Dasein/dasein

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"Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness"
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.

It is worth considering some of the factors that make up our identity in Being and Nothingness. ‘Facticity’ is the word Sartre uses to stand for the innumerable facts about our life which we have not chosen. These make up the sense in which our life is given, discovered, inherited and dependent on circumstances outside our control. We are bodily creatures, in a specific time and place, with a personal history, living in specific conditions. There are many undeniable facts about our individual psychologies.

Sartre lists various characteristics, habits, states, etc., which make up the psychic unity of our egos. These include not only latent qualities which inform our behaviour, such as industriousness, jealousy, ambition; and actual states which embody a certain behaviour, such as loving or hating; but also a whole pattern of acts.

This is the part that I clump into the either/or world Self. The empirical, demographic, material facts about us that, while open to dispute, we are either able to demonstrate to others as true or not.

But even here there is room for considerable ambiguity. For example, we can display emotional reactions to events that, say, others then capture on film. The film shows us bring angry or happy or sad. But what if we are only feigning this. What if, for whatever personal reason, we believe it is advantageous for others to think that we are feeling one thing rather than another. Same with the things we say, and the behaviors we choose. How are others able to know if we really mean it?

Thus even with respect to "the facts" about us, in a No God world there are any number of contexts in which "I" can go far below the surface.

I only suggest that this may well be applicable to how we have come to understand our own "I" as well. We think that we are being truthful [to ourselves] about the things we think, feel, say and do. But there are so many variables here [going back to our indoctrination as youths over time historically and across space culturally] that we can only understand and control up to a point.

The supposed solidity of our ego is really just countless layers of existential factors coming at us over the years from any number of convoluted directions.

This part:

Our individual facticity is dependent on a particular language, a concrete community, a political structure, and on being part of the human species. In other words we are natural and cultural beings who do not determine the conditions and facts of our lives.

I mean, come on, seriously, how many of us have really ever stopped to think this through? To consider the implications of it when faced with choosing behaviors out in the is/ought world. Especially in the modern world where [potentially] we have access to countless moral and political narratives. If only through the internet alone.

Or, perhaps, objectivism is derived precisely from that. Faced with so many conflicting frames of mind "out there" in the world, "I" feels the need to pick one and stick with it.

If we need this complex environment to give us an identity, we also need relationships with other people to comprehend our identity. It is through the mediation of others that we can apprehend ourselves. For example, we appreciate ourselves in a new way when we are known or desired or loved: “I recognise I am as the other sees me”; “I see myself because somebody sees me,” as Sartre writes.

But: Which particular people, in which particular contexts? And the recognition that in it coming down to these people in these contexts, there were so many other possibilities of things having been different had it been other people in other contexts.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot: all this assuming we have some measure of autonomy of course.

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"Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness"
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.

Sartre concerns himself deeply with questions of sociology, culture, language, psychology, and human relations. All of this creates the facticity of our being, the givenness of our unique identity. We should remember that Sartre never denies that human beings have an essence: “Essence is everything about the human being which we can indicate by the words: that is.” For each human being, “certain original structures are invariable.”

This is basically my own point when I distinguish between I in the either/or world, and "I" in the is/ought world. Though even in regard to conflicting goods there are any number of actual objective facts that can be determined as true for all of us.

And this, in my view, has got be the "for all practical purposes" demarcation. The things about yourself able to be established and your reaction to things able to be established precipitating particular moral and political value judgments.

But, sure, there is no way for me to then demonstrate that these too are not able to be pinned down as true for all rational men and women. Here all I can do is to invite others to argue that they can be. That this is the case because they have already done so. And that they are able to demonstrate to me why I am in turn obligated to share their assessment.

So rather than being anti-essentialist, Sartre’s philosophy could be termed a ‘qualified essentialism’, his sole qualification being that essence is never enough.

What the objectivists then do is to insist that, on the contrary, their very own moral and political [and even esthetic] value judgments reflect what is essentially true given the font they have come to embrace as the transcending source one turns to in order to settle any conflicts.

