Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Sat, 2 May 1998 20:18:59 +0100
Hey, gang.
"If I'm not myself who am I?"
Affected.
Seriously, a better question might be: How is it that I am who I
am? --In other words, what is a person?
The problem of the self is the fule driving the engion that is
philosophy. Decartes' re-posting of it what earned him the title "The
Father of Modern Philosophy." Up to WWI Anglo-American Philosophy was
Hegelian and metaphysicsl. The war stimulated an anti-metaphysicsl
reaction (Russel, Moore, Early Witgenstein, and Ayer). For them,
metaphysics was to the new Phil. (Positivism) what astrology was to
astronomy. WWII brought 2nd thoughts. Late Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle
argued that the Positivists couldn't resolve the traditional problems of
solipsism (can you prove the existance of other Minds) and Mind-matter
enterface. This newer, controversial metaphysics was dubed "the Phil. of
Mind."
We want to start out asking how is a person possible? What
natural facts about the world make it inteligable that we should have the
concept 'person?' (*We* presumably means "each and every one of us")
Well, to "have" a concept means to use it. Wittgenstien stated that
concepts are like tools -- we do things w/ words and meanings.
That's the path that keeps looping back into SOM; the reason being
that "we, each and every one of us." An alternative to the tool analogy
is to point out that we also do things w/ courts, parlaments, licensing
authorities, systems of weights and measures, and codes of etiquette.
These are PUBLIC tools. We use them -- but not we, each and every one of
us, but we, all of us together. (This distinction is called the
'distributive' vs. the 'collective we' -- "We die alone," vs. "We are the
LS.") 'Person' is used firstly for public purposes and only secondly for
individual ends.
'Person' is a noun-concept. Any noun-concept automatically
divides the world into two things: those things it correctly applies to
and those things it does not. We use 'person' to divide the world into
persons and (mere) things. 'Person' is the clear supperior of the two.
(Ken, stick w/ me before you pull a human-centric charge on me, okay?)
'Person' is supperior logically, legaly and moraly. Logically: only
persons can correct one-another's reasoning (my cat can't call me
'illogical' or 'unreasonable'). Legaly: only persons have legal rights and
obligations. Morally: only persons have a moral psychology (Moral
psychology -- the question of what do you have to have in order to be a
moral entity. IE. A person cursing and kicking his car because it woun't
start is making an error in moral psychology). (NOTE: In MoQ we expand
"morality" so there are different moralitys at different levels, but here
I'm refering to the strict/narrow sense: moral=social ethic.)
The person/thing distinction is the most fundamental of all social
institutions -- society exists only in its members. It depends absolutly
on the ability of its members (us) to recognize one-another and tell the
difference between persons and things. This ability is the most early
ability imposed upon children. (The point of the boy raised by wolves
isn't that he can't tell birds from non-birds, for God's sake; it's that
he can't tell persons from non-persons.) And this is the ability most
strictly enforced in adults. Let's call this training the "socializing
process."
Persons are products! Acording to most people's (natural)
thinking 'person' should correspond to certain natural facts -- something
"out there." And so the S-O metaphysitian singles out a property --
self-consciousness, sentience or what-have-you. In natural thinking, the
socializing process doesn't create self-concious persons; it modifies
them. Wolf-boy hasn't been properly modified, but he is a person. There
"are" persons in the sense that there "are" mountains and there "are"
galactic nebuli -- namely, they "are" whether we recognize them or not
(we, each of us).
But persons are not "natural facts," but social facts! Persons
arise in the self-conscious opposition of the natural facts -- the
physical body w/ its creature urges. We get to be persons by
training/controlling our bodies -- synching the natural rhythms to the
social rythms. (One does not fart in public or urinate on the ketchen
floor.) What doesn't have this self-control cannot be allowed to correct
me, insult me, or sue me in a court of law. A child may talk to his Teddy
bear, but an adult who seriously takes his Teddy to be a person will not
long be allowed to manage his own affairs. And if one does not grant
personhood to thoes who dererve it then one will soon be stricken of one's
personhood one's self. This receprocity is repeated in the more concrete
roles we play: mother-child, hero-villian, customer-server... A trusted
adviser requires someone who trusts his advice. I may claim that I have a
beautiful singing voice, but if people scramble for the doors when I open
my mouth to sing... We exist by mutualy agreeing what one-another is
trying to be. Where agreement fails the persons (logically and morally)
must re-identify one-another or else actions have no meaning. That is, I
can't know what you're doing unless I know what one is supposed to be
doing in your situation. (This is basic to Aristotle, BTW.)
A thing is just those properties which we can (idealy and
objectivly) agree in the long run that it has. A thing is characterized
by mutual agreement and how we talk *about* it. A person is characterized
by how we agree to talk *to* him -- which determins how we expect him to
talk back. Thus, the most important thing is to be able to tell whether X
merely is a body, or whether X *has* a body. And, of course, it's not a
clear-cut A/not-A. There are a host of "marginally functional persons" --
the psychotic, the retarded, a felon, a senile person or a young child.
These people have a body but the same way persons have bodies. They cannot
reliably restrain themselves.
One is a person by not being a thing. Person = member of society.
There is a reason that 'persons' come up in the social patterns of value
-- that's where they are found and that's what they are. If you want to
stick the person/the self/the mind up on the intellectual level then
you've goofed up the system and are going to have lots of mind-body
questions.
This view of personhood is not new. It's the way the Greeks
viewed things (The purpose of the polis [city-state] is the creation of
individuals). That view culminates in Aristotle. It is revived later in
Hegel and then comes down through Hiedgger and Goffman. So w/ all this
intellectual momentum behind it you might wonder why we don't all naturaly
think this way. Answer: psychology. Psychology is our dominating
discorse. It prevades (and defines) the modern world. It begins w/ Freud
who had a physiological focus -- physiology means the body and that means
the individual body. So we naturaly think of the self or personality or
mind as something privately "in here" (like C-fibers in the brain) But
the truth is that the person exists primarily in public space. (Not the
distributive we, but the continuous we.) So once you settle the mind into
the social level then the problems of solipsism and mind-matter interface
disappear like smoke.
Goffmanian sociology w/ its inter-personal (rather than
inner-personal definition of the self) spells a death toll for psychology.
Goffman's *Frame Analysis* is a great book and easy to read, but it went
over in the sociology community like a led zeplin because if you approch
it SOM in your head, w/ the traditional Cartisan mind or Freuadian ego,
then it doesn't make any sense. If you read it thinking person=member of
society (social/moral person) then it's dynomite!
There's more to say (as always)... but not right now.
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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