Interesting (capital I)

I'm currently reading a sort of introduction to Philosophy, Think, by Simon Blackburn. The most interesting section so far has dealt with "The Self", although the section on "Free Will" was very good too; although not convincing me that I'm not complete master of my fate, it certainly gave insight into why others believe otherwise. I love the quoted Islamic parable of "Death in Samarkand" from this section:

The disciple of a sufi of Baghdad was sitting in an inn one day when he heard two figures talking. He realized that one of them was the Angel of Death. "I have several calls to make in this city", said the angel to his companion. The terrified disciple concealed himself until the two had left. To escape Death, he hired the fastest horse he could, and rode day and night to the far distant desert of Samarkand.

Meanwhile, Death met the disciple's teacher, and they talked of this and that. "And where is your disciple, so-and-so?" asked Death. "I suppose he is at home, where he should be, studying." Said the sufi. "That is surprising." Said Death, "for here he is on my list. And I have to collect him tomorrow, in Samarkand, of all places.

To me this illustrates how parables can be made to prove any point you may wish to make, but the intended lesson here is obviously one of not being able to control your own fate, the "bullet-with-your-name-on-it" theory. Obviously having the perception that I am in control doesn't mean that I am, but what's the difference of a complete (deceptive) perception of control as opposed to having that control? It seems to me that there's no difference, and no way to disprove the idea (a good argument for it being false) as whatever happens was what was supposed to happen - also, as Blackburn points out, even if God could see all time laid out in front of him, he would never for example see me making an omelette in one "frame" of the movie of my life and not see me breaking eggs in a previous frame. The very law of cause and effect seems to underwrite our freedom of will.

Back to "The Self"! What is this thing I call I? Is it my mind, my body, a mixture of both or neither - something overarching, different entirely and ethereally to minds and bodies and stuff? Blackburn begins with Hume:

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity.

Blackburn:

Hume is pointing out that the self is elusive. It is unobservable. If you "look inside your own mind" to try to catch it, you miss because all you stumble upon are what he calls particular perceptions, or experience and emotions. You don't also get a glimpse of the "I" that is the subject of these experiences. Yet we all think we know ourselves with a quite peculiar intimacy.

Or, that perceptions, or memories of them, are what make a person or a mind or an I - we could no more have a disembodied "I" than we could have a disemtreed tree. As Blackburn suggests, beliefs that suppose a duality of some sort (body/mind or soul/body) want to prise one side of the duality away from the other - the side which gives the other its identity! Proponents of a duality of sorts do present some good arguments, such as one which seems to say where "I" is by saying where it isn't (is this a valid argument? I have my doubts), note the thoughts of Thomas Reid:

A part of a person is a manifest absurdity. When a man loses his estate, his health, his strength, he is still the same person, and has lost nothing of his personality. If he has a leg or an arm cut off, he is the same person he was before. The amputated member is no part of his person, otherwise it would have a right to a part of his estate, and be liable for a part of his engagements. It would be entitled to a share of his merit and demerit, which is manifestly absurd. A person is something indivisible...My thoughts, and actions, and feelings, change every moment: they have no continued, but a successive, existence; but that self, or I, to which they belong, is permanent, and has the same relation to all the succeeding thoughts, actions, and feelings which I call mine.

Yes, but all of a person equals a person, doesn't it? Or at least all of his brain? We could imagine the famous brain in a vat (a modern revision of Descartes evil demon) scenario, but we can't imagine a brainless mind or soul in a vat, or at least I can't. Even if we can't put our finger on exactly what or where this thing "I" is, we can say generally where it is I think, for if a person has his brain removed, he is certainly not "the same person he was before"! So it seems that chemicals and electrical impulses doth make a man.

