2008 Woodie Awards
Unity of Self
A response to Bauer's commentary from Issue 6
Wes DeMarco
Issue date: 2/5/05 Section: Viewpoint
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Professor Bauer opened up some wonderful issues about the unity of the self back in the December 1, 2004 Issue of the Provoc. I wish to raise some questions about his answers-or what verges on answers-and the kind of evidence he invokes.
Bauer seems to believe that if we can say 'it is alive,' we can infer that it is one. This is doubtful. Mangroves are alive, but it is hard to individuate them living in a swampy web that in some ways functions as a single organism. Mycelial networks, from which mushrooms grow, are alive. The volvox, obviously alive, is more like a society than an individual. Corals are alive, but are not units in the sense Bauer seems to want.
Issues about the unity of life forms are nice hard issues. Still, even if we could reach a single general answer, we should ask whether the way in which one life is a unity is a good guide to the way in which non-living things are unities: photons, molecules, vectors, cars. 'Unity' is a term with many meanings, and if there is a paradigmatic central case that anchors all the meanings of unity, it is unlikely to be 'one living thing.'
In reference to unity of self, Bauer repeatedly asks if we feel like one thing, as if that feeling would settle the issue. He asks, "Do you feel as if you are one, single thing?" and asserts that "our common-sense answer" to the self-count is "I feel like an absolutely, unequivocally-one, single, thing." To the contrary, many people do not feel this absolute and unequivocal unity. In truth, the lack of unifying depth of feeling is now endemic.
Psychologically speaking, there is a range of states, from non-pathological experiences of 'being of two minds' and playing different roles in different contexts, to pathologies such as dissociative identity disorder and what used to be called 'fugue states' and outright multiple personality disorder. In these states, whatever the under-lying metaphysical reality, the self does not feel like one absolute thing. Probably some of these phenomena are, as critics claim, artifacts of therapy, but not all are.
Bauer seems to believe that if we can say 'it is alive,' we can infer that it is one. This is doubtful. Mangroves are alive, but it is hard to individuate them living in a swampy web that in some ways functions as a single organism. Mycelial networks, from which mushrooms grow, are alive. The volvox, obviously alive, is more like a society than an individual. Corals are alive, but are not units in the sense Bauer seems to want.
Issues about the unity of life forms are nice hard issues. Still, even if we could reach a single general answer, we should ask whether the way in which one life is a unity is a good guide to the way in which non-living things are unities: photons, molecules, vectors, cars. 'Unity' is a term with many meanings, and if there is a paradigmatic central case that anchors all the meanings of unity, it is unlikely to be 'one living thing.'
In reference to unity of self, Bauer repeatedly asks if we feel like one thing, as if that feeling would settle the issue. He asks, "Do you feel as if you are one, single thing?" and asserts that "our common-sense answer" to the self-count is "I feel like an absolutely, unequivocally-one, single, thing." To the contrary, many people do not feel this absolute and unequivocal unity. In truth, the lack of unifying depth of feeling is now endemic.
Psychologically speaking, there is a range of states, from non-pathological experiences of 'being of two minds' and playing different roles in different contexts, to pathologies such as dissociative identity disorder and what used to be called 'fugue states' and outright multiple personality disorder. In these states, whatever the under-lying metaphysical reality, the self does not feel like one absolute thing. Probably some of these phenomena are, as critics claim, artifacts of therapy, but not all are.