Together: The phenomenon of selfhood

Together: The phenomenon of selfhood

Samuel Bird

To make sense of something, we break into parts or put it in a larger group. An effort to understand the universe at large would lead us to looking at particular instances and portions of it. The question of what is the correct degree of magnification and demarcation to know things as they are is not apparent. Some argue that anything we perceive is simply a portion of the same whole system and we ourselves are a part of that. Others say that we can delineate something until it becomes nothing but particles. As there is nothing necessary about how we view the world and the interrelationship between its parts, I think there are some great possibilities. We can slice things up to whatever magnification is useful and place them in baskets as is effective. Now, we take the self. The greatest mystery of all that is, is the mystery that we are. Deciphering the enigma that we think from and see out of is no easy task. Many great methods have been found helpful to find categorical distinctions between different parts of us. People of the book or Judeo-Christians, split us between mind, heart, and flesh. Plato broke us down to the tripartite soul. Freud had his id, ego, and superego. Many methods have had powerful ways of breaking us apart to use contrastism against each part. I have found their commonalities to include some aspect of the material or animalistic, some aspect of the emotive and human, and some aspect of the reasonable and dominating mind. Their truth value was still in question, but their use got us started. While I am still looking for an illustrator, I wrote a children's book a while ago that expresses these parts as the beast, the boy, and the being. From Esse Maxim, I build from the two great facts of self and world. As I say that we only know the world as it is, I have found we largely know ourselves as the world is. From this, I also make a case for the material or as I call it, the beast. This thing that houses and bridges my outer world to my inner also makes it possible. This inner world is where all thoughts and emotions go past us. This is what I call the boy. Finally, there is the core of us. This entity cooperates with the before mentioned ones and is the core of what we are. I call this, the being. Together, the beast, the boy, and the being are what comprises us and I think an exploration of these somewhat unique beings will aid us in understanding and engaging. 

We often say that we are cold, hungry, or tired but what is it that experiences these things? While the cause of the facts is a mystery, we can look at what is the case. These experiences of discomfort come from a world that offers an array of temperatures, food, or restful opportunities. What it is related to is something that is in the world. This body I possess has spatial and time properties such that it is directly connected to the world around it. It is subject to the effects of the world and can only bring about states of affairs by making the correct movements. While my mind can imagine the top of a mountain, my body would need to put foot in front of foot for some time before it experiences that same thing. This organism doesn’t only exist in the world, it consists of it. The same materials that make me up can be found in other places. However, no matter if we had access to all the atomic parts that I am composed of, you would be hard pressed to make another one of me. By chance or intelligent design, some force brought our general organism into being and only procreation can perpetuate it. Again by chance or design, this body is designed around surviving in a specific part of the world called an environment. It is clear that life can adapt to new environments and humans are able to change their environment around themselves. These organisms can’t persist across time without resources. They have baser and more apparent sorts like food and water, and less obvious kinds like love and fulfillment. Much of the value that undergirds our desires and concepts of goods come from these facts for ourselves and those same needed facts as others need them. What the ideal environment is, can be surprisingly arbitrary, though in a specific spectrum. Life can’t seem to survive on mars, but it survives on Antarctica and the Sahara desert. While there are a series of environments that are possible, within those environments, the ideal one for the organism is whatever it was designed to be in. Antarctica may seem terrible to the insects of the Sahar, but the penguins think it is perfect. For this reason, the preferable state of affairs for an organism has some relativity, but is relative to the functions of that organism. For this reason, I personally am very careful to mitigate the variance between the environment I am designed for, and the one I am in. This allows the organism to find a sense of homeostasis. While the stoics and Bhuddists have found ways to make the human experience somewhat independent of the organism, its functioning can somehow affect the functioning of the other facets. For the same reason, baser hedonism that doesn’t allow for the right blend of challenges and rewards also can’t produce homeostasis. While the mind-body problem makes it unclear how they relate, it is clear that altering my brain chemistry via alcohol can limit cognition. Additionally, some reason that being conscious is contingent on the organism and its cessation is the cessation of consciousness. As said prior, this entity is both in and made of the world. For this reason, it is not accessible a priori. However, it is the first and most consistent fact from the world. If facts of the world come from synthesis, they do so via the sense organs of the body. Therefore, if we can trust any sense, we must trust that there is a medium to bridge that sense. For this reason, this organism is the most properly basic part of reality in terms of ourselves. In my children’s book, the beast represents the organism. Its job is to keep the rest safe. While many ways of thinking pit the rational part against this entity, I give it reverence. Others will let it have control, but I am the master. I often meditate anc consider the flesh and blood that makes up this aspect of myself. I find it to be an incredible creature that I am grateful for. 

