I'd like to cut this rational justification/ emotional response knot and simply say : Nearly all of us would be scared if condemned to torture & we'd be scared because it's going to be us who is tortured. "

So, yes, you're right - it's about the continuity of the self (for lack of a better term) over time. So the first step is: we understand our self to be continuous - we understand that there's something that remains the same, despite other personal changes (I use the torture example because I think it really drives this point home, lends it an existential weight.)

So, well & good. but personal continuity is an explanandum, not an explanans. We might posit some sort of soul (which, having been posited, drastically lowers any assurance one might have about the impossibility of one's existing after death.) But if, on the other hand, one rejects the idea of a soul, then another explanation must be put forth.

That second explanation is what I was hoping to draw out.

gotta crash, but I'll respond tomorrow to all. Thanks for all the interest in this thread!

I'd love to be able to say something more, but every attempt I have made over many years to analyze personal identity has fallen into aporia. :’(

That's just it though! I'm trying to make the aporia obvious and explicit, no matter what your spiritual background. (I agree that there's no way to avoid aporia.) My swoony dream suitor for this thread is an intelligent, but aporia-averse respondent who will tussle all the way. (that's a challenge! if there's anyone listening.)

@dukkha I'm not ignoring you - you just have a much longer post - I'm mounting a response.

But then I'm back at, of course you'd be concerned, and that is a dumb question. Beings obviously are frightened of death and pain. What's your point?

But you weren't experiencing pain or death (beyond the pain of anxious apprehension) waiting. in the hallway, to be caned. So why be frightened? What did the suffering of a boy, not in the hallway, have to do with you?

(I have no point - I'm just asking you to explain why you were concerned about a future state of suffering?)

We know intuitively they are the same person, we just can't explain to ourselves how it is possible that they are. I guess my answer would be that is a spiritual truth that they are the same, and as such it is not something that can be analyzed and given comprehensive (or for some inquirers, even satisfactory) account of in objective terms

Ok, but at this point you've already settled on an answer - an unanalyzable spiritual connection. And that's fine, but there's nowhere left to go from here. I don't necessarily think you're wrong, but we can't reach any further ideas through debate.

Also, another question is, what do you mean when you say the future child is not identical with the present child? Do you mean her body will be different; will have grown, for example? If so, it must nonetheless be her body, and not someone else's that has grown, no? I think it is true that we cannot claim the two temporal instantiations (present and future) of the child are identical ( in the sense of absolutely identical); but rather that it is a case of their being two (obviously different) temporal instantiations of the same identity. — John

Yes, the insistence on the two bodies being absolutely identical is facile, I agree, but it's how you bridge the gap. Again, though, you've already provided an answer (the spiritual connection) so I can't agree or disagree.

I would say you worry about the child you're looking at now and for the future child that will be tortured because you understand them to be one and the same. You worry for the child you see now because she or he will be tortured.

But they're not the same person, are they? How could the present child be identical to the child in the future? Has literally nothing changed in the interval? What makes them the same person? (again, I have to emphasize, I'm playing the dumb person following the step-by-step instructions of the person explaining how you make PB&J - not to troll, just to draw out explicit explanations of implicitly understood ideas)

It's not a matter of respecting or not respecting 'my tradition'. The text I quoted addresses the question: one who was completely free of any self-concern, would not dread impending pain.

I already explicitly anticipated and addressed that response though, in the OP. Imagine it's someone you love who wasn't, for whatever reason, 'completely free of any self-concern' (and, of course, though you appreciate the ideal, I have deep doubts, no disrespect, about whether you're at that level. I'm certainly not.)

Is that really so obvious? Depending on your metaphysical presuppositions, this claim may or may not be so

That's true. But for the people for whom it's not obvious, it's usually not obvious for religious/mythological reasons. & I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just trying to meet people who don't buy into those views on their own terms.

You ask this as though you have a choice in the matter. You will be concerned about what happens to you regardless of whether you ought to. As to whether you ought to, irrespective of whether you have any choice, I think you ought to. To be concerned with what will happen to you in this life, to be concerned with suffering, is show moral awareness.

