Have you read this guy's remarks (https://is.gd/SK1Wrs)? Seriously, where's the recall?
Is it just me or is Baggini losing steam while getting to his 100th thought experiment? I mean, I wouldn't blame him. I'm just wondering. Take a look at this latest entry.
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Arnold Conan had just made an unpleasant discovery: he wasn't Arnold Conan at all. Or rather, he used not to be. It was all rather confusing.
This is the best sense he could make of his unusual autobiography. He was born Alan E. Wood. Wood was, by all accounts, a deeply unpleasant man: egotistical, selfish, cruel, and ruthless. Two years ago, Wood had got into deep trouble with the State Bureau of Investigation. He was given a choice: spend the rest of his life in maximum security prison, where they would make sure he was victimised by the other inmates; or have his memory erased and replaced with that of an entirely fictitious creation of the spooks at the SBI. He chose the latter. And so it was that Alan E. Wood was put under a general anaesthetic, and when he woke up, he had forgotten all about his life to date. Instead, he remembered an entirely fictitious past, that of Arnold Conan, the man he now believed he was.
Conan had established that these were the facts. But he still did not know who he was: Wood or Conan?
Sources: Total Recall, directed by Paul Verhoeven, 1990; "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick, 1990.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 262.
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By my count, this is now the 12th thought experiment out of 88 so far that touch upon the issue of personal identity. Once I finish all 100 thought experiments I plan to do a recap of my findings for each of the different categories, so for now, rather than repeat myself again and again, let's just file this one under the identity list since there's nothing new to consider here. I've spoken about identity here:
Response to Experiment 2: Beam Me Up...
Response to Thought Experiment 11: The Ship Theseus
Response to Thought Experiment 12: Picasso on the Beach
Response to Experiment 30: Memories Are Made of This
Response to Thought Experiment 32: Free Simone
Response to Thought Experiment 38: I Am A Brain
Response to Thought Experiment 39: The Chinese Room
Response to Thought Experiment 46: Amoebaesque
Response to Experiment 49: The Hole in the Sum of the Parts
Response to Thought Experiment 54: The Elusive I
Response to Thought Experiment 65: Soul Power
Newbies to the blog who want to know more about personal identity are encouraged to go back and read a few of these, but I don't want to keep torturing the rest of you who likely have good recall...
If you're still looking for a new voice to read on this issue, I highly recommend an article I read in Aeon magazine this week by Adeba Birhane, an Ethiopian woman pursuing a PhD in Ireland in cognitive science. Her article — Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ — starts off like this:
According to Ubuntu philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without ‘ena’, or selfhood, and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time. So the ‘self’/‘other’ distinction that’s axiomatic in Western philosophy is much blurrier in Ubuntu thought. As the Kenyan-born philosopher John Mbiti put it in African Religions and Philosophy (1975): ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.’
Great stuff. Seriously, click here for the rest. And stop worrying whether Total Recall could be a documentary.
--------------------------------------------------
Arnold Conan had just made an unpleasant discovery: he wasn't Arnold Conan at all. Or rather, he used not to be. It was all rather confusing.
This is the best sense he could make of his unusual autobiography. He was born Alan E. Wood. Wood was, by all accounts, a deeply unpleasant man: egotistical, selfish, cruel, and ruthless. Two years ago, Wood had got into deep trouble with the State Bureau of Investigation. He was given a choice: spend the rest of his life in maximum security prison, where they would make sure he was victimised by the other inmates; or have his memory erased and replaced with that of an entirely fictitious creation of the spooks at the SBI. He chose the latter. And so it was that Alan E. Wood was put under a general anaesthetic, and when he woke up, he had forgotten all about his life to date. Instead, he remembered an entirely fictitious past, that of Arnold Conan, the man he now believed he was.
Conan had established that these were the facts. But he still did not know who he was: Wood or Conan?
Sources: Total Recall, directed by Paul Verhoeven, 1990; "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick, 1990.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 262.
---------------------------------------------------
By my count, this is now the 12th thought experiment out of 88 so far that touch upon the issue of personal identity. Once I finish all 100 thought experiments I plan to do a recap of my findings for each of the different categories, so for now, rather than repeat myself again and again, let's just file this one under the identity list since there's nothing new to consider here. I've spoken about identity here:
Response to Experiment 2: Beam Me Up...
Response to Thought Experiment 11: The Ship Theseus
Response to Thought Experiment 12: Picasso on the Beach
Response to Experiment 30: Memories Are Made of This
Response to Thought Experiment 32: Free Simone
Response to Thought Experiment 38: I Am A Brain
Response to Thought Experiment 39: The Chinese Room
Response to Thought Experiment 46: Amoebaesque
Response to Experiment 49: The Hole in the Sum of the Parts
Response to Thought Experiment 54: The Elusive I
Response to Thought Experiment 65: Soul Power
Newbies to the blog who want to know more about personal identity are encouraged to go back and read a few of these, but I don't want to keep torturing the rest of you who likely have good recall...
If you're still looking for a new voice to read on this issue, I highly recommend an article I read in Aeon magazine this week by Adeba Birhane, an Ethiopian woman pursuing a PhD in Ireland in cognitive science. Her article — Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ — starts off like this:
According to Ubuntu philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without ‘ena’, or selfhood, and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time. So the ‘self’/‘other’ distinction that’s axiomatic in Western philosophy is much blurrier in Ubuntu thought. As the Kenyan-born philosopher John Mbiti put it in African Religions and Philosophy (1975): ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.’
Great stuff. Seriously, click here for the rest. And stop worrying whether Total Recall could be a documentary.
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