Wonderful thoughts, Gareth! -- and some day if you wish, perhaps you might muse further on "distributed" selves (or non-selves) -- e.g., Daniel Dennett's comments in FREEDOM EVOLVES:
"If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything" with footnote: "This was probably the most important sentence in Elbow Room (Dennett 1984, p. 143), and I made the stupid mistake of putting it in parentheses. I've been correcting that mistake in my work ever since, drawing out the many implications of abandoning the idea of a punctate self. Of course, what I meant to stress with my ironic formulation was the converse: You'd be surprised how much you can internalize, if you make yourself large."
Thank you, Mark! I'm not familiar with that work of Dennett's, but I will definitely check it out. Yes, there's a lot of interesting material here - and links back to Buddhist ideas of self/not-self, and from there to the idea of a "greater" self. I will definitely have a think about something I can write about all of that. I did touch on some of this in an old post: https://garethsouthwell.substack.com/p/who-am-i
Wonderful thoughts, Gareth! -- and some day if you wish, perhaps you might muse further on "distributed" selves (or non-selves) -- e.g., Daniel Dennett's comments in FREEDOM EVOLVES:
"If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything" with footnote: "This was probably the most important sentence in Elbow Room (Dennett 1984, p. 143), and I made the stupid mistake of putting it in parentheses. I've been correcting that mistake in my work ever since, drawing out the many implications of abandoning the idea of a punctate self. Of course, what I meant to stress with my ironic formulation was the converse: You'd be surprised how much you can internalize, if you make yourself large."
and so forth ... see the random note-to-self (?!) at https://zhurnaly.com/z/No-Self,%20One-Self,%20All-Self.html with links ...
THANK YOU again for thoughtful & provocative essay, GS! 🦄
Thank you, Mark! I'm not familiar with that work of Dennett's, but I will definitely check it out. Yes, there's a lot of interesting material here - and links back to Buddhist ideas of self/not-self, and from there to the idea of a "greater" self. I will definitely have a think about something I can write about all of that. I did touch on some of this in an old post: https://garethsouthwell.substack.com/p/who-am-i