I probably failed to phrase things right, then, because this is exactly what I wanted to emphasize (this is why I tried to footnote away any shallow stoic response and shifted the question, with John, to concerns about one's infant child, not oneself.)

Well, given that one cannot but fear potential harm, and having dismissed the possibility of the stoicism of the sage, then it is perfectly rational to feel in such a way. It would irrational not to fear harm.

Agreed, but harm to oneself. What does the suffering of someone in the future have to do with me?

As I said to John, I'm not concerned, for the purposes of this thread, with answers (ancient or otherwise) to the first question. In saying that, I'm certainly not discounting your tradition or the power of its texts. It's just not my focus here.

Because it's impending? Does indeed seem a dumb question. Back in my day, we used to get caned for infractions at school - a practice long since banned - I have a vivid recollection of standing in the corridor outside the headmaster's office for about 15 minutes. That wait was an important part of the punishment.

But why were you worrying? After all, no one was caning you in the hallway. Caning may have been impending but it wasn't happening then. So why worry about it? (Again, I know these questions seem stupid)

I understand the confusion about the first question. It's hard to phrase it right. It applies to heaven/hell and classic reincarnation, but I actually have more in mind a secular idea (as dukkha put it: I've already spontaneously come into existence once, why couldn't it happen again?)

In any case I'd like to focus more on the second question. Identification with a future self is a good start. I think, actually I'm going to shift the question a little, if you're ok with that - I don't think it changes the essential point, but I think it brings things into even greater relief. Imagine, instead, you have an infant child that a bizarrely sadistic regime has sentenced to some sort of torture tomorrow. You've already been sentenced to death at midnight. The child can't identify with a future self. Do you still worry for the child you're looking at now or only for the future child who will be tortured?

(If you think this change is bogus, I'll recant and start again according to the original question.)

I have a hunch that you've read more Foucault than I have, but I'm familiar with the general contours of his thought. I think it's fair to say that many of his early works are characterized by a deep sense of.... maybe not oppression, but of an inescapable, often invisible, entanglement that undercuts the possibility of real agency. Dispotifs run deep, so deep that they control how you think about them, even when you're trying to think critically. There's an undeniable paranoiac element to 'early' Foucault - both the man in the tower, unseen and seeing & and the fear of something in me that isn't me (though, to be more precise, it's more like 'me' is a kind of 'fold' in-and-of greater forcefields of power...and the man in the tower is himself in me)

The (perhaps cartoonish) understanding I have of Foucault is that it's only in his later work that individual agency, and all the positive stuff takes off (the technologies of the self etc.) Is that fair?

If there is a rupture between early and late Foucault - and the rupture is something like how I've characterized it (and I'm open to criticism here, I may have totally botched it) - isn't his whole Iranian flirtation contemporaneous with the shift?

Fair enough. I'll revise my understanding of your statement to be something like "I have had some personal experiences of leftists talking about Islamic in pomo terms and have also seen that on the internet and I don't like that." I can't argue with that and I'm sure it's true.

Listen, you made the claim that leftists make no attempt to understand the Qu'aran, Mohammad's place in history etc. and that it's entirely Queer theory & that kind of thing. The handy thing about a statement structured like this a single example falsifies it. (and it would be easy to multiply examples.)

But, yeah, we can drop it. Your statement was a throwaway one from the beginning ( the same kind of thing as "all men hate women", or "all white people are racist ") so I'm not sure why I'm getting so involved. It just bugged me, I guess?

@TheWillowOfDarkness

Criticising someone's beliefs, actions and values is to attack their place in society. It is to say they are too heinous or savage to belong.

You do realize that to be consistent, you have to also extend your radical moral largesse to the KKK and neo-nazis, right?

Unless, I'm utterly misreading you and you're arguing for these kinds of attacks?

I voted for Trump because in the debate when asked what he was looking for in a Supreme Court Justice, he, unlike Clinton, mentioned the word "Constitution." Yes, their job is Constitutional interpretation, not contemporary morality enforcement.