There's more to say on this though. Blackburn:

We are often quite careless about how much change to tolerate while still regarding [a thing as being] ... the same "thing": witness the joke about the Irish axe which has been in the family for several generations, although it has had three new heads and five new handles. Sometimes we get confused: an illustration is the case of the "ship of Theseus":

Theseus goes on a long voyage, and in the course of it bits of his ship need replacing. In fact, by the end, he has tossed overboard used sails, spars, rigging, planks, and replaced them all. Does he come back in the same ship? We would probably say no. But suppose some entrepreneur goes round behind him, picked up the discarded bits, and reassembles them. Can't the entrepreneur claim to have the original ship? But surely we cannot have two different ships each of which is identical with the original?"

We know that every seven years the molecules in our bodies, including our brains, are renewed completely - so am I a different person to the person I was Seven years ago? It could be worse still. Note Kants thoughts:

An elastic ball that strikes another one in a straight line communicates to the latter its whole motion, hence its whole state (if one looks only at their positions in space). Now assuming substances, on the analogy with such bodies, in which representations, together with consciousness of them, flow from one to another, a whole series of these substances may be thought, of which the first would communicate its state, together with its consciousness, to the second, which would communicate its own state, together with their consciousness and its own. The last substance would thus be consciousness of all the previously altered substances as its own states, because these states would have been carried over to it, together with consciousness of them; and in spite of this it would not have been the very same person in all these states.

In other words, says Blackburn, "we don't know anything about immaterial substances". And even if we did have such a substance, it could be subject to the same changes that our bodies are subject to, or even renewed each night (!), whilst passing on its vital "I"'ness to the next "I", so that you couldn't differentiate between them (the elastic balls or the "I"'s) even though they are completely different "things"! So much for the immortal soul - but does the person really change in such a way, so that I really am not the same person I was yesterday (at most) or ten years ago (at least)?

Some think yes, others no. I would count myself in the latter group, but that's got a lot to do with what I mean by person. In my way of thinking of my own person, I suppose that my brain (and therefore my mind) is just as much a part of me as my hand has always been, even if it has been gradually replaced a few times already in my life, in a similar way to the ship of Theseus. To me it is the same brain, just as my hand is to all appearances the same hand, just as the ship to Theseus was the same ship - thinking otherwise smacks of a sort of Creationist appearance of age argument, something that cannot be proved but which we could consider as unlikely as Bertrand Russell's 5 minute old universe (to quote Russell):

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

When I consider this next and final section from Blackburn, I don't know what to think, and it scares the hell out of me. Here's quite an extensive quote from the section "Scrambling the Soul" [p144-148] (thank goodness for Google print and OCR technology!):

There is a curious difference between the past and the future, when we think of our own selves. Suppose we lived in a world in which human bodies and brains were easier to aggregate and disaggregate than they are. We could take them apart and reassemble them as we can with computers or automobiles. Suppose that these operations are called scrambling operations. We can crank up the psychologies of people again after these operations, rather like copying the software and files on a computer. Or, we can change the dispositions, by changing the software or files, retaining some old and adding some new. Scrambling operations are regarded as beneficial and healthy.

Suppose in such a world you were told that tomorrow you would go into a scrambling operation. And you are given a glimpse of who will emerge. Person A has a lot of your stuff in him, and a lot of your qualities: he or she remembers things as you now do, looks much as you do, and so on. Anyhow, person A is going to be sent to the Arctic (perhaps you are army personnel). Person B is also a good match with you, again incorporating lots of your actual physical stuff—brain and cells—in him, and having a lot of your qualities (software and files). Person B is going to the tropics.

