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16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / a. Self needs body

[a body is necessary for a sef]

15 ideas
The mind only knows itself by means of ideas of the modification of the body [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: The mind does not know itself, except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications of the body.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 29)
     A reaction: This is reminiscent of Hume's 'bundle of perceptions' report of introspection. It is in tune with a modern 'animalist' view of a person, and with a view of the mind as a map of the body and its environs. Is he a sceptic about personal identity?
We need an account of the self based on rational principles, to avoid materialism [Kant]
     Full Idea: Why do we have need of a doctrine of the soul grounded merely on pure rational principles? Without doubt chiefly with the intent of securing our thinking Self from the danger of materialism.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A383)
     A reaction: And why is materialism a 'danger'? Only, I think, because it would make immortality impossible. Huge chunks of Enlightenment philosophy are the last vestiges of the religious view of reality. I think we can base morality on a material self.
The powerful self behind your thoughts and feelings is your body [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Behind your thoughts and feelings stands a powerful commander, an unknown wise man - he is called a self. He lives in your body; he is your body.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], I.4), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Creature'
     A reaction: I find Nietzsche's view of the self very congenial, though I tend to see the self as certain central functions of the brain. The brain is enmeshed in the body (as in the location of pains).
Certainty that I will die is more basic to my existence than the Cogito [Heidegger]
     Full Idea: The certainty that 'I myself am in that I will die' is the basic certainty of Dasein itself. It is a genuine statement of Dasein, while 'cogito sum' is only a semblance of such a statement.
     From: Martin Heidegger (History of the Concept of Time [1925], p.316-7), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 4.§46-53
     A reaction: This just seems to be false. Children face their existence in thought long before they face their mortality. Absorption in activity can marginalise death, but not marginalise thought.
What is sacred is not a person, but the whole physical human being [Weil]
     Full Idea: There is something sacred in every man, but it is not his person. Nor yet is it the human personality. It is this man; no more and no less. …It is he. The whole of him. The arms, they eyes, the thoughts, everything.
     From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p,70)
     A reaction: I take her to be referring to exactly the concept of a 'person' which Locke introduced. It is important to remember that his concept is mainly forensic - as a concept of ownership and contracts. A person is an abstraction. Even a corpse is a human.
Bodily identity and memory work together to establish personal identity [Ayer]
     Full Idea: In general the two criteria of memory and bodily identity work together.
     From: A.J. Ayer (The Central Questions of Philosophy [1973], §VI.B)
     A reaction: This seems better than any simplistic one-criterion approach. In life we use different criteria for our own identity, as when dreaming, or waking with a hangover, or wondering if we are dead after an accident.
People own conscious states because they are causally related to the identifying body [Ayer]
     Full Idea: I think personal identity depends on the identity of the body, and that a person's ownership of states of consciousness consists in their standing in a special causal relation to the body by which he is identified.
     From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV)
     A reaction: I think with this is right, with the slight reservation that Ayer talks as if there were two things which have a causal relationship, implying that the link is contingent. Better to think of the whole thing as a single causal network.
Two experiences belong to one self if their contents belong with one body [Ayer]
     Full Idea: For any two sense-experiences to belong to the sense-history of the same self it is necessary and sufficient that they should contain organic sense-contents which are elements of the same body.
     From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7)
     A reaction: This makes more sense if you are a realist about organic bodies, but less sense if (like Ayer) you define the body in terms of sense-experiences. It is a stab at what is now called 'animalism', but needs an account of brain transplant thought-experiments.
Empiricists can define personal identity as bodily identity, which consists of sense-contents [Ayer]
     Full Idea: We have solved Hume's problem by defining personal identity in terms of bodily identity, and bodily identity is to be defined in terms of the resemblance and continuity of sense-contents.
     From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.7)
     A reaction: This is a phenomenalist account of personal identity, so it has no independent account of the body apart from the contents of the mind. Personally I think we must distinguish 'central' mental events from 'peripheral' ones.
A person is an entity to which we can ascribe predicates of consciousness and corporeality [Strawson,P]
     Full Idea: What I mean by the concept of a person is the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics are equally applicable to a single individual of that single type.
     From: Peter F. Strawson (Individuals:Essay in Descript Metaphysics [1959], 3.4)
     A reaction: As Frankfurt points out, merely requiring the entity to be 'conscious' is a grossly inadequate definition of what we mean by a person, which is typically a being that is self-aware and capable of rational decisions between alternatives.
If we have a pain, we are strongly aware of the bodily self [Cassam]
     Full Idea: Since sensations such as pain generally present themselves as in some part of one's body, the bodily self seems to be anything but elusive in sensory awareness.
     From: Quassim Cassam (Introduction to 'Self-Knowledge' [1994], §I)
     A reaction: This strikes me as a really good observation. Whenever we do Hume's experiment in introspection, we tend to examine either pure sense experiences or abstract ideas. If we introspect a pain, we actually find the body at the centre of activity.
Maybe our persistence conditions concern bodies, rather than persons [Olson, by Hawley]
     Full Idea: Instead of attributing person-like persistence conditions to bodies, we could attribute body-like persistence conditions to persons, …so human persons are identical with human organisms.
     From: report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.10
     A reaction: In the case of pre-birth and advanced senility, Olson thinks we could have the body without the person, so person is a 'phase sortal' of bodies. A good theory, which seems to answer a lot of questions. 'Person' may be an abstraction.
For 'animalism', I exist before I became a person, and can continue after it, so I am not a person [Olson, by Lowe]
     Full Idea: According to 'animalism', I existed before I was a person and I may well go one existing for some time after I cease to be a person; hence, I am not essentially a person, but a human organism.
     From: report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.10
     A reaction: There is a very real sense in which an extremely senile person has 'ceased to exist' (e.g. as the person I used to love). On the whole, though, I think that Olson is right, and yet 'person' is an important concept. Neither concept is all-or-nothing.
The self is founded on bodily awareness centred in the brain stem [Edelman/Tononi]
     Full Idea: Structures in the brain stem map the state of the body and its relation to the environment, on the basis of signals with proprioceptive, kinesthetic, somatosensory and autonomic components. We may call these the dimensions of the proto-self.
     From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13)
     A reaction: It seems to me that there is no free will, but moral responsibility depends on the existence of a Self, and philosophers had better fight for it (are you listening, Hume?). Fortunately neuroscientists seem to endorse it fairly unanimously.
You hold a child in your arms, so it is not mental substance, or mental state, or software [Merricks]
     Full Idea: When you hold your child, you do exactly that - hold the child himself or herself - and not some stand-in. This implies that we are not two substances, and we are not mental states nor akin to software.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4)
     A reaction: And it is not just a brain, either. This is a nice simple example to support the sensible view that a person is a type of animal. Like all other physical objects that is a bit vague, so we should not be distracted by borderline cases like brain bisection.