Sartre emphasizes that the totality of essences which constitutes our identity cannot adequately define a human being, because our consciousness of this totality is itself an essential aspect of our being. We have a relationship with the totality, an attitude to it, a responsibility for it. This is the reason human identity is ambiguous, insecure, and insufficient to account for our actions.

In other words, one is never able to accumulate at one time and in one place all of the indisputable facts about that which constitutes their identity. There are only those variables that, at any given time and in any given place, one is actually conscious of.

And, in my view, the relationship, the responsibility, and the attitude we take regarding human interactions in any particular context is always going to be profoundly problematic. Even in regard to the facts at hand.

Making the part where "I" interacts with others in the is/ought world all that much more "ambiguous, insecure, and insufficient".

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"Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness"
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.

...as we have already seen, there is no suggestion that our identity is cut off from a world of causes and influences. However we respond to the facticity of our dispositions, for example, this remains present to us as a factual necessity, even if we reconstruct it through our decisions about how to act.

In other words [as I interpret it] there are objective facts that I is embedded in. Historical facts, cultural facts, facts derived from our actual situation out in a particular world. We may not understand or express those facts as they are but they are there to be demonstrated as in fact things that are true about us.

Where things get problematic here however is when the facts are what they are but mere mortals are not able to demonstrate them.

As I noted on another thread:

"...even in regard to the 'fact of the matter', one may ultimately need God. At least when someone makes a claim that comes down to either believing it or not believing it. In other words, a claim that cannot be substantiated beyond that.

I recall for example the courtroom scene from the film Reversal of Fortune. Sunny von Bülow is hovering like a ghost above the proceedings below. Speculating on what the outcome of the trial might be. Now, there was "the fact of the matter": Claus is either guilty or not guilty of putting her into an irreversible coma. The jury acquitted him. But was their own decision in fact the right one?"

In a No God world there is simply no way to get around this even in the either/or world.

....Sartre never imagines that anguish is present in all our activities. He acknowledges that in most everyday situations we are acting without anguish: we are usually caught up in things without much reflection, taking for granted a certain identity and certain goals. Even in the midst of the most spontaneous or habitual act, however, “there remains the possibility of putting this act into question.”

This is something that I often point out. Some here see me as this anguished soul barely able to function from day to day. But in the course of living my life from day to day, I, like you, experience no anguish at all regarding the preponderance of the behaviors that I choose. Alone or with others. It is only when my behaviors come into conflict with others in the is/ought world that "I" am likely to experience anguish.

Or in a time of general crisis when our lives are being pummeling in a particularly grim manner.

It's just that my own anguish is embedded more in the manner in which I construe human interactions from the perspective of the moral nihilist. My anguish revolves more around a fractured and fragmented "I" down in a "hole" that is embedded in conflicting goods derived from dasein: "the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty".

Whereas the anguish of the objectivist is more likely to revolve around a context in which they are convinced the "real me" is in sync with "the right thing to do" but in a particular context things are not going their way. Those who are not "one of us" are prevailing. But at least the objectivist can take comfort in the fact they are on the side of the angels.

"I" have access to none of that anymore.

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"Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness"
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.

Sartre does not think that everything human beings do is within their control. He would accept that many ‘actions’ that human beings ‘do’ are involuntary (we hiccup, sleepwalk, blush), many are instinctive (we eat when we are hungry, we smash things in anger, we run from danger), many unfold almost unconsciously (we drive with astounding skill while on a kind of autopilot, we sing a song without paying it much attention), and that many actions have unforeseen consequences. He notes, for example, that “the careless smoker who has through negligence caused the explosion of a powder magazine has not acted.” Sartre simply says that sometimes we are conscious that an action is ours, and conscious that there are alternative courses of action. The fact that we can take a view on certain actions, that we can deliberate and decide between alternative possibilities, shows that in these cases we are free to determine the course of our action. Only a deliberated act like this can be an acte humain, a ‘human act’.

