing so it is sustained by a succession of different physical beings, then your identity is entirely unimpaired; it is not affected or diluted in the least.

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key claim here is that mental continuity makes for sameness of person irrespective of what else occurs. If we can conceive of the same mental life – and hence the same person – being sustained by a succession of different physical substances, can’t we also envisage the same mental life being carried by a succession of different mental substances? Locke argues that both scenarios are equally imaginable. Body-swaps are possible, but so too are soul-swaps.

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But what precisely does ‘mental continuity’ amount to? Unfortunately, Locke himself didn’t provide us with a great deal of guidance.

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Instead of ‘sameness of consciousness’, the modern Neo-Lockeans talk in terms of ‘sameness of psychology’. A person’s psychology consists of memories, but also beliefs, values, character traits, preferences, intentions, hopes, and so forth.

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We can say that an earlier and a later person are psychologically continuous if they are joined by a chain of overlapping psychological connections.

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to the Neo-Lockeans, your memories are genuine by virtue of being causally dependent on your earlier experiences.

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mental continuity has two distinguishable elements: experiential continuity and psychological continuity. Experiential continuity exists within our streams of consciousness, and consists of the felt flow of experience from moment to moment. Psychological continuity is based on causal dependencies between earlier and later psychological states.

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when it comes to our continued existence, it is experiential rather than psychological continuity which matters.

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we are fundamentally a collection of persisting capacities for experience

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a self remains in existence provided its capacity for conscious experience endures, irrespective of any and all psychological changes it might undergo.

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Let’s return to our main question: ‘What am I?’ What are you?’ A viable answer has to specify the kind of entity that we are. It also has to be able to supply a clear and convincing answer to a further question: ‘How must I be related to someone who exists in the future if that someone is going to be me?’ Motivated by the thought that we cannot fail to continue to exist provided our streams of consciousness continue to flow, C-theory equates us with subjects of experience, which are themselves composed of nothing more than capacities for experience. The theory also states that it is the ability to contribute to a single stream of consciousness that makes it possible for capacities for experience (both active and dormant) to belong to a single subject over intervals of time.

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streams of consciousness not only possess a genuine unity, this unity is a product of relationships among experiences themselves.

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For us to continue to exist we needn’t actually be conscious; it is sufficient for our capacities for consciousness to persist. However, it remains the case that we are essentially subjects of experience, beings whose defining trait is the ability to be conscious, just as Descartes claimed.

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So, while elementary physical particles may not have the type of experiences that we do, their nature allows them to combine to constitute experiencing subjects such as ourselves.

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According to C-theory we are, fundamentally, subjects of experience in the form of C-systems, which in turn are collections of experiential capacities with the distinctive attribute of being able to contribute to unified streams of consciousness.

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Thinking about trips and transformations that we could or couldn’t survive has helped us to discover the kind of thing that we are. As we have seen, we are essentially subjects of experience: beings whose sole essential property is the capacity to have experiences.

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If we are subjects of experience, our only essential property is our capacity for consciousness. Alterations to our DNA, or the nano-technological transformation – or even replacement – of our flesh and blood pose no threat to our existence, provided they do not interfere with this capacity.

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For Descartes and the Cartesian dualists, our conscious minds reside in non-physical substances. If conscious minds are not actually part of the physical realm at all, it would be a mistake to assume that activity in a wholly physical computer could, in and of itself, constitute a consciousness or a conscious subject.

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Given their sophistication, it may not be wrong to hold that virtual zombies have a mental life of a distinctive kind, but it is entirely experience-free; it is not a mental life we could envisage ourselves enjoying.

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One alternative stance on the mind–body relationship is Russellian monism. This view is resolutely non-dualistic: according to its proponents, experiences and experiential properties are fully paid up members of the physical world. How is this possible, given the absence of any mention of experiential properties in the textbooks of fundamental physics? It is possible because there is simply more to the physical world than is recognized by current physics, or so the Russellians maintain.

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The situation looks very different, however, from the vantage point of Chalmers’ naturalistic dualism. On this view, you will recall, consciousness is not itself a physical phenomenon; experiences are immaterial in nature. However, the occurrence of experiences is correlated in a law-like way with certain sorts of physical processes. Since the processes in question are computational – they involve the manipulation of data or information in or by physical systems – there is no reason whatsoever why a thing has to resemble a human brain in order to be able to produce experience. Any system which can manipulate information in the right sort of way – in the way your brain does, for example – will generate experiences.

