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Impartialist Ethics and Psychic Disintegration: a Talking Cure Roman Nakia Briggs University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

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Impartialist Ethics and Psychic Disintegration: a Talking Cure Roman Nakia Briggs University of Arkansas, Fayetteville University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 12-2015 Impartialist Ethics and Psychic Disintegration: A Talking Cure Roman Nakia Briggs University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Clinical Psychology Commons, and the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Briggs, Roman Nakia, "Impartialist Ethics and Psychic Disintegration: A Talking Cure" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 1320. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/1320 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Impartialist Ethics and Psychic Disintegration: A Talking Cure A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy by Roman Nakia Briggs Henderson State University Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, 2003 University of Arkansas Master of Arts in Philosophy, 2005 December 2015 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ____________________________________ Dr. Richard Lee Dissertation Director ____________________________________ ____________________________________ Dr. Eric Funkhouser Dr. Edward Minar Committee Member Committee Member Abstract This dissertation deals with integrity understood as a state of the psyche. Its primary interlocutor is Professor Bernard Williams, and its point of departure is my interpretation of his Objection from Integrity to impartialist moral theories. Against Williams, I hope to show that the active adherent of impartialist ethical systems (e.g., act utilitarianism) may retain both moral integrity and integrity. In demonstrating this, I make use of a variant of Roy Schafer’s action language approach to psychoanalysis, and what I call practical aestheticism . Acknowledgements The plan was to write up a detailed set of acknowledgements, thanking each of you in specifics. However, as I started the first mental draft of this project, it occurred to me that this would involve a dissertation-length manuscript all its own. For the sake of brevity (and expensive paper), please accept by most sincere and perhaps too concise Thanks ! Thanks, first and foremost, to my parents, Ronald and Mona Briggs – words always fail in describing my love for and gratefulness to you both; I couldn’t have done this without you has never been said with more sincerity. I love you and cherish you more than you know. Thanks, too, to Ryder and Wyatt – I love you, boys! And, of course, big thanks to my dissertation committee: the omnibenevolent and über-patient Richard Lee, Eric Funkhouser, and Ed Minar – you guys are the best! And [in alphabetical order] big thank you shout-outs to: Celeste Atkins; Aaron Baker; Oliver Balson; David Barrett; Norm Bates; Tanya and AJ Biami; Chad Bogosian; The Briggs Brothers (and Sister); Bruce and Chico; Jeff Byrnes; Aaron and Kristin Champene; Stefanie Childers-Turner; Paul Cudney; Joshua and Jenna Daniel; Karen Davidson; Wakanda Davidson; Diana Dominguez; Kevin Durand; Adam and Christy Erwin; Alex Felton; Bob and Kara Fink; Reagan Funkhouser; John Gulley; Angela Hackstadt; Karly Hamilton-Scarbrough; Zac Harmon; Dawna and Jake Hendricks; Chuck Hoyack; The Huffman family; Jim Lampinen; Steve Levine; Jack and Raina Lyons; Virginia Pfau- Thompson; Tetima Parnprome; Tatiana Patrone; Cameron Pershall; Jeff Perumal; Matt and Christina Pianalto; James Pierce; Julie Pollock; Ray Porter; Jennifer Rowe; Sharon Seals; Tom and Georgia Senor; Jerry Sillavan; Lynne Spellman; Sherry Sparks; Barry Ward; Denise Wells; Jeremy and PJ Williams; Holly Wimer; Tony Woodside; and, Kathryn Zawisza. And, in memoriam, infinite love and thanks to my sister, Heather Briggs Sillavan – you’re with me every moments of every day, sis. To my grandparents, John Jr. and Jesse Mae Briggs and Ray and Jane Davidson; and, to my dear friends, John Foster, Don Ledford, Cody Moore, and Jack and Kevin Walters – you are missed. Special thanks to Christine Korsgaard for allowing me to view an advanced e-copy of her then-unpublished Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity (2009); and, to Darcia Narvaez for allowing me to view an advanced e-copy of her then-unpublished Character: Essays in Moral Psychology (2009). Special thanks, too, to the attendees of both the International Conference on Persons (BYU, August 2011), and Desire, Drive, Dissent (University of New Mexico, April 2012) for extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of portions of this dissertation. For anyone that I managed to forget in name, please except my apologies. Roman Briggs August 31, 2015 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Ronald and Mona Briggs – persons of integrity. And, it was completed in memory of my sister, Heather Briggs-Sillavan – a beautiful self. Table of Contents Preliminaries Introduction . .1 Notes . 