This is basically where things get considerably more complicated for me. From my frame of mind, even to the extent that we strive to be "authentic" in the thngs that we choose [in the is/ought world], "I" is still necessarily entangled in all of the many, many genetic and memetic variables that go into the creation of any particular "self". Deliberate all you wish but there are still going to be any number of factors embedded in the myriad experiences that you have had from the cradle to the "here and now" that you are either not wholly aware of or that were beyond your control.

Starting with the historical and cultural context into which you were thrown, then acknowledging your childhood indoctrination and then accumulating all the particular and unique interactions that you had that nudged or shoved or toppled you into particular predispositions regarding any number of aspects that culminated into who you think you are today.

How here is "I" not largely an existential construct?

Yes, we come to forks in the road where after deliberating we must choose one course of action rather than another. But, in my view, only those oriented towards objectivism are able to convince themselves that [in the is/ought world] one way is necessarily more authentic than another.

Instead, as I see it, the deliberations themselves are just another manifestation of "I" as an existential contraption. And that's before we get to the part about political economy and conflicting goods.

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"Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness"
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.

Sartre’s argument is not undermined by someone insisting that this experience of detachment and freedom is just an illusion: “You think you are free, but really everything is determined – even your belief in freedom is psychologically determined.” Sartre’s method is phenomenological. He starts with human experience and tries to clarify what is found in that experience. In this case, we do not experience a psychological belief that we are detached and free; some stubborn conviction which forms the basis of our philosophy. Rather, we experience the detachment itself. It is not a conclusion or an implication. Anguish is the experience of having to choose without adequate grounds for choosing – of having to be free. This is the starting point of Sartre’s phenomenology, the original data on which his philosophy is built. It does not reveal a prejudice in favour of freedom. On the contrary, to insist that all human actions are determined would be to impose a prejudice on the data of experience and contradict it. This prejudice would be a form of bad faith.

This is the part that always comes down to a fundamental question that seems beyond our grasp: is any of this interaction between Sartre back then and Wang and you and I here and now really within our control as autonomous beings?

I merely suggest in turn that the answer to this question is predicated entirely on the answer to the questions, "why is there something instead of nothing?" and "why is there this something and not another?"

Sure, we can speculate endlessly about natural phenomena, human experience and feelings of anguish. But we are seemingly unable to establish that any of this was ever able to be other than what it must be given that "I" has the capacity to opt for an alternative reality.

If we are in fact not detached from the immutable laws of matter having naturally/necessarily evolved into human brains [on this planet] then what reality seems to be to any particular one of us is interchangeable with what it appears to be to anyone else: only how it was ever able to appear.

Thus to speak of a "prejudice" here seems entirely moot.

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"Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness"
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.

Sartre’s vision of the relationship between identity and freedom can be summarised in the following way: Human beings have an identity but go beyond it. We identify with our thoughts and feelings and values, with our circumstances, with the totality of our experience. Yet at the same time we are conscious of this experience and therefore distant from it.

From my frame of mind however it is less the part where we go beyond our identity and more the part where "I" is understood only in the context of all those factors in our lives that are either beyond our understanding or control. The part embedded in dasein as an existential contraption. It is the distance here that counts most. And while we can attempt to gather as much information as possible to bridge the gap between the indoctrinated child and the more autonomous adult there are still going to be countless gaps not able to be filled.

We have questions, dilemmas, and moments of existential and moral anguish which make us aware of our own incompleteness and insufficiency.

In other words, in my view, each individual "I" has his or her own set of reactions to the world around them. Then the question becomes whether or not through disciplines like science and philosophy conflicting points of view can either be reconciled or resolved.

There is a fundamental lack within the present which paralyses our thoughts and actions. Nothing can completely determine for us the meaning of the world or the direction of our life. Yet we are able to go beyond all that we are and conceive of a future which will make sense of the present.

