The self and other things that may not exist - Elijah Cummings

No Self

    This chapter of Julian Baggini's book, How the World Thinks, discusses the philosophical and religious position that the self does not exist, specifically as it pertains to certain classical Indian Ideologies. First, what is the 'self' in this context anyway? Self is admittedly a decently broad and vague term, but here it is referring to the notion that each human (and perhaps other beings, but at least humans), have distinct perspectives and experiences that are self-contained, such that one could easily distinguish between two 'selves'. Moreover, most who declare the existence of a self also believe that there are things which do not possess a self and which do not compose a larger self (the inanimate). This creates a distinction between things with and without experience.

    The two major ideas that challenge this concept are called ātman and anattā, from Vedic tradition and Buddhism respectively. 

• The first, ātman, asserts that all things in the universe (including humans/human consciousness) are part of a universal entity called the Brahman; the universal self. Vedic conceptions of salvation are intrinsically tied to these, since it requires ātman to become aware of its oneness with Brahman (HWT 176-7). Essentially, according to this belief, we are never individuals, but we delude ourselves into believing we are, inadvertently distracting us from the proposed top priority of oneness. Eliminating the illusion of the self is the ultimate goal of life for those who believe.
• The second, anattā, has quite a confusing relation to the first. Literally translating to "no ātman," it seems to position itself completely opposite of ātman, and though they disagree on more surface-level matters, they share certain fundamental beliefs that give them much more commonality than it may at first seem (HWT 178). The biggest distinction is that it rejects the complete absence of self, but not entirely; it sees the self as the culmination of the five skandhas (aggregates):
• The physical, material body
• Sensations and feelings
• Perspectives
• Mental Activity
• Consciousness

The position taken in anattā is that the self is only the sum of its parts (the skandahs) and not a persistent entity that exists immaterially and separately from these components. In western philosophy, this is comparable to the distinction between the common scientific and Christian perceptions of the self. Baggini likens the stances of both anattā and modern science to an H2O molecule. According to these beliefs, the molecule only exists so long as its parts are all present. In other words, it intrinsically IS its parts; there is no extra, immaterial thing which is 'truly' H2O along with the components (HWT 179). The opposition to this could then be equated to beliefs such as Christianity which posit that there does, in fact, exist immaterial, eternal, extra things (at least for humans) in the form of souls. Circling back, most Buddhist branches agree more fundamentally with atman's assertion that the self, regardless of whether it is entirely false or a group of real characteristics, is to some degree an illusion and that a depersonalized existence is the ultimate goal.

    Both traditions generally concede, however, that living life as if a personal self does exist is the most practical (HWT 180). They see the illusion as so ingrained that everyday life must be lived, as Baggini puts it, in the world of appearances, not absolute reality. I found many of these ideas incredibly interesting and stimulating for my own thought, bringing up concepts that I had never considered before in that light which I will endeavor to explain below.

Materialism

    First off, no, this is not about greed or obsessions with one's possessions; wrong kind of materialism. What I am referring to here is the belief that the only thing that truly exists is physical matter (this was touched on briefly when discussing science above). Though I am first and foremost a skeptic, I do strongly believe in materialism. What I mean is that, though I do not deny the possibility of the immaterial/ethereal, I have yet to experience convincing enough evidence for the existence of it anywhere, and so for the time being I firmly rest in materialist thought.

    Materialism also happens to solve many logical paradoxes and dilemmas for me surrounding semantics and names, which reinforces my belief in it further. An excellent example is the classic thought experiment of the Ship of Theseus. The scenario goes that a ship is repaired with new parts over and over again for a long time, until eventually no part of the original vessel remains. Is it still the same ship? The materialist answer would be no. In fact, there was no 'original ship' because there was no 'ship', only a grouping of matter which we collectively decided to refer to as one thing with a definite intended function. A more practical way of looking at this could be saying that there are no nouns other than elementary particles (assuming elementary particles are a thing and matter does not endlessly cascade into smaller subcomponents) and that, instead of a boat existing physically, there is just a bunch of matter which is 'boat-ing,' momentarily performing the act of doing boat things. Using this, one could argue that the matter which was 'boat-ing' before the repairs, wherever in the universe that might be now, is the 'original ship.'

