On The Subjectivity of Mind, or If It's Like Anything To Be A Tree
One of the arguments for the claim that we are not our bodies but are something else is that the body and the external world is objective and publicly accessible, whereas the way we feel, what it's like to be who you are, is subjective and private -- only you have privileged access to your mental states. Invoke a little bit of Leibniz's law here, and you have to say they're two different things because they have different properties. Invoke a little bit of Descartes' method of doubt there, and you conclude that you are essentially the mind (a thinking thing, a res cogitans), because you cannot doubt that you think (ego sum, ego existo; cogito ergo sum), whereas you can doubt all the other things.
I'm not convinced by this though. I don't think the external world or the body is necessarily publicly accessible in the way that people often assume it is. I agree that a lot of it is -- we can see birds, we can see people's skin, we can touch the bark of the tree -- but I think there are more aspect to bodies and the external world than just this, and that those aspects are the privileged parts. What I mean to say is, the body isn't a completely public thing. Not the body of a human, not the body of a dog, not the body of a tree.
It only feels like it is like something to be who we are because we are the particular configuration and collection of atoms that we are. This collection reacts and operates in a specific way, different to that collection, and that one over there, and in the end, with our powers of language and cogency, we call this collection most near "I" and that one over there "you" or "it". The reason it feels like there is something to be you isn't necessarily because you have a non-extended mind; it could just as well be that all you are is the collection of atoms that compose your body and their reactions, and the reason that other people can't feel this is simply because they are their own collection of atoms; we are separated bodily, physically, not mentally.
In light of this, we know no more about what it is like to be another human than what it is like to be a dog or a tree. We often assume that it isn't like anything to be a tree because they are not sentient, but this is a kind of sentience-chauvinism that is based on nothing but the analogies we can make from our own cases. Perhaps there is something it is like to be a tree -- we know this no more than we capital-k know what it is like for our neighbours to feel pain.
I'm not convinced by this though. I don't think the external world or the body is necessarily publicly accessible in the way that people often assume it is. I agree that a lot of it is -- we can see birds, we can see people's skin, we can touch the bark of the tree -- but I think there are more aspect to bodies and the external world than just this, and that those aspects are the privileged parts. What I mean to say is, the body isn't a completely public thing. Not the body of a human, not the body of a dog, not the body of a tree.
It only feels like it is like something to be who we are because we are the particular configuration and collection of atoms that we are. This collection reacts and operates in a specific way, different to that collection, and that one over there, and in the end, with our powers of language and cogency, we call this collection most near "I" and that one over there "you" or "it". The reason it feels like there is something to be you isn't necessarily because you have a non-extended mind; it could just as well be that all you are is the collection of atoms that compose your body and their reactions, and the reason that other people can't feel this is simply because they are their own collection of atoms; we are separated bodily, physically, not mentally.
In light of this, we know no more about what it is like to be another human than what it is like to be a dog or a tree. We often assume that it isn't like anything to be a tree because they are not sentient, but this is a kind of sentience-chauvinism that is based on nothing but the analogies we can make from our own cases. Perhaps there is something it is like to be a tree -- we know this no more than we capital-k know what it is like for our neighbours to feel pain.
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