Both candidates "mentioned the word." (Probably because the question they were responding to was literally something like: What's your stance on the interpretation of the constitution?") Do you mean that that the job of justices is to take an originalist stance toward interpretation and to have no truck with 'living document' talk? Because I could maybe see where you're coming from with that - it's just not what you said at all.

Well anecdote (which means here an actual course listing at an actual top tier college) beats bare assertion which is all you've offered but I assume your take is based on a broad survey you've undertaken of the nation's islamic studies programs?

I'll leave you with this though, the course offerings for Islamic Studies at Georgetown University:

- ISLAMIC STUDIES

ARAB-351-352 Introduction to Arabic Culture (3, 3)
ARAB-373 Women in the Qur’an (3)
ARAB-444 Introduction to Islamic Civilization
ARAB-525 Qur’anic Exegesis (3)
ARAB-535-536 The Qur’an (3,3)
ARAB-555 Introduction to Arabic and Islamic Studies
ARAB-609 The Qur’an in History (3)
ARAB-610 Science in the Islamic World
ARAB-611 Islamic Thought on the Eve of Modernity
ARAB-627 Intro to the Hadith (3)
ARAB-760 Arab Historiography (3)
THEO-350 Readings in Sufism (3)

Listen, if you want to pretend that this

There's no desire to understand how the Quran was written, who wrote it, Muhammad's place in history, etc. No, just endless books and articles being created on how queer black Muslims in Belgium negotiate relations of power.

should have been charitably understood as this:

" I was making a comparison of the amount and level of critical scholarship on Islam and Christianity, concluding that the latter is greater than the former"

then, yeah, you're being dumb (ok, ok, disingenuous.)

Nah, you were being pretty dumb.

It strikes me that there's one very obvious reason why anglo-european countries would have significantly deeper and richer scholarship re: christianity.

Whatever one thinks about the left's relationship with Islam,

this:

There's no desire to understand how the Quran was written, who wrote it, Muhammad's place in history, etc.

is a dumb thing to say.

There are tons of books on these subjects. I took a middle east studies 101 course by a suuuper liberal professor and we covered - tho in a brief 101 way - precisely these topics. They were an integral part of the course.

There are some points you make I agree with, but stuff like this makes it seems like either have no idea what you're talking about or just like the sound of your own rhetoric. You're poisoning your own well.

Yeah, I am, that's why I'd take a comment such as the professor's as trolling.

That's an angle I hadn't considered, and it does make sense.

@Thorongil Is it possible he was trolling?

I disagree - his analysis clearly exceeds the bounds of a neutral analysis of motivation.

Ok, gotcha. It does seem complicated though. What allowed someone so constantly on guard and critical to let his guard down, to think so wishfully? I don't think it can be chalked up entirely as a mere flight of fancy.

Yes, 'spiritual theocrats' are oppressed by liberal democracies if, by 'oppressed,' we mean 'not allowed to be theocrats.' That's true.

Are you saying that Foucault wouldn't accept the Iranian revolution while other, less canny thinkers would? Or that Foucault qua analyst of power wouldn't accept the revolution that Foucault qua wishful thinker would, if only briefly?

Re just addressing one thing, yeah, I was starting the one-point-at-a-time approach so that stuff wouldn't get overlooked. Then YOU dropped it when I made it clear that your objections had nothing to do with the idea of connections between Alex @T1 and Alex @T2 (I asked you what your example had to do with that, and you said "nothing")--but that was what I was talking about. — terrapin

I already explained this. I explained it in the post you're referencing:

You cited causality as a way of understanding why T1 Alex has good reason to be nervous about T2 Alex's suffering. Since the executioner is also causally responsible for T2 Alex's anguish, yet has no reason himself to worry about suffering that anguish, then pointing to causality doesn't explain why T1 alex's anxiety is justified. — me

& I have already addressed the confusion over "good reason" in my long break-down post.

Well I think we all agree the remarks of Thorongil's professor are pretty dumb, and, if rendered accurately in the anecdote, suggest a pretty facile reading. But it's not like there's nothing in Foucault that lends itself to this kind of thinking. Are you familiar with F's take on on the Iranian Revolution?