From our standpoint this is a bit like the ship of Theseus. We need not make a big issue of whether you become person A or you become person B. We might find ourselves regarding one of the new people, or even both of them, as you—or we might find ourselves regarding them as newborns. An analogy used by the contemporary philosopher David Lewis is with a road that splits. We do not think it is a big metaphysical issue whether we say that just one branch is the old Turnpike Way, or whether both are, or whether neither is. But from your standpoint, it might seem the truth is crucial. Either you will spend next year in the cold, or in the heat, or you will not survive at all. There are just three crisp options. You can’t wrap your mind around vagueness and indeterminacy: ‘It will be a bit as if you are in the tropics and a bit as if you are in the Arctic’ makes no sense. There is nobody at the later time for whom there is some kind of mixture of tropic and Arctic, heat and cold. A is cold, and B is hot. There is nobody for whom it is half-and-half. Equally, ‘It will be a bit as if you don’t exist and a bit as if you do’ is just as bad. Either you will be in the one place sweating it out, or in the other place freezing, or you will have joined your ancestors. ‘You will be there as both of them’ just sounds like cant as if someone consoled me for never having seen Venice by saying ‘You will be there as your son goes'. Blow that. (As Woody Allen said of a similar consolation: ‘I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying :)

The queer thing is that we lose this sense of crispness when we think of the past. Suppose in this world you learn that you now are the result of a scrambling operation that involved two persons, C and D, who each contributed this and that to the person who you are. That is interesting, but it does not give you the same wrenching, urgent need to know. If you learn that C spent Christmas 1990 on a ship and D spent it up a mountain, but you can’t remember either, you need not obsess over the question ‘Where was I on Christmas day 1990?’ If the scrambling gave you vague awareness of both experiences that is fine too: you are someone for whom it is a bit as if you climbed a mountain that day, and a bit as if you went sailing.

It is chilling to realize that at the later time there need be nobody who is upset about identity. Person A in the Arctic has a partial continuity with you now, and so does person B in the tropics. Each of them can look back with nostalgia on some of your doings. And if they like they can wish for more or less of your parts or your psychological traits and memories just as we can look back with nostalgia on our earlier selves, and wish to be more or less like them. We can grieve over lost powers and memories, or rejoice over gained knowledge and maturity, according to taste.

I don't know what to make of these comments, but they do ring true on some level. I (and probably many others) have similar disquieting thoughts when considering Jesus' promise of an earthly resurrection (once quite real to me, now less real) and whether the resurrected person would be me or just a perfect copy of me (with my memories, dispositions etc). It occurs to me (contrary to my previous belief) that this biblical teaching actually supports there being something other than body and mind that makes you, otherwise how could the resurrected you be you? We're not talking gradual "ship of Theseus" destruction/creation here, but a total destruction followed by a total recreation! The argument I consoled myself with previously was Jesus' comparing death to sleep and resurrection as awakening from sleep, and indeed, we do enter an oblivion each night which we seem to escape from unscathed each morning. Death is not sleep though - it seems more permanent than ever to me now, and I find with such musings that death even creeps into life, into my living mind, and into my living body. I find myself wondering anew and with fresh perspective, along with Job (14:14 NIV):

If a man dies, will he live again?

That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

I came across this joke other day - it's funny whilst making a very serious point I think, one I've made quite a few times in this blog, and that's self-evident (I hope). Here it is:

"I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. "Well, there's so much to live for!" "Like what?" "Well... are you religious?" He said yes. I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?" "Christian." "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant ? "Protestant." "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?" "Baptist" "Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?" "Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?" "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off."

I'm sure a Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915' ist wouldn't consider themselves an "ist" any less than a Jehovah's Witness would consider themselves an "ist", neither would members of these (jokey and definately not-jokey) religions consider themselves a derivation of some earlier (now erroneous) group (read more on this in the linked Wikipedia article on restorationism below) . Note though how the founder of the Witness movement was influenced by various Adventists (particularly the Millerite Barbour):

"Born into a Presbyterian family, Russell had nearly lost his faith until it was rekindled by contact with some Second Adventists (one of the spiritual heirs of the Millerites). Adventist ministers Jonas Wendell, George Storrs and George Stetson were early influences. In 1876 Russell met Nelson H. Barbour and subsequently adopted Barbour's understanding of biblical chronology."

