War of the Pellf: The Self In Self Organizing Cooperatives

War of the Pellf: The Self In Self Organizing Cooperatives

Introduction

What are the exact mechanisms by which self-organizing-cooperatives (abbreviated SOC) and structures of self-organizing cooperatives (SSOC’s) interact with one another? How freely can they be arranged and rearranged? How can they be constructed to deal with racial, gender, and class inequality? Individuals, selves or persons, form the units whose mereological sum is society. Within the Buddhist tradition, the metaphysical status of the individual varies and as a result, the nature of society comprised of such individuals varies. I believe that within the context of non-hierarchical societal relations the questions enumerated above cannot be meaningfully addressed without committing to a conception of the self however minimal. At the same time in many Buddhist traditions whose practices promote non-hierarchical social relations there is no self.

The lack of self in the Madhyamika tradition coincides with the principle of independent origination and lack of essence in all things. It is this underlying principle (of independent origination or emptiness) which I think can form the metaphysical basis upon which the definition of the polis, the public-political, can be constructed. In the Mahayamaka tradition there is no difference between ultimate and conventional reality. This principle (of interdependent origination) enables us to see that perceived differences (like membership in a SOC, to a gender, race, trade, art, etc.) are merely conventional. Thus, if there is no self ultimately or conventionally then all members of human society (the public), and any particular SOC’s both are and are not unique members of every SOC, since all SOCs are interconnected. Thus, in the Mahayamaka tradition, the formation of SOC’s on the basis of some particular properties the persons possess would be conventional and unnecessary; thus SOC formation is always voluntary and contingent if one believes in the metaphysics of the Mahayamaka tradition.

However, merely highlighting the universality of interdependence (of all things withing the conception of no-self) does not go far enough in capturing aspects of conventional reality relevant to the flourishing of human persons. In the western traditions we are highly motivated to propose some theory of the minimal-self so that we might rearrange the society we live in today to be a more collective and mutually beneficial socio-political structure (or to advance our understanding of human’s place in nature). Thus to supplement the capitalist alternative in SOC’s, I examine Thich Nhat Hanhs mindfulness practices constitutive of Interbeing and draw upon some of his precepts as it informs us of the type of self possible in self organizing cooperatives. It seems very natural to commit theoretically to a material basis for the continued existence of human beings, and on this basis to build into the fundamental principles of all SOCs a measure of the degree to which they promote human flourishing. However, over and above human flourishing we might aim to promote particular selves in the constitution of SOC formation; the type of self we can promote, as we will see, is partly circumscribed by Nhat Hanhs practices.

It is one thing to assume that the self has a particular conventional status (perhaps a very important and ineliminable one) and on this basis to promote its welfare, and another to build a subject out of ultimate reality and describe how to promote its welfare. The Buddha provides insights which mitigate the force of conventional reality and promote the acceptance of ultimate reality (a reality of no-self). To this end it might be argued that the Buddha is insensitive to many potentially desirable aspects of the social reality we co-construct. Thus, it is required that a sense of the minimal self such that a group of humans can lead a good life (praxis) and flourish, but on which no unnecessary properties are created/encouraged, be articulated. This essay provides some orientation of modern theories of the minimal self, some indication of the social forces present due to the rise of capitalism and motivates further work in the compatibility of our modern western theories of the minimal self with social organization which respond to the social circumstances capitalism leaves us in.

On the other hand it is important to realize that many aspects of human flourishing may not be conceived along the lines most people care about, such as the pursuit of beauty and pleasure. The Buddha warns that the three sources of dukkha (suffering) are 1) desire, 2) ignorance and 3) aversion. Whether the Buddha is right in a societal context we will need to examine. What is necessary is an analysis of several minimal selves in various Buddhist traditions (such as the ones Garfield writes about in his Chapter 4 “The Self”) with a critical eye toward what attitudes, character traits, and defining interdependent features a society of such selves would promote. However, withing the confines of this essay I cannot examine both the selves in the various Buddhist traditions and the selves which have appeared in modern cognitive science and so I will focus on just the recent minimal views of the self in western philosophy/cognitive-science and the recent development of Buddhist doctrine of anatman (no-self) as found in Nhat Han’s development of Zen Buddhism.

