There was a time when some philosophers thought that mathematics was more real than reality. Thus, if a thing existed in mathematics, it was likely that a thing which existed in reality was a sort of inferior copy of that mathematical object. Perhaps this was because real things are finite and 'contingent' (i.e. determined in an arbitrary manner) while mathematical things may be infinite and non-arbitrary- i.e. necessary or 'natural' . A particular circle drawn by a child may have a finite decimal expansion for the ratio of circumference to radius. But a perfect mathematical circle does not. Maybe, with the Platonists, we should consider the mathematical circle the real circle and actual circles as illusory.
This seemed fine so long as all mathematical objects- but even other non-mathematical things like Justice or Beauty- appeared to have a canonical or 'natural' representation. Euclidean geometry is so perfect it must be the natural geometry of the universe. There is such a thing as 'natural law' and some 'golden ratio' which captures what makes a painting or a piece of music beautiful.
Then it was discovered that almost all mathematical objects are not 'natural'- they are arbitrary. But fairy tales too are arbitrary. The fox turns into a beautiful girl because granny says she does. It isn't really the case that some pretty girls are foxes in disguise. Still, one might say 'that's one foxy chick'. But this is merely a manner of speaking.
Economics was defined as the science which studies choice under scarcity. But is choice finitary or does it involve infinite series? If we assert the former, it appears as though we are limiting how we can represent choice (which may have arbitrary, 'constructive', ways of garnering intuitions from infinite series without having to represent them). What this means is that our 'map' must be less fine grained than the thing itself and, ultimately, be something we arbitrarily imposed.
Why not implicitly assert that choice is infinite and that 'existence' can be asserted of things which can't be constructed? In this way we appear to be dealing not with an imperfect map of Human Choice, but with Rational Choice itself. Indeed, ours is the Mind of a Liebnizian God able to prescribe a 'windowless monadology' for all beings.
This hubris misled some mathematical economists into thinking the 'axiom of choice' must arise in any set to do with preferences. Sadly, neither is there a set of preferences- the thing isn't well enough defined- nor does Zorn's lemma apply because there is no well-ordering. Still, what is cool about the 'axiom of choice' is that the Banach Tarski paradox arises. This means you can take a mathematical object and, by mathsy magic, turn it into two, three or an infinite number of identical mathematical objects. This gives rise to the notion that we can use different criteria to order the preferences of a person such that multiple identities for that person are generated- just as, by Banach-Tarski, a sphere can be reconstituted into a whole bunch of spheres equal in size and other wise identical to the original.
Consider Alice. She is a Mom. Thinking as a Mom, she may have a different set of preferences from the preferences she has an ambitious career woman. Alice is also a White Supremacist. Thinking as a White Supremacist, her preferences may be quite different. This gives rise to the notion that, mathematically speaking, we can generate a 'Mom Alice' based on Alice's Mom preferences, and a Career-Woman Alice and a White Supremacist Alice. Wouldn't that be cool? The answer is, no. It would be nonsense because there is no set and thus no topological object or graph corresponding to Alice's preferences, or Mom Alice's preferences etc. True, arbitrarily, we could stipulate what we think these would be. But in that case we can equally speak of Alice as a lesbian elephant who is slowly but inexorably turning into a washing machine. My point is that any arbitrary shite others spout can be countered by equally arbitrary shite you spout. True, the other may be able to do some useful stuff in an arbitrary manner and thus get paid some money- but that is a matter of utility. It is not 'philosophical' or 'moral' or 'ethical'. It is also the case that a bunch of people may gain political power by spouting some arbitrary shite. But a countervailing coalition based on an equally paranoid misology may prevail.
What happens if we stop invoking the Banach-Tarski paradox and accept that people have a single identity linked to one and only one physical body, and pretend instead that people are actually 'networks' of some complex type? The answer is that any network, however complex, must still be a graph. The very same problem arises- viz. there is no unique or non-arbitrary way to get 'ordered pairs' or whatever else is being used to define the graph or network. We may say 'surely, by Yoneda lemma, for a fine enough mathematician, there must be some way to turn everything about a person into mathematics?' So what if what we have now is an approximation with arbitrary features? If we get funding to keep working on this, surely our approximations will become better and less arbitrary?' The problem here is that the same may be said about thinking of people as lesbian elephants who are slowly but inexorably turning into washing machines. The difference is, a mathsy guy can't point out what elementary blunder we are making as we go along, This nips the enterprise in the bud because such errors 'cascade'. However, only a lesbian elephant could point out mistaken assertions we make about Sapphic pachyderms. Happily, they tend to be thin on the ground- probably because Neo-Liberalism has been taking it up the ass from Patriarchy for many years now. On the other hand, we can show solidarity with lesbian elephants by properly deconstructing neo-liberal texts like those of Kathleen Wallace who writes in Aeon that 'You are a network'
I suppose my mind is some sort of neural network. Since I am as stupid as shit, this network must be finite. But will savants content themselves with having a but finite representation of their own minds? No. One way or the other they will implicitly assume it is infinite. This means, by Ramsey's theorem, that the 'graph' of the network is going to have 'cliques' which are like the 'multiple identities' generated by Banach Tarski's use of the axiom of choice.