To me, the phrase "Islamic government" seemed to point to two orders of things.

"A utopia," some told me without any pejorative implication. "An ideal," most of them said to me. At any rate, it is something very old and also very far into the future, a notion of coming back to what Islam was at the time of the Prophet, but also of advancing toward a luminous and distant point where it would be possible to renew fidelity rather than maintain obedience. In pursuit of this ideal, the distrust of legalism seemed to me to be essential, along with a faith in the creativity of Islam.

A religious authority explained to me that it would require long work by civil and religious experts, scholars, and believers in order to shed light on all the problems to which the Quran never claimed to give a precise response. But one can find some general directions here: Islam values work; no one can be deprived of the fruits of his labor; what must belong to all (water, the subsoil) shall not be appropriated by anyone. With respect to liberties, they will be respected to the extent that their exercise will not harm others; minorities will be protected and free to live as they please on the condition that they do not injure the majority; between men and women there will not be inequality with respect to rights, but difference, since there is a natural difference. With respect to politics, decisions should be made by the majority, the leaders should be responsible to the people, and each person, as it is laid out in the Quran, should be able to stand up and hold accountable he who governs.

It is often said that the definitions of an Islamic government are imprecise. On the contrary, they seemed to me to have a familiar but, I must say, not too reassuring clarity. "These are basic formulas for democracy, whether bourgeois or revolutionary," I said. "Since the eighteenth century now, we have not ceased to repeat them, and you know where they have led." But I immediately received the following reply: "The Quran had enunciated them way before your philosophers, and if the Christian and industrialized West lost their meaning, Islam will know how to preserve their value and their efficacy."

When Iranians speak of Islamic government; when, under the threat of bullets, they transform it into a slogan of the streets; when they reject in its name, perhaps at the risk of a bloodbath, deals arranged by parties and politicians, they have other things on their minds than these formulas from everywhere and nowhere. They also have other things in their hearts. I believe that they are thinking about a reality that is very near to them, since they themselves are its active agents.

It is first and foremost about a movement that aims to give a permanent role in political life to the traditional structures of Islamic society. An Islamic government is what will allow the continuing activity of the thousands of political centers that have been spawned in mosques and religious communities in order to resist the shah's regime. I was given an example. Ten years ago, an earthquake hit Ferdows. The entire city had to be reconstructed, but since the plan that had been selected was not to the satisfaction of most of the peasants and the small artisans, they seceded. Under the guidance of a religious leader, they went on to found their city a little further away. They had collected funds in the entire region. They had collectively chosen places to settle, arranged a water supply, and organized cooperatives. They had called their city Islamiyeh. The earthquake had been an opportunity to use religious structures not only as centers of resistance, but also as sources for political creation. This is what one dreams about [songe] when one speaks of Islamic government....

....At the dawn of history, Persia invented the state and conferred its models on Islam. Its administrators staffed the caliphate. But from this same Islam, it derived a religion that gave to its people infinite resources to resist state power. In this will for an "Islamic government," should one see a reconciliation, a contradiction, or the threshold of something new?

The other question concerns this little corner of the earth whose land, both above and below the surface, has strategic importance at a global level. For the people who inhabit this land, what is the point of searching, even at the cost of their own lives, for this thing whose possibility we have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crisis of Christianity, a political spirituality. I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong. — Foucault

- excerpts from What are the Iranians Dreaming About? - 1978

survive the encounter - i know it has a very specific meaning here - but survive the encounter sounds about right.

Yes, I think it comes down to an individual stance. And I think being an adult is probably finding a way to balance the two tendencies and knowing which tendency to indulge when. And this sounds like your initial defense of conservatives - empirically reacting to problems as they arise. But then, I guess there's a point, where you can't really decide one way or another - the situation doesn't tell you - and you still have to act.

I think that leftism isn't sustainable and collapses societies, often with a high toll in human suffering.