Yes, but only to the extent that we acknowledge "I" as an unimaginably complex and problematic intertwining of genes and memes set down in a particular world understood in a particular way. It's not so much paralyses as the ambiguity embedded in "the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty." Pertaining by and large to the is/ought world.

Some go further beyond this than do others. But, in my view, that really only takes them deeper into the profound mystery of existence itself. Ever and always assuming some measure of autonomy here.

It is by freely acting for an end which does not yet exist that we orientate ourselves to this goal and make it real for us. In this way we make sense of the world and give meaning to our life by our active commitments.

Okay, but to the extent that one then makes a distinction being living "authentically" and "inauthentically" is the extent to which I will then interject with my own far more nihilistic components.

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"Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness"
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.

A human being is neither the present static identity nor the intangible future goal. We are constituted rather by our freely chosen relationship between present identity and end. Personhood therefore necessarily involves both the facts that determine us and the movement beyond these facts to what we seek to become.

My point though is that, above all else, in however we react to this particular general description of "a human being" our conclusions must be brought out into the world of actual human interactions. A profoundly problematic existential contraption in which most will eventually confront others who react to the author's meaning here differently.

And then these "philosophical" interpretations become entangled further in lived lives in which "goals" and "movement" may or may not be in sync with what philosophers like Sartre call "authentic" behavior.

The existentialists themselves are no less entangled in the variables embedded in my own vantage point. "I" as a ceaselessly fabricated and refabricated embodiment of dasein confronting conflicting goods in a world where what ultimately counts in these conflicts is who has the political power to actually enforce one set of behaviors over all others.

It involves essence and existence, self-possession and self-dispossession, introspection and ecstasy, present and future, the real and the ideal, the indicative and the conditional. It involves what is true, and what could be. In Sartre’s understanding we constitute our personal identity by accepting who we are and freely moving beyond this.

No, it involves whatever you have come to believe these particular words put in this particular order mean "in your head" here and now. A world of words. Take them out of your head and employ them in interacting with others and they acquire an actual existential use value and exchange value.

Which in discussions about identity and value judgments in places like this, you are either more or less willing to bring arguments and assessments "down to earth" by noting the manner in which your philosophical conclusions impact the behaviors that you do choose given a particular context out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view.

I do this and bump into a fragmented and fractured "I" tumbling down into the hole that is moral nihilism.

And you?

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Nowhere Men
Nick Inman wants to know where you’re at.
In Philosophy Now magazine

Many contemporary philosophers begin by ruling out the question ‘Who are you?’ as only of interest to an anthropologist: ‘who’ defines a person by his relationship to other people – it doesn’t shed any light on human nature. The crunch question, which is the only one a physical scientist would allow, is ‘ What am I?’

Actually, the crunch question would seem to be, "why am I who the anthropologists say I am, and what the physical scientists say I am?"

That and how did existence itself come to be such that it evolved into who or what or why others speculate that I am.

Including philosophers.

Of course, we seem far, far removed from an answer that definitive. So what real choice do we have [in the interim] but to explore possibilities short of that. After all, they are no less fascinating to ponder.

Now we’re dealing with stuff. What else is there to deal with? If everything that exists is stuff – matter – then it is obvious that if I am, I must be something too. It would also help to say where I am because, as Eccles in The Goon Show put it, “Everybody’s got to be somewhere.”

Here we start getting closer to the "stuff" that fascinates me the most. The part in particular where we delve into the relationship between brain matter precipitating mind precipitating consciousness precipitating "I". Is any of that ever really within our command as autonomous matter? Or is it intertwined in one or another manifestation of God or pantheism? The part where wherever you are there is no getting around the most fundamental fonts of all.

Well, there’s only one place I can be. Whatever my self is, it must be me the animal, the biological organism, or part thereof. So I am inseparable from my body: I move around with it, I rely on it for input and output. When my body dies I will disappear.

