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Question 1: Application of the Unitary & Non-Unitary Self Distinctions: Within class we probed the fiction of the unitary-self. We recognized the potential danger in treating as pathologies variations in humans’ behavior/inner-states. I am willing to accept that a skilled attorney understands and is attentive to the multiplicity of persons within an individual. I acknowledge the danger of the unitary-self outlook is that the subscriber to this outlook is less likely to take notice of human “aberrations.” What is less clear to me is how being sensitive to the non-unitary self concept further skills the attorney who presumes a unitary-self but recognizes the range of human emotion and tailors his actions accordingly. Is there a practical difference between these two outlooks? Is it that the non-unitary-self concept compels one not to merely recognize the multiplicity of human states but to search for their causes in prior experiences? If yes, then what bearing and what benefit does this have on persuasive advocacy before non-realist justices? | | | Concerning your second question, I don’t know what Cohen would say, but perhaps we can connect his strategy with the idea that judges use these fictive legal concepts in order to avoid having to actually face difficult decisions. If a judge doesn't want to face an ethical question for whatever reason and he is skilled in manipulating legal fictions, then I see no reason for him to suddenly change. It must at least be necessary for a lawyer to bring the ethical question out in the open. Otherwise there would be nothing to stop the inertia. However, if we are right about transcendental nonesense and logic being a defense that protects us from facing difficult questions, then as a lawyer trying to present the real issue of a particular case I wouldn’t expect immediate results. In fact, I would expect a violent backlash unless the judge was already willing to consider and decide the ethical issue. So it might in fact be counterproductive in the immediate case. But perhaps it might make the comfort that legal fictions provide a little less satisfying.
-- PatrickCronin - 24 Jan 2009 | |
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I'm still struggling to understand Cohen's and Holmes' views on consciousness, so I offer these thoughts somewhat tentatively . . . .
As I understand them, Cohen and Holmes aren't trying to answer the metaphysical question whether the "essence" of the self is "fundamentally" either unitary or plural. Instead, they're trying to show why people who try to answer that question one way or the other end up getting lost in a thicket of transcendental nonsense. In doing so, Cohen and Holmes challenge at least two assumptions people make when they ask that metaphysical question: (1) the assumption that the phrases "unitary self" and "multiple self" have some essential meaning--that is, a meaning which is independent of the experiences of the world we use those phrases to describe; and (2) the assumption that the experience of consciousness is somehow "really" characterized by only one of those phrases and not the other.
When critics of Holmes "attempt[] to show that [his] definition of the law . . . is either true or false," Cohen argues that they're making a category mistake--definitions aren't true or false, they're useful or useless (835). Homes is not talking about the "essence" of the law. Instead, Holmes is using the word "law" to refer to the operation of certain social institutions from the perspective of someone who wants only to avoid fines and jail time. If we think it would be useful to see what these institutions would look like from the perspective of the man who cares about grander things, Holmes doesn't say we're "wrong" to do so, or that the "essence" of the law is something different. He's just interested in a different question.
The same is true of the phrases "unitary self" and "plural self." As Cohen puts it, his and Holmes' task is to "salvag[e] ... whatever significance attaches to the traditional concepts of metaphysics" (including the concepts of the unitary self and plural self), through the "redefinition of these concepts as functions of actual experience" (827). That task involves figuring out what it would actually mean, in terms of concrete experience, to view the self as either unitary or multiple, and then to figure out under what circumstances it would be useful to take one or the other viewpoint. The task, for the functionalist, is not to decide whether the self is "really" metaphysically unitary or multiple.
To the functionalist, then, the phrases "unitary self" and "multiple self" might be understood as describing the experience of selfhood from two different viewpoints. I might describe my experience of myself at a given moment as "multiple" or "plural" when I view my thoughts, desires, emotions, and memories as "givens" that are external to and prior to my experience of consciousness. Then, in the next moment, I might describe my conscious self as "unitary" or "autonomous," when I view my thoughts, desires, emotions, etc., as encompassed by or internal to my concept of I.
The fact that I can take up two (or more?) different perspectives relative to my conscious self doesn't mean that either viewpoint is "true" or "false," just like Holmes' decision to analyze the law from the viewpoint of the "bad man" is not "true" or "false." Questions in moral philosophy can't be answered by data from biology or physics, but that doesn't mean that the perspective of moral philosophy is "true" or "false" from the perspective of physics or biology--they are simply talking past one another. The perspective you choose depends on the sorts of questions you're trying to answer at any particular moment, not any belief that the perspective you choose is the metaphysically and invariably "true" perspective.
After setting up this conceptual framework, though, what's left is the really hard part. I'm accustomed to thinking of myself and others as unitary and indivisible; indeed, I've been talking about "_choosing_" different perspectives, and the language of choice and of conscious decisionmaking is the language of the unitary/autonomous perspective. The next step would be to try to figure out what it would actually mean, in terms of concrete experience, to actually shake that habit, and to start thinking about myself and others as multiple when it is useful to do so. At that point, I have to admit, I find myself at a bit of a loss.
-- DanielMargolskee - 25 Jan 2009
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