Seating myself on the seat of the self

The Seat of the Self; Philosophical Health Check, II

By John Taylor; 2008 Nov 11, 08 Qudrat 165 BE

Let us continue with the "philosophical health check" offered on the internet by a British philosophy magazine. You can take the quiz yourself at:

http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/check.htm

The automated philosopher that analyzed my answers was clearly designed and written my materialist academics (ones the Master mocked as "philosophers on the hoof") Among others, the machine picked out flaws in my logic about the following rather basic issues:

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What is the seat of the self?

Can we please ourselves?

Can I make choices for my own body?

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Let us today look at the first question, where the self is situated.

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43845 of the 139281 people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs. You agreed that:

Severe brain-damage can rob a person of all consciousness and selfhood

And also that:

On bodily death, a person continues to exist in a non-physical form

Analysis ... working ... beep, beep ... working ... stand by ... completed. Read handout below:

"These two beliefs are not strictly contradictory, but they do present an awkward mix of world-views. On the one hand, there is an acceptance that our consciousness and sense of self is in some way dependent on brain activity, and this is why brain damage can in a real sense damage 'the self'. Yet there is also the belief that the self is somehow independent of the body, that it can live on after the death of the brain. So it seems consciousness and selfhood both is and is not dependent on having a healthy brain. One could argue that the dependency of the self on brain only occurs before bodily death. The deeper problem is not that it is impossible to reconcile the two beliefs, but rather that they seem to presume wider, contradictory world-views: one where consciousness is caused by brains and one where it is caused by something non-physical."

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As a former atheist, it is amusing to see my old 15 year-old fallacies dredged up. The cyber-philosopher states:

"On the one hand, there is an acceptance that our consciousness and sense of self is in some way dependent on brain activity, and this is why brain damage can in a real sense damage 'the self'.

The computer cleverly slips in a presupposition not warranted by the proposition that, "Severe brain-damage can rob a person of all consciousness and selfhood." It concludes that mind is dependent upon brain. This can be refuted by a few parallel examples. Is a light bulb dependent upon the switch that turns it on and off? Is your car dependent upon the key that you use to start it?


In a sense, yes. Switch and key are Sine Qua Non, without which not, which is exactly what they are designed to be. But in another sense, absolutely not. Every time you pay your electric bill or stop at a gas station you are recognizing that the light from your light bulbs or the motive power of your vehicle do not come from switches or keys, they come from somewhere else.

Our mechanical philosopher has somehow forgotten the greatest contribution of the Greeks to knowledge (indeed it is a Sine Qua Non of calling oneself a scientist or philosopher), the understanding -- mined by Socrates and refined by Aristotle -- that there are four causes behind every phenomenon. A switch, a key or a brain are material causes of indoor illumination, running motors and the self. Nor are they the only material causes. There are many other causes, formal, efficient, final, and even more material causes, without which a phenomenon cannot take place. In order to be cogent, an argument needs at least to touch base on all four causes.

In no way is a relationship of dependency implied here. It concludes,

"The deeper problem is not that it is impossible to reconcile the two beliefs, but rather that they seem to presume wider, contradictory world-views: one where consciousness is caused by brains and one where it is caused by something non-physical."

As mentioned, this amphiboly conflates at least two of the four meanings of the word "cause." Cause has a narrow material sense (the death of brains and minds) and a broader, more complete definition covering all four causes, MEFF, material, efficient, formal and final causes. Religious beliefs, insofar as they are explanations (actually they are not that primarily, they are points of faith), tend at least to cover all four causes.

The silicon cynic also nudges toward the assumption that damage is necessarily done when consciousness is extinguished. This is not necessarily so. In fact, most of the time the reverse is the case. The self seems not to be damaged but is actually helped by sleep, a total but temporary loss of consciousness. Sleep, this mysterious aid to consciousness, is still poorly understood but nobody doubts nowadays that the brain needs sleep. It cannot function at all without being periodically turned off, rebooted, and turned on again. And the strange thing is that all consciousness is not lost in sleep; indeed, during REM sleep the sense of self is often heightened.

That said, Baha'is do agree with materialists on one important point, that we do not understand self and consciousness. In fact, Baha'u'llah goes even further; He emphatically states that soul, mind and spirit constitute mysteries that we cannot understand and never will. In that sense, we are even more cynical than cow philosophers. Our stance that this question is a permanent mystery, in my opinion, implies that Baha'is should be willing to shut up about it. If the nature of the seat of self is not knowable you are wasting your time blabbing about it ad nauseam. Move on to mysteries that might be solvable. Baha'u'llah ordered us, after all, to avoid what begins and ends in mere words and to go on to spend our limited time on what will be of benefit to humanity.

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John Taylor
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/


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