In the following I will states some definitions, exposit six or so theories of the minimal self, orient our discussion to our present social situatedness under capitalism and examine one constitution for practicing mindfulness to promote social welfare for the self being promoted (or lack thereof)

The difference between selves and persons.

A plethora of minimal selves.

SOC’s and top down power structures.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s constitution for interbeing.

Selves, persons and pelves

It is important at the outset to be clear how I use “persons” and “selves”. This may change over the course of this essay as we look at different theories; it may no longer be unambiguous to use the terms as defined here, but still being clear about the starting denotation of these terms will be useful. By “person” I mean human being, by which I mean the orthodox interpretation of homo sapiens among paleoanthropologists, which picks out the organism whose anatomical features resemble those seen today, i.e. the human organism which shares anatomical features with the first organism of similar anatomy dating back to 315,000 years ago.

In contrast, by “self” I mean a theoretical posit in a philosophic or religious tradition, created to do some explanatory work: as the posit connecting various embodiments (ex: the western “soul” responsible for guaranteeing that the person who dies at one time is connected, via the soul, to the entity in hell/heaven/purgatory at another time); as the posit responsible for bearing the aggregates of ideas to a particular human body over time; as the posit responsible for witnessing the syntheses of all the aspects of perception into one unified total experience at one time; …. Different philosophers and religious leaders have argued for different purposes for the theoretical posit of the “self” and we will be looking at why one is better suited for self organizing communities (abbreviated SOC pronounced [ess-o-see], more on this later).

Finally, In order to not commit a slight of hand in my own argumentation concerning the relationship between the self and person, and to avoid confusion: if it seems like the scrupulous reader might be confused about whether the discussion pertains to “selves” or “persons” without begging the question, I will use a new term “pellf”. “Pellf” will be stipulated to mean “either self or person, not distinguished as the paleoanthropological object nor the philosophic/theological posit”. The plural form of “pellf” will be “pelves”. With such a term we can talk about collections of persons or selves without assuming anything causal/historical nor philosophical properties about the group. We can start with a collection of pelves and ask: what would make this collection have this or that social property?

A metaphor might help: selves, persons and pelves are related like neutron/proton cores, electrons and molecules. Persons are the neutron/proton base. Those entities within the smallest circle of definitive properties which a self or person could possess are persons. Outside the smallest circle are some properties which might matter (for effective human organization, i.e. politics), such as diachronic identity, and different theories of the self will draw different ellipses around the persons’ circle in the center (in the metaphor there are different levels of energetic charge which electrons can exist circling around the atom). Outside any particular person core, and self-theory-ellipse, are other properties (which one theory of the self does not find important, but which another theory might). Thus a self cannot exist without a person, but any self has numerous pelves which differ from it in holding one or more property necessary for the self which that particular self theory do not (and vice versa). Pelves are hypothetical, they might be a myth, as they require us to imagine (or investigate) what properties homo sapiens could possess. The disjunction of all the possible selves is the domain of the pellf (in the metaphor: all the possible electrical charges of the molecule is the pellf). Extending the metaphor for a second: different collections of energetically charged atoms can combine to form molecules (in chemistry a molecule is the smallest collection of atoms which can form a chemical reaction); collections of selves can form a society. As I’m stipulating the use of these terms, the properties of persons are the fixed core, the properties of selves are different atoms on the periodic table, and the properties of pelves are molecules. The chemistry is very easy when you have one self (one atomic core and electrical charge) to simply multiply. If one theory of the self is correct then it should not be difficult to imagine what a society of such selves might be like. However, I’m afraid the actual world has many philosophic and religious traditions so in fact we live in messy world, a world one self and many pelves (though which self is the true self will differ depending on who you ask).