This ignores the fact that I have a mind only because I have a particular brain located in a particular body. True, I may suffer some mental or developmental abnormality and thus have 'multiple personalities'. But this is rare, generally mischievous, and can be treated by medical science.
The other thing is, when this body dies, no 'network' known to science will preserve my identity. I will be gone. On the other hand, some function I currently perform- e.g. loading the washing machine- may be performed by somebody else. As far as the washing machine is concerned, a defective element in a network was replaced by one identical to it in other relevant respects.
To say I am my mind which is a neural network which is a graph of a particular type is to confuse the map with the territory. If I get possession of a treasure map, this does not mean I have got possession of treasure. True, I may think of my own mind as a treasure map but maybe this is because I am a lesbian elephant who is slowly but inexorably turning into a washing machine.
One other point, a complete graph of a person's network, though locally finite, is likely to have an infinite path. This brings in something like Konig's lemma or the bar theorem. Once again, as with the axiom of choice, you will have 'multiple identities' or, in the language of Ramsey's theorem, cliques. Welcome to schizophrenia my friends! If you think identity politics is debilitating and mischievous, wait till Kathleen Wallace has finished with you and your psyche has been splintered into a howling mob of 'woke' nutters scratching each other's eyes out while demanding reparations for historic, or other imaginary, injustices. Even so august an institution as the Institute of Socioproctology is not immune to such ructions. I was forced out of my post as President by allegations of sexual self-abuse. The current President is the Neighbor's cat. But once some lesbian elephants have enrolled (for low low fee of $9.99) , I might have the votes to put myself back in office.
'You cannot be reduced to a body, a mind or a particular social role. An emerging theory of selfhood gets this complexity.'
There are useful purposes for which I am reduced to these things. Arguing otherwise, might have highly mischievous consequences. If we buy a car and somebody else drives away with it, we are miffed. We want a highly reductionistic notion of ownership to apply to our own car or our own body.
Who am I? We all ask ourselves this question, and many like it.
No we don't unless we have amnesia.
Is my identity determined by my DNA
yes, provided your body is alive. After death you may become a cockroach.
or am I product of how I’m raised?
Up to a point- sure.
Can I change, and if so, how much?
Yes. More particularly, you can go to the bad very fucking quickly.
Is my identity just one thing, or can I have more than one?
You could become Batman and thus have two identities.
Since its beginning, philosophy has grappled with these questions, which are important to how we make choices and how we interact with the world around us.
No. They are useless. Religion on the other hand may be useful. People may give you money if you help them remember their past life as Cleopatra or if you convince them that you can ensure their next life won't suck ass big time.
Socrates thought that self-understanding was essential to knowing how to live, and how to live well with oneself and with others.
He was as daft as a brush. Smart peeps don't end up having to drink hemlock.
Self-determination depends on self-knowledge, on knowledge of others and of the world around you.
Though having crazy delusions about such things may work even better.
Even forms of government are grounded in how we understand ourselves and human nature.
No they are founded in being able to raise enough money in taxes to pay for defenses against insurrection or invasion.
So the question ‘Who am I?’ has far-reaching implications.
It has none. Say 'I am the cat which is the dog which is also a walrus'. This will have no fucking implications whatsoever.
Many philosophers, at least in the West, have sought to identify the invariable or essential conditions of being a self.
They have all failed. That's why only cretins now take up Philosophy in Collidge.
A widely taken approach is what’s known as a psychological continuity view of the self, where the self is a consciousness with self-awareness and personal memories.
But we don't think people with brain damage who lack this don't have a self.
Sometimes these approaches frame the self as a combination of mind and body, as René Descartes did, or as primarily or solely consciousness.
Why not frame the self as a combination of hyperdimensional cat, dog and walrus?
John Locke’s prince/pauper thought experiment, wherein a prince’s consciousness and all his memories are transferred into the body of a cobbler, is an illustration of the idea that personhood goes with consciousness.
No. It is predicated on the notion that consciousness can be detached from one body and transferred to another. If this were actually done, it would illustrate the idea that personhood is based on physical embodiment. This is because the cobbler will be treated as a cobbler- a crazy one- if he goes around insisting he is the monarch of the country.
Philosophers have devised numerous subsequent thought experiments – involving personality transfers, split brains and teleporters – to explore the psychological approach.
All they have done is show that they have shit for brains.
Contemporary philosophers in the ‘animalist’ camp are critical of the psychological approach, and argue that selves are essentially human biological organisms.
To be fair, there was a time when it appeared obvious that some God had created us. It seemed unlikely that evolution could achieve 'by accident' what appeared to be the product of very careful design.
(Aristotle might also be closer to this approach than to the purely psychological.) Both psychological and animalist approaches are ‘container’ frameworks, positing the body as a container of psychological functions or the bounded location of bodily functions.
Both are otiose. We show great care for our bodies. We don't give money to quacks who say they can transfer us into the body of a beautiful billionaire like Beyonce.
All these approaches reflect philosophers’ concern to focus on what the distinguishing or definitional characteristic of a self is, the thing that will pick out a self and nothing else, and that will identify selves as selves, regardless of their particular differences.
If the police were as stupid as these philosophers, they would never be able to identify and arrest those responsible for various crimes.
On the psychological view, a self is a personal consciousness. On the animalist view, a self is a human organism or animal.
