Structuring the Self

Majid Davoody Beni

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030311025
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Mente e corpo in filosofia

This book presents a unified account of the self, based on a network of knowledge sourced from several scientific accounts of selfhood. Beni constructs his ontological account of the self from the common structure that underpins the theoretical diversity that is manifested in rival and sometimes incompatible scientific accounts of the self and its aspects. The enterprise is inspired by recent structural realist theories in the philosophy of science, specifying the basic structure of the self, and explaining how representational, phenomenal, and social aspects of the self are embodied within this structure.

© The Author(s) 2019

M. D. BeniStructuring the SelfNew Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Sciencehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31102-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Self, Its Substance, and Its Structure: A Selective History

Majid Davoody Beni^{1, 2}

(1)

Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies, Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan city, Kazakhstan

(2)

The Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Majid Davoody Beni

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

AristotleDescartesHumeKantSubstanceStructureFormSelfMindPerson

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

This chapter aims to flesh out the difference between the substantivalist, eliminativist, and structuralist approaches to understanding the self. It accomplishes its goal through surveying some deliberately selected fragments of the long history of philosophical engagements with the self-notion.¹ The chapter does not aim to review every important philosophical engagement with the self, much less to provide a comprehensive history of the philosophy of selfhood. There are various important theories of the selfhood—authored by Plato, Averroes, Leibniz, and John Locke, among many others—that are either glossed over or completely neglected in this chapter. Instead, the chapter includes a selective historical review which aims at fleshing out a significant philosophical difference between three ways of thinking about the self. These three approaches consist of the substantivalist account, the eliminativist account, and the structuralist account of the self. I embark on explaining these three ways of conceiving of selfhood through a quick survey of ideas of a few of the greatest philosophers of all ages. After briefly referring to some pre-Socratic speculations at the dawn of history, I will survey Aristotle’s and Descartes’ theories of selfhood. Despite their differences, I argue that the theories of Aristotle and Descartes somewhat agree in supporting a substantivalist conception of the self. I delineate the substantivalist view by referring to excerpts from works of Aristotle and Descartes. I also aim to scrutinise the solidity of grounds for adopting the substantivalist view throughout, and I introduce an alternative to substantivalism. As a foil to the substantivalist view, I highlight parts of theories of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. There is a difference between Hume’s and Kant’s respective views on the self; while Hume’s theory may initially seem eliminativist, Kant defended a modified form of substantivalist theory of selfhood in the context of his transcendental approach. I argue that despite their difference, Hume’s and Kant’s respective theories could be understood as being at odds with the orthodox substantivalism of Aristotle and Descartes. Moreover, I argue that it is possible to construe both Hume’s and Kant’s conceptions of the self in the spirit of structuralism. Thus, I built upon examples from the history of philosophy to flesh out the distinction between the substantivalist, eliminativist, and structuralist perspectives. I draw on works of some of the most renowned philosophers of history to provide the reader with familiar examples of the orthodox foil (e.g., the Cartesian view) to structuralism as well as some familiar precedents (in the works of Hume and Kant) that are in line with my own theory of structural realism about the self.

Although I will allude to some exegetical points (in connection with works of Hume and Kant) to flesh out the structural realist theory of the self, my endeavour in this chapter is not completely exegetical. It is not my aim to show that structuralism is the only (or the most) plausible way of understanding the philosophical theses of Hume and Kant. Nor am I willing to suggest that Hume and Kant had been committed to structuralism as a philosophical agenda, in the same way that some contemporary philosophers, for example, John Worrall, Steven French, among others, are committed to it. The main reason for drawing on the theories of Hume and Kant in this chapter is that they both argue that the orthodox substantivalist theory of the self—as being developed by Descartes—cannot be defended on the basis of either experiential or logical arguments. Despite such instances of scepticism about standard substantivalism, neither Hume nor Kant eliminates the self from their philosophy completely. The remaining option, which is not committed to either substantivalism or eliminativism, is structuralism. In this chapter, I argue that it is possible to recognise some early versions of structuralist theories of the self in works of Hume and Kant. Thus I introduce structural realism about the self by drawing on well-known historical examples, and thereby prepare the reader’s mind for the structural realist theory that I will spell out in the book.

It is important to notice that, despite flirting with the history of philosophy in this chapter, this book does not substantiate the structural realist theory of the self on the basis of historical considerations. Rather, it aims to flesh out a structural realist theory of the self on the basis of recent theories of cognitive science and computational neuroscience. And today, our cognitive science is developed far beyond the scope of Hume’s armchair psychology and Kant’s transcendental, a priori psychology. In the final section of this chapter, I outline some important breakthroughs that contributed to the formation of cognitive science as a collaborative and multidisciplinary enterprise. In the next chapter, I will build the structural realist theory of the self upon recent findings in cognitive sciences.