The recent plethora of minimalist views of the self

There are many views of the self. Within the western tradition there have recently been several accounts of the minimal self put forward. The following theories are ones which Garfield notes in his chapter “The Self” in his book Engaged Buddhism: “…the plethora of recent proposals for “minimalist” conceptions of the self (Strawson 1999, 2011a, Gallagher 2000, Thompson 2007, 2014, Zahavi 2005, 2009).” I do not aim to comprehensively represent all the views of the self but the following form a fairly representative sample. Something that motives these views is that in addition to the person there often seem to be some necessary properties to tack on (either to explain our experience as of an individual, or which are necessary to govern our social/collective action for the preservation of our species). Garfield explains why in the west the notion of a minimal self is so appealing:

“It is easy to see what drives minimalism as something like a movement. On the one hand, we have the strong intuition that we are selves in some sense—subjects, agents, centers of consciousness and referents of personal pronouns—and philosophical commitments in domains as diverse as metaphysics, epistemology and ethics to some kind of unified subject if agency, choice, rational justification and moral assessment is to be possible. On the other hand, the clear naturalistic light of reason tells us that over and above a complex organism in a rich social matrix there seems to be nothing that fits the bill of a continuing, integrated entity that subserves these functions.

Minimalism presents itself as the middle path, providing a self that does all of the requisite philosophical work and satisfies at least most of our pretheoretical intuitions, but without the objectionable ghostly substance or suspect empirical claims that more maximal theories involve. Buddhists love to valorize their positions as middle paths; after all, in the Discourse Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Doctrine the Buddha presented his doctrine as the middle path. Nonetheless, we must always beware of claims to the middle; they can end up being little more than Solomonic compromises, giving to neither side anything it could ever want. In any case, this seems to be the final major issue at stake in Western debates about the self: Is a minimal conception of the self viable, and if so, which minimal conception is in the end acceptable?”

Here then, are the minimal selves Garfield notes. In the following I quote the authors and comment on their proposal. Something I do not discuss in this section is the question of motivation: ‘for what purpose do these authors advocate for their theory?” This is not always clear. Our purposes are clear: we aim to create a basis for society upon the pillar of a self which will allow for the development of self-organizing cooperatives which do not re-inscribe the oppression capitalist social arrangements create. Thus the critical question to keep in mind when assessing these views is “what would society be like if this view of the self were correct, if society promoted those entities, what social institutions would it give rise to?” In the next section I will focus on social organization, so I will restrict my comments here to the relations these theories bare to one another.

Strawson 1999 (this is a quote from the essay which I think captures the central idea):

“What, then, is the ordinary, human sense of the self, insofar as we can generalize

about it? I propose that it is (at least) the sense that people have of themselves as being,

specifically, a mental presence; a mental someone; a single mental thing that is a

conscious subject of experience, that has a certain character or personality, and that is in

some sense distinct from all its particular experiences, thoughts, and so on, and indeed

from all other things. It is crucial that it is thought of as a distinctively mental

phenomenon…”

This is reminiscent of Descartes “Cogito” or “I-think”. I expect many western readers would fine this proposal comforting, especially if one believes in the soul and equates this mental presence to the soul. I should note that Strawson himself is a materialist at this time, so he really means a particular brain state by ‘mental presence’, ontologically. Phenomenologically he means the experience which takes a self as it’s subject, whether there is one that exists or not. The view is rather vague and so it is more useful to characterize the Strawsonian minimal self along the lines of Strawson 2011.

Strawson 2011 (this is Strawson’s abstract. In 12 years his positions changes, the minimal self becomes more circumscribed: character, personality, all the things that link experiences together over time gets dropped in his updated theory of the self):

“This article examines the metaphysics and phenomenology of the self or subject of experience. It suggests that the phenomenological description of the minimal subject requires no reference to body, environment, or social relations and argues for a thin conception of subjectivity which equates the subject with the experience itself. Under this principle of minimal conception, the subject does not exist if the person (or human animal) is asleep (unconscious). It contends that the profound metaphysical question about experience and experiential selves is whether experience is limited to certain types of physical processes, or is characteristic of all physical processes, which would entail panpsychism.”

In an interview Strawson says that experience is very rapidly changing, so selves are very short lived (i.e. of duration somewhere between Planck’s constant and a few seconds).

