The following is a Content Contributor Essay, by my friend Andrew Eick. It is part of our theme of selfhood. I hope you enjoy!
The problem of "Self" is a philosophical quandary which I find more a nuisance than anything else. It is an elusive game of shadows we play with our own psyche. Largely, the notion of self has to do with our conscious state, although as someone influenced by Jung, I have difficult ignoring the unconscious cultural gravity wells that constantly impress upon this notion of who am I? I attribute most of my lack of interest in the notion of the self in what I view as my own lack of sense of self. I genuinely do not hold a strong sense of who I am as a person independent of my lived social experience. I'm too aware of all the various and ubiquitous cultural milieu which has influenced me that I've never seen or had a sense of "me" outside a mask I've selected to represent a state,or a fraction of some vague notion that gives me a declarative cognitive impetus.
I have great difficult in defining this notion because I very much agree that I have this impetus, this Will to Power if you prefer, that motivates actions which are clearly my own. There is certainly some sort of engine that drives my decision making. This conscious ego, aware of its own surroundings, certainly seems to fit a notion of self as a disseminator of knowledge. Yet, it all feels as much a part of who I am as my clothing is. In the present, I am this, but I have not always been this, nor will this continue to be me. Much like the Jungian shadow, my notion of self seems obscured in the unconscious id. Everything beyond is just a facsimile of culturally acquired window dressing, bundled together but lacking a container to give it any formal shape.
In considering my notion of self, I begin by turning to the work of Kenneth Burke and his concept of Identification. Quoting from his Rhetoric of Motives, "To identify A with B is to make A 'consubstantial' with B." Burke's Trinitarian language is intentionally loaded. Consubstantiality makes A and B both separate and One. Much like David Hume's concept of self as a bundle, they exist relationally constituting a whole.
Burke continues: "The thing's identity would here be its uniqueness as an entity in itself and by itself, a demarcated unit having its own structure. However, 'substance' is an abstruse philosophic term, beset by a long history of quandaries and puzzlements. It names so paradoxical a function in men's systemic terminologies, that thinkers finally tried to abolish it altogether...A doctrine of consubstantiality, whether explicit or implicit, may be necessary to any way of life. For substance, in the old philosophies, was an act; and a way of life is an acting-together; and in acting together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes, that make them cosubstantial."
If we look at this poetically, the notion is most beautifully illustrated by Donne;
Adding to this tension is my recent discovery of the neuroanthropologist Merlin Donald, who certainly advocates for a unique notion of an individual consciousness, yet one that is highly deterministic to the external cultural network into which it is hooked. Cognitively, Donald breaks consciousness into three levels which have developed along our unique evolutionary path. The first of these levels is binding "the theoretical basis of object perception or, more accurately, the neural means of attaining perceptual unit. The mechanism of binding is ultimately responsible for our ability to perceive complex things, such as objects and events." Donald's binding is simply Burke's consubstantiality without the religious front loading. It is our perceptual capacity to piece our world together. Adding Donald's levels two (short term or working memory) and three (intermediate and long-term memory) we can maintain these consubstantiation, our sense of who we are, for extended periods if not indefinitely.
For me, this is the best notion of what a self is. Intoning the French constructivist Etienne Bonnot de Condilliac, Donald asserts, "the mind self-assembles, according to the dictates of experience, guided by a set of innate propensities, which correspond roughly to the basic components of conscious capacity..." As such, the self is a function of our minds. It is not so much who we are, but how we form our sense of who we are. That sense is formed culturally, a gestalt of our cultural bundles that is given shape by binding them together through identification. If we then extrapolate this ontologically, our sense of self is not a contrast of innatism and determinism, but a melding of the two. Our self is what drives us to construct the projection we bundle together with the building blocks of culture.
If I were to apply a visual aide, I would borrow from the notion of a Pathfinder (substitute Dungeons and Dragons if you aren't familiar) character sheet. Our prescripted Hominid Executive Suite, to borrow Donald's terminology for our unique cognitive evolution, is the template from which we can begin to build a character (a self). This is not a blank slate. I am limited in what I can do with this, just as our construction of the self is limited by our cognitive suite (as well as all our other biological factors that come into play). To fill this in, I take material from one of any various external sources, the rule books which give me various options to build with. I assign attributes, select a race and class, add feats, itemize skills, tabulate bonuses, outfit equipment, etc. If I am just using the Core Rulebook, my options are going to be limited to that content, just as if I am only exposed to American culture my sense of self is limited to the content of the American Experience.
