https://m.youtube/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0 The misleading argument thats been used by Rosenberg and Harris about the self as an illusion ought to be rejected. The main thrust of the argument rests on two different false equivocations. (1) The notion of I or ego is not dependent upon the idea of the ghost in the machine. This is only one theory of the nature of the self that rests in mind-body dualism and religion. Many metaphysical naturalists, from Nietzsche to Mises, from Mackie to Rand, have advocated a commitment to the self and ego that is not dependent upon dualism. Dennett, and here Harris, convey the notion that consciousness is not a simple brute property but an interconnected neural system, where each component part works with the others to produce an overarching unified experience. That overarching experience of each distinct living being is the self, and those of us who continue to live by an ethic that prioritizes its existence are not deterred by the fact that it is an emergent phenomenon dependent upon component parts. (2) This cues the second equivocation, where the argument is made that, because D=A+B+C, it is only really A, B, and C that are allowed existential significance, and D is considered just an illusion. But pointing to component parts does not suffice to demonstrate their thesis. All it amounts to is a bad argument spirited by greedy reductionism, obliterating any phenomena from being considered real that is not just the straightforwardly considered basic constituent of that phenomena. Note as an aside that the affirmation of the reality of a self is likewise not dependent upon an understanding of its will as free in a robust libertarian sense of the term. Of the proponents of egoism cited above, Nietzsche was a staunch determinist about the will and critic of the notion of the soul, but this did not prevent him from affirming the existence of discrete entities as individual persons, nor even from praising and condemning different kinds of them; this is true while Rand was his opposite, proposing a substantive component of the will that has robust libertarian freedom in making decisions, and while Dennett works a compatabilism in Freedom Evolves. Harris disappoints in boarding the currently fashionable train toward the dissolvement of the self using neuroscience. The arguments provided establish no such thing. If you want to say that neuroscience dissolves the *soul*, as a simple brute entity with no component parts located in an operating room behind the curtain, that is just fine and the argument holds weight. But when you use this language about the illusion of self the argument is taken too far and becomes a non-sequitur drawn from misleading language and mistaken equivocations. The Ego is the unity of the acting being. - Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 22:17:46 +0000
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