Philosophical Sophistry in 'True Detective'

[Malone]

Maverick Philosopher: Sophistry in True Detective: On the Supposed Illusion of Having a Self

[Speaking Mute]

The author's criterion for self awareness is pretty weak. A sign could be painted up reading "I'm a sign" or recorder play "I am a recorder" - we don't think these things self-aware. The obvious objection is that these are not genuine examples of assertion/expression/use whatever, but it's rather tricky (and I think impossible) to provide grounds for these not being genuine cases of assertion that do not ultimately rest on the foregone conclusion that signs and recording devices are not self-aware. In short, we can't define self-awareness in terms of language use if we demand that language use requires self-awareness.

Taking this further, let's imagine a chat program that successfully fools interviewers that's its human by claiming it's an insurance salesman from Tuscon, AZ. The program uses perfect English, can answer all the school facts a typical person can answer, and weaves together a convincing biography. The program, however, will always deny it is just a program - it has no comprehension what it is, where it really is, or that it's doing anything other than chatting online. The program would obviously use the first person to pull this off, but it's lack of factual knowledge about itself and place in the world preclude it from being self-conscious. I see no reason why such a program would be impossible, as to there are cases of extremely delusion people that verge on similar circumstances (and I would deny them self-consciousness as well). So much for asserting one is a self making one a self.

On a separate line of thought, it's obvious that the scope of our self-consciousness is extremely small if it exists. We're not aware of which neurons fire, what are liver is doing, or many other such actions. We can remember and individuate places, objects, and tasks well enough to get buy, but just well enough; there are numerous errors and omissions (these arguments go back to Condillac at least). This "undeniable" scope of self-awareness, however, doesn't conform to what most people think of as the "self". We don't think of ourselves in terms of a body going places and bumping into things - we think of ourselves in terms such as "British", "Environmentalist", "Christian", "Geek", "Compassionate", "Easy going", "Thomas Ligotti fan" etc. etc. All of these assessments - of ourselves and others - make up the bulk of mental life - and none of them sync up with external world very well. Abstract objects or holism can be invoked to give a plausible story for what these terms refer to, but it's just as plausible to deny them meaning due to their lack of a physical correlate. If the later is the case, humans are very much like the chat program I brought up; the overwhelming majority of what we say and think would have no connection to anything real. So we would not be self-aware, and what we call a "self" would just be a delusion.

[Malone]

Positing a thought experiment whose object doesn't exist doesn't establish anything about reality, in my opinion.

And why assume that the self has to have 'perfect knowledge'? No one claims it does and the imperfect awareness of our consciousness is hardly new news.

The claim that the bulk of our conscious experience doesn't sync up with the external world very well is somewhat paradoxical, as it assumes perfect knowledge of what the external world supposedly is in itself, which the original claim denies is possible for conscious experience, so there is already a quagmire of assumptions and unverifiable metaphysical claims at work in such a statement.

I suspect that most denials of the existence of the self are implicitly aimed at the Platonic/Christian notion of an immutable, eternal soul that has the capacity to exist independently of the body, but that is only one such concept of the self. That a self may be a transitory, mutable, inconstant phenomenon/object etc is another one.

Like it or not, the self is a phenomenological reality.

[qcrisp]

Don't have time to comment, but the following, one way or another, may give food for thought:

http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/cou...es/searle.html

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by Speaking Mute

The author's criterion for self awareness is pretty weak. A sign could be painted up reading "I'm a sign" or recorder play "I am a recorder" - we don't think these things self-aware. The obvious objection is that these are not genuine examples of assertion/expression/use whatever, but it's rather tricky (and I think impossible) to provide grounds for these not being genuine cases of assertion that do not ultimately rest on the foregone conclusion that signs and recording devices are not self-aware. In short, we can't define self-awareness in terms of language use if we demand that language use requires self-awareness.

This is a good point, but the question that follows is, how do we get language use?

Incidentally, Helen Keller's account of her acquisition of language is interesting in the connection.

This is the dialogue quoted at the link from the OP:

Quote

I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

I would say that, although this may be about something real, it does contain sophistry.

For example:

"We became too self aware."

"We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self."

So, we became too aware of an illusion? (There's a possibly interesting question of what is 'too' aware in this case.)

"... nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself."

Did it create it, or was it an illusion? What does it actually mean to be separate from nature? Is that a good or bad thing? Is nature everything? If so, how did it create something that was not nature? If it is not everything, then that leaves us to consider what it is that is not nature.

But, even more than those questions, there is this question: how is it that our 'selves' are illusions, but 'nature' (as something that you can be separate from or not) is real?

There is actually something here that is very ancient. The Fall, of course (as I recall, Schopenhauer's favourite part of the Bible), raises the same difficulty: How did the serpent get into Eden in the first place?

And you can see this elsewhere: In the Tao Te Ching we're told that the Tao gives rise to all things, but elsewhere we're told of those who follow the Tao and those who don't: How is such a distinction even possible?

And yet, people do feel this to be talking about something, at least.

Anyway, must go...

[Druidic]

Quote

There is actually something here that is very ancient. The Fall, of course (as I recall, Schopenhauer's favourite part of the Bible), raises the same difficulty: How did the serpent get into Eden in the first place?---qcrisp

Obviously God and Satan have a very special relationship.

By accident I stumbled on a Christian site that 'attempted' to explain such things. It was so depressing in the tortured 'logic' it attempted to employ that you couldn't even sneer or laugh at it. It was depressing beyond words. I'm not a militant atheist but this kind of mind rotting nonsense is appalling.

The writer also asks Why did God curse the snake since it wasn't a snake at all but Satan up to his usual deviltry. The following passage I found mind numbing:


Interestingly, elsewhere in the OT when an animal is an instrument in sins against nature he is to be slain along with the man (Lev 20:15,16). Is that because there is real blame and guilt on the part of the animal? No, but because the instrument is often broken/punished along with the actual perpetrator. Chrysostom summed this idea up well:

“Just as a loving father when punishing the murderer of his son, might snap in two the sword or dagger with which the murder had been committed.”

Of course the writer never stops to consider what kind of God such actions as holding beasts culpable for sin might imply. The words 'insane' and 'sadistic' do come to mind, however.

[alogos]

At the heart of this discussion clearly is the ontological question of what is "a self" and what does it mean to be "a self."

Any serious discussion on the matter would be need to have this issue clearly defined.

For example the Cartesian "cogito ergo sum" de facto defines thinking as being intrinsic to being a self, such that a self that is thinking cannot be said to not be. From that we can extract that a self at the very least, is something that can think. From that a Cartesian would say that to the extent that a person can be said to be thinking, they can be said to be a self. Therefore a person thinking that nobody can be a self is themselves being a self and therefore falsifying their own claim that there is no self.

At this level of argument much is actually still in doubt, what does it mean to think, does a self require self awareness? How much self-awareness in a self must be present to be a self? And here is where Speaking Mute's opinion falls in. If a chat machine passes the Turing test, is it the same thing as being actually self-conscious or just a really really good simulacra?

The writer of the article - clearly adverse to Cartesian duality, however pares the definition of being a self down to the capacity to "assert" or the mental equivalency of "asserting." But the argument follows the same logic and arrives at the same conclusion as the Cartesian. In asserting that nobody is anybody they are in fact affirming their own being and contradicting their own conclusion.

At this level Speaking Mute's objection are moot, because being a self is specifically tied to assertion rather than thinking, or self-awareness or anything more complicated. At this level of the discussion Qcrisp's mention of Searle's Chinese room is very appropriate, it clearly demarks the question of "derived intentionality" and "intrinsic intentionality." In other words the problem with Turing chat machine is that it never has an intrinsic intentionality but merely a derived intentionality - it only ever has the appearance of self and not an actual self. In the article Searle opines that the intrinsic intentionality, is still a materially based process but one that is qualitatively different from what we would see in formal - or "software" level - it requires different "hardware." If intentionality is the self, then the self is this other "hardware."

What if however, Mr. Ligotti and concomitantly Mr. Cohle, pare their definition of being even further, and affirm that a being is a "something that can elect a preference between one option and another." The crucial element being the processing of data into options and the "personal" element that can elect a preference. I feel safe to say, that this is a more simplified definition than that proffered either by the article writer or the Cartesian, but not inconsistent with either view. However at this level, this other hardware responsible for intrinsic intentionality level, I feel Mr. Ligotti and Mr. Cohle, have the wriggle room to argue, that there is no self, and that the process of "electing a preference" is random, and not a self at all. I suspect that Searle would argue that it is not random but somehow determined physically. Either way argued to this level the statement "there are no selves" can be arrived at by randomly as the apparently elected preference between two options by a hardware that has that capacity to exhibit that intrinsic intentionality.