1.2 In the Beginning

The famous Delphic proverb “Know thyself” has been attributed to a number of different sages of the days of yore. Even if the historical root of this proverb could be traced back to a particular person successfully, it would be still impossible to determine the precise historical moment in which a person, or more probably, a society of persons had begun to wonder about their identity. What is certain is that since time immemorable, “who am I” has been a tantalising question. To the extent that the official history of philosophy is concerned, some pre-Socratic philosophers were the first to voice such curiosity.

Even before the dawn of philosophy, there have been mythological theories of the selfhood. However, according to the surviving historical fragments, Thales of Miletus was the first person to enquire about such things. He enquired as to the nature of the world and the mind (or soul), by employing a philosophical (in contrast with mythological) methodology. According to Aristotle’s report, Thales had said that “the loadstone has a soul because it moves the iron” (Graham, 2010, p. 35 A22). This assertion does not seem to be based on anything like scientific observation in the strict sense.² However, at least Aristotle construed Thales’ phrase in a way that could make it intelligible to the contemporary reader. According to Aristotle, Thales had presumed that the soul is the source of motion (Graham, 2010, p. 35 A22). Aristotle’s construal indicates that Thales has specified the notion of the mind on the basis of its observable function, namely being the cause of the motion. This means that Thales’ theory was reliant on the pieces of evidence about the observable effects of the soul. He had endeavoured to support his stipulation of the soul as an unobservable entity, which is in possession of traceable causal powers by such pieces of evidence. The stipulation could explain the observable phenomenon—that some things are being moved—and there is a causal mechanism to explain the relationship between the soul and observable phenomena, given that the soul is the cause of motion. Thus Thales provides a functional analysis of the soul. It is true that he had also drawn a connection between the soul and water—which had been supposed to be the source of everything—by remarking that the mind made everything out of the water (Graham, 2010, p. 35 A23). However, as far as surviving fragments indicate, his attempt at characterising the soul as the cause of motion does not rely on mysterious speculation about the intrinsic nature of the soul. There had been others, aside from Thales, who had adopted this rather functional characterisation of the soul and assumed that the soul is the source of motion. As we will see in the next section, Aristotle himself advocates such a view. This is in contrast with Plato’s various remarks (e.g., in Meno, Phaedo, and Republic) on the incorporeal nature of the soul which is supposed to explain the soul’s capacity for understanding immaterial forms.

It is true that most of what pre-Socratics said about the soul remains enigmatic. For example, Thales asserted that the soul is mixed in everything, and all things are full of gods (Graham, 2010, p. 34 fragments A22–23). Some other pre-Socratics, such as Pythagoras, advocated more explicitly esoteric teachings about the soul, for example, its capacity for metamorphosis (or reincarnation) (Graham, 2010, p. 919). Some of the Platonic dialogues, for example, Phaedrus , preserved this air of mysticism. In comparison to this tradition, Aristotle provides a far more systematic and precise survey of the concept of the soul/mind/self. Aristotle’s theory does not endorse mystical teachings such as reincarnation, nor is it openly committed to dualism—in the way that Plato’s view on the incorporeal essence of the soul is committed. Despite its naturalistic tendency, Aristotle’s view is philosophically too sophisticated and too loyal to the spirit of functionalism to reduce the soul to a natural element such as water or fire. Aristotle’s theory introduces the soul in a naturalistic context and in relation to the natural life of organisms, but its thoroughgoing functionalism prevents it from identifying the soul with a material substance such as water. He does not explain the causal power of the soul in virtue of its material nature, for example, being a watery element. According to Aristotle, the soul is “a sort of first principle of animals” (Aristotle, 2016, pp. 1, 402a).

Aristotle’s theory of the soul or self is important in the context of our present enterprise because it introduces a well-posed substantivalist theory of the self. According to Aristotle, the soul or self is a “substance”, which bears certain properties or attributes and abides through changes and endures over time. I shall unpack this remark in the next section.

1.3 Aristotle’s Substantivalism

For Aristotle, the world could be understood in terms of general categories or kinds, for example, quality, quantity, relation, place, date, posture, state, action, or passion (see Aristotle, 1963). This view holds that primary substances (e.g., a specific tree, a stone, a chair, etc.) are the basic units of existence, and primary substances have priority over other mentioned categories (quality, quantity, etc.). This means that the existence of instances of all other categories depends on the existence of instances of individual substances in which they inhere or to which they are related. Instances of each category must be ascribed to a specific substance or inhere in it as the properties, attributes, or accidents of that specific substance.

Aristotle’s substantivalism has an intuitively appealing ring to it. Common sense indicates that the world consists of individual objects (or substances) such as trees, stones, chairs, fishes, and so on. And things must be distinguishable to be individuals. An individual object or a primary substance has some specific haecceity or thisness. The haecceity or thisness makes the object what it is, and it makes the object essentially discernible from all other things. A given tree has a thisness which makes it distinguishable from all other things in the world. Properties of the tree, its colour, age, size, and so on, exist in virtue of their relationship with (or inherence in) the tree. Aside from Aristotle’s substantiv...