SANITY AND MADNESS, meeting 2 (out of 2)
-
functionalism: acceptable or not?
-
mind and reality in The Unteleported Man (PKD)
-
Philosophical conceptions of the self (S. Gallagher)
-
self in The Unteleported Man (PKD) [segue to next week's theme:
self and others]
the world and the self
a basis for self: "feeling at two with the universe"
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see.
slide 2
"koinos kosmos"
the self is determined by the boundary it shares with the universe
("kosmos")
what would this boundary look like for a hecatoncheire? for a hive
mind?
"But this world can't be para," Gretchen Borbman said, "because we all share
it, and that's still our sole criterion, the one point we can hang onto."
The Unteleported Man (a.k.a. Lies, Inc.), by Philip K. Dick,
p.126
slide 3
the self: a glossary (Gallagher)
-
immunity principle: one cannot use the first-person pronoun
mistakenly
-
minimal self: phenomenologically, this is the awareness of
being the subject of an experience, unextended in time
-
narrative self: a self-image constituted with a past and a
future in stories we tell about ourselves
-
non-conceptual first-person content: the content of a primitive
self-consciousness that is not informed by conceptual thought (e.g.,
proprioception)
-
sense of agency: the sense of being the cause of an action
-
sense of ownership: the sense of being the subject of an
experience
emergence of the "minimal self"
note the central role of
efference copy processes
(efference copy underlies your inability to tickle yourself; details
*here)
*
designates a password-protected link; obtain the password from the
instructors
slide 5
delusion of thought insertion
hypothesis (C. Frith):
- thinking is a kind of action;
- as with action, a thought has to match the subject's intention for it
to feel self-generated
slide 6
a robot with a sense of self?
"During unsteady or conflicting phases of the system dynamics, an
arbitration process takes place in that shared space, and the robot is
required to take its own current state into account.
Specifically, it needs to take into account (`become aware of') the conflict
in its own system, and its own degree of familiarity with the surrounding
environment.
This, in Tani's view, is the robotic equivalent of
self-consciousness."
cf. Parry (the paranoid schizophrenic chatbot, created
in 1971 by Ken Colby)
slide 7
momentary self
"On [
Strawson's] view, a human being consists of a series of
such transient selves, each one lasting only as long as a unique period of
experience lasts, coming into existence and going out of existence, without
continuity."
"A Buddhist treatise of the fifth century, the Visuddhimagga (Road to Purity), illustrates
the same doctrine with the same figure:
`Strictly speaking, the life of a living being is exceedingly brief, lasting
only while a thought lasts. Just as a chariot wheel in rolling rolls only
at one point of the tyre, and in resting rests only at one point...'
Other Buddhist texts say that the world annihilates itself and reappears six
thousand five hundred million times a day..."
from A New Refutation of Time by Jorge Luis Borges
slide 8
two models of the narrative self
"we are not totally in control of the product"
slide 9
"is this book full of everything about me?"
"You too," the 'pape vendor announced, "can play a vital role in the
development of this fine virgin colonial world... In fact, it is a distinct
possibility that you are already mentioned..."
On impulse he chose the first entry, that with the lowest page number.
Early in the morning Theodoric Ferry, chief of the vast economic and
political entity Trails of Hoffman Limited, got out of bed, put on his
clothes and walked into the living room.
Damned dull stuff, he decided in bewilderment. Is this book full of
everything about me?
The Unteleported Man (a.k.a. Lies, Inc.), by Philip K. Dick,
p.184
slide 10
"Slander!"
"Listen," he said severely to the alert 'pape vendor, "my private life is my
own business; there is no valid reason in the galaxy why my doings should
be listed here."
I'm damn near the main character in this tract, he realized. Myself, Matson,
that Rachmael ben Applebaum, this girl named Freya
something and of course Lupov — naturally Lupov. On impulse he looked
up a citation regarding Dr. Lupov...
Peering tautly into the small vid screen, Dr. Lupov said to the
sharp-featured young man beside him, "Now is the time, Jaime. Either Theo
Ferry examines the Bloode text or else he never does. If he turns to page
149, then we have a real chance of —"
Hands shaking, Theo Ferry leafed through the book to page 149. And,
compulsively, unblinkingly, studied the text before him.
He had gone unresistingly to that page — and he would not be coming back
out.
The Unteleported Man (a.k.a. Lies, Inc.), by Philip K. Dick,
p.186
slide 11
"Throw away that thing!"
With unbelievable effort Theo Ferry managed to close the book. The page of
print vanished... and as soon as it did so he felt strength return to his
arms; volition flooded back and he at once jumped up, dropping the book. It
tumbled wildly to the ground, pages fluttering; Theo Ferry at once jumped
on it, ground his heel into the thing — hideously, it emitted a shrill
living cry, and then became silent.
Alive, he thought. An alien life form; no wonder it could deal with my
recent activities; the page actually contained nothing — it was no
book at all, only one of those awful Ganymede life-mirrors that Lupov was
supposed to use. That entity that reflects back to you your own
thoughts. Ugh. He winced with aversion. And it almost got me, he said to
himself. Close.
The Unteleported Man (a.k.a. Lies, Inc.), by Philip K. Dick,
p.188
slide 12
"I officially declare this late Wednesday afternoon and Computer
Day."
"You may be interested to know, Mr. ben Applebaum, that you are not the
first person among us to live with that hallucination — I refer to the
prior one, that of the garrison state.
If your delusional gestalt, when you present it to the computer, comes out
on those lines, I can assure you that a tru bi-personal view of a paraworld
will have been established... and this, of course, is what we fear, as you
well know. Do you want to see the garrison state world established as the
authentic reality?"
slide 13
open issues
here are two of the "outstanding questions" listed by Gallagher that we find
the most relevant to the core of this course:
-
because the sense of self-agency is absent both in the case of
involuntary thoughts and in cases of schizophrenic experiences of
inserted thoughts, the lack of a sense of self-agency by itself cannot
explain the schizophrenic patient's sense that certain of his thoughts
belong to someone else;
what else is required to explain this?
-
in narrative theory, self-constitution is meant to imply a situation
in which the self is both the narrator and the narrated;
if there
is more than one narrator (if we are also constituted by stories about
ourselves told by others), what mechanisms at the psychological level
integrate or adjudicate these diverse constitutions?
slide 14
| Aforismos de ojos | Aphorisms for the eye |
Al ojo en la pared,
tapalo con la mano. |
The eye on the wall,
cover with your hand. |
 |
Al ojo en la palma de mano,
cubrelo con la otra mano. |
The eye in the palm of your hand,
cover with the other hand. |
Al ojo que piensa entre ojo y ojo,
miralo en otra cara. |
The eye that thinks between eye and eye,
see it in another
face. |
Al ojo humeante de la mente,
no lo veas de frente. |
The eye steaming in the mind,
don't look at it, head on. |
Al ojo loco del espejo,
limpialo con to pañuelo. |
The crazed eye in the mirror,
rub it out with a hankie. |
Ojos que no parpadean,
no creas en ellos. |
Eyes that don't blink,
put no trust in. |
El paisaje es la medida del ojo.
El ojo es la medida del sol. |
A landscape is the measure of an eye.
The eye is a measure of the
sun. |
Pasa la vida
con los ojos prendidos. |
Spend your life with your eyes
turned on. |
| from Ojos, de otro mirar
(Eyes to see otherwise) by Homero Aridjis |
supplementary material
