Boundaries of the Senses and the reification of the individual.

unenlightened

As soon as I put in the title, I was referred to this thread: -

(Sorry for the zombie undead thread. Flipped a coin about starting a new one.)

Relevant and interesting article from Aeon site linked below for your enjoyment and response. Of substantial length too, which is good. Some articles there are good, but are so short they seem like mere introductions. The author of the article (Derek Skillings) also joins in the discussion on the website.

https://aeon.co/essays/what-constitutes-an-individual-organism-in-biology — 0 thru 9

The zombie never got discussed, but I thought the reference might be somewhat relevant to those that cannot think without some scientific research.

Anyway, there are three particular boundaries I want to consider.
1. The skin, that marks the edge of the tactile sense, and the limit of what immediately hurts when damaged, and what is subject to voluntary movement.
2. The boundaries of the remote senses, hearing, smell, and vision. This is a very variable and fuzzy boundary.
3. Memory. This is the boundary of the known, the familiar.

There might be room for a fourth, 'social boundary', but I'll save it for later.

1. The skin is the parish boundary of the self. marked by unfeeling calluses nails and haired hyper sensitive specialist organs of mouth. The individual's mastery of it develops very quickly from birth, and mutual respect for it is the basis of many personal rights, and crimes of assault, battery, rape, etc.

2. The remote senses establish the existence of a world beyond the skin, a world of things and others. It is the world that makes one aware of the boundary of the skin, and thus of oneself as a separate being.

3. Memory allows for learning, and the integration of the senses. One learns that this kind of sight and sound and smell (henceforth to be known as 'Mummy'), signals delight and comfort.

(4. This is the beginning of the social self...)

So the reason for labouring this fairly obvious piece of introspection, and commonplace division of experience in what is supposed to be an ethics thread, is to present something of an inversion of the Naturalistic fallacy. The normal version is 'you can't get an ought from an is', and it is usually used to deny the 'reality' of moral claims. My radical extension is to deny also the 'reality of identity claims:-

You can't even get a 'you' from an 'is' - the self is a naturalistic fallacy constructed from the limitations of the senses, which do not make any real boundary or change in the world. This means that there is no difference in substance between what one ought to do and what one wants to do, because the 'one' is fictional in both cases.

Thus the supposedly uncontroversial conditional ought of the form - 'if you want to survive, you ought not to jump off a skyscraper', fails to answer, because wanting is as unreal as oughting to an unreal subject.

This is a very quick outline of something that might be interesting to explore or might fall apart at the first comment. Have at ...

Philosophim

The problem OP, is you define a "you" in your premises.

The skin is the parish boundary of the self. — unenlightened

The remote senses establish the existence of a world beyond the skin a world of things and others — unenlightened

Memory allows for learning, and the integration of the senses. — unenlightened

So I'm having a hard time following the conclusion that we can't get a "you" out of that. "You" is the thing with the skin, senses and memory. Then there is the world of others. If such a claim is a fallacy, then we need to see some indication why. All you've done is present arguments against this fallacy through your premises.

SophistiCat

The normal version is 'you can't get an ought from an is', and it is usually used to deny the 'reality' of moral claims. My radical extension is to deny also the 'reality of identity claims:- — unenlightened

You make it sound like there is a dichotomy between the naturalistic fallacy on the one hand and moral skepticism (denying the reality of moral facts) on the other. But the naturalistic fallacy thesis is more narrow: whatever the status of moral claims, they cannot be justified by or reduced to non-moral facts alone. This leads to two possibilities: either moral facts do not exist, or they are epistemically autonomous.

You can't even get a 'you' from an 'is' - the self is a naturalistic fallacy constructed from the limitations of the senses, which do not make any real boundary or change in the world. This means that there is no difference in substance between what one ought to do and what one wants to do, because the 'one' is fictional in both cases. — unenlightened

Same thing here. The natural extension of the naturalistic fallacy thesis would be to claim that personal identity is essentially normative: it cannot be derived from or reduced to non-normative (material) facts about the world without recourse to some normative postulates. But that doesn't make the self a fallacy. Accepting the above thesis, one can still say that the self is a psycho-social construct. It is as real as such constructs are - which I think are plenty real.