'Self' is merely a word used by people to refer to the person inhabiting their one, unique, body.
This has tended to lead to a somewhat one-dimensional and simplified view of what a self is, leaving out social, cultural and interpersonal traits that are also distinctive of selves and are often what people would regard as central to their self-identity.
Very true. Suppose a policeman catches you as you stab your victim. He and various other witnesses identify you and you alone as the murderer. Your lawyer may try to get you off by mentioning that your Aunt has a cat. Thus you should not be viewed simply as a murderer but also as the nephew of an estimable woman who likes cats. Surely, if anybody should go to jail, it should be your aunty who, for all we know, wears gloves. If the glove does not fit, you must acquit!.
Just as selves have different personal memories and self-awareness, they can have different social and interpersonal relations, cultural backgrounds and personalities.
Why stop there? Why not add that just as selves have different memories so too do they have different assholes from which farts are emitted?
The latter are variable in their specificity,
some of my farts are loud. Some are silent but deadly.
but are just as important to being a self as biology, memory and self-awareness.
not to mention farting.
Recognising the influence of these factors, some philosophers have pushed against such reductive approaches and argued for a framework that recognises the complexity and multidimensionality of persons.
This is useful only if a murderer can be acquitted on the grounds that his aunty owns a cat. Of course, if that aunty is the head of a Drug Cartel, the Jury will understand that if they don't acquit, they will end up as kitty chow.
The network self view emerges from this trend. It began in the later 20th century and has continued in the 21st, when philosophers started to move toward a broader understanding of selves.
We must all understand that our true selves are totes gender fluid and non-binary. Also, maybe we are Lesbian elephants. That would be cool coz we could use our trunks in all manner of fun ways.
Some philosophers propose narrative and anthropological views of selves.
I iz bleck. My 'self' has been constituted by horrendous sexual abuse- not just fellatio but also cunnilingus- at the hands of Dead White Viceroys. Yet people expect me to work for a living! How is that just?
Communitarian and feminist philosophers argue for relational views that recognise the social embeddedness, relatedness and intersectionality of selves.
Did you know that many people who lack a dick are also bleck? How is it fair that they are expected to teach worthless shite rather than just get paid regardless?
According to relational views, social relations and identities are fundamental to understanding who persons are.
No. That maybe important in understanding people but it isn't important in understanding that they are so and so who resides at such and such address.
Social identities are
social roles. That's the Doctor. Standing to his right is the Vicar. The lady they are talking to is the town bicycle.
traits of selves in virtue of membership in communities (local, professional, ethnic, religious, political),
No. You may be a member of a professional body, but if you don't practice that profession, you lack that social role.
or in virtue of social categories (such as race, gender, class, political affiliation) or interpersonal relations (such as being a spouse, sibling, parent, friend, neighbour).
These are predicates, not traits or properties which inhere in a particular body.
These views imply that it’s not only embodiment and not only memory or consciousness of social relations but the relations themselves that also matter to who the self is.
No. Relations matter to people. Who their self is does not matter unless they have amnesia.
What philosophers call ‘4E views’ of cognition – for embodied, embedded, enactive and extended cognition
why not 'ejaculatory'?
– are also a move in the direction of a more relational, less ‘container’, view of the self.
Why not have a more relational, less 'container' view of buckets? Are they not, in some sense, Lesbian elephants guilty of any crime which might be ascribed to me?
Relational views signal a paradigm shift from a reductive approach to one that seeks to recognise the complexity of the self.
My computer is very fucking complex. If I seek to recognize this, it stops working. On the other hand, there is nothing very complex about myself. In dreams, I am Beyonce. Then I wake up and see my big fat hairy belly and know that I am stuck being simply myself.
The network self view further develops this line of thought and says that the self is relational through and through, consisting not only of social but also physical, genetic, psychological, emotional and biological relations that together form a network self.
This is why, if you cut a person off from their 'networks'- e.g. if they are marooned on a desert island- they lose all bodily integrity or sense of a connected self. Their eyes merge into the light by which they see. Their ears become the winds. Their noses, however, turn into the trunks of sapphic elephants.
The self also changes over time, acquiring and losing traits in virtue of new social locations and relations, even as it continues as that one self.
Only because it isn't really a network and thus can't reverse the ageing process.
How do you self-identify?
When asked by the police, or other relevant authority, I give my name, my address and maybe my NI number or date of birth. It is a separate matter that I may identify as a lesbian elephant when of strong drink taken.
You probably have many aspects to yourself and would resist being reduced to or stereotyped as any one of them. But you might still identify yourself in terms of your heritage, ethnicity, race, religion: identities that are often prominent in identity politics.
Or just politics. But these aren't 'identities'. They are 'classes' seeking the political equivalent of the redress achievable by 'class-action' suits.
You might identify yourself in terms of other social and personal relationships and characteristics – ‘I’m Mary’s sister.’ ‘I’m a music-lover.’ ‘I’m Emily’s thesis advisor.’ ‘I’m a Chicagoan.’
In these cases, you are not identifying yourself at all. You need to introduce yourself by name though you are welcome to add relevant details which signal your desire for friendly conversation.
