Think by Simon Blackburn

Chapter 4b Free Will/Self The unobservability of the self

„ David Hume, the Scottish empiricist we met in connection with his critique of Descartes’ method of doubt, is very skeptical of the notion of a self. „ His argument (p.122) is just that the self is unobservable. When we introspect the only thing we can become aware of is some experience or other. We are never aware of some “I” that is some how the bearer of all those experiences. Empiricism

„ Hume’s argument is typical of classical empiricism: if you can’t see (or, more generally, sense), it doesn’t exist. „ But this argument against the self is actually a very poor one for the 21st century. „ The reason is very simply that today we acknowledge all sort of things that are beyond sensation. „ If we only believed in what we can see in touch, then we would have to regard virtually of the phenomena of contemporary science (molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, charges, forces, electromagnetic radiation, dark matter, black holes, etc.) as fictions. David Hume did not believe in the soul because

A. Hume was a rationalist and the soul can not be rationally proven. B. Hume was an empiricist, and he did not think that the soul was observable. C. Hume was a determinist and was skeptical that a soul could be free. D. Hume actually did believe in a soul. The self and morality

„ Like free will, the idea of a persisting self is central to our moral intuitions. „ Basically, the idea here is that holding people responsible for things over time requires the assumption that they are the same people over time. „ In fact, we often do here arguments that someone should not be held responsible for something he did 20 years ago, because he is really not even the same person. The simplicity of the self

„ Philosophers like Thomas Reid (a contemporary of Hume) have insisted that the self is not only real, but indivisible. (p.123). „ The point here is that we really can’t identify the self with our body or some part of our body, because our body can be theoretically chopped up into little pieces. And it’s silly to suggest that each little piece would be entitled to it’s share of the estate or be held responsible for it’s share of the harm done by the entire body. Simplicity and immortality

„ As Blackburn points out (p.124) there is an interesting connection between the assumption of simplicity, and immortality. „ Dying, after all, is just a form of change. But the only kinds of things that can change are things that have parts. „ So if Reid is right that the self is simple, then it cannot change, which means that it must be immortal. Thomas Reid believed that the self is simple because

A. simple things are easier to understand. B. the self is indivisible, and only simple things are indivisible. C. the self is immaterial and only immaterial things are indivisible. D. non simple things can not transfer their properties through epicyclic parameters. Locke’s on identity I

„ John Locke had some of the most interesting insights into identity. „ He approached the question of personal identity for human beings by asking first what is the basis of identity for non human beings. His answer is interesting. „ Locke asks us to consider an oak tree from it’s ‘birth’ as an acorn to it’s death 350 years later when it topples in a storm. We are inclined to say that it is the same tree the entire time, but obviously it changes dramatically in physical terms. „ According to Locke, the oak is not the thing you see before you at any given time. The oak is that physical process through time. Locke says that it continues to be the same oak insofar as it “partakes in the same life.” Locke on identity II

„ Locke’s view has relevance for our understanding of human beings as well. Even though science can not countenance the existence of souls, it is not thereby committed to the idea that your are merely an assemblage of particles. „ Like the oak you are a “functional unity”. At any given moment we see only a very small part of you. The “real you” is not an immaterial object, for the simple reason that you are not an object at all. Human beings, like oaks, are processes through time. „ This way of looking at living things gives Locke a nice way of saying what it means to be the same being over time. Specifically, to be the same being is simply to be participating in the same process. Growth and change do not undermine identity as long as the functional organization remains. Locke believed that since human beings are not made of the same physical stuff through time they are not self-identical through time.

A. True B. False The Ship of Theseus

„ The Ship of Theseus (or Neurath) is an excellent story for dialing in the problem of characterizing a functional entity in terms of what it’s made of. „ Imagine that Theseus (legendary King of Athens) sails his ship on a voyage so long that every part on the ship is replaced due to wear and tear. When he returns to port, is it the same ship? „ Now add to this the assumption that someone is following the ship throughout it’s voyage and gathering all the discarded parts. He assembles them into their original form. Now who has the Ship of Theseus? „ Locke’s answer is straightforward. The true Ship of Theseus is the one that Theseus returned on. This is not because Theseus returned on it, but because the ship is not what it is made of, but the entire temporal process by which it’s functional integrity is maintained. Locke’s critique of the immaterial soul

„ Locke has established that ships, oaks, and animals can remain self-identical despite having all their matter replaced. „ This gives him an interesting basis for criticizing the view that human self-identity is due to a single, simple immaterial soul. „ His point is extremely interesting (p. 128) : Even if we accept the idea of an immaterial soul, how do we know that a single, simple self-identical substance persists through time? Locke’s question elaborated

„ Remember, Locke has just shown us that a being can be identified with a physical process, where the actual matter is constantly in flux.