Harry Hindu

the self is a naturalistic fallacy constructed from the limitations of the senses, which do not make any real boundary or change in the world. — unenlightened

Whose senses?

unenlightened

one can still say that the self is a psycho-social construct. It is as real as such constructs are - which I think are plenty real. — SophistiCat

Morality is also as real as a psychosocial construct, which I also think is plenty real. What I am targeting, if you will allow a slightly more loose characterisation is that selfishness is somehow justified in a way that selflessness is not. Somewhere there is an old essay of mine that argues that self-interest is in no way rational. Here I am suggesting that both sides of the distinction self/non-self are on a par in terms of ontology. The boundary is purely perceptual, a horizon-like edge.

So I'm having a hard time following the conclusion that we can't get a "you" out of that. — Philosophim

I am obliged to use the language we have. Clearly we can and we do get a self and a sense of self from our sensual experiences and in describing how it happens, my intention was to convey that the distinction and identification we get is a feature of perception, not of reality as such. I think the idea of a horizon conveys this quite well. One sees a horizon 'over there', but the line one sees from here is not there when one reaches it, but on the contrary, back where one came from, where one remembers there having been no line. In the same way, one distinguishes between cutting one's fingernails and cutting one's fingers, because one's fingernails are beyond the horizon of pain.

Harry Hindu

my intention was to convey that the distinction and identification we get is a feature of perception, not of reality as such. — unenlightened

Then the distinction between victim and perpetrator is a feature of perception (whose perception?), and not real? If I took your posts and reposted them without crediting the source, then YOUR outrage would be just a result of YOU not understanding that the distinction is merely a feature of YOUR perception and not of reality as such.

SophistiCat

I am obliged to use the language we have. Clearly we can and we do get a self and a sense of self from our sensual experiences and in describing how it happens, my intention was to convey that the distinction and identification we get is a feature of perception, not of reality as such. — unenlightened

There is a kind of materialistic presupposition here (for lack of a better word) that draws a hard boundary between impersonal physical facts like skin and light and neurons on the one side, and on the other - psychological and social facts that are sort of pretend, unreal. But are they, really?

Perhaps ontology is the wrong tool here, because the argument in question is epistemological. It says that reason cannot straightforwardly derive one set of facts from the other.

unenlightened

There is a kind of materialistic presupposition here (for lack of a better word) that draws a hard boundary between impersonal physical facts like skin and light and neurons on the one side, and on the other - psychological and social facts that are sort of pretend, unreal. But are they, really? — SophistiCat

Yes, I am deliberately starting from a materialist standpoint, because it is materialism that leads to moral nihilism. The language is always tricky around ontology and I want to say that horizons, like mirages, like like individuality, like desire, are not social constructs, not fantasies, and not material objects, but objective features of perception. The desert traveller uses map and compass or experience and tradition, or some such, to counter the limitation of vision that might otherwise lead him to follow a mirage. And the wise member of society uses empathy and moral tradition to counter the limitation of his necessarily self-centred perceptions.

JerseyFlight

Yes, I am deliberately starting from a materialist standpoint, because it is materialism that leads to moral nihilism. — unenlightened

What? This is false. It is the projection of the ideal that poisons life and suffocates the creature. Man lived on this earth for thousands of years without Nihilism. It was the creation of a false dichotomy of super-worlds and super-beings that destroyed man's mind against existence. Now he is so much limping, even dragging himself, he cannot face what is, too much of the false sweetness did he consume. What he cannot see is that the ideal was never the material result of his happiness, this is the great supernatural lie! You can give a man all the ideas in the world, paint for him the most beautiful God, but the moment you deprive him of the material facts of life's quality, is the moment the value of all those things vanishes into the shadows from which they came. This proves that man has never needed the supernatural, he simply invented it, insecurely, out of fear.