Or you might identify personality characteristics: ‘I’m an extrovert’; or commitments: ‘I care about the environment.’ ‘I’m honest.’ You might identify yourself comparatively: ‘I’m the tallest person in my family’; or in terms of one’s political beliefs or affiliations: ‘I’m an independent’; or temporally: ‘I’m the person who lived down the hall from you in college,’ or ‘I’m getting married next year.’
These statements don't identify you. They are traits you share with many other people. Identification involves unique characterization.
Some of these are more important than others, some are fleeting. The point is that who you are is more complex than any one of your identities. Thinking of the self as a network is a way to conceptualise this complexity and fluidity.
Just as thinking of the self as a lesbian elephant is a way to conceptualize all the fun things chicks could get up to if they had trunks. The problem here is that no useful purpose is served by such fantasies. You are not an elephant and you are not a network. You are a a human being who needs to floss more often. Deal with it.
Let’s take a concrete example. Consider Lindsey: she is spouse, mother, novelist, English speaker, Irish Catholic, feminist, professor of philosophy, automobile driver, psychobiological organism, introverted, fearful of heights, left-handed, carrier of Huntington’s disease (HD), resident of New York City. This is not an exhaustive set, just a selection of traits or identities.
There is only one identity- that of Lindsey. Several different predicates apply to her.
Traits are related to one another to form a network of traits.
No. Traits are merely things upon the basis of which predicates are applied to a particular object. Some traits may be related to each other- e.g. if you describe Lindsey as tall you can't also call her short- but others aren't.
Lindsey is an inclusive network,
only in the sense that she is a Lesbian elephant- i.e. this is merely a manner of speaking.
a plurality of traits related to one another. The overall character – the integrity – of a self is constituted by the unique interrelatedness of its particular relational traits, psychobiological, social, political, cultural, linguistic and physical.
No! The overall integrity of a self is constituted by invisible lesbian elephants fisting each other with their ginormous trunks. Why does nobody acknowledge this? Is it because elephants have dark skins? Or is this pure misogyny and homophobia?
We notice right away (from a crap diagram) the complex interrelatedness among Lindsey’s traits. We can also see that some traits seem to be clustered, that is, related more to some traits than to others.
for example, being a mother correlates highly with being a woman. Also Irish Catholics tend to be less militant in killing their own fetuses.
Just as a body is a highly complex, organised network of organismic and molecular systems, the self is a highly organised network.
The body is not a network. However, for a particular purpose, we can model aspects of the nervous system or the endocrine system using network analysis. But, at some point we have to drop the analogy and figure our surgical or other substantive interventions of a medical type. Even the best network engineer can't reboot your brain.
Traits of the self can organise into clusters or hubs, such as a body cluster, a family cluster, a social cluster.
No. We can discern various traits in various things and, for some purpose of our own, speak of their clustering though they have no independent existence. This is like saying 'the wish is the father of the thought'. It is merely a metaphor. It isn't the case that the wish got the thought's mother pregnant even though he promised to pull out and come on her tits.
Traits can be closely clustered, but they also cross over and intersect with traits in other hubs or clusters.
What's more, the wish that fathered a particular thought may also so frequently take it up the ass from the Uncle of the thought with the result that his Aunty never gets preggers. This is a good thing because she decides to pay for her one and only nephew to go to private skool. That's the reason the thought which was fathered by a wish which continually takes it up the ass was able to go to Ivy League and become a Professor.
For instance, a genetic trait – ‘Huntington’s disease carrier’ (HD in figures 1 and 2) – is related to biological, family and social traits.
Things which are 'hereditary' are obviously related to stuff that is biological. What Kathleen forgets is that 'family' may be 'adopted family'. Social traits depend on society they do not supervene on the biological.
If the carrier status is known, there are also psychological and social relations to other carriers and to familial and medical communities. Clusters or sub-networks are not isolated, or self-enclosed hubs, and might regroup as the self develops.
No. As a person changes, people observing her will give greater salience to different traits.
Sometimes her experience might be fractured, as when others take one of her identities as defining all of her.
No. Her experience won't be fractured unless her skull is. It isn't really the case that I turn into a quivering mass of jelly if someone refuses to accept that I am Meghan Markle and thus a member of the Royal Family.
Some traits might be more dominant than others. Being a spouse might be strongly relevant to who Lindsey is, whereas being an aunt weakly relevant.
The reverse may be the case if the husband is constantly sodomizing the wish which is the father to the thought which is the one beloved nephew upon which the aunty can lavish all her love, affection, and most importantly, money.
Some traits might be more salient in some contexts than others. In Lindsey’s neighbourhood, being a parent might be more salient than being a philosopher, whereas at the university being a philosopher is more prominent.
This is also true of wholly imaginary traits. Lindsey's students may prefer to think of her as a Lesbian elephant.
Lindsey can have a holistic experience of her multifaceted, interconnected network identity.
by fisting with her trunk other imaginary lesbian elephants. Failure to do so will fracture her sense of identity.
Sometimes, though, her experience might be fractured, as when others take one of her identities as defining all of her. Suppose that, in an employment context, she isn’t promoted, earns a lower salary or isn’t considered for a job because of her gender.
This will definitely cause her to turn into an invisible lesbian elephant.
Discrimination is when an identity – race, gender, ethnicity – becomes the way in which someone is identified by others, and therefore might experience herself as reduced or objectified.