Another way to look at this is that societies aren't sustainable and inevitably collapse themselves. I guess this is my view. And I guess I'm not a firm leftist. Maybe a meta-conservative with a tragic outlook? I think plugging the dam is as doomed as revolution, so I don't see any especial merit in either. Or I do see the virtues in both. They're both necessary (inevitable?) so I can't really come down one way or the other. I think Marchesky is right that we'd still have slavery without leftists. But then we wouldn't have the civil war (and but also there's the conservatism of northern factory owners, and it's very complicated.)

Would we better off with ancien regime France and no revolution? idk.

But again, this has been going on since the beginning of time and will probably never stop. Many of the OT prophets fit your leftist diagnosis to a T.

EDIT: posted this before I saw you'd already posted on the civil war.

I agree with you, which is why I think it's too easy to reject leftism flat out. But I also think many of TGW's points are spot-on.

By which I mean: it's utopian to dream of a world without utopian thinkers. Dreaming is baked into being, for better or for worse.

Maybe so, but reactive law is incredible. Again, it's what built England. You wait for a problem to arise, then judge when you have to on what ought to be done. Over the years an intricate, deeply woven house of natural institutions is built. The leftist by contrast is Cartesian, and demands that an entire constitution be written up from scratch, on the spot, and immediately enshrined, not in response to the organic problems the world rises and solving them, but from an a priori conception of the way the world ought to be.

But there's one really big problem with this view. The conservative is wise enough to confront the problems that arise as they are and then determine what ought to be done. The leftist on the other hand demands that things be built from scratch based on ideals. But so how does one confront the leftist? Because one problem that arises, among many, is a bunch of people demanding that things be built from scratch and based on ideals ( this is not new, or particularly cartesian - it goes back to the prophets, and further)

Haven't read the book so I can neither praise nor criticize it. But perhaps your source of knowledge about self-flagellating white guilt should come from experience and first hand observation rather than from Vollman's (or anybody else's) book.

In your life experiences, do you find white people who flagellate themselves about their white guilt? Have you witnessed ordinary white people engaging in behavior toward blacks, asians -- whoever -- that would merit self-flagellation?

What I mean was that it was a wake-up-call about how narcissistic and useless white self-flagellation is for understanding and interacting with non-white people. I more or less agree with TGW that this kind of self-flagellation is the default in middle class, liberal circles. Flagellation is a way of keeping the focus on oneself, often at the expense of reducing other people to mere occasions for one's pious penitence.

But yes, in my experience I do find white people flagellating themselves. And I have certainly witnessed atrocious behaviors by whites toward non-whites. We're mostly white, up here, but there are quite a few Somalian refugees in Portland.

Regarding the rest of what you've written, I agree that people are mostly the same. But I don't think that means they're mostly good.

What I meant was simply that white people literally see a half-white half-black person as black. That's the reflexive reaction. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that they don't see them as devoid of desires and fears.

Great post. Sincerely, though. I disagree with much of it, but you've argued your case persuasively. I kinda feel bad fisking it.

Wherever the leftist sees something that isn't perfect, where the empiricst of conservative impulse is to change oneself to match the world, the leftist impulse is to change the world to match oneself

Isn't this almost tautologically false? The conservative, by definition, does not change. After all, the world doesn't change - the sun rises and the sun sets. But while he doesn't believe anything essential changes, he does concede that the world is in flux. So he reacts, meeting this or that irruption with force, in order to restore things to the way they were. He may not try to change the world to serve the observatory, but he's endlessly vigilant against the weeds that threaten his well-manicured garden. The conservative changes, a bit, but he changes to stay the same.

Hence why the leftist believes that if something is bad, the best thing to do is illegalize it, and so on.

But what does the conservative do about stuff he believes is bad? He defends the laws already in place. Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. A resigned, even ironic, acceptance. But still acceptance.

It also may in turn mean that there are certain things that, while true, cannot or should not be believed, because that would cause one to represent reality in an evil way, making one evil, and so unpleasant truths have systematic reasons to be denied or at least suspended in various forms of doublethink.

Do you consider strict guidelines about how one may or may not depict God leftist by virtue of their focus on representation?