Again, aspects of "I" that are applicable to all of us. Given the gap between "I" and all there is to know about all there is to know. But far more fascinating to me is the part where, given some measure of autonomy, "I" and "you" and "they" are not able to pin down what seems to be true for all of us.

The search for me can be narrowed down further. Although I have a foot, I would not say that I am a foot. Rather, the part of me that perceives and thinks is behind my eyes. “Logically,” says neurobiologist Dick Swaab, “you are your brain”.

And, for some, this marks the end of the discussion. In other words, is this or is this not inherently and necessarily a manifestation of biological imperatives? The part about dasein is merely subsumed by the determinists in the assumption that it is.

Here on this thread though I can only start by taking an intellectual leap to autonomy. Even though I have no capacity to demonstrate that it does in fact exist.

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What’s So Simple About Personal Identity?
Joshua Farris asks what you find when you find yourself.

Materialists or physicalists are philosophers who believe that humans are completely physical beings, whereas dualists believe we are minds – sometimes souls – with bodies. Both materialists and dualists are very interested in the nature of personal identity. In the recent literature, there are four prominent basic views on it. The proponents of all these views want to answer the questions, ‘What is a person?’ and ‘How can we identify one?’. Other relevant questions include, ‘Who am I?’, ‘Who am I in certain contexts?’, and ‘Is there a fact of the matter to my being me?’

Most here know what I propose. There are the self parts we are able to reasonably situate objectively out in the either/or world. Facts about us. Assuming some measure of autonomy. And accepting that even demonstrable facts are embedded in our ignorance regarding "I" and a complete understanding of existence itself.

The basic views of personal identity I discuss here are: the body view; the brain view; the memory/character continuity view; and the simple view. Additionally, there is a new simple view called the not-so-simple simple view. Defenders of both simple views largely agree in their estimate of the first three views, yet there are some important distinctions between the two simple views, which deserve attention.

Of course, so far this just another general description intellectual contraption about human identity. And who among us can make clear-cut distinctions between "the body, the brain, the memory/character continuity" and all of the hundreds upon hundreds of additional variables intertwined in the genetic and the memetic "I". "I" out in a particular world historically and culturally. To even suggest a "simple view" seems preposterous to me.

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What’s So Simple About Personal Identity?
Joshua Farris asks what you find when you find yourself.

The Body View

First let’s consider the body view. It is normally ascribed to Aristotle, but it has some contemporary defenders too. The bodily view of personal identity is the view that persons are identical to their bodies. Generally, defenders of the body view do not identify persons with one aspect of the body or one physical part of the body, such as the brain. Instead, the person is identical to the body as a whole: I am my body.

Okay, take this body out into the world and, with it, interact with others. When they ask why you choose the things that you think, feel, say and do you tell them, "I am my body, that's why."

Here that makes sense [to me] only to the extent the body as a whole is in sync with the laws of matter in a determined universe. Then identity itself is merely an inherent manifestation of that.

...we seem to treat our bodies as distinct objects of reflection, meaning that we seem to intuitively believe that our bodies are in some sense distinct from the core of the self in which we identify. When I encounter my feet as objects of reflection, for example, I am intuitively making a distinction between my self and those parts of my body. This intuition is also arguably active when we use parts of our body for different functions, for example, when I pick up a stick with my hand.

The part where given some degree of human autonomy ascribed to the self-conscious "I", a distinction is made between the autonomic body functions entirely embedded in the biological evolution of life on earth and that mysterious "ghost in the machine" that somehow more or less self-consciously maneuvers this body in and out of particular contexts only more or less able to be understood or controlled. The part where the genetic self stops and the memetic self begins; and then gets embedded in any number of historical and cultural narratives that each individual "I" ceaselessly constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs existentially from the cradle to the grave. The part "I" assign to my own understanding of dasein.

Another problem for the body view is the persistence of identity. It is difficult to see how on the body view the same self can persist through time. The body is a complex organism that changes over time; it has the potential to add or lose major parts, and additionally cells are growing and dying continually. However, it intuitively seems that the person is something more fixed, stable, unified, and enduring: that I am the same person through time. So suggesting that the body is identical to the self seems to undermine basic assumptions a person has of their self.