If you say others are identifying or objectifying you in a specific way, then, it follows, you too are objectifying them. True, the rapist saw you as nothing but a vagina into which he could shove his cock. But is it fair for you to speak of him as a rapist when the fact is, he is also a prominent serial killer and, perhaps more importantly, his aunty owns a cat? Obviously, the right answer to this quandary is to acquit your rapist of all blame. It is the fundamental misogyny of this society which is to blame. Why has Biden not undergone gender reassignment surgery? How come the UN has not banned dicks? Not until the whole network is fundamentally reconstituted can a person without a dick have anything but a fractured identity which is constantly being raped, sodomized, having its eyes gouged out, getting skull fucked in its empty eye-sockets and subjected to body shaming and having to tolerate people who wear MAGA caps.
Lindsey might feel conflict or tension between her identities.
She may feel conflict between her 'personae'. When she talks as a Mum she may say things she disapproves of as a philosopher. But personae are not identities.
She might not want to be reduced to or stereotyped by any one identity.
But she does want to have one and only identity which is uniquely linked to her body. If someone else cashes her pay-check or empties her bank account, she will get very angry. This is because she and she alone is entitled to that money. If the Bank says 'how can you be sure some other identity of yours did not take the money?' She replies 'how can you be sure you won't feel pain if I kick you repeatedly in the balls?'
She might feel the need to dissimulate, suppress or conceal some identity,
some persona. If she is hoping to get laid, it might be wise to conceal her wedding ring and the photo she carries in her wallet of her balding 40 year old son.
as well as associated feelings and beliefs.
You have to pretend that the Boss's jokes are funny even if you are an invisible Lesbian elephant.
She might feel that some of these are not essential to who she really is. But even if some are less important than others, and some are strongly relevant to who she is and identifies as, they’re all still interconnected ways in which Lindsey is.
No Lindsey is for a biological reasons. If her head is chopped off Lindsey will cease to be for biological reasons. Networks don't matter.
What about the changeableness and fluidity of the self?
What about our multiple identities as Lesbian elephants?
What about other stages of Lindsey’s life? Lindsey-at-age-five is not a spouse or a mother,
but may be an invisible lesbian elephant
and future stages of Lindsey might include different traits and relations too: she might divorce or change careers or undergo a gender identity transformation. The network self is also a process.
All processes are part and parcel of having the identity of an invisible lesbian elephant.
It might seem strange at first to think of yourself as a process.
rather than a lesbian elephant who is working as a process-server so as to put herself through Jungle Law School
You might think that processes are just a series of events, and your self feels more substantial than that.
Lesbian elephants can be very substantial.
Maybe you think of yourself as an entity that’s distinct from relations,
though we know that we wouldn't exist if Mummy and Daddy hadn't had sexual relations and, after that, smothered us with affection and gifts and educational opportunities.
that change is something that happens to an unchangeable core that is you.
This is a religious idea. We feel Mummy and Daddy haven't perished though their bodies may have done so.
You’d be in good company if you do. There’s a long history in philosophy going back to Aristotle arguing for a distinction between a substance and its properties, between substance and relations, and between entities and events.
Languages work on the basis of subject object predication. Aristotle thought there must be come further 'hypokeimenon' undergirding to all that is. He was wrong.
However, the idea that the self is a network and a process is more plausible than you might think. Paradigmatic substances, such as the body,
This is contested. Plato would say the body is not a substance. Aristotle would say it has spatial extension and that's good enough. But his theory depends on all things having a 'telos' or purpose built into them which is why their actions appear coordinated or law-like.
If this is not the case, whatever it is things appear to be isn't their substances. To give an example- I walk into your house and see a framed reproduction of a painting by Van Gogh on the wall. Later, as I leave, I glance at it again. The Van Gogh painting has gone. There is now a painting by Degas. I approach closer and realize I was deceived by a 4k TV designed to look like a framed canvas painting. I suppose, if you had programmed your TV so that it only showed Van Gogh's picture, one could say 'Mr. X has a Van Gogh painting on his wall'. The fact that it was displayed by a TV set is irrelevant. The telos of the object is to show Van Gogh's painting and no other. But, I now discover, the TV is tuned to a Hi Def Art channel. It does not show anything on its own but rather shows whatever it is that is being digitally transmitted from somewhere else. I might say, 'Mr X has a TV which shows whatever painting the Hi Def Art Channel network is transmitting.'
Are bodies like TV sets tuned to a particular channel? Are they part of a network? No. For some specific purpose- e.g. using a Peloton exercise-bike- such may appear to be the case. But, generally speaking, bodies are not plugged into a network.
are systems of networks that are in constant process even when we don’t see that at a macro level: cells are replaced, hair and nails grow, food is digested, cellular and molecular processes are ongoing as long as the body is alive.
Networked computers don't have this feature. Thus they are not really networks. Only things which aren't networks- e.g. animals and plants- are networks. What a great discovery!
Consciousness or the stream of awareness itself is in constant flux.
Whereas the programs transmitted on network TV aren't. This shows that like computer networks, TV networks aren't networks. However cats are networks as are potted plants.
Psychological dispositions or attitudes might be subject to variation in expression and occurrence.
