Emotions and the Self

EMOTIONS AND THE SELF

Much of the perplexity that motivates modern discussion of the

nature of mind derives indirectly from the striking success of

physical explanation. Not only has physics itself advanced at a

remarkable pace in the last four centuries; every hope has been

held out that, in principle, all science can be understood and

ultimately studied in terms of mechanisms proper to physics.

Seeing all natural phenomena as explicable in terms appropriate to

physics, however, makes the mental seem to be a singularity in

nature. Chemistry and biology may well be reducible to physics,

but the same seems hardly possible for the mental. The gulf

between mind and physics seems too great to bridge, and the success

of physics guarantees its standing. The place of mind in nature is

thereby rendered problematic. This line of reasoning has tempted

thinkers since Descartes to see the mind as not only independent of

other natural phenomena, but as even somehow lying outside the

natural order itself.

A variety of particular problems about how the mental fits

with the rest of nature have been widely discussed in recent years.

Less often noticed, however, is that similar problems appear to

affect our understanding of the concept of the self in relation to

the natural order. For something to be, or have, a self, two

conditions seem intuitively necessary. There must be some sort of

unity in the mental life of that being. In addition, to have or be

a self, one must be distinguishable from other beings, and in

particular from other beings of the same or of a relevantly similar

sort. Intuitively, nothing can be a self unless it functions in

some suitably unified way and unless there is a reasonably clear

contrast between it, considered as a self, and other things

distinct from it. It is perhaps plausible to see the conceptual

resources of modern physics as adequate to explain the physical

unity and individuality of the macroscopic objects around us,

including the biological integrity of living organisms such as

ourselves. But it may well seem that, however well physics can

accomplish those tasks, its conceptual resources are simply insuf-

ficient to explain the special functional unity and individuality

involved in something's being a self.

The difficulty emerges especially vividly when we contrast

the way a common sense view of things represents the place of the

self in nature with the way this might be represented by the view

of the world suggested by physics. On the common sense view, the

world consists of macroscopic objects of various kinds, which

behave in the ways they do because of their intrinsic properties.

This sort of view leaves it open to regard those organisms which

have mental abilities as simply special sorts of organisms. There

may still be a problem in saying exactly what mental abilities are

and what properties and capacities are special to such organisms.

But the problem is not that of explaining how the mental can arise

and exist in nature, but the problem of articulating just what the

mental is and trying to determine what is special to those organ-

isms that have mental states. On a common sense view of this sort,

the special unity and individuality that characterize selves also

poses no special problem. Organisms generally exhibit a remarkable

degree of functional unity because of their biological makeup.

This functional unity results in a clear contrast between individ-

ual organisms and their surrounding environment, including other

individuals. Organisms that have more elaborate abilities and

properties will function in ways that are more distinctively

unified and more effectively resist impingement from the environ-

ment. Such organisms will therefore be selves to a greater degree

than less elaborate organisns. Various psychological and social

abilities will presumably be the culmination of such functioning.

By contrast, modern physics conceives of natural phenomena

as due to the behavior and interaction of nonmacroscopic entities

governed by mathematically formulable laws. Such laws must gener-

ate and explain the relative autonomy of biological organisms by

appeal to the nomological behavior of interacting parts, ideally at

the biochemical and biophysical levels of analysis. The emergence

of selves among the furniture of physical reality needs special

explanation,