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Bostrom’s ‘simulation argument’ takes the form of a trilemma. According to him we have to accept that at least one of the following claims is true: (1) The human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a technologically advanced stage. (2) It is unlikely that any advanced civilization will run large numbers of simulations of their own history. (3) We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

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The simulation argument relies on certain supposedly accurate empirical predictions as to how the real world is likely to turn out. But if we come to accept that it is likely that we are living in simulations we obviously no longer have reason to accept the relevant predictions. There’s no reason to suppose that future developments that seem probable from within a simulation are really probable. On this view, the simulation reasoning is self-defeating, and can therefore safely be dismissed.

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If you think it likely that many of the simulations our descendants will produce will be reliable in these relevant ways, then you can coherently believe that you are yourself living in one of these simulations.

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If you are led by the simulation argument to the conclusion that there is a fair probability that you are inhabiting a simulation, you have every reason to suppose that the non-simulated world is not too dissimilar to your world – in effect, you may be living in a fiction, but you are not living in a total fantasy.

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We now have to accommodate ourselves to the thought that, even if reality is much as it seems, there is still a significant likelihood that our current experience is simulated.

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Selves are things that exist in time. We are born, we die, and our lives are constituted by what we do and experience in the time between these two termini. While this much is obvious, what it means to exist in time also depends, in part, on the nature of time itself.

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Each of these views of the universe corresponds to a different conception of time itself: (1) Presentism (the small sliver): the universe consists of a succession of momentary (or very brief) phases; since only one of these presents is ever real, the past and future have no reality at all – they don’t exist. (2) The Growing Block (the medium-sized solid): the present and the past both exist, only the future is wholly unreal; since new ‘slices’ of reality – new presents – are being created, and once created these remain in existence, the universe is constantly growing. (3) The Block Universe (the large solid): the past, present and future are all equally real; there is no privileged or moving present – every event is present at the time when it occurs, just as every place is a ‘here’.

[mkmk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now, I shall proceed to search for arguments against the theory that says it's more likely than not that we're living in a simulation being run in the future where super-computers exist and are able to run simulations of the history of humankind.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dainton seeks to answer the question of selfness: If a person P1 at time t1 and a person P2 at a later time t2 are numerically identical, how must P1 and P2 be related? If you are interested in the singularity and philosophy, this is a great primer. 4.5 stars

[Bruno Noble · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dainton gets it right. He paraphrases Locke (accurately) as follows. “What is needed for an earlier and a later person to be one and the same is for that later person to be mentally continuous with the earlier person… Mental continuity makes for sameness of person irrespective of what else occurs.” For Locke, memory – the ability to recall an incident or experience – is key to defining or understanding this notion of selfhood but, while this seems straightforward, it is considered problematic today because “we are… deluded about our autobiographical memories. Many of us naturally assume that memories are akin to video recordings, which gradually fade with age but remain essentially accurate (if blurred) records of our past experiences. [But] psychological research has shown that they are nothing of the kind. We remember far less of our lives than most of us suppose, and we remember very selectively… Our memories are… active re-creations, which typically involve a sizeable number of fictional elements.” And then on Hume’s “bundle of perceptions”, as Dainton puts it, “The fact that you can’t see your eyes doesn’t mean that you don’t have any. If the self is that which is aware of the contents of our consciousness… it clearly isn’t going to appear amid these contents.”

The English philosophical establishment never much liked Sartre and so I was pleased to read that, according to Dainton, “we are not like any other kind of thing at all. Most of us think we have potential — even if we aren’t always making the most of what we have. According to my account of the self, there is a very real sense in which we are nothing but potential…” It wasn’t clear to me, though, if Dainton knows how similar that is to Sartre’s starting point, that there are beings-in-themselves that are what they are. (A stone is a stone. But we are not stones.) So, quite logically, if we’re not ‘things that are what they are’ we must be ‘things that are what they’re not’. (Sartre calls them beings-for-themselves.) So, embracing this idea of a self — of a person, of a human being — is potential and the constant renewal of one’s self because there is, too, in ‘being what you are not’ and ‘not being what you are’ an element of nothingness, of negativity, of the negation of the ego and this – to my mind – is where Western philosophy, at this point of existentialism, meets Eastern philosophy, or Buddhism.

Dainton doesn’t shy from our contemporary philosophers — Julian Baggini, who wrote, “The Ego Trick is not to persuade us that we exist when we do not, but to make us believe that we are more substantial and enduring than we really are.” And John Hood: “We all certainly experience some form of self but what we experience is a powerful deception generated by our brains for our own benefit” — but I would have liked to know what he thought of Galen Strawson who wrote, in the early 2000s, about the opposition between the diachronic (or continuous or narrative) self and the episodic (or discontinuous or non-narrative) self.

