Friday and Saturday, the UCR Philosophy Department hosted its annual conference. Eminent scholars traveled from afar to address the conference theme: the self.
Various accounts of "the self" were bruited and attacked; fine discriminations were made; historical texts were deferentially cited. Is the self where consciousness comes together? Is it our subjective location in space and time? Is it created by our personal narratives? Or could it be, as Kierkegaard says:
The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation [which accounts for it] that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but [consists in the fact] that the relation relates itself to its own self.Through it all, I felt unmoored. What is a self really? I'm not sure how we are to go about answering such a question.
I believe it's a great mistake to plunge into metaphysics with intuitions about what it sounds right or wrong to say as one's only guide. First, one needs a sense of why we care. What is the purpose of the account? Do we want to know who to punish after a crime? Do we want to know why we should save for retirement? Do we want to know how an animal knows not to eat its own limbs?
With no practical or empirical grounding, it's all just puffs of fog.