We are sometimes happy and sometimes sad. Washing machines don't have this property. This proves we are actually washing machines and washing machines are actually cats.
They’re not fixed and invariable, even when they’re somewhat settled aspects of a self. Social traits evolve.
One day, my old washing machine will evolve into a lizard.
For example, Lindsey-as-daughter develops and changes.
So does her kitten.
Lindsey-as-mother is not only related to her current traits, but also to her own past, in how she experienced being a daughter.
A mother cat is related to her own past as a kitten. This is why all cats are actually networks when they are not washing machines.
Many past experiences and relations have shaped how she is now.
More have not.
New beliefs and attitudes might be acquired and old ones revised.
Moreover she may become a washing machine.
There’s constancy, too, as traits don’t all change at the same pace and maybe some don’t change at all. But the temporal spread, so to speak, of the self means that how a self as a whole is at any time is a cumulative upshot of what it’s been and how it’s projecting itself forward.
Cats are projecting themselves forward through time. They may evolve into washing machines.
Rather than an underlying, unchanging substance that acquires and loses properties,
e.g. being a little girl thirty years ago and being a Mum now.
we’re making a paradigm shift to seeing the self as a process, as a cumulative network with a changeable integrity.
Lindsey is sometimes a washing machine and sometimes evolves into a lizard.
A cumulative network has structure and organisation,
Its implementation may do so.
as many natural processes do, whether we think of biological developments, physical processes or social processes.
or lesbian elephants which are turning into washing machines.
Think of this constancy and structure as stages of the self overlapping with, or mapping on to, one another.
Those 'stages' are imposed by the eye of the observer. They are not intrinsic. We can equally think of Lindsey as a lesbian elephant overlapping with, or mapping into, her washing machine.
For Lindsey, being a sibling overlaps from Lindsey-at-six to the death of the sibling; being a spouse overlaps from Lindsey-at-30 to the end of the marriage.
Just as our seeing Lindsey as a lesbian elephant overlaps with her being a washing machine.
Moreover, even if her sibling dies, or her marriage crumbles, sibling and spouse would still be traits of Lindsey’s history – a history that belongs to her and shapes the structure of the cumulative network.
Even if invisible lesbian elephants don't exist they can feature in my history of her.
If the self is its history,
it can't also be its geography. History is about chaps. Geography is about maps.
does that mean it can’t really change much?
NO! It means invisible lesbian elephants can change into washing machines because the cat told them to.
What about someone who wants to be liberated from her past, or from her present circumstances?
She should become a washing machine.
Someone who emigrates or flees family and friends to start a new life or undergoes a radical transformation doesn’t cease to have been who they were.
Only in the sense that people I describe as lesbian female elephants who change into washing machines don't cease being whatever it is I said they were.
Indeed, experiences of conversion or transformation are of that self, the one who is converting, transforming, emigrating.
NO! They are the experiences of washing machines which used to be lesbian elephants. One ipse dixit proposition is just as good as another.
Similarly, imagine the experience of regret or renunciation.
I deeply regret not proving the Reimann hypothesis when I was 17 because I was too busy making love to super-models. On the other hand, I have no regrets about renouncing the British Crown because I felt it looked a bit cheap and flimsy.
You did something that you now regret, that you would never do again, that you feel was an expression of yourself when you were very different from who you are now. Still, regret makes sense only if you’re the person who in the past acted in some way.
No. We regret not doing things we couldn't have done because we were too shit.
When you regret, renounce and apologise, you acknowledge your changed self as continuous with and owning your own past as the author of the act.
No. You are pretending, against all the evidence, that you can stop being utterly shite. This is like my saying I have now renounced sex with super-models and thus will soon have a proof of the Reimann hypothesis.
Anchoring and transformation, continuity and liberation, sameness and change: the cumulative network is both-and, not either-or.
Precisely my point about everybody being a lesbian elephant who is turning into a washing machine.
Transformation can happen to a self or it can be chosen.
e.g. choosing to be a lesbian elephant who turns into a washing machine
It can be positive or negative. It can be liberating or diminishing. Take a chosen transformation. Lindsey undergoes a gender transformation, and becomes Paul. Paul doesn’t cease to have been Lindsey, the self who experienced a mismatch between assigned gender and his own sense of self-identification, even though Paul might prefer his history as Lindsey to be a nonpublic dimension of himself. The cumulative network now known as Paul still retains many traits – biological, genetic, familial, social, psychological – of its prior configuration as Lindsey, and is shaped by the history of having been Lindsey.
This is also true of people who have not had any surgery but who I identify as lesbian elephants who are turning into washing machines.
Or consider the immigrant. She doesn’t cease to be the self whose history includes having been a resident and citizen of another country.
or her having been a lesbian elephant.
The network self is changeable but continuous as it maps on to a new phase of the self.
lesbian elephants are very good at that sort of mapping.
Some traits become relevant in new ways. Some might cease to be relevant in the present while remaining part of the self’s history. There’s no prescribed path for the self. The self is a cumulative network because its history persists, even if there are many aspects of its history that a self disavows going forward or even if the way in which its history is relevant changes. Recognising that the self is a cumulative network allows us to account for why radical transformation is of a self and not, literally, a different self.
It also enables us to understand why anybody I say is a lesbian elephant who is turning into a washing machine is actually a cumulative network with those features.
