Seeing as how I’m all about learning things and being challenged by new ideas (hence this blog), at some point last year I figured I should be doing this stuff in real life too. I searched around my local community for some sort of philosophical discussion group, and although I was surprised at the slim pickings in this supposedly intellectual region, I did end up finding a small group of like-minded people with whom I've been sharing some very enlightening discussions for the past half a year or so. The organizer of the group recently emailed me asking if I would be willing to lead the discussion for the upcoming topic “What is the Self?” and I happily agreed. Here I’ll sketch out some ground I’d like to cover at the meet-up and try to raise some questions that should generate an active discussion.Contemplating the necessary components.
The first question in any debate about such a nebulous topic is a pedantic one: how do we define our terms? Defining the self can be a cumbersome task though; somewhat like explicating the function of “the” in a sentence, the explanation is disproportionately more difficult than the usage. I thought a better way to get people comfortable talking about themselves would be to flip the question and ask what they would have to lose in order to not be themselves any longer – in other words, what would have to happen for you to become someone else?
Becoming someone else is an idea that makes me uncomfortable to think about. I like me and would prefer to continue being me for as long as possible. But I don’t need to look too far into the past to find someone who occupies not only all of my familiar places but even my body, someone who I hesitate to identify as me. I recognize that at one point this person was me, but whoever he was is distinct from the me that exists currently. Becoming someone else is evidently something I've done before, probably several times at least, and yet it’s something I look forward to doing again with trepidation. On the other hand, some changes seem desirable; for example, I will be in some very subtle way different after the meet-up discussion of this topic – hopefully more informed and knowledgeable. This change doesn't seem as problematic because something necessary is maintained: the periphery is affected but the core remains the same.