SophistiCat

The language is always tricky around ontology and I want to say that horizons, like mirages, like like individuality, like desire, are not social constructs, not fantasies, and not material objects, but objective features of perception. — unenlightened

You can't even get a 'you' from an 'is' — unenlightened

But whether these things are deemed to be material or not (I don't much care), the boundaries of perception are still ises, they are facts about the physical world. It's just that when discussing the physical world we are more used to the perspectiveless view from nowhere, whereas perceptions are centered on an individual, they are indexical. This distinction doesn't counter the naturalistic fallacy though: you are still attempting to derive normative from non-normative.

Philosophim

I am obliged to use the language we have. — unenlightened

That is a given. But within the language we have, my point still stands. If I'm reading you online, its not the same as if we were speaking with one another, so we have to be careful with the word choices we use. I always worry I come across as cold or overly harsh, when all I wish to do is have a nice discussion. =)

my intention was to convey that the distinction and identification we get is a feature of perception, not of reality as such. — unenlightened

Ok, I think this explains your point better. So why do you believe that perception is separate from reality? If I see the color red, is the sight itself not real? When I taste an apple and find it delicious and another tastes an apple and finds it repulsive, is that not real too? What about my perception that though I wish to fly by my mind alone, I find that I cannot?

Think about all 3 circumstances, and see that each is an indicator of the self. What do those perceptions tell us about the self? How are they real, or unreal?

unenlightened

What? This is false. It is the projection of the ideal that poisons life and suffocates the creature. Man lived on this earth for thousands of years without Nihilism. It was the creation of a false dichotomy of super-worlds and super-beings that destroyed man's mind against existence. — JerseyFlight

Oh! I thought you didn't want to discuss with me.

So you claim is that we were alright until religion came along and before that there was no moral nihilism? I would like to see some of your data on what must surely be prehistoric times, as religion has been around for a good while. I figure Plato was a moral realist and the beginnings of the undermining of moral realism coincide with the development of science with Hume. I look forward to your historical and prehistorical education.

unenlightened

This distinction doesn't counter the naturalistic fallacy though: you are still attempting to derive normative from non-normative. — SophistiCat

That's ok: that's not what I'm trying to do. On the contrary, I'm trying to extend the naturalistic fallacy to include desire and self-interest.

unenlightened

why do you believe that perception is separate from reality? If I see the color red, is the sight itself not real? When I taste an apple and find it delicious and another tastes an apple and finds it repulsive, is that not real too? What about my perception that though I wish to fly by my mind alone, I find that I cannot? — Philosophim

My favourite example is the stick insect. Stick insects are real. They are real insects, AND unreal sticks. There is a real insect and a real semblance of stickitude, and these things are one thing - a stick insect.

Likewise, your perceptions are real, but sometimes you have a real perception 'as of stick' when there is no real stick, but instead a real insect with the semblance of a stick. One has a real perception of the horizon as a line where sea meets sky. but the line is not there where you see it, and when you go there, you see the horizon as a line passing through the place you came from. Similarly, a painting of a chair is a real painting, but not a real chair.

With regard to apples and other matters of taste, what someone finds -delicious or repulsive, is a fact about them, rather than a fact about the apple, although strictly, I would want to say it is about someone's relationship to apple.

So finally, what I experience as the boundary of my self is simply the horizon of my sensitivity, or of my understanding, or of my memory. So to condense this to a one line meme:

Your skin doesn't separate you from the world, it joins you to it. You are the world.

Philosophim

Well I am a part of this world, no doubt there. But I am not the world. I have different experiences than a walking stick bug. I have limitations in my will. The fact we can say our interpretations of our perceptions do not fit the reality of the world outside of those perceptions indicates this as well.

Are you trying to say we are defined not apart from reality, but by our limits in relation to it? I don't think anyone would have a problem with that.

tim wood

The boundary is purely perceptual, a horizon-like edge. — unenlightened

Yours imo one of the more thought provoking OPs I've read in a while - a good thing. Not to say this will measure up, but I'm trying.

It seems to me a distinction can be made between boundaries and edges. An edge marks an absolute division. At the edge, what's on this side stops, and isn't on the other side - the point of change marking the edge. Usually also a warning of dire consequence if crossed without care. A cliff illustrates: at the top, it's an edge. At the bottom it's a foot.