    Perhaps the most interesting implication of materialism to me is the fact that, if there are only physical things, then every reaction must be the result of physical things interacting. On its face, this might seem benign, obvious, even, but then I ask you to consider consciousness (the self). Following this train of thought logically is an incredibly strange experience that shifted a lot of my ideas on individuals and experience.

    If consciousness is the name given to a presumably real phenomenon (supposedly I am experiencing it right now, and though I cannot fathom a reality where I am not, I always like to be a little skeptical), and all real phenomena are the result of physical material (according to materialism), then consciousness must be the product of a physical system. If consciousness is the product of a physical system, then I believe there is more than decent grounding to argue that consciousness could be constructed. The problem with asserting any further than this is that there is still no indication of what those systems are, how they work, and why, just that they DO exist somewhere in some capacity. Without more information, it is hard to make further logical arguments without making some (occasionally quite large) assumptions. But making assumptions to facilitate an existential tangent can be incredibly entertaining to me, so I will proceed anyways, of course trying to account for all angles I can think of as to not be too biased.

Hypotheticals

    Seeing as we're dealing with consciousness and individuality, I think it goes without saying but a lot of this will sound a little dystopian or at least morally confusing. Below are several scenarios that build off of progressively more assumptive premises:

• First, the (most) boring one, though still fascinating. Lets assume that we conclude definitively that the only way to create true consciousness (something with an internal experience), is with the exact structures and materials that create it in humanity. This means that every part, down to the molecules that the system is composed of, must mimic the plan of a human's consciousness systems. Of course, no two humans are truly identical, so we can perhaps reason that there is SOME leniency in terms of structure, but for all we know, it might still only tolerate an incredibly tight range of variance before it ceases to produce conscious experience. In this scenario, the only guaranteed implication is that, if we were to construct a human being with all of the correct materials and structural composition, then it would actually possess consciousness, even if they were built as an adult and assembled by a machine which stuck molecules together like Legos rather than growing as an infant in a womb. You could perhaps even construct a consciousness with false memories and other manually planted mental processes (habits that were prebuilt by constructing the stronger neural links that would otherwise take years to form naturally).
• Next, lets assume that material still matters, but it is mostly just material; structure still matters, but it is less human-specific and more general, despite still requiring biological matter (cells) to occur. Much of the same can be inferred from the above scenario, though this now implies that humans are not alone in consciousness, and even that our experience of consciousness might not be exclusively the richest, as people tend to assert. What was described for humans above can now be replicated with other creatures.
• Now, lets lower the requirements even more: material is of no concern. Think of it like the following analogy: most people would agree that the function of a lightbulb is more important than its material; if one was an LED and another a fluorescent, it does not matter how they achieve their purpose (illuminating), just that they achieve it at all. It goes without saying that yes, differences in form are in fact differences in function, so this is more a question of how much difference is too much (a more conservative conclusion might argue more for the second or first scenario than here and beyond). Artificial intelligence can now plausibly be conscious.
• Finally, what if there are hardly any constraints at all on what consciousness is? What if consciousness is more prevalent than we expect it to be? That starts diving into panpsychism, which asserts that consciousness is just an innate aspect of matter. Importantly, just as matter is simple when isolated but can join to form complex molecules and structures, many panpsychists believe that the consciousness of an atom is far more rudimentary than that of a person, with no structures to facilitate vision, hearing, memory, and so on. If this is true, then forget cloning humans or consciousness in plants and AI, because suddenly everything is conscious to some degree. Sure, some are maybe more complicated experientially, but this also opens the door for systems which we don't typically consider conscious to perhaps actually have quite a bit more of an experience existing than we would otherwise concede. Things like a camera which are not intended to function with perspective could perhaps actually utilize vision to observe, even if they still lack memory, emotion, etc.

    Bringing this back around, the Buddhist concept of anattā brought me through some incredibly strange thoughts, and though I cannot quite say the same for ātman in a literal sense (I find it hard to conceive that my consciousness is entirely an illusion), I do find great commonality in the more semantic and material 'nouns and souls aren't real' claims, even if in a much less spiritual sense than they usually have, being religions.