Again, here are the two "reductionist" explanations:

1] the body is at one with nature and all of this unfolds only as it ever could have. "I" is merely the illusion of opting for alternative twists and turns.
2] Religion. "I" is manifestation of God's will.

Where this becomes all the more problematic is when we consider the way in which "I" can be profoundly upended by biological conditions -- Alzheimer's, dementia, schizophrenia, other major mental disorders -- that seem to confirm the extent to which the body prevails.

Or the use of powerful drugs that can shape and mold the manner in which we experience "I" as a a sort of...chemistry lab?

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What’s So Simple About Personal Identity?
Joshua Farris asks what you find when you find yourself.

The Brain View

Another popular physicalist/materialist view is called the brain view of personal identity. This is the view that the person is identical to the brain; either to the brain as a whole, or to some part of it, such as the cerebral cortex, which produces the experiences and other higher order mental activity human minds enjoy.

It seems very natural for materialists to identify the self with the brain, given that the brain is responsible for much of the goings on in the body as well as in the mind.

The brain view is of course necessarily embedded in the body view. In fact, unless the mind part can somehow be explained as "transcending" the argument that the brain is but more matter inherently in sync with the laws of nature there's no real distinction at all.

Do brains think? Such a question seems very odd. The immediate response seems to be, ‘No, I think’. Usually, when speaking of thinking, we implicitly speak of the person doing the thinking, not of a collection of neurons firing. Something like the following may seem more promising for the brain view: ‘I use my brain to think’ or ‘I depend upon neural functioning for thinking’.

And here we are: hopelessly stuck!

Or, rather, so it still seems to me. But this part will always exasperate some more than others. In that some are able to convince themselves that how they think about this relationship here and now need be as far as they go to make it true. Then the part where how what we think and feel precipitates behaviors that precipitate very real consequences whether what we think and feel is in sync with what is actually true or not. Let alone in being able to determine if all of that is moot given the assumption that the brain and the mind and "I" are all entirely at one with nature itself entirely at one with the possible existence of God.

However, this is not a reason to think that selves are brains. To say you are your brain because you use your brain to think is similar to someone saying that my hand picks up a stick, so I am my hand. A hand may pick up a stick, but it is a person’s hand picking up the stick: I use my hand to pick up the stick. Equally, it is my brain doing the activity facilitating my thinking; but me using my brain to think with is not equivalent to me being my brain. Thus, the brain view will not work as a satisfactory view of personal identity either.

Got that? Next up: the hand picking up the stick and using it to thrash someone soundly. That even more problematic matter able to reconfigure into a point of view. An actual vantage point out in a particular context out in a particular world in which the brain qua mind qua "I" precipitates [existentially] moral judgments from others.

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What’s So Simple About Personal Identity?
Joshua Farris asks what you find when you find yourself.

[Lynne Rudder Baker, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts] identifies persons with what she calls ‘the first-person perspective’. This is the perspective I have of myself, or the perspective you have of yourself. Thus, persons are here not identical to a body or a brain; neither are persons identifiable with a set of memory or character states; instead, persons are identified with a particular perspective.

In other words, as I interpret it, "I" is not reducible down to the body or to the brain, or to a particular set of memories, or to a personality, or to a character. Instead it is embodied in the manner in which they all somehow come together from day to day to produce a "perspective". I think this, I feel that, I choose this, I do that.

Basically, the manner in which most of us think about "I" in the world around us for all practical purposes. Given some measure of autonomy.

And we can think of it this way until someday, someone actually is able to demonstrate why the whole package is reducible down to a specific factor above.

And, in the interim, it still comes down to that which we are in fact able to demonstrate to others is [existentially] the most rational way in which to think, feel, say or do...anything.