However, we can add content. I can access other books and learn spells not available in the Core Rulebook. Pick up race or class options to provide more variety to my option of characters I can build. This would be akin to acquiring new cultural experience. The greater access I have to the distributive cultural network, the more varied my construction of self can be. If I wish to play a wizard, I fill in the blank spots of the sheet with the class features a wizard has. However, I can use the same rules (the same culture) to play a fighter, a rogue. Without that cultural influence, my sheet is of very little use. It is blank, in the sense that none of the fields that constitute a character have been filled in. Without the rulebooks to generate my character, they do not exist. Without a culture to shape my Executive Suite, I do not exist.
This leaves us with an ethical quandary I would like to discuss in closing, providing elaboration in follow up essays. Does this imply that someone removed from culture does not have a self? That feral children are somehow less than, because they have not been enculturated? That a person born blind, deaf, and never taught to communicate with the external culture can never be a fully fledged individual?
My short answer is no. Such an assumption overlooks a bias we have as a preconception relating to the eye and the ear. Even a feral child constructs some sense of who they are. Takes from the external world and applies it to express what lurks inside. Even a nonlinguistic person, lacking both sight and touch, can feel the world around them. In fact, Condilliac's thought experiment for exploring consciousness and self-construction was a statue which could only perceive through smell. All this showcases is the shadow dance. The hard to grasp impetus that drives us to construct self as an external expression of our internal thoughts. It highlights, at best, a bias to fully communicative beings at the expense of non-communicative humans and animals. That drive clearly exists prior to language. Donald's Executive Suite is something our ancestors acquired somewhere between our split from chimpanzees and anatomically modern humans. However, the terminology of defining self, as Burke notes, "is an abstruse philosophic term, beset by a long history of quandaries and puzzlements." Bound and tethered by culture as we are, to perceive this buried impetus is difficult without corrupting it with the terministic biases our of our cultural constructions. The shadow continues to bob and weave.
The problem of "Self" is a philosophical quandary which I find more a nuisance than anything else. It is an elusive game of shadows we play with our own psyche. Largely, the notion of self has to do with our conscious state, although as someone influenced by Jung, I have difficult ignoring the unconscious cultural gravity wells that constantly impress upon this notion of who am I? I attribute most of my lack of interest in the notion of the self in what I view as my own lack of sense of self. I genuinely do not hold a strong sense of who I am as a person independent of my lived social experience. I'm too aware of all the various and ubiquitous cultural milieu which has influenced me that I've never seen or had a sense of "me" outside a mask I've selected to represent a state,or a fraction of some vague notion that gives me a declarative cognitive impetus.
I have great difficult in defining this notion because I very much agree that I have this impetus, this Will to Power if you prefer, that motivates actions which are clearly my own. There is certainly some sort of engine that drives my decision making. This conscious ego, aware of its own surroundings, certainly seems to fit a notion of self as a disseminator of knowledge. Yet, it all feels as much a part of who I am as my clothing is. In the present, I am this, but I have not always been this, nor will this continue to be me. Much like the Jungian shadow, my notion of self seems obscured in the unconscious id. Everything beyond is just a facsimile of culturally acquired window dressing, bundled together but lacking a container to give it any formal shape.
In considering my notion of self, I begin by turning to the work of Kenneth Burke and his concept of Identification. Quoting from his Rhetoric of Motives, "To identify A with B is to make A 'consubstantial' with B." Burke's Trinitarian language is intentionally loaded. Consubstantiality makes A and B both separate and One. Much like David Hume's concept of self as a bundle, they exist relationally constituting a whole.
Burke continues: "The thing's identity would here be its uniqueness as an entity in itself and by itself, a demarcated unit having its own structure. However, 'substance' is an abstruse philosophic term, beset by a long history of quandaries and puzzlements. It names so paradoxical a function in men's systemic terminologies, that thinkers finally tried to abolish it altogether...A doctrine of consubstantiality, whether explicit or implicit, may be necessary to any way of life. For substance, in the old philosophies, was an act; and a way of life is an acting-together; and in acting together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes, that make them cosubstantial."