Gallaher 2000 (this is from the conclusion):

“In a recent book, Damasio has insightfully captured the difficulty involved in expressing the interrelations between the minimal (‘core’) self and the narrative (‘autobiographical’) self. The difficulty is due to complexities that are apparent on both the personal and the sub-personal, neurological levels. Episodic memory, which is necessary for the construction of the narrative self, is subject to constant remodeling under the influence of factors that include innate and acquired dispositions as well as social and cultural environments. The registration of episodic memory as ‘my’ memory of ‘myself’ clearly depends on a minimal but consistently reiterated sense of self that I recognize, without error, as myself. In some respects, as Damasio insists, this depends on narrowly defined, embodied capabilities and feelings. In other regards, however, the core features of the self are constantly being reinterpreted by the narrative process. In the neurological terms that Damasio uses this means that there are extremely complex demands made on the processes that link early sensory cortexes that hold information on the minimal or core self, and convergence or dispositional zones that contribute to the generation of the narrative self. In this regard, he makes it clear that at present the neuroscientist, like the philosopher, can offer, at best, informed speculation on these processes.”

Here one can see that Gallaher contrasts Strawson’s temporal slice or minimal self with “the narrative (‘autobiographical’) self.” Gallaher finds that this distinction usefully divides approaches of the self in a way “that promise the best exchange of ideas between philosophy of mind and the other cognitive sciences and that convey the breadth of philosophical analysis on this topic.”

The core minimal self and the narrative self can complement and contradict one another and it is far from obvious or known how to capture an experience such that it can be shared. In fact, Garfield calls the narrative self the “maximally minimal account” citing Dennett, or Hutto as it’s champions, and says that Strawson’s view ““reduce” the self from a diachronic continuant to a series of momentary entities, each of which is nonetheless an integrated subject of experience and agent of reasoning and action, emphasizing a kind of synchronic unity at the expense of diachronic unity”. Thus, autobiographical narrative and momentary experience are distinct factors (or to use the metaphor from before, ellipses) which can be added to/drawn around the core person to demarcate the self. Autobiographical narrative and actual experience, as we know, often come apart. For example: An individual might say “I hate doing the dishes” (out loud, or to themselves). Suppose the same individual actually goes and washes the dishes and they have a rather mundane experience, slightly relieve some stress, and get a little joy from the running water (and lets suppose, to avoid confusion, that these experiences had no accompanying narrative). Either the individual failed to refer to their selves with the sentence “I hate doing dishes” and so we should discount the narrative selves’ contribution in a characterization of the ‘true self’ – the narrative self is pellf -- or they in fact succeed in referred to their self with the sentence and we should discount the experiences – the experiences themselves are pellf. There may be other options for resolving this and endless other hypotheticals which aim to show that these two self-theories come apart (in what properties they attribute to the person). What would be necessary to refute my claim here (that they are distinct approaches to the self; I am agreeing with Gallaher) is a proof that all experience has an accompanying narrative and vice versa, and that the meaning of the sentences of the narrative and the content of the experience are the same. Gallaher points out how we (cognitive scientists) are going about examining sub-personal neurological mechanisms which contribute both to the phenomenal experience of being the subject of experience, as well as to the formation of a narrative which takes oneself as the protagonist. I would be very surprised if in the final theory the narrative and the experiential attribute all and only the same properties to the person. The next theory looks a little closer at those sub-personal neurological/nervous and

Thompson 2007 (this is a summary of the book):

“Thompson draws upon sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy to argue that mind and life are more continuous than has previously been accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind. Where there is life, Thompson argues, there is mind: life and mind share common principles of self-organization, and the self-organizing features of mind are an enriched version of the self-organizing features of life. Rather than trying to close the explanatory gap, Thompson marshals philosophical and scientific analyses to bring unprecedented insight to the nature of life and consciousness. This synthesis of phenomenology and biology helps make Mind in Life a vital and long-awaited addition to his landmark volume The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (coauthored with Eleanor Rosch and Francisco Varela).”