Now imagine a transformation that’s not chosen but that happens to someone: for example, to a parent with Alzheimer’s disease.
This person will no longer be able to fulfil certain roles. It would be a mistake to re-elect him to the White House.
They are still parent, citizen, spouse, former professor.
Not necessarily. The child may disown the parent fearing a steeply escalating financial liability for medical care. Citizenship may be stripped of a person now unable to defend himself against the charge that he had committed treason or gained naturalization by fraudulent means. A marriage may be annulled- i.e. treated as though it had never taken place. A person accused of plagiarism may have his appointment as a Professor retroactively cancelled. On the other hand, this person is still a lesbian elephant slowly but inexorably turning into a washing machine- if that is what I say he is. That's how 'ipse dixit' stipulations work.
They are still their history; they are still that person undergoing debilitating change.
Only in the sense that they are still a lesbian elephant.
The same is true of the person who experiences dramatic physical change, someone such as the actor Christopher Reeve who had quadriplegia after an accident, or the physicist Stephen Hawking whose capacities were severely compromised by ALS (motor neuron disease). Each was still parent, citizen, spouse, actor/scientist and former athlete.
and lesbian elephant
The parent with dementia experiences loss of memory, and of psychological and cognitive capacities, a diminishment in a subset of her network.
also, some other lesbian elephants are saying mean things about this parent.
The person with quadriplegia or ALS experiences loss of motor capacities, a bodily diminishment. Each undoubtedly leads to alteration in social traits and depends on extensive support from others to sustain themselves as selves.
NO! They sustain themselves as lesbian elephants so as to slowly but inexorably turn into washing machines.
Sometimes people say that the person with dementia who doesn’t know themselves or others anymore isn’t really the same person that they were, or maybe isn’t even a person at all. This reflects an appeal to the psychological view – that persons are essentially consciousness. But seeing the self as a network takes a different view.
My dad may be dead but that's no reason I shouldn't continue to cash his pension cheques. You must see dad as part of my network of fraud but for which I won't be able to afford cocaine.
The integrity of the self is broader than personal memory and consciousness.
Many lesbian elephants are pretty broad in the beam.
The poignant account ‘Still Gloria’ (2017) by the Canadian bioethicist Françoise Baylis of her mother’s Alzheimer’s reflects this perspective. When visiting her mother,
Why does she not have her mother live with her
Baylis helps to sustain the integrity of Gloria’s self even when Gloria can no longer do that for herself.
Why not do it 24/7?
But she’s still herself.
Plenty of people visit the graves of loved ones with some similar motivation.
Does that mean that self-knowledge isn’t important?
It is very important but on in the sense that more important yet is the self-knowledge associated with actually being a lesbian elephant who is slowly but inexorably turning into a washing machine.
Of course not. Gloria’s diminished capacities are a contraction of her self,
No. She is exhibiting some novel behavior and brain states and so forth.
and might be a version of what happens in some degree for an ageing self who experiences a weakening of capacities.
Or it might not. There may be some aspects of brain-states in Alzheimer's which are 'adaptive' or which, in a different context, may improve outcomes.
And there’s a lesson here for any self: none of us is completely transparent to ourselves.
There is no 'Momus window' into the soul. Our own preferences are opaque to us. This is necessary, otherwise we could be 'hacked' by a predator or parasite.
This isn’t a new idea; even Plato, long before Freud, recognised that there were unconscious desires, and that self-knowledge is a hard-won and provisional achievement.
Claiming to know oneself can help you make a bit of business. Showing you can know yourself in the Biblical sense can get you arrested for indecent exposure. Yet both are a wank.
The process of self-questioning and self-discovery is ongoing through life because we don’t have fixed and immutable identities: our identity is multiple, complex and fluid.
No. Our identity is fixed. How we feel about our identity or what we might want it to be changes over time. Some 40 years ago I wanted to be a homeless alcoholic. Fate was unkind to me. Now I want to be a younger, more callipygous, Beyonce. Alcoholism is boring. Twerking looks fun. I bet I could be the next TikTok twerking sensation.
This means that others don’t know us perfectly either. When people try to fix someone’s identity as one particular characteristic, it can lead to misunderstanding, stereotyping, discrimination.
What Professors should worry about is the fact that they are trying to assign to themselves a particular characteristic- viz. being smart and knowledgeable- which they singularly lack. This can lead to great public mischief.
Our currently polarised rhetoric seems to do just that – to lock people into narrow categories:
e.g. 'Professor', 'PhD student' rather than the broader category of 'stupid, useless, shitheads'.
‘white’, ‘Black’, ‘Christian’, ‘Muslim’, ‘conservative’, ‘progressive’. But selves are much more complex and rich.
People who bang on about their color or creed or political orientation are trying to gain money or power of one sort or another. But there are also plenty of people who will take a bit of cash in return for telling you about your multiple identities as lesbian elephants or dolphins or Queen Cleopatra or whatever.
On the other hand, when priests say you have an immortal soul which can get to a real nice Heaven, maybe you should listen to them. This is because you know your body will actually die. It won't survive death under a bunch of different identities or as a 'network' or as the washing machine all lesbian elephants end up becoming.
Seeing ourselves as a network
or a lesbian elephant
is a fertile way to understand our complexity.