„ So, why couldn’t a soul just be an analogous immaterial process, where the “soul stuff” is constantly in flux? Kant’s elastic balls

„ The German philosopher Kant imagines a different possibility (p. 129) using an analogy with perfectly elastic balls. „ We know, he says, that when one rolling ball hits another stationery one, it imparts it’s momentum to it. „ How do we know that the self isn’t like this? Why couldn’t it be that during your lifetime a multiplicity of immaterial substances is simply transferring the contents of your consciousness from one to the other in the way that elastic balls transfer their momentum?

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Self 1 Self 2 Self 3 Self 4 Argument from ignorance redux

„ Recall Schopenhauer’s powerful point that our belief in freedom is largely the result of our ignorance of the causes of our actions. „ Kant’s point is very similar. As Blackburn emphasizes, we assume that the self is simple because that’s the way it appears from within. But for all we know our immaterial substance (if there is any such thing) gets replaced every night with a new one that has all our memories and experiences recorded on it. Both Kant and Locke believed that the self is due to a single immaterial substance persisting through time.

A. True B. False Human beings vs. persons.

„ Interestingly, Locke held that the criteria of identity he developed for oaks and human beings (partaking in the same life) is not sufficient for persons. „ For Locke, a person is "...a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and different places." „ In other words, a human being is a person to the extent that it is self-conscious, able to reflect on its memories and experiences. The prince and the cobbler

„ Although Blackburn does not discuss it here, Locke arrives at his criterion of identity for persons through a thought experiment. „ He asks us to imagine a prince and a cobbler who exchange souls in their sleep. Hence, the body of the cobbler wakes up in a hovel with all the memories of a prince, and the body of a prince wakes up in castle with all the memories of a cobbler. „ Locke thinks it is obvious that the cobbler as human being is still in the hovel, but the cobbler as person is now living in a castle and in a prince’s body. „ Hence, Locke argues that the criterion of identity for persons is not a function of it’s physical nature, but of its consciousness. To be the same person through time is to possessed of the same memories. Locke’s motivation

„ As a Christian, Locke believes in a soul that survives bodily death; but as a scientist and a philosopher he knew that there is no way to know the soul of another man. Hence, while he puts the thought experiment in terms of changing souls, he does not see personal identity in terms of the soul at all. „ Part of what Locke was concerned about here is the nature of just punishment. He believed (very controversially for the time) that it isn’t just to punish someone for a crime she can’t remember committing. „ Locke’s thought experiment allows him to put his objection in the strongest possible terms: If the person doesn’t remember committing the, then the person didn’t do it, even if his body did. Problems for Locke

„ Locke’s view was groundbreaking, but also highly problematic since it really can not preserve the idea that we are the same person over time. „ The reason is just that from birth to death we forget a lot of stuff. There are all sorts of things you could remember when you were 10 years old that you can’t remember at all now. „ For example, on March 27th 1998 you probably could have told me what you had for breakfast the previous morning, but now you’ve probably forgotten. „ It’s not clear that this result bothered Locke that much. He may have been happy to conclude that while we are pretty much the same person from day to day, we aren’t really the same person from decade to decade. Locke’s view implies that you are the same human being from birth to death, but not that you are the same person.

A. True B. False Reid’s critique

„ Thomas Reid (p.131-132) made a famous criticism of Locke’ view with a thought experiment about an officer in the military. „ Essentially he asked us to imagine this man as a young boy, a military officer, and as an old general. Call these times A, B, and C respectively. He asks us to imagine the following things to be true of A, B, and C ‰ A: The boy is flogged at school. ‰ B: The officer captures the enemy’s flag in battle. At this time, he can still remember when he was flogged in school. ‰ C: The old general still remembers capturing the flag, but has no memory of the flogging. „ Reid points out that Locke’s view implies that A=B and B=C, but A ≠ C. This is a problem because it violates the the transitivity of identity. Locke’s defense

„ Reid’s criticism seems crushing, but there is a fairly simple response to it. Locke can point out that in the real world (as opposed to the purely mathematical one) whether a thing is the same over a certain period of time is going to be somewhat stipulative. „ Blackburn asks us to imagine a law that givesTheseus a tax break on his ship as long as it remains physically identical to the one he bought. The government stipulates that the ship is the same at two different points in time A and B, just in case 55% of the physical material is the same. This will also fail transitivity. Suppose: „ A= newly purchased ship. „ B= 10 years old, 40% of original material replaced. „ C= 15 years old, 60% of original material replaced. „ So again, A = B, B = C, but A ≠ C. But who cares? This is not really a mathematical or metaphysical identity, it is just identity for practical legal purposes. Locke’s theory of identity has the same defense. It is identity for practical/moral purposes. Hume’s bundle theory of the self

„ As we saw earlier, Hume argued that the self, considered as a simple entity that ‘owns’ perceptions and experiences is unobservable, and that we should be skeptical of it’s existence. „ It is often said that Hume subscribed to a different view of the self, namely that it is not the owner of our perceptions, but simply the collection or ‘bundle’ of perceptions itself. „ That’s one way of putting Hume’s view. The other way of putting it, perhaps more charitable, is that Hume didn’t believe in a self at all. „ Hume’s view of the self is actually strikingly like the Buddhist view, according to which a persisting self is the fundamental illusion, responsible for almost all human striving and, ultimately, suffering. Kant’s critique of Hume