9 Chapter 1 1.0: Introduction . .14 1.1: Selves Disintegrated . 16 1.2: The Objection from Integrity . 26 1.3: Selves Reintegrated . 33 1.4: Selves Perfected . 43 1.5: Selves Abandoned . .57 Notes . 72 Chapter 2 1.0: Introduction . 109 2.1: Persons as Agents . 114 2.2: Agents in Time . .124 2.3: Time and Value . .131 2.4: Evaluators as Selves . .147 2.5: Selves and Moral Selves . .161 Notes . .170 Chapter 3 3.0: Introduction . 196 3.1: Utilitarianism and Disintegration . 198 3.2: Disintegration and Moral Death . .216 3.3: Action and Reintegration . .235 3.4: Reintegration and Aesthetics . .254 3.5: Concluding Thoughts . .280 Notes . 286 Appendices I: The Objection from Integrity . 318 II. Necessary Conditions of Personhood . 319 III. Necessary Conditions of Selfhood . 320 IV. Necessary Conditions of Moral Selfhood . .321 Bibliography . .322 Introduction I’m an avid consumer of hardboiled fiction – the pulpier, the better. As an enthusiast of this genre, I especially enjoy Raymond Chandler’s run of stories featuring the quintessential world-weary gumshoe, Philip Marlowe – The Big Sleep , in particular. The following is an interesting story about that story, which I hope will shed some light on my overall approach to this project, and what I had hoped to accomplish in completing it. When The Big Sleep was being adapted to the silver screen for the first time (the 1946 MGM release, costarring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall), its trio of screenwriters pored over Chandler’s text in attempt to unravel one uncommonly elusive thread. Namely, they needed to establish who killed General Sternwood’s chauffeur, and what the murderer’s motive was. The novel informs us only that the General’s Buick was fished out of the Pacific, the driver’s body still draped around the steering column; that upon impact he had sustained a broken neck, determined by authorities to be the cause of death; that he had been struck across the temple with a blunt object just prior to this; and, finally, that the car’s throttle had been jammed, causing it to accelerate rapidly off of a wharf, and into the ocean.1 These facts certainly suggest that foul play was involved. But, assuming that this is so, who done it? After unsuccessfully trying to deduce this from more unambiguous plot points, the scriptists eventually relented, and decided to contact the author, himself. When asked who offed the driver and why, Chandler admitted, somewhat embarrassingly I imagine, 1 that he had no idea.2 Forced to take creative license, the screenwriters decided to simply divulge the facetious speculations of Chief Inspector Ohls, and to leave it at that: “Could be a drunk, or a suicide.” Pay no attention to the premortem bump on the head and the obviously tampered-with (in this version) Packard. For whatever reason, Bogie’s Marlowe seems to let this matter go, and the film, like its source material, closes without any resolution. In the 1978 version of the film (distributed by United Artists, and starring Robert Mitchum), the chauffer’s death enjoys its own scene. Here, we see him seem to intentionally speed the General’s Bentley sedan off of a pier, into the choppy waters of the English Channel.3 Rather than providing ultimate explanation, though, this raises another, somewhat more involved question: Why did he do it? Perhaps he had succumbed to the effects of a broken heart. After all, we’re informed, the driver had fallen madly in love with the General’s insatiable daughter, Camilla (in the book and first film, Carmen). And, we all know well and good that that was never going to work out, given the severity of her issues. By the time the Coen Brothers tipped their fedora to Chandler with their deliberately slack homage, The Big Lebowski , the chauffer had disappeared altogether – his few functionary roles being subsumed by other characters less dispensable with respect to pushing forward the narrative. 4 Here we have one sliver of the structural evolution of The Big Sleep . Was Chandler’s story improved by retellings which included such changes? In a strictly 2 formative sense, sure. Otherwise, not so much. The novel, in my mind, bests all film adaptations. The first film adaptation is superior to the second. And, the second, at least insofar as we’re talking about instances of gritty and grisly dime fiction, per se, is preferable to the third. With each successive reworking, however, certain elements of the story – again, the how and why
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