{"id":8132,"date":"2014-02-14T16:34:44","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T16:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/02\/14\/sophistry-in-true-detective-on-the-supposed-illusion-of-having-a-self\/"},"modified":"2014-02-14T16:34:44","modified_gmt":"2014-02-14T16:34:44","slug":"sophistry-in-true-detective-on-the-supposed-illusion-of-having-a-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/02\/14\/sophistry-in-true-detective-on-the-supposed-illusion-of-having-a-self\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophistry in True Detective<\/i>: On the Supposed Illusion of Having a Self"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day I referred to the following bit of dialogue<\/a> from the new HBO series, True Detective<\/em>, as sophistry. Now I will explain why I think it to be such.  Here is the part I want to focus on.  The words are put in the mouth of the anti-natalist Rustin Cohle.  I've ommitted the responses of the Woody Harrelson character.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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\u2019s 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.
<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sorting through this crap is as painful as reading the typical student paper.  Where does one start with such a farrago of Unsinn<\/em>?  But here goes. The main points made above are these:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. The emergence of consciousness and self-consciousness in human animals is an accident, a fluke of evolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. We are each under the illusion of having, or being, a self when in fact there are no selves.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. We have been programmed by nature to suffer from this illusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. The honorable thing to do is to deny our programming, refuse to procreate, and embrace our extinction as a species.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each of these theses is either extremely dubious or demonstrably incoherent, taken singly, not to mention the dubiousness of the 'is'-'ought' inference from (3) to (4).  But in this entry I will address (2) alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

'There are no selves' is what our anti-natalist means when he say that everybody is nobody.  For it is a Moorean fact<\/a>, undeniable even by our anti-natalist, that every living human body is some living human body or other.  He is not denying that plain fact but that these living human bodies are selves. <\/span><\/p>\n

Performative Inconsistency<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Now 'There are no selves,' if asserted  by a being  who understands what he says and means what he says, is asserted by a conscious and self-conscious being.  But that is just what a self is.  A self is a conscious being capable of expressing explicit self-consciousness by the use of the first-person singular pronoun, 'I.'  Therefore, a self that asserts that there are no selves falls into performative inconsistency.  The very act or performance of asserting that there are no selves or that one is not a self falsifies the content of the assertion.  For that performance is a performance of a self.<\/span><\/p>\n

The claim that there are no selves is therefore self-refuting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Assertion is a speech act.  But we get the same result if one merely thinks the thought that one is not a self without expressing it via an assertive utterance.  If I think the thought *I am not a self,* then that thought is falsified by the act of thinking it since the act is the act of a self.<\/span><\/p>\n

The point can also be made as follows.  If there are no selves, then I am not a self.  But if I am not a self, then I do not exist.  Perhaps some living human body exists, but that body cannot be my<\/em> body if I do not exist.  What makes this body my<\/em> body is its connection with me.  So I must exist for some body to be my<\/em> body.  My body is my<\/em> body and not my body's body.  So I am not identical to my  body.  I have a body.   'This body is this body' is a tautology. 'I am this body' is not a tautology. If I exist, then I am distinct from my body and from any body.<\/span><\/p>\n

So if I am not a self, then I do not exist.  But the thought that I do not exist is unthinkable as true.  Only I can think this thought, and my thinking of the thought falsifies its content, and this is so even if 'I' picks out merely a momentary self.  (I am not committed by this line of reasoning to a substantial self that remains numerically the same over time.)  So we have performative inconsistency. <\/span><\/p>\n

This reasoning does not show that I am a necessary being, or that I have or am an immortal soul, or even that I am a res cogitans<\/em> in Descartes' sense.  What it shows is that the self cannot be an illusion.  It shows that anyone who carefully considers whether or not he is a self can attain the certain insight that he is at least as long as he is thinking these thoughts. <\/span><\/p>\n

Soviel Schein, soviel Sein<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

There is another way of looking at it.  If each of us is under the illusion of having a self or being a self, then who is being fooled?  To whom does this false seeming appear?  There cannot be illusions in a world without conscious beings.  An illusion by its very nature is an illusion to consciousness.  So if consciousness is an illusion, then it is not an illusion.  The same holds for the self.  If the self is an illusion, then the self is not an illusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

There cannot be Schein<\/em> (illusion) without Sein<\/em> (being).  "So much seeming, so much being."<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/span><\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>The Self as Center of Narrative Gravity?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Sweet Dreams of Dennett<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day I referred to the following bit of dialogue from the new HBO series, True Detective, as sophistry. Now I will explain why I think it to be such.  Here is the part I want to focus on.  The words are put in the mouth of the anti-natalist Rustin Cohle.  I've ommitted the … Continue reading “Sophistry in True Detective<\/i>: On the Supposed Illusion of Having a Self”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[281,96,54,328],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-natalism","category-consciousness-and-qualia","category-mind","category-self-self-awareness-self-reference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}