Personal identity (14)

Why shouldn’t we speak of continuity in case an entity has been split? Does continuity stops when a thing splits? Suppose a country is split into two separate countries (like the Czech Republic and Slovakia). Looking from the present to the past there is continuity back till the time that the original country was founded or came into being. So, looking backwards there is a continuity from the Czech Republic in 2007 back to the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. But can we say that there is a continuity from Czechoslovakia to the Czech Republic? If we say no, how about Spain, if the Bask country would separate and would become an independent country? Then we should still say that there is a continuity of Spain from the times far back in history before the date of independence of the Bask state. If we say yes, how about my body and my toe? Is it important that my toe is only a little part of my body that we say that there is a physical continuity of my body from my birth on (at least)? But how big (in percentage of the combined mass of body and toe) must my toe be that we deny that there is a physical continuity of my body?
Etc. It looks like the problem of the ship of Theseus.

Personal identity (13)

How can it be that we have pain in a toe that we do not have any longer? I mean phantom pain. Does that show that the psychological continuity criterion of meaning is correct and that it is not true that psychological identity has both psychological aspects and physical aspects (see my "Can a person break a world record?")? For despite the discontinuity of my body (or a part of it), my psyche continues as before. My body has split but my psyche shows a historical continuity.

“Live as if each day can be the last day of your life”

Live as if each day can be the last day of your life, Nietzsche says. Well, I like running a lot, in that way that I like to train each day and that I do train each day. I like especially to train as hard as possible. Therefore, if today would be the last day of my life, I would train as hard as possible. However, my experience says that it is quite possible that after today there will be another day. From experience I also know that if I train really as hard as possible today, I cannot train tomorrow. When I was young, I could train a bit then at least, but now I am older I cannot do it any longer. If I would train as hard as I could, I could not do one step tomorrow. But okay, Nietzsche was a wise man and on the last day of your life the best you can do is follow the advice of a wise man. Therefore, this day, now that I have read his advice, I train as hard as possible.

-.-

Now it is tomorrow, because I survived yesterday. Today I want to live again as if it would be the last day of my life. On the last day of my life, I want to train as hard as possible. But I cannot train at all! How stupid Nietzsche’s advice is in the light of my experiences.

Personal identity (12)

Pain in a toe might be like a red traffic light. The traffic light does not know that it is red, but we give a meaning to its being red. It is a state that has a meaning for our brain but not for the traffic light. Does that mean that we are the brain? If so, how about the toe? If it does not belong to us, to whom does it belong then? If it does belong to us, why does it not know then that it has pain? Does the toe belong to somebody?

The actuality of Michel de Montaigne

Si me semble-il, à le dire franchement, qu’il y a grand amour de soy et presomption, d’estimer ses opinions jusque-là que, pour les establir, il faille renverser une paix publique, et introduire tant de maux inevitables et une si horrible corruption de meurs que les guerres civiles apportent, et les mutations d'estat, en chose de tel pois; et les introduire en son pays propre.

Michel de Montaigne, dans De la Coustume et de ne Changer Aisément une Loy Receue

Violent video games

The idea: to shoot a man and it is just a game. No wonder that a society that tolerates this is so violent. And for those who do not believe how dangerous violent video games are, see for example the research by Brad J.Bushman and other investigators.

Montaigne’s library

Visit the place where Michel de Montaigne wrote his famous Essays.

Freedom of the will

Recent investigations have shown that a person first acts and then has a will to act: the will for an action comes a fraction of a second after the action concerned starts. Does this mean that there is no freedom of the will? That the action causes the will to do this action? No, for the essence of the freedom of the will is not simply that I am free to do now what I want to do now, but freedom of the will means that I am free to make plans for the future and that I can execute them when the time for doing them arrives. That I can plan an action long, if necessary months or years, before it will take place and that I can adopt it to the circumstances. Free will is a long term phenomenon that has nothing to do with momentaneous causation. If that would not be so, a falling tree that suddenly blocks my road would be a clear falsification of the existence of a freedom of the will. Maybe there is no free will, but then it is for other reasons.

Personal identity (11)

What Gallagher shows in his How the body shapes the mind is that it is impossible to separate the mental part from a person’s bodily part, which makes that a brain transplant is impossible in any way, be it that the brain as such is transplanted or be it that only the mental contents of the brain is transplanted, teletransported or what you want to do with it. It puts the personal identity discussion in a new light. One implication is that personal identity cannot be reduced to any form of psychological continuity, that there is no psychological criterion of personal identity and that the psychological approach of personal identity fails. However, also a pure bodily criterion will not do. What Gallagher makes clear is that a person is an integrated whole of mind and body. Now he should have to write a book How the mind shapes the body.

Personal identity (10)

Or am I laughing, because my body moves? Like that I get the feeling that I smile when I make a smiling face? Then my body understands the joke before I understand the joke.

Personal identity (9)

If my body does not understand the joke, why is it then moving when I am laughing? For isn’t it so that it is moving, because I am laughing?

Personal identity (8)

My body moves when I am laughing, but does it understand the joke?