In a recent work, Baker puts it like this: “A person is a being with a first-person perspective essentially, who persists as long as her first-person perspective is exemplified” (Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective, 2013, p.149), even though defining personal identity in this way is rather circular, and not very informative for the reader, as Baker acknowledges (p.150). As Baker says in her conclusion, “the first-personal view is a Simple View because it provides no informative criteria of personal identity”

There's no getting around circularity here because however you explain human identity, you come back to certain assumptions you make which are not able to be either verified or falsified definitively. And this must be the case or there would already be an explanation out there that accomplishes precisely that.

Though, sure, if you think there is one, link it to us.

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Elastic Selves in the Age of Enhancement
Susana Badiola wonders how technology will help us understand our selves.

Scientists and futurists are spreading before a dazzled public all kinds of astonishing prospects of humans in the near future being deliberately transformed through the use of technology. Through advanced medicine and by integrating technology into our lives and our very bodies, we may soon be stronger, healthier, longer-lived, happier, with more acute senses, and capabilities undreamed of by our ancestors. Such technological enhancements of ourselves will be our own conscious choices. What will that mean for our sense of self?

The technological self?

Assuming of course that, using the technology currently available to them, neuroscientists are not able to rule out entirely at least some capacity on our part to freely choose among the options made available.

Given some measure of autonomy here, "I" is about to enter that brave new world in which the human biological self itself is reconfigured into a kind of memetic self predicated on those qualities that any particular historical or cultural community value the most.

Of course this part...

...we may soon be stronger, healthier, longer-lived, happier, with more acute senses, and capabilities undreamed of by our ancestors...

...is one thing. But it might well become another thing altogether if science is able to reconfigure the mind's "I" so as to instill characteristics and behaviors more in sync with one political narrative rather than another.

What sort of behaviors should be encouraged if all it takes is tweaking the brain at or around birth?

Then this part:

Old questions such as ‘What are we?’ or ‘What makes us be who we are?’ still resonate through contemporary philosophy. The conviction of being oneself obstinately remains despite all theoretical attempts to dilute it. Phenomenologists take the experiencing self as a given, as a starting point. Others feel intellectual discomfort with substantive notions of self, and explain my feeling of being me either as an illusion or as a social construction. The conclusion that ‘the self within’ is an illusion caused by some grammatical, psychological or epistemological mistake is not exclusive to philosophers; neuroscientists and artificial intelligence theorists explain it away as being the result of complex systems, carbon based or otherwise.

What might science be able to pin down here more definitively? Whole new ways to grasp the phenomenological "I"? Will a "self within" be discovered? Will there be ways to determine what the optimal self might be? And ways to bring that about in the really and truly brave new world of childhood indoctrination? The "mass me"?

Or, instead, will it be discovered that the mass me is just the wholly determined me spread out among all of Earth's inhabitants?

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Elastic Selves in the Age of Enhancement
Susana Badiola wonders how technology will help us understand our selves.

An I on the Self

We should start by clarifying our problematic notion. Even as we all seem to know what we mean by ‘self’, it is not easy to characterize.

Why? Because grappling with "I" in one context can be quite different from another context.

Consider:

* There's the "I" that goes about the business of living from day to day in the either/or world. Hundreds of things that we do [alone or with others] that are entirely in sync with that which is as close as we have been able to come to "objective reality". In fact, the main obstacles to pinning this self down revolve around sheer speculation --- sim worlds, solipsism, dream worlds, matrix perspectives.

* There's the "I" that goes about the business of living from day to day in the is/ought world. Still hundreds of things that we can agree are "true objectively" for all of us. But these things trigger relationships that trigger behaviors that are judged far, far more subjectively. The "I" that I root in dasein.

*There's the "I" all the way out at the end of the metaphysical limb --- going back to the understanding of existence itself. Or in resolving the debate about "free will".

* There's the "I" that, for some, is in a relationship with one or another God. I and Thou.

But that, it turns out, just gets us started...