Dainton concludes by looking far ahead to when tele-transportation becomes a possibility. If you are replicated atom for atom from one place to another, would that other person still be you? And what if you’re uploaded into a computer-created virtual world limited only by your imagination?

Maybe that’s when, if we don’t know who we are, we’ll at least know who we want to be.

[Cal Davie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book on the concept of the Self.

Dainton takes us through a variety of approaches to consciousness before detailing his own approach of phenomenal continuity. In this, it is the continuity of experience which is our basis for Self. He has an art of putting extremely complicated ideas in a very simple way, and plays with a range of sci-fi and fantasy thought experiments which aid the reader's understanding.

I'd recommend it for anyone interested about consciousness or the concept of the self.

[Elisabeth Marksteiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having struggled with Parfitt, this was a much easier and fun read on Philosophy of Mind and Self. Lots of references to Star Trek and Zombies. Highly accessible- FUN! Yet, this pithy description does not negate that it is a serious introduction to complex philosophical arguments. Absolutely loved it.

[Jonathan Perks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting if not sometimes brain-fusing journey through ‘what is consciousness’? From Descarter to Dainton’s own theory of C-systems this book certainly challenges you to think using ideas such as Star Trek transporters and Matrix-like life simulations to explain current thinking on thinking.

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book leads you to different dimension of self
It's discuss more of teleportation, instead of death
What will happen when you are teleported whether you retain the same body or same conscious
Whether our self is our body or collection of consciousness
Superb book
More like a science fiction

[lukoto · Rating 3 out of 5]

翻了翻书柜里大学时候买的这个系列 感慨下求知若渴的时期 然后被这个机翻味傻到（尤其后半部分感觉译者开始疯狂打酱油）

[· · Rating 3 out of 5]

(4 January, 2024)

With a subject such as this it is perhaps inevitable that Descartes is discussed. His mental 'substance' is bad reasoning, how can anyone experience anything outside of the material world? Let's put Solipsism aside for a minute (if not, who's really reading this?), whatever I experience is because my brain is interpreting the world around me. How, one may ask? With neurons, synapses and electrical signals - all physically real things! At least Dainton talks of Russell and Chalmers, you know... real philosophers!

All this talk of Star Trek transporters and not one mention of the two Rikers... I wonder why?

Although the author does not call them p-zombies, he uses that argument against Physicalists (and Materialists and Reductionists) - all for naught as the reasoning behind the thought experiment is so obviously faulty. To wit: imagine a being physically exactly like you, then imagine it with no mind or consciousness , it proves the mind is immaterial and real. What the fuck?

As a Materialist I have no problem with acknowledging a copy of me (identical in every way) is me. Initially so, yes, but he is already a different person as his experiences will differ from mine. Our pasts are the same but our (present and) future will be unique to each.

Discussing the copies of persons made from the branching of our Universe (the Many Worlds Interpretation) is quite illuminating. All versions of me are me - until right after the moment of splitting that is, whether it be from different outcomes or alternate decisions. When that happens they will then be copies of me, or me be a copy of (one of) them.

Lastly, a tangential comment on the 'Epilogue: On Being Moved (or Not) by Time': if humans could see in 4D (three space and one time) maybe all this would be pointless. Imagine every living creature as 'life worms', where one could see another's life throughout all time (nota bene at any point till the present), would we not accept all copies as 'the real one' since we could trace each's life path to the originating being?

[Siddharth Khadiya · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Self, Barry Dainton gives us a gripping account of the nature of 'Subjects' or 'Selves'. In doing so he takes us right from Rene Decartes Mind-Body Dualism to the more recent Naturalistic Dualism of David Chalmers and Integrated Information Theory of Giulio Tononi.

The bulk of the book is dedicated to explaining the C-Theory of Consciousness and its implications on the selves in different scenarios like informational teleportation, brain in a vat, fully immersive simulations that many say are things of the near future, etc.

A truly riveting read for the uninitiated like me.

[Matej · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very entertaining read. Enjoyed the frequent sci-fi references. I disagree with many of the conclusions, but it certainly made me reevaluate some positions I hold. Suitable for non-philosophers. Can be read in a day.

[Oran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come

[Jakub Mrozinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good summary of famous literature on personal identity, and some not so famous new ideas, with an original theory that’s convincing.