Studying a historical event deeply I think can put one in a state of appreciation for it that transcends moralizing and cheerleading. To the people who see all history and all prospects for social action as a battleground of such cheerleading, and who see sobriety as fighting for the oppressor and implicitly approving of genocide, that mindset is dangerous. But I think in the end, lies just can't help you, only the truth can, so even if the lies feel morally good, you have to face the fact that they aren't helping anyone. I think a lot of people are scared that if they don't pick a side in the virtual reality as the events are ongoing, they're bad. And it narrows their field of vision to see the only way of respecting other people as adopting the blue side of that virtual reality.

This I agree with entirely, buut....

I don't think that's possible in any sort of liberal or leftist way of thinking, and so it has to be abandoned altogether. Liberalism and adulthood aren't compatible, so liberalism and respect aren't compatible.

I don't agree with this. I think both conservatives and liberals can take up the comic-book vision, and I think both conservatives and liberals can rise above it. This actually seems self-apparent to me, and I'd question how seriously you think that manichean good v evil narratives are more characteristic of liberal thought.

And then the resigned wisdom of the realistic, pessimistic conservative can very easily become the twisted humanism of the plantation owner who wishes the world wasn't structured like this, but that's how it is, and always has been, and there have always been slaves and always will be, so the best one can do is make slavery as humane as possible. A kind of Ecclesiastes argument.

Edit: posted this as you were posting your response to BC which may or may not have rendered this post moot. Reading it now.

Ok, I think we're mostly on the same page. I guess all I'm saying I'm sympathetic to the idea that there's a large social (religious/ethical/mythological) aspect to race and that I think it has to do with ideas of purity/impurity.

My wake-up moment with the whole classic self-flagellating white guilt thing was William T Vollman's Argall. It's the Pocahontas story told by an author who has no clear sympathies and seems to have read every source there is to read (it's a novel, but the book is littered with quotes from all sorts of contemporary texts, and the authorial voice is constantly changing.)

In it, both sides are violent and self-serving and dazed by their own myths, sometimes ( tho rarely ) noble, and both are consumed by in-fighting, often using the interracial conflict as leverage for their own intramural grabs for power.

To Vollman, the actions of the Europeans were neither noble nor deeply evil (well, there is a bit of cosmic pessimism to the book, but that's a broader evil.) They just had better technology, is all.

But the thing is the book just seemed super fucking respectful. To both sides. Like felt respectful. You can usually feel the bullshit, but I got none of that.

they could have called him Asian on grounds he was from Hawaii, if that was what the narrative needed

First, the idea that racial attitudes can be neatly separated from media virtual reality doesn't make sense to me. Second, I was introduced to Obama by a political nerd long before his campaign and I immediately saw his picture and thought of him as black. Maybe I'm not representative. Maybe other white people would have seen him as asian. But I doubt it. What are your intuitions here?

My point was just that, the pop view of ethnicity sees mixed people as, well, mixed. And it's a universal tendency among people to favor their ethnic in-group and to dislike mixing with others. If it were true that whiteness had a special role here, then it would make no sense for half white-black and half asian-white kids to feel an identity crisis on either side, which they often do.

I agree, and admitted as much in my first post on the 'one-drop' thing. That's why those in power tend to install their own ethnicity as an absolute and create a 'one-drop' rule. This is the social-construct piece. It takes a an actual irl set of physical characteristics and makes of them this metaphysical and pure center, any deviation from which immediately casts you outside the center. I don't think this is a uniquely european thing. But in America History, white people have tended to have the power.

Do you think that black people disavow mixed white-black children as non-black?

I honestly don't know. I live in Maine and don't have much irl experience with this. My 'many black people as well' comment is based entirely on things I've read (You'll love this - one main source is Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye). And I may be entirely wrong.

Certainly white people spontaneously, reflexively view mixed white-black children as black.

I'm assuming, based on your comment about Obama in the hood that you think it cuts both ways?

I think the self-reproach is calculated and manufactured in academic institutions.

Yes, and no? It's certainly manufactured there, but no one coldly, rationally built the blueprint. I think it's probably more an emergent phenomenon. It comes from somewhere.