A boundary, on the other hand, usually means that what is on this side is also on that side, the boundary itself often indistinguishable, marking the limit of a usually well-defined interest not manifest in the thing bounded.

Skin, senses, memory all seem boundable, though the bounding arbitrary (yes?). But edges, hmm. The more closely looked at, the less definite and more distanced and remote they get. A knife fight comes to mind as a vivid example of a concern of skin. But if the skin itself the boundary/edge, then why be scared - until I'm cut?

My point, that self - whatever that is, and I'm sure it's something - is coterminous with the world it finds itself in, no edge separating, and boundaries arbitrary and subject to quick change. As the world surges in, we surge out into it. The consequence being that in addition to what is always already there, we add ourselves to it, it to us, and we a unity that ceases when we no longer are. Or another way: being in the world, we also find ourselves there. And we bring wants and desires, shoulds and oughts, and they are parts of our lived world. I find in this a ground; what we do with who we are and what we find, a different topic.

JerseyFlight

until religion came along and before that there was no moral nihilism? — unenlightened

Yes, this is correct. Nihilism was actually birthed from Christianity. This was Nietzsche's accurate evaluation of it. Don't take my word for it, see:
The Specter of the Absurd: Sources and Criticisms of Modern Nihilism (Suny Series in Philosophy)
by Donald A. Crosby

TheWillowOfDarkness

↪unenlightened

Jersey is referring to the nihilism of transcendent metaphysics, where something else is said to replace or perform man's/the material's value. I would quibble because with Jersey's suggestion of Christianity. The transcendent metaphysic and their priests have a far longer history than just Christanity.

Nihilism (our earthly lives have no meaning, no morals, etc) begins when we suppose Earth existences are worthless. The transcendent metaphysics (e.g. God, etc., whatever meaning giver your tradition supposes) then flies into rescue us from our ignominy. We don't need to worry or fear, for our worthlessness will be cured by this transcendent force.

The nihilism Jersey us talking about is not the dishonest posturing which sometimes emerges out of some forms or moral scepticism (these people are usually not moral nihilists at all, just confused about what morality is and how to oppose objectionable claims about morality they encounter), but the condition of thinking material existence has no meaning or value itself (and so then posing a transcendent realm to do it instead).

Srap Tasmaner

So finally, what I experience as the boundary of my self is simply the horizon of my sensitivity, or of my understanding, or of my memory. So to condense this to a one line meme:

Your skin doesn't separate you from the world, it joins you to it. You are the world. — unenlightened

I'm not quite following this. If the distinction between me and the world is on the order of an optical illusion, and the world is definitely a thing, then I'm at best part of it, not a different thing.

So what makes that sensitivity, understanding and memory mine? It's also an illusion that they belong to a thing separate from the world; those things just belong to the world, right?

In fact, all the sensitivities, understandings and memories are all the world's. But it compartmentalizes them -- because I don't have your memories, and you don't have my aches.

Is that an illusion too, or does the world really keep them separate?

180 Proof

↪TheWillowOfDarkness

:up:

unenlightened

Are you trying to say we are defined not apart from reality, but by our limits in relation to it? I don't think anyone would have a problem with that. — Philosophim

Well yes, but then I am saying that our limits are features of perception. I cut my hair and feel undiminished because my sensitivity does not extend that far. My sensitivity does not extend to your head either, but I don't cut that off, because i understand that it is sensitive even though I am not sensitive to it. And this is rather the same kind of understanding as that the road continues round the bend and the sea continues over the horizon.

As the world surges in, we surge out into it. The consequence being that in addition to what is always already there, we add ourselves to it, it to us, and we a unity that ceases when we no longer are. Or another way: being in the world, we also find ourselves there. And we bring wants and desires, shoulds and oughts, and they are parts of our lived world. I find in this a ground; what we do with who we are and what we find, a different topic. — tim wood

I think you have the essence, but I'm trying to be as mundane and boring as possible so I won't follow your speculations at this stage.

