[lit-ideas] Re: Popper Himself
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 13:44:19 +0100 (BST)
--- Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx wrote:
> I find it odd that Donal McEvoy should speak of 'selfhood'. As I
> understand,
> Popper denied the idea of (his) selfhood?
As the title of one of his books indicates ('The Self and Its Brain') Popper
did believe in the existence of selves - and unequivocally asserts this in
that work. TSAIB is Popper's most developed work on what might be termed 'the
philosophy of mind'. He favours the biological approach to understanding
selves as an upshot of the evolutionary usefulness of 'individuation' - an
approach he finds in Locke. Individuation gives organisms a footing for
self-defence and attack, and a basis for coordination of activities. He
believes only humans have true 'selfhood' and that we are not born selves but
become selves through our acquisition of language, self-consciousness and our
mental interaction with World 3. Why JLS might have thought Popper denied the
existence of selves escapes me.
> Selfhood is one of the most metaphysical notions of all time.
It depends, according to Popper. Selfhood is somewhat akin to consciousness,
which might also be regarded as 'metaphysical' rather than scientifically
testable. Whether it is testable or not depends on what we accept as a test.
For example, Popper argues that subjective consciousness is testable quite
easily. We press our finger on our eyelid. Our vision splinters. But we are
aware, subjectively, that it is only our vision - not the world we are seeing
- that has splintered. Of course, there are ways of evading this apparent
test - of saying it does not sufficiently _prove_ we have consciousness (it
certainly does not conclusively prove it)- and if we adopt an evasive
strategy we will render the concept of 'consciousness' untestable and hence
metaphysical. We may insist the idea we have an internal
illumination/consciousness is just an illusion.
Selfhood is rather less testable than consciousness, admittedly, and is
perhaps best seen as metaphysical - but we could accept certain tests as
evidence of selfhood, for example that the subject has a clear grasp of the
difference between himself/herself and others and understands that others too
are selves, a grasp that might be evidenced by their behaviour, verbal
reports etc. There are some tragic cases of humans brought up by wolves who
appear, from their behaviour, not to have achieved or developed selfhood -
which indicates selfhood can be deployed as a testable concept rather than a
purely metaphysical one.
>Almost like
> 'togetherness'.
Togetherness is surely real from a certain POV.
Donal
___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo!
Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