„ The main problem with Hume’s view is that it is very difficult for us to make sense of perceptions that don’t have an owner. „ As Blackburn points out, imagining a perception without a perceiver is like trying to imagine a dent without a surface, or a smile without a face. „ Kant puts the point this way. Hume is right that the self is unobservable, and right to reject the self as a simple, immaterial entity that collects experiences in some way that is completely beyond empirical examination. „ But Hume is wrong to conclude that the term “I” refers only to a particular bundle of perceptions. In some ways this shows that Hume himself can’t quite get beyond thinking of the self as a kind of thing. „ Kant claims that the word “I” does not refer to a particular thing at all. Rather, it is the expression of a particular point of view. The self as an organizing principle

„ One way to see what Kant is saying is to adopt what we now sometimes call the “design stance.” What would it be like to design a robot that had some minimal form of self- consciousness? „ Focusing on visual experience, Blackburn imagines a robot fitted with a camera. The robot can record visual images on a screen, and in this sense a “bundle of perceptions” is present. „ But these perceptions are not of any real use to the robot at this point, because it has no way of knowing what it is looking at. For example, if a round shape is moving across the screen, it does not know whether it is looking at something small moving slowly nearby, or something larger moving more quickly far away, or even whether the shape itself is moving, rather that the robot. „ The point here is that the bundle of perceptions is not at all useful to the robot unless it has a set of rules for interpreting their significance with respect to it. The self as an organizing principle 2

„ In other words, ideas like ‰ near, distant, left, right, above, below, before, behind, big, little, fast, slow, etc. all express relations to a particular observer. These relations express the observer’s point of view, and they need to be determined in order for the observer to know how to respond appropriately to it’s perceptions. „ So the idea here is that anytime we refer to an “I” we are not referring to some kind of immaterial substance, or something we could discover in experience, but rather to the set of principles that tells us how to use these experiences to represent the environment from our particular perspective. Other points of view

„ If a simple robot like the one described is outfitted with a set of organizing principles it will have a point of view, though it won’t actually know it has a point of view; i.e., it will have a self, but it won’t actually be self-conscious. „ Self-consciousness is partly the recognition that our own point of view can be different from others; because of your particular circumstances you perceive an environment we both occupy differently that I do. „ Blackburn suggests that it is this ability to look at things from another person’s point of view that gives rise to certain delusion, such as that we might survive bodily death. „ For example, because you can imagine different points of view, you have the capacity to imagine what it would be like to be at your own funeral. For example, you can imagine seeing your body in a coffin, and it is very natural to describe this activity as your self seeing your body in a coffin. Or you can imagine living in a different place or time, which you naturally describe as imagining your self living at a different place or time. „ Blackburn’s point here is just that using the underlined expression doesn’t add any content. But it can make us believe in an imaginary object. Duplicating the soul

„ Today philosophers sometimes like to imagine more sophisticated versions of Locke’s thought experiment about the Prince and the Cobbler. „ For example, suppose that we were able to simply upload all of your memories, experiences, skills and aptitudes into the body of another person who looked just like you. When the upload is complete, there will be two different individuals with the same consciousness. „ If we could do this, Locke would have to say (at least at the moment of creation) that two completely different human beings are actually the same person. „ Taking Locke’s view seriously in legal and moral terms is going to make things pretty awkward, as it implies that you both own the same car, both have the same marital obligations, etc. Duplicating the soul 2

„ These thought experiments can also be very confusing. „ For example, suppose you woke up in the hospital this morning feeling fantastic, but not knowing how you got there. The doctor tells you that you were in a horrible accident the night before. They weren’t able to save your body, but they were able to copy all of the contents of your brain and upload it into another brain inside a body just like yours, though with none of it’s previous defects. Seems like on the whole you’d find this situation to be pretty agreeable. „ On the other hand, suppose exactly the same transfer as above occurs against your will, with the exception that you were not in a horrible accident at all. You wake up to be told that all of the contents of your brain have been uploaded to a new improved body, and that in a few hours they will go ahead and put you to sleep for good. Seems like on the whole you’d find this situation pretty disagreeable. Past vs. Future

„ As Blackburn points out, our intuitions about the significance of these outcomes are very different depending on whether we are looking to the future, or looking back at the past. „ In the first example, looking to the past, you are the surviving improved self, and you are the same person only with an improved body. It’s great. „ In the second example, looking to the future, your are going to be killed so that some other being they say is really the same person as you can live. It totally sucks. But after you are gone, everyone else is just fine with it. „ Of course, we don’t have the ability to perform these operations at this point, and maybe we never will. But these examples do seem to show that our simple notion of a determinate self that either persists fully intact through time, or else completely perishes can not be quite accurate.