Galen Strawson once listed twenty-one different concepts of ‘self’ (Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, 1999), and Peter van Inwagen analyzed nine possible referents of the pronoun ‘I’ (The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics, 2002).

The biological "I", The neurological and chemical "I", the historical "I", the cultural "I", the sociological "I", the psychological and emotional "I". And on and on.

Other authors, such as Anthony Kenny, deny that the first person pronoun refers to anything at all, and say that this grammatical error is the source of many a philosophical muddle (The Metaphysics of Mind, 1989).

On the other hand, don't get them started, right?

The ambiguity of the word ‘I’ seems apparent in claims such as ‘I have not been myself lately’ – which could be paraphrased as ‘There is something wrong with me’, or more confusingly, ‘I am aware that my self has not been itself lately’ – meaning, ‘I (supposedly the person talking) am aware that whoever I have been lately (self) is not the one who really I am (myself)’! This conceptual separation between myself and the self is characteristic of the ‘philosophical muddle’ pointed out by Kenny. Other instances show this problematic gap too. Consider, for example, ‘I was mad at myself’ or ‘I do not know who I am any more’, which both seem to suggest there is an essential self that a perhaps less essential ‘I’ can observe or get mad at.

And what does this ultimately revolve around? The fact that we relate to our "self" differently in different sets of circumstances. Somehow the "I" in my head is intertwined with all that exist out in any particular world. But there are so many different [and at times entirely unique] possible permutations "out there" given interactions awash in contingency, chance and change, that trying to pin down an understanding of all the variables that combine to create an "I" at any particular time, in any particular place can only be at best a more or less sophisticated guess. While, for many of us, it is more like a WAG.

And yet how could one speak of an "essential self" or the "real me" without the capacity to reduce all of these factors down to the one true reality?

[iambiguous]

Elastic Selves in the Age of Enhancement
Susana Badiola wonders how technology will help us understand our selves.

As Ludwig Wittgenstein has made us aware, language can be misleading, presenting a common structure for very different uses. For example, ‘I have a computer’, ‘I have a dog’, ‘I have a dream’, and ‘I have a headache’ share a common structure, but my ‘ownership’ of my headache does not have the same sense as in the case of my computer.

Language can get particularly misleading when "I" is intent on pondering all the stuff that goes on in the mind that generates the "I" in the first place. Dogs and computers are things that are out in the world. You either have one or you don't. And, if you do, you are easily able to demonstrate this to others. The communication back and forth is rather clear and objective.

In a similar manner, the claim that ‘I have not been myself lately’ suggests there is a real way to be myself, and a false way, even when the only possible self seems to be the one of which we are aware.

Here again however a distinction can be made between being or not being yourself with regard to things which are able to be demonstrated. If one day you find out from the doctor that you have an inoperable brain tumor, or have contracted AIDS, "I" can well come to embody a very different perspective on life. Or if your beloved spouse or child was murdered, "I" too can then come to reflect on life emotionally and psychologically such that you are never quite the same again.

But what is the true or the false way for one to embody a self with respect to conflicting goods? Interactions that garner particular reactions [good or bad] from others depending on the moral and political values that you embrace.

Philosophers such as Peter Hacker attempt to dissolve this muddle by clarifying conceptual confusions when discussing consciousness. For example, ‘I do not know what to think’ expresses not introspective deficiency, but the fact that I cannot make up my mind. And when I add ‘I think’, I’m not identifying a mental operation, but only specifying epistemic weight.

Yes, any particular "I" may not know what to think, but, depending on the context, there either is or is not a rational way in which to think about someone or something. You can't make up your mind but there are ways in which to show you what a rational mind is obligated to believe or know.

There are epistemological boundaries separating that which we can know for certain and that which we cannot.

And it is always the latter that is of most interest to me. Things that "I" can draw more or less informed and educated conclusions regarding...and things that appear to more in the nature of personal opinions.

And, in regard to our day-to-day interactions, what could possibly be a more crucial task for philosophers to take on?