From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Nov 01 2002 - 01:00:56 MST
Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>> ### What if the two instantiations of the idea of self, carried by
>> either person, had the *same* referent?
> > In that case I would conclude that one or both persons were thinking
> > insane thoughts, i.e, that they were not thinking rationally. Two
> > distinct persons cannot logically be one person, regardless of their
> > thinking about the subject.
>
> ### You seem to be unwilling to change your frame of reference. Anything
> that doesn't fit in must be insane.
I don't know what you mean here by "frame of reference."
I stated that two distinct people cannot logically be one person regardless
of their thinking about the subject. I consider this truth to be
self-evident.
Two people might think they are Jesus Christ, for example. This would not
make either of them Jesus Christ, nor would it make the two persons into one
person. There would be no overlap between self and other. The only overlaps
between them would be in that they share a common delusion, and in that they
may end up in the same psychiatric facility.
> Remember, I am not saying that there is an objective way of identifying
> identity. My participation in this whole thread is about convincing you
that
> identity is subjective, and is a matter of personal choice, along with the
> highly complex perceptions of "self" vs. "other".
Okay. I'm not even sure that I disagree with that.
> I don't want you to
> blindly accept my frame of reference, merely to accept that not everything
> outside your frame must be "irrational", or "insane".
Unfortunately (or fortunately) propositions must be accepted by all as
rational or irrational if the term "rational" is to mean anything. It is
only because humans agree on what is rational that they can make sense to
one another in their communications.
If you tell me that up is down and that black is white then I'm obliged to
remind you that your words are irrational and nonsensical. I would hope you
would show me the same favor should I ever go off the deep end by making
some irrational argument to support some fanciful conclusion. (I see a
propensity for such errors on this discussion list, by the way, perhaps
because as a group we are very imaginative and optimistic people with a love
for the fantastic and extraordinary.)
> > perceptions are *cognized* by your mind and by hers. Each of you will
> > then find yourselves to be a distinct self, with distinct thoughts
> > and emotions about your perceptions, even if your fields of vision
> > share some or all elements in common.
>
> ### I am glad you make this distinction. You are on the way to joining me
> and Lee here.
>
> Let's continue the experiment....
>... situation, that is, the location of the bodies, but our point of
reference
> for our "selves" would be located elsewhere - at the overlap of "self" and
"other".
I don't see it that way. If you perceive of yourself as sharing something
with another, even your personal point of reference, then you have not
actually overlapped yourself with that other. You are the self that shares
something with that other self.
To put it another way, if your "I" and the other "I" are truly overlapping
then you are one and there is no other.
> ### Are you saying that your personal experience with infants led you to
> discover that they have a full sense of self? Did you publish it?
I said nothing about a "full sense of self," only that in my experience
infants are aware of the very primitive distinction between self and other.
No I did not publish it.
Erikson, (one of the psychologists you mentioned), wrote that the infant
spends his first 12 months learning to trust outsiders. Obviously this
presumes an awareness of self/other. If I remember correctly, Piaget
(perhaps the best authority on early cognitive development), wrote that the
infant begins to learn to manipulate external objects, in his mind if not
also physically, during that same period.
Of course no one has ever interviewed an infant to know for certain when
this discovery of self/other is made but surely it is made very, very early
in life. I would not personally be surprised if via some future technology
we might learn that the fetus discovers it sometime in the third trimester.
There is also something sometimes called "the social self," which is thought
to begin in its development in the second year. I think that is what you may
have been referring to earlier when wrote about the idea of self/other at
15-18 months. But in any case the actual number of months is not relevant to
this discussion.
> My dog's sense of self is so far removed from the complex mental
constructs
> you and I are using in our discussion, that bringing it in might only
breed confusion.
Here again I am not talking about "sense of self," at least not as I usually
use that term, just as I was not talking about "full sense of self" above. I
am talking about a very primitive, bare-bones almost unconscious distinction
between self and other. My dog appears to make this distinction, and I
suspect yours does as well, but I would be careful about guessing about any
"sense of self" (which to me connotates a slightly higher level of personal
development.)
Getting back to my original point about the importance of the self/other
distinction...
Regardless of when this realization of self/other occurs in human
development, it marks the beginning of rational thought. Upon the self/other
distinction rests all reason. We understand then for the first time that we
exist and that there are at least two things in the universe. We then begin
to ponder the relationship between those things, and build upon our
subsequent realizations, such that within less than two decades we are
solving differential equations and considering deep questions about the
nature of life and reality. This is why I object so strongly to Lee's
conclusion of self = other. His argument may be clever and interesting but
it assaults the very foundation of reason. It's a textbook case of failure
by reductio ad absurdum.
-gts
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