Reductionism
Just a heads up that I’ll be posting on the concept of self and reductionist versus non-reductionist explanations. I’m working through David Chalmers’ The Conscious Mind and Mark Siderits’ Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy together. (I’ve set aside Dennett and Hofstadter for a little bit, to look at some different approaches).
I think the question of the self is a useful one to investigate, since we make so many assumptions based upon our intuitions about personal identity, continuance over time, etc. These assumptions impact work in the area of perception, epistemology and of course, ethics. A few days ago, I was reading Kierkegaard and came across a famous passage about conflict between the “first self” and the “deep self” and the implications this has for human meaning, etc. I recognize Kierkegaard’s method is different than what I’m used to, but I was surprised that he seemed to assume these two “selves” as having some kind of reality. Perhaps he was speaking metaphorically, but that doesn’t seem to fit the thrust of the passage.
Anyway, all that is to say I’ll have more later this week/end on reduction and the self.