The transcendent metaphysic and their priests have a far longer history than just Christanity. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes that's what I thought. Nietzsche is kind of modern, and trying to come to terms with the then prevailing mechanistic view of the world derived from science and the industrial revolution. Blaming the past is always the best plan to avoid responsibility. But this thread is nothing to do with Christianity anyway, so it's all a bit of a diversion.

In fact, all the sensitivities, understandings and memories are all the world's. But it compartmentalizes them -- because I don't have your memories, and you don't have my aches.

Is that an illusion too, or does the world really keep them separate? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't have the reference, but @Banno put up some interesting stuff about intelligent slime moulds at some point, and there is also Hofstadter's ant farm. Nature seems very vague about the what constitutes individuality. But your question provokes me to add something related to these cases, that has importance for humans.

Communication extends sensitivity, and so extends individuality. If communication would be perfect between us, we would be of one mind - the hive mind. But then I refer you to the stick insect; real insect, stick illusion. The separation is a real illusion. I am myopic -- a real condition that makes everything appear blurry.

TheMadFool

You can't even get a 'you' from an 'is' - the self is a naturalistic fallacy constructed from the limitations of the senses, which do not make any real boundary or change in the world. This means that there is no difference in substance between what one ought to do and what one wants to do, because the 'one' is fictional in both cases — unenlightened

I think I get what you're driving at. No "one" implies everything predicated on the "one", its existence, its reality, becomes, how shall I put it, untethered, like horses and pets without riders and owners.

It reminds me of a recent thread on cyncism, nihilism, and buddhism. If any of these three can lay a doctrinal claim on the illusory nature, the complete absence, of a "one", it's buddhism but, curiously, buddhism doesn't go on to claim that wants and oughts, other things linked to the "one" you speak of, are pointless but instead makes it a point to discourage people going down that road to nihilism.

It appears that the nonexistence of a "one" doesn't imply that oughts and wants, other things dependent on a "one", are not worth pursuing or shunning as the case may be.

What are your thoughts on this?

Srap Tasmaner

↪unenlightened

You suggest we're not the separate things we think we are, but all parts of a whole. There is no genuine separation, but only a perspectival illusion like a horizon. Some of the parts of that whole, us, maybe other organisms, see themselves as separate things.

Since I don't have your memories and you don't feel my aches, I suggest that even if we are parts of a whole, we are very separate parts, and that separation is no illusion at all, perspectival or otherwise.

If communication were perfect (and complete and instantaneous) we would indeed be a hive mind.

But it's not and we're not. I'm not sure the currently available hardware even supports that upgrade.

Is the dualism of self and world we do each genuinely experience then entirely due to there being more than one of us? If you were the only mind in the world, would your self then be illusory?

If so, the more or less Cartesian view I suppose you're combating does fall, but in a way I find surprising and extremely interesting.

unenlightened

Since I don't have your memories and you don't feel my aches, I suggest that even if we are parts of a whole, we are very separate parts, and that separation is no illusion at all, perspectival or otherwise. — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed. The horizon is not an illusion, it's how far one can see. And the self is how far one can feel and remember. But that's all it is.

It seems to me that in light of this, it makes perfect practical sense for me to be concerned with feeding myself, and allow you to worry about feeding yourself - we each know our own needs. But it makes no sense at all for me to think that feeding myself is more important than feeding yourself.

It reminds me of a recent thread on cyncism, nihilism, and buddhism. — TheMadFool

I was just looking at that. Forgive me, but I don't think it is illuminating to go further down the road of isms and religions. I would get further entangled with folks' identifications, which are another kind of myopia, that I have explored here in other threads. There may well be a connection with certain strands of Buddhist thought, but I prefer to stand alone, as it were, and not be assumed to say any more than I have actually said.