Because lesbian elephants could become the Mummies of Dumbo who has a magic feather and thus can fly.
Perhaps it could even help break the rigid and reductive stereotyping that dominates current cultural and political discourse,
But that 'discourse' is stupid, ignorant, self-serving shite. Just say so, and its hold is broken.
and cultivate more productive communication.
By talking about things which are useful in raising productivity
We might not understand ourselves or others perfectly, but we often have overlapping identities and perspectives.
This does not matter in the slightest. Just buy and sell stuff on open markets.
Rather than seeing our multiple identities as separating us from one another, we should see them as bases for communication and understanding, even if partial.
Only if we aren't communicating and understanding those we need to communicate with and understand. If this is the case, it may be that we aren't doing anything useful or productive. Equally, we may simply be not worthy of communicating with and everybody understands this.
Lindsey is a white woman philosopher.
Nothing wrong with being white or a woman. Philosophy, sadly, turned out to be stupid, ignorant, shite.
Her identity as a philosopher is shared with other philosophers (men, women, white, not white).
No. That's why she objects if one of them put's their own name to a paper she wrote.
At the same time, she might share an identity
this is a predicate
as a woman philosopher with other women philosophers whose experiences as philosophers have been shaped by being women.
Your experience of shit is not shaped by the fact that you have or lack a dick. Shit simply is shit. White males produce shite philosophy. So do black women- so what? Everybody poops.
Sometimes communication is more difficult than others, as when some identities are ideologically rejected, or seem so different that communication can’t get off the ground.
This is a good thing. Answer a fool according to his folly. If somebody starts banging about how horrible it is to lack a dick, get your own back by shouting loudly about Varadkar and his fucking leprechauns which have chased all the Iyers out of Iyerland. Baffle bullshit with bullshit. Counter kray kray with kray kray.
How else might the network self contribute to practical, living concerns?
You could make a little money writing shite like this for Aeon. Maybe some drooling imbecile will become your PhD student or else you can join a citation cartel of equally useless glorified child minders.
One of the most important contributors to our sense of wellbeing is the sense of being in control of our own lives, of being self-directing.
That is a purely subjective matter. Some may value being 'self-directing', others may value being a lesbian elephant turning slowly but inexorably into a washing machine.
You might worry that the multiplicity of the network self means that it’s determined by other factors and can’t be self-determining.
You might also worry that the washing machine into which you, as a lesbian elephant, are turning into way not have an extended warranty.
The thought might be that freedom and self-determination start with a clean slate,
Why? No country became free and self-determining without some previous history. No child gained majority or enfranchised itself without some previous history. People who are already free aren't interested in talk of freedom. There must be some prior constraint or coercion they seek to escape for the word to be meaningful.
with a self that has no characteristics, social relations, preferences or capabilities that would predetermine it. But such a self would lack resources for giving itself direction.
You don't need resources to give yourself a direction. True, you may not be able to follow it. That's why maybe it's a good thing you are actually a lesbian elephant who is slowly but inexorably turning into a washing machine.
Such a being would be buffeted by external forces rather than realising its own potentialities and making its own choices.
This woman chose to study and then teach stupid shit. Perhaps she had no greater potential.
That would be randomness, not self-determination.
Nothing wrong in choosing a random path or 'lawless choice sequence'. The problem, by Razbarov Rudich, is that there is no way of distinguishing random from pseudo random. We don't know any choice sequence is truly 'lawless'. Moreover, by the Watanabe 'ugly duckling theorem', classification without some bias is impossible. My point is Math, by the beginning of the Seventies, had shown that everything this silly woman is babbling about is a priori nonsense save in the sense that everybody is a lesbian elephant slowly but inexorably turning into a washing machine.
In contrast, rather than limiting the self, the network view sees the multiple identities as resources for a self that’s actively setting its own direction and making choices for itself.
Which is why a white Professor can also claim to be an African American lesbian elephant
Lindsey might prioritise career over parenthood for a period of time, she might commit to finishing her novel, setting philosophical work aside.
This is just standard operating procedure for lesbian elephants slowly but inexorably &c.
Nothing prevents a network self from freely choosing a direction or forging new ones.
Something prevents any actual network architecture we know of doing any such thing. True, an element of a network may cease to serve its required function and the network may reconfigure so as to exclude it.
The network self view envisions an enriched self and multiple possibilities for self-determination, rather than prescribing a particular way that selves ought to be.
You soon find yourself excluded from any social or business or family network if you make a habit of knifing your interlocutor.
That doesn’t mean that a self doesn’t have responsibilities to and for others.
It also doesn't mean those responsibilities are themselves lesbian elephants slowly but inexorably turning into washing machines.
Some responsibilities might be inherited, though many are chosen. That’s part of the fabric of living with others. Selves are not only ‘networked’, that is, in social networks, but are themselves networks.
Just as kids aren't just in School, they are Schools; prisoners aren't just in prison, they are prisons, lesbian elephants aren't just into each other, they are each other in a manner which leads them to turn into washing machines.
By embracing the complexity and fluidity of selves, we come to a better understanding of who we are
lesbian elephants- right?
and how to live well with ourselves and with one another.
turn into a washing machine- preferably ones with an extended warranty.
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