From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri Nov 07 2003 - 21:17:03 GMT
Scott,
Scott said:
To me, intellectual patterns are things like "E=mc[squared]", or "the self is (or is not) an illusion". To call the self an intellectual pattern is in the same mold as materialists like Rorty and Dennett, who look on the self as a figure in a narrative. Such claims simply do not fit my experience. In my experience, the self is that which thinks intellectual patterns, which feels, etc., that it is different from all that is thought, or felt, or perceived. In short, it is not SQ alone.
Matt:
I'm not feeling very creative right now, so I won't take up your claim that Rorty and Dennett's idea of a self is simply SQ.
But, I was a tad confused by the claim that an "intellectual pattern in the same mold as ... the self as a figure in a narrative." First, let me say that I think you are right, what you describe as the self, roughly, that which holds static patterns, is distinct from the way Rorty and Dennett view the self, i.e. the sum total of static patterns. That the self is a figure in a narrative does not immediately strike me as different from how you would describe the self. The reason is that a figure in a narrative is distinct from the narrative: you have the figure and you have the narrative. Rorty wants to say that the figure does not have any _special_ distinctiveness from the narrative. He says that we can ascribe anything with 'narrative gravity,' a phrase he pulls from Dennett. Rorty's picture of the self is a web of beliefs and desires, which I see as essentially the same as the picture of the self as a set of static patterns. What we call the "self" is a pragmatic as
cription of narrative gravity, saying that it helps to hold Bob as distinct from Bobbette, despite that fact that their webs or static patterns overlap to a very large degree, if we want to cope with Bob (which includes things like predicting his behavior, understanding him, or loving him).
I just wanted to point out that I think you are right, that Rorty and Dennett do hold a view contrary to yours, but I thought the reason for this was obfuscated.
Matt
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