Right before sitting down to write this, I meditated for a considerable amount of time. During this, I will be aware and listen to what the organism is doing and feeling. I will listen to what the ears offer, run the focus of my feelings across my body, and breath. Then, often coupled with a side-to-side movement of my eyes, I will sit there in the middle of my mind and watch. Thoughts will flow past. Today, because I am rusty after a while of not meditating, I found myself getting caught up in thoughts too quickly. After some time, I was able to stay by the river's edge and let the water flow by. Each thought was a concept with an action item. Maybe an idea for an article and a prompting to write it. A reminder of a lost love, and a push to mourn. A fact of fortune and a wish to express gratitude. As each moved past me, it became clear to me that there was a viewer, and a viewed. The core part of me was sitting on the banks edge while this thing that moved thoughts past it was seperate. This land of concepts is what I call, the inner world. It rivals in complexity and magnitude to the outer world as far as we perceive it. Additionally, this is a place that we can create anything we desire and hold it up before us. I am writing a series of short stories now that explore this inner world, but one is particularly unique. This one young man has lost control of his inner world, and it is driving him insane and causing pain. The story follows his exploits until he realizes that as he has godlike powers in this realm, he has a divine responsibility. He begins to organize this world that reside within himself and being about an ordered mind. I am wary of what I put in my inner world. Cheap entertainment rattles and bounces around inside it and breeds its own. Great literature and philosophy reverberate after their kind and bring about the same. Meditation then brings an awareness of what it is that this world has come to. I think we can control what we act on and intake, but we then need to discover what it is the efforts culminated into. Memories and patterns of thought build up here and are benefited from whatever degree of attention we can offer. While we still can control what the net sum of our person is, we must go back to see what we have brought about thus far. In this children’s book mentioned prior, the boy serves the job as the emotive party. He is sentimental and loving. The series of short stories that all revolve around some form of madness may make it hard to see how this is the same entity. This is because of the nature and qualities of emotions. Aside from Hume, many philosophers have discredited such and in doing so missed out on much great good. I often emote in my writing to illustrate a larger concept that is not immediately and explicitly expressible. This is no coincidence. Emotions are thought to act as a sort of implicit memory. Cognition is immensely energy dependent and a strain on our organism. As such, we can’t store unlimited experiences and then break them all apart in a moment. Rather ingeniously, what happens instead, is a series of experiences gives us a sense of something. When a similar stimulus occurs, we are reminded what this type of experience has inductively tended to do. Usually this is in terms of what value it did or did not bring. For example, let's say every time you and I first made eye-contact in a day, I would smile and begin to tell you hopeful and helpful things. When hard matters came up, I was willing to talk them out and end on a good note. I would have a general concern for you that would lead to me maximizing your value. No matter how wonderful it would be to replay explicit facts, you rather hold feelings that build up from what has tended to be the case. These thoughts and their associated actions are much of what goes past us on the river. This makes much of the human experience somewhat ineffable. Many studies have even found a basis for thinking that much of human cognition is coming to an emotive conclusion and then backing it up with reason after the fact. Little of what we do is directly and originally logical. This is why Kant said to stick to a maxim when you could and only build a new one when needed. This is why doing logic statement proofs is so difficult at first. Though I have the rules before me, I am not a systematic computer, but rather have a series of operations I tend to run. I say all this to show what types of things go past on the river, and to defend the role of emotion in philosophy. The boy is the moniker I give to that part of me that can feel, and to it I am grateful. 