In fact as just one movement in a set of movements that can be described as restoration'IST Witness beliefs share a similarity to (even modern) Seventh Day Adventist teaching. An even closer fit to the "joke" above could be achieved by substituting Bible Students and Jehovahs Witnesses as the last two divisions - Bible Students follow the teachings of the founder Russell closely and are loyal to the original teachings of the religion in a way that witnesses are not. But each group would say that they're reestablishment of true church, and that the other is nothing of the sort - to their eternal chagrin no doubt!

Remember, God's on the outside looking in, just like us reading that joke above. The way most people see that joke is surely (if He exists and cares) the way He sees it - God's not an ist.

A Side of Bex

Here's my wife, heavy with child, but she's going to get heavier with child - the baby isn't due till January 12th! I'm sure Joni wasn't this big. And it looks as though we may be moving house around that time too, bit of a nightmare that. We've known for about a Month that our housing association have found us a bigger flat - a 4 bedroom maisonette in the next street - but the current (illegal) "tenant" isn't budging, despite being threatened with court proceedings. Apparently "she's done this before" and our housing association expect that it could take a while to get her out (even though she shouldn't be there, being the daughter of the previous tenant and not a tenant herself). Not that we'd want her thrown onto the street, but our situation is quite precarious too...

What To Do?

The H5N1 virus is still on my mind, as it is on the collective public mind at the moment, but that could change - will change, if the virus doesn't mutate and explode into the human population soon. That's a scary thought, because it may disappear from our minds, from the front pages of the newspapers, but it's not going to disappear. Whether it's this year, next year, or a few years down the line, we WILL have to face this, as individuals and as a society, as a WORLD.

I hear that Madonna's new album is now freely available on the internet, and I thought that to be quite a good illustration of the way this virus could spread - it took just one person to get hold of the CD and put it on the net - within days, even hours, it's around the world. No laws or borders can stop it, and from that one copy many thousands, millions are made. I suppose a better illustration of this would be an (aptly named) computer virus which actively spreads itself. It would be the same with the H5N1 derived virus: nothing could stop it, at best it could only be slowed, which may allow it to weaken naturally and allow any available vaccines to be produced and administered. This "slowing down" of the virus is something that governments may try to do, but it is doubtful that any measures would work, with influenza being so contagious and producing no symptoms during the first few days of contagion.

In a way, there's nothing we can do - yet. Even when it happens, there probably won't be much we can do. At least when it happens, we'll know what we're dealing with. We'll know how lethal it is - what the "excess mortality" is in its path - and whether it takes young and old, or targets healthy young adults particularly, as in 1918 ( it was the victims own immune systems that were killing these healthy young adults, immune systems that were too good at their job - like a heavily armed but too heavy handed army going in to rescue hostages and killing all the hostages along with the hostage takers). We can only prepare ourselves mentally I think, and decide whether we will let this evil make better or worse people out of us, as people or as memories in other peoples minds - and hopefully God's. Will we fearfully retreat from our neighbours in their hour of need, or will we brave death (which is after all certain for all of us eventually) to help others who need us? A huge problem in 1918 was the shortage of doctors and nurses and civilian volunteers, not just due to the war, but due to the fear that most had of contracting the disease. Yet those who did volunteer helped save thousands of lives, as a majority of victims who contracted secondary infections (pneumonias) could be helped with care and (sadly scarce) medication.

Better to die in acts of courage, as thousands of these doctors, nurses and volunteers did, than to die in sequestered fear. I think the Romans would call it a "good death".

A Year of Blogs

Long, long ago, in a land far, far away, lived John. He wrote the words which you now read, to store a little of what made his life in one year. He wrote it using something called a web site (called Blogger), then controlled by something called a company (called Google), in the first years of what was then known as the internet, on a machine called a computer (you know what that is). Up to this point, he had written about a year of his life, about just some of the things that happened to him, or that he thought about, in that year. He hopes you are enjoying it, that at the very least you are amused by it. He wishes he were you, reading about him. Then he would be alive. So it goes.