Trip to Montaigne

The trip to Southern France that my wife and I made would become quite philosophical. We went to Sarlat, where Étienne de La Boétie had lived, we were in Descartes, the birthplace of the philosopher who has given his name to this town, and between both visits we were in the Château de Montaigne.
When we arrived at the gate just before ten o’clock, it was still closed. After ten minutes waiting we still couldn’t go in. we decided to call. Just then a young lady in a car came with the key. We walked through a long lane to the reception and bought tickets. Another young lady accompanied us to the famous Tour de Montaigne and opened the door for us. We were the only visitors.
To the left a staircase went up. To the right we saw the chapel where Montaigne used to attend Mass. We entered it. It was a small room with an altar in a niche. Only a few chairs in front of it. The ceiling blue with stars, like heaven.
The stones of the staircase were worn out. We reached Montaigne’s sleeping room on the first floor. The bed and the other furniture were not original. The room had an extension, where Montaigne could sit and listen to the Mass on the ground floor.
The study on the second floor looked larger than the sleeping room. However, that was not possible, for the study was exactly above the sleeping room. So, it is here that Montaigne has written his famous essays! Walking up and down the floor, taking a book from one of the bookcases, reading it, developing his thoughts. The library of 1.000 books – many of them he got from his friend Étienne de La Boétie – is not here anymore. After Montaigne’s death, his daughter has sold them. Only a few have been found back.
At the left, there is a writing table with a chair, facing the middle of the room. Also this furniture is not original. All round wooden horse saddles from Montaigne’s time on stands, a model of the castle, a statue of the philosopher. In the wall, the holes where the bookcases had been fixed can still be seen. On the beams of the ceiling, Montaigne had painted Greek and Latin inscriptions.
To the right of the staircase, a doorway leads to a little room with a heath. In winter, Montaigne stayed here. On the walls paintings with pictures from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. They are a bit worn off but still visible. There is also a text saying that Montaigne resigned from his office as a councillor at the parliament of Bordeaux, because he found it annoying and because he wanted to lead a quiet life until his death. But Montaigne was only 37 years old! Times have changed.
We went back to the court of the castle and walked to the terrace outside of the walls, enjoying the view from the top of the hill. Far away we saw the castle of Montaigne’s younger brother.

Personal identity (7)

Can I laugh if my body doesn’t laugh?

Personal identity (6)

To Parfit: Can I catch the ball if the person who I am is only psychologically (and not necessarily physically) continuous with the person who I was?

Personal identity (5)

Do I catch the ball or do my arms catch the ball?

Personal identity (4)

If my body passes the line first and breaks a world record, why is it then that I am honoured for it? Or is it that my body is honoured for it? But if that is so, what do I have to do with it?

Personal identity (3)

Can I break a world record, if it is my body that passes the line?

Personal identity (2)

When I stumble, and I hurt my toe, is the pain then in my toe or in my brain?

Personal identity (1)

When "I" stumble, is it then I who stumbles or is it my body that stumbles?

On the origins of totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt wrote in The origins of totalitarianism (Harvest Book, Harcourt, San Diego etc. 1976, p.440):

"These camps correspond in many respects to the concentration camps at the beginning of totalitarian rule; they were used for ‘suspects’ whose offenses could not be proved and who could not be sentenced on ordinary process of law".

And a few pages hereafter:

"The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man. This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other hand, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting its inmates outside the juridical procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty"

(ibid. p. 447).
My first thought, when reading these passages was not that it was about the concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War (where the first concentration camps in the world were established) in the first quotation, or about the concentration camps in Nazi-Germany and the former Soviet Union in the second quotation, but my first thought was: Guantanamo! That is something to think about. Is "Guantanamo" the first step to totalitarianism? Attacking crime is not simply a matter of catching criminals, but it is also, and most of all, a matter of defending one’s own values. And what is certain anyway is that Guantanamo is not the latter, defending one’s own values, whichever way you look at it.

Reason and cause

A reason is not a cause but the way something functions as a cause.

The real revolution is in the head, not in the street

In his The unconquerable world, Jonathan Schell defends the idea that in fact a revolution has already taken place at the moment the violence starts. Be it in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution, or in the Russian Revolution, and so on, all violence used is not more than the finishing touch of the change that has already taken place in the heads of the people who rise in revolt. In one word, and that is my interpretation, violent revolution is superfluous. How nice would it be if also the governments opposed would realize that. Happily, many governments do. After the Spring in Prague, all revolutions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have been nonviolent, and not only there dictators have been overthrown in a nonviolent way. "Living in truth" (Vaclav Havel), freedom within your mind, Schweik methods are in the long run stronger than any dictatorship would wish. How these mechanisms work is well shown by Roland Bleiker in his Popular dissent, human agency and global politics. It is a pity that he has done this by playing down the importance of a "La Boétian" approach of opposition and that he has no eye for the organisational aspects of a nonviolent revolution that is "La Boétian" (cf. Gene Sharp).

Un art moyen ?

Just the idea: A photo of me in front of the Eiffel Tower with Bourdieu’s Un art moyen in my hand. So sorry that you cannot read the title of the book then...

“The same purpose can be reached by different means”- Montaigne

In his first essay, with the title "The same purpose can be reached by different means", Montaigne shows with the help of examples mainly derived from classic texts (as always) how army commanders are saved or pardoned for different reasons. It may be because they showed bravery or perseverance, or it may be because they begged for mercy. Or they aren’t pardoned. Man is fickle and it is difficult to say how he will react when confronted with a certain circumstance. In his "The place of scepticism in the philosophy of Montaigne", Foglia draws the conclusion that this article by Montaigne "rejects both the project of a science of man and of a science of action". However, this is true only, if one thinks that a science of man or a science of action must be constructed the way a natural science is: as a science with strict laws and hypotheses derived from these laws. But why would that be so? What Montaigne’s article supports is the idea that a science of man or a science of action cannot be nomological but that it must be interpretative. In an interpretative science of man or action, it is not social laws that explain what men do but his or her reasons and motives tell us why a man did what he or she did. It is just that what Montaigne does, looking for reasons and motives, when he tries to explain Alexander’s actions.