If we look at this poetically, the notion is most beautifully illustrated by Donne;
"No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's.
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee."
Adding to this tension is my recent discovery of the neuroanthropologist Merlin Donald, who certainly advocates for a unique notion of an individual consciousness, yet one that is highly deterministic to the external cultural network into which it is hooked. Cognitively, Donald breaks consciousness into three levels which have developed along our unique evolutionary path. The first of these levels is binding "the theoretical basis of object perception or, more accurately, the neural means of attaining perceptual unit. The mechanism of binding is ultimately responsible for our ability to perceive complex things, such as objects and events." Donald's binding is simply Burke's consubstantiality without the religious front loading. It is our perceptual capacity to piece our world together. Adding Donald's levels two (short term or working memory) and three (intermediate and long-term memory) we can maintain these consubstantiation, our sense of who we are, for extended periods if not indefinitely.
For me, this is the best notion of what a self is. Intoning the French constructivist Etienne Bonnot de Condilliac, Donald asserts, "the mind self-assembles, according to the dictates of experience, guided by a set of innate propensities, which correspond roughly to the basic components of conscious capacity..." As such, the self is a function of our minds. It is not so much who we are, but how we form our sense of who we are. That sense is formed culturally, a gestalt of our cultural bundles that is given shape by binding them together through identification. If we then extrapolate this ontologically, our sense of self is not a contrast of innatism and determinism, but a melding of the two. Our self is what drives us to construct the projection we bundle together with the building blocks of culture.
If I were to apply a visual aide, I would borrow from the notion of a Pathfinder (substitute Dungeons and Dragons if you aren't familiar) character sheet. Our prescripted Hominid Executive Suite, to borrow Donald's terminology for our unique cognitive evolution, is the template from which we can begin to build a character (a self). This is not a blank slate. I am limited in what I can do with this, just as our construction of the self is limited by our cognitive suite (as well as all our other biological factors that come into play). To fill this in, I take material from one of any various external sources, the rule books which give me various options to build with. I assign attributes, select a race and class, add feats, itemize skills, tabulate bonuses, outfit equipment, etc. If I am just using the Core Rulebook, my options are going to be limited to that content, just as if I am only exposed to American culture my sense of self is limited to the content of the American Experience.
However, we can add content. I can access other books and learn spells not available in the Core Rulebook. Pick up race or class options to provide more variety to my option of characters I can build. This would be akin to acquiring new cultural experience. The greater access I have to the distributive cultural network, the more varied my construction of self can be. If I wish to play a wizard, I fill in the blank spots of the sheet with the class features a wizard has. However, I can use the same rules (the same culture) to play a fighter, a rogue. Without that cultural influence, my sheet is of very little use. It is blank, in the sense that none of the fields that constitute a character have been filled in. Without the rulebooks to generate my character, they do not exist. Without a culture to shape my Executive Suite, I do not exist.
This leaves us with an ethical quandary I would like to discuss in closing, providing elaboration in follow up essays. Does this imply that someone removed from culture does not have a self? That feral children are somehow less than, because they have not been enculturated? That a person born blind, deaf, and never taught to communicate with the external culture can never be a fully fledged individual?
My short answer is no. Such an assumption overlooks a bias we have as a preconception relating to the eye and the ear. Even a feral child constructs some sense of who they are. Takes from the external world and applies it to express what lurks inside. Even a nonlinguistic person, lacking both sight and touch, can feel the world around them. In fact, Condilliac's thought experiment for exploring consciousness and self-construction was a statue which could only perceive through smell. All this showcases is the shadow dance. The hard to grasp impetus that drives us to construct self as an external expression of our internal thoughts. It highlights, at best, a bias to fully communicative beings at the expense of non-communicative humans and animals. That drive clearly exists prior to language. Donald's Executive Suite is something our ancestors acquired somewhere between our split from chimpanzees and anatomically modern humans. However, the terminology of defining self, as Burke notes, "is an abstruse philosophic term, beset by a long history of quandaries and puzzlements." Bound and tethered by culture as we are, to perceive this buried impetus is difficult without corrupting it with the terministic biases our of our cultural constructions. The shadow continues to bob and weave.