TheMadFool

I was just looking at that. Forgive me, but I don't think it is illuminating to go further down the road of isms and religions. I would get further entangled with folks' identifications, which are another kind of myopia, that I have explored here in other threads. There may well be a connection with certain strands of Buddhist thought, but I prefer to stand alone, as it were, and not be assumed to say any more than I have actually said. — unenlightened

My fault entirely. I assumed, erroneously it seems, that bringing out the similarities between your thoughts and known philosphical ideas would shed more light on the issue. My apologies and good luck with your discussion.

Srap Tasmaner

The horizon is not an illusion, it's how far one can see. And the self is how far one can feel and remember. But that's all it is. — unenlightened

I thought the point was that an horizon looks like a boundary but isn't, that we imagine there is a self on this side and a world on the other side, but for there to be two genuinely separate things there would have to be an actual, not an apparent, boundary.

Instead you're saying there's a sort of functional boundary, that we have a self insofar as we are limited. If the horizon of our experience were expanded to, I don't know, infinite, maximal, something, then we would find either that our self is everything or that we have no self, take your pick.

I'm not sure I follow from there though. Recognizing how we might be but aren't, and that it's not a difference in kind, but "only" in degree --- I'm lost now.

NOS4A2

↪unenlightened

The senses, too, have a boundary. The eye has the cornea; the the tongue has a mucosa; and so on. Direct contact between the boundaries of the self and the world is a necessary condition for perception, without which we would not perceive anything. Perception, as much as "experience", "identity", "memory", occur at and within the boundary and never outside of it. As such, the self begins and ends at the boundary, as finite as it is transient, as individual as it is particular.

SophistiCat

It seems to me that in light of this, it makes perfect practical sense for me to be concerned with feeding myself, and allow you to worry about feeding yourself - we each know our own needs. But it makes no sense at all for me to think that feeding myself is more important than feeding yourself. — unenlightened

I am still not sure what you are trying to say here, but this struck me as bizarre. I get a feeling that you are working within a rationalist framework where you believe that you can't take even such an elementary action as feeding without first rationally justifying it from first principles.

unenlightened

I thought the point was that an horizon looks like a boundary but isn't — Srap Tasmaner

Instead you're saying there's a sort of functional boundary — Srap Tasmaner

It's yes to both, I'm afraid - 'and also', not 'instead'. That might seem difficult, but compare with this:

I don't have your memories and you don't feel my aches, I suggest that even if we are parts of a whole, we are very separate parts, and that separation is no illusion at all — Srap Tasmaner

Now how can it be, given the separateness of our senses and experiences, that we agree about this? How can we be even be talking about the same thing? How can we both look out to sea and notice the horizon, and also both know that there is no line or edge right there where we can see an edge? These things cannot be made sense of with a universal real/unreal dichotomy.
______________________________________________________________________________________

Can I just ask everyone to think carefully about the following pair of statements:

A horizon is a real feature of vision on a round world, not a real feature of a round world.
A self is a real feature of awareness in a human body, not a real feature of a human body.

I think the first can be readily seen to be true, and it gives the right shape to what I wish to claim about the self, that is about me and about you.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

I get a feeling that you are working within a rationalist framework where you believe that you can't take even such an elementary action as feeding without first rationally justifying it from first principles. — SophistiCat

I'm sorry to hear that. No. The view that I am contradicting is the one that claims that self-interest is rational, whereas altruism is irrational. You know, the founding principle of game theory.

JerseyFlight

The view that I am contradicting is the one that claims that self-interest is rational, whereas altruism is irrational. — unenlightened

Whoever claims this, did they have a mama that fed them when they was a baby? If selves only existed there would be no selves. The party claiming this is smuggling in the altruistic world that accounts for his quality, so the claim cannot even be made without presupposing the value of the thing it tries to deny. It is able to make the claim only because of the existence of the thing it denies. End of story.

Srap Tasmaner

the founding principle of game theory — unenlightened

Say what?

It's just math. It's not like nobody was exploited until von Neumann and Nash and the others hatched their evil scheme.

A horizon is a real feature of vision on a round world, not a real feature of a round world.
A self is a real feature of awareness in a human body, not a real feature of a human body. — unenlightened

And ... therefore we are one? I cannot bring the argument here into focus.

Boundaries of the Senses and the reification of the individual.

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