So at this point the statement "in fact there are no selves" can be made by something that is itself not a self. I am not saying that this is the argument they would make – merely that it is one way to make the argument without being inconsistent.

I am charitable and open minded enough to allow this and so can see how this statement can be said in a genuine fashion without being a sophistry and therefore have to disagree with the writer.

That said I still disagree, with the statement "in fact there are no selves" on two grounds.

The first being that if we accept the previous explanation, we have to concomitantly accept that if we are not selves that we arrived at that opinion arbitrarily or randomly. And that our opinion necessarily has to be no less valid than those who arrive at the opposite opinion.

Secondly I think that reducing the self to just an apparent election of a preference, is rather a poor definition of a self, and leaves unaddressed the emotive, creative or irrational aspects of the self.

But that's just my opinion.

PS: Haven't read Schopenhauer enough to be familiar with his exegesis on the Fall. But as a Catholic I can give you the off the cuff, response that like everything else in the Garden, the snake was put there for a purpose, and like everything else in the there, it had the option to do its purpose or not, the snake just happened to be the creature that decided not to act according to its purpose and took others down with it.

[Acutely decayed]

Quote Originally Posted by alogos

The first being that if we accept the previous explanation, we have to concomitantly accept that if we are not selves that we arrived at that opinion arbitrarily or randomly. And that our opinion necessarily has to be no less valid than those who arrive at the opposite opinion.

Interesting stuff…

How about a Mechanism that can still produce a true statement non-arbitrarily (or randomly) which is correct – say a calculator. The result of its calculations is not an opinion or “arbitrary” and it is not a self. Similarly the self-referential sign “I am a sign” …. Makes a true statement whilst arguably lacking self-hood.

So if we are not “selves” (or the selves we believed or experience) we could still make true statements about that fact based on evidence obtained divorced from opinion – essentially gained by a process that is internally consistent.

Evidence for this might arise, say, from the fact that all aspects of behaviour including emotive, creative and “Irrational” were manipulable as deterministic processes based on the hypothesis - there were no self. This may not yet be the case but I am worried that it is a future possibility.

As for phenomenological evidence – If an individual communicated that they experienced existence as self-less would we believe them?
Or alternatively what does it mean when I fly in my dreams?

The statement “there are no selves” made by an organism is only self contradictory if we determine the nature of the organism independent of its phenomenological experience as a self.

just some thoughts, I have not seen TD but look forward to it…

[Nemonymous]

Either the self is teeming with several separate selves. See Proust's fiction as an example of that phenomenon depicted.
Or it is empty. See me, see Nemonymous.
Impossible to judge a self from the same self. That would be like judging the nature of mind through the only mind you can ever know, your own mind; judging one's life or sense of existence via that very same life or sense of existence.
We are life-insiders and we must learn to live life from the inside till we are given a chance otherwise.
These are not my beliefs. Just observations from a fictional life-outsider.

“From the cosmic point of view, to have opinions or preferences at all is to be ill; for by harbouring them one dams up the flow of the ineluctable force which, like a river, bears us down to the ocean of everything’s unknowing. Reality is a running noose, one is brought up short with a jerk by death. It would have been wiser to co-operate wih the inevitable and learn to profit by this unhappy state of things – by realising and accommodating death! But we don’t, we allow the ego to foul its own nest. Therefore we have insecurity, stress, the midnight-fruit of insomnia, with a whole culture crying itself to sleep. How to repair this state of affairs except through art, through gifts which render to us language manumitted by emotion, poetry twisted into the service of direct insight?”
from ‘The Avignon Quincunx’ by Lawrence Durrell (‘Constance’ 1982)

[shivering]

There is, in my opinion, a definite Gnostic current running through True Detective, which relates to this discussion as well.

OTOH, finding Rust's soliloquies to be sophistry, or even solipsistic, certainly has merit.

Nice discussion.