If the thoughts and emotions with their associated actions are going past us on the river, then what is sitting on the bank? I will give you the only honest answer to any question. I don’t know. Because this thing is so core to who we are, we can’t stick up a hand or other appendage that is another part of it, as it is the last part. There is no mirror in the mind to walk toward and see what it is we are seeing as. However, I have some thoughts to suppose. Much of what I would try to say would run up against the same issues of the “mind-body problem” or the “hard problem of consciousness. There is one useful tool I can use to identify properties of a noun, and that is the verbs it does. If I run, then I am a runner. If I kill, then I am a killer. If I philosophize, then I am a philosopher. While this has limits, this existential line of thinking says that we are only that which we do. Like other philosophers, I gave something a name and then pretended that meant I had knowledge about it. The name I give to this entity sitting on the bank is the “singularity of consciousness.” Outside of sounding pretentious, it demonstrates that this entity is like the core of a black hole, in that it is so infinitely one thing, that even if it has other parts, we could never know it. I have read a small pile of literature on consciousness, but most all I can say is that it is something that is conscious. Some have found this consciousness to be a properly basic and seperate part of the world. They are called dualists in this sense. To think that consciousness is an emergent property of the material world would make you a monist. There are many dozens of theories on how the mind and body relate, but I will leave that up to others. Let us get back to its verbs. I find that it perceives, judges, and directs. As offered ideas go past it witnesses them. It then is able to place them on a gradient in terms of its values. It then can decide which part is executed. Others would say that it simply perceives like a passive viewer as the body takes it along, but I disagree. I also am torn between if this consciousness is a gradient, or a fact between entities. If there was a God, we would probably say He is maximally conscious. However, I don’t think you or I could do anything to change this process. Additionally, I am horrified by a history of people harming others because they thought they were less conscious. To this day, the best explanation I have heard is from Thomas Nagel who described consciousness as when there is something it is like to be that thing. If I placed your soul in a rock, there would be no experience to be had. There are so many more thoughts on this that I encourage you to look into. What I can say for now, is that this is what I call the being in my story. It is the core of what gives us a self rather than a thing. It takes in data via the body and mind to then weigh, judge, and send out thoughts from. While it is easier to be grateful for those things I have like a mind and a body, I am grateful for that thing that I am. 

I could be exactly wrong and all the ideas here. However, I am not trying to see the world as it is independent of my construction, but rather to construct a conceptual tool to make sense of such a large mystery. The most curious and improbable fact of all being, is that same enigma that our very person represents. I am trying to then break apart the self into reasonable and non-arbitrary smaller units to make sense of it. By dividing it, we can now tell what properties it holds and more importantly, what properties it doesn’t. When we see things just as we are, we can see the emergent properties. By breaking them down however, we can now use exclusion to see what the properties are like separately. With the fallacies of division and composition, I suggest a deep knowing of the self comes from a holistic and divisive look or at least some wisdom. To view a mystery as complex as all that is, is already a task enough, but to be a mystery myself can seem like too much to bear. From the two great facts, I know I have self and world, but I don’t know any qualities about them. I can then make sense of the world in terms of how it relates to me. I can then make sense of the self in terms of how the world relates to it. I can’t solve the problem of consciousness today, because today I only know what resources reality provides for me to address it. I can’t either know the world in all planes it can be on, as many purport that there is an aspect of reality my senses can’t show me. What I can do, is start to know myself. This is not just a memorization of dry facts, but a dynamic experience across time. While it can be strenuous to see how the subjective consciousness relates to the objective world, I can watch myself. I can learn how my body operates and revel in that. I can know my patterns of thoughts and emotional behaviors. I can then see how each of these things can tell me about that which nothing else can. We started by slicing away the parts of the self, but now I mention the name of the children’s book this is based off of: Together. While separation can teach us things, perhaps that puts the parts out of their element and then we can’t see their relationship. What I have found is while there is clearly a portion that must seek to rule to be fully human we need to incorporate the other aspects of the self. Become acquainted with them. See their value. Being is a wonderful thing to me, but being aware of it is even more special. While it is a mystery that one part of the universe is experiencing all the rest, it is a mystery that affords me and you the most wonderful of opportunities. Existence.