On the metaphysical question of whether a minimal self is limited to a particular physical process or not (and Strawson argues that it is in 2011, or else panpsychism is true) Thompson argues that it not (limited to a particular physical process). While Strawson leaves open the possibility of panpsychism being true and hints at it’s absurdity, Thompson takes panpsychism on board. Here Thompson argues that panpsychism is likely true and that mindedness is ubiquitous outside, as well as inside, persons (so long as there is life).

One might object at this point: ‘Thompson is arguing for minds being everywhere in nature, not selves.’ But recall that Strawson (1999) calls the self a distinctly mental substance. Thompson then can show that the mental substance person’s take themselves to be (autobiographical narrative) or experience (minimal core) can be extended to other living things. Thompson (2007) does not do this, however. The self he argues for supervenes on the person’s biological sub-systems. Garfield characterizes Thompson (2007) as promoting a neurobiologically grounded conception of a constructed self: “[Thompson] begins by arguing that any account of embodied agency for biological organisms like us requires a conception of selfhood, on pain of positing knowledge, agency and experience without any subject for those phenomena:

The dynamic sensorimotor approach needs a notion of autonomous selfhood or agency because to explain perceptual experience it appeals to sensorimotor knowledge. Knowledge implies a knower or agent or self that embodies this knowledge…

Thompson then characterizes this self as an invariant topological pattern that is recursively produced by the [[[Wikipedia:nervous system|nervous system]]]: The nervous system establishes and maintains a sensorimotor cycle, whereby what one senses depends directly on how one moves, and how one moves depends directly on what one senses. Whereas biological selfhood in its core cellular form is brought forth by the operational closure of autopoietic network, sensorimotor selfhood results from the operational closure of the nervous system. In either case, it is legitimate to invoke the notion of “self” because the dynamics of the system is characterized by an invariant topological pattern that is recursively produced by the system and that defines an outside to which the system is actively and normatively related.”

Garfield takes such an account as Thompson’s to not establish a self, but to reduce the self to non-existence in favor of a no-self account of personhood. I think the worry is well warranted. After all the self is a philosophical or religious posit and the person a paleoanthropological category. If one’s account of the self is merely a filling-in-the-details version of the person, I see no reason to call it a theory of the self. On the other hand, if there is no self, as the Buddha insists and argues for, then Thompson’s theory it is very important as we must have the details right about what biological organisms we are, what our capabilities and limits are, if we are to flourish together. Notice as well, that the notion of the self, either the ‘biological self’ or the ‘sensorimotor self’, is justified for Thompson because there is an outside “to which the system is actively and normatively related”. The way the biological or sensorimotor self are related to an outside active world needs no illustration, but taking these systems to enter into normative relations with the outside requires more than instantaneous experience: it seems that Thompson is assuming something like the narrative self which these internal recursive patters of the system provide a justification for (example: one does not get a pattern of activation in the nervous system which we can gloss over with the description ‘I ought to move the right hand away from the fire’ without an evaluation of ‘it is bad for the right hand to be in the fire’). If what legitimizes Thompson’s view of the self (as opposed to a no-self account of personhood) is the evaluative component of these internal systems it’s still left open whether those evaluative relations can be articulated without narrative/autobiographical language; after all there’s often a lot of unnecessary language in narrative descriptions and the descriptions are often very high level, leaving out the sub-personal events (which Thompson uses to base his evaluation on). I think it is worth distinguishing the narrative self from Thompson’s. Thompson’s view should be called the sub-narrative view. Imagine all the details of the sub-personal living organisms of your favorite novel written down and all of the high level details omitted (and all the details of non-living organisms remaining the same). The original narrative (O) would have details this new narrative (N) lacked and vice versa, while for Dennett/Hutto O would be a tale of selves and N would not, while for Thompson the N would count as a tale of selves and O would not.

Thompson 2014 (seven years later):

Thompson’s 2014 essay is not so much about a conception of the minimal self as it is a series of reasons for the integration of neurphenomenology and Buddhist meditative practices. More broadly it argues that the separation of science from some religious practices (such as developing a greater awareness of the state of ones own mind and monitoring of ones attention) has hampered our cognitive sciences. One important point of the essay, however, is that the practice of introspection in science has had such a poor reception in the west following William James due to 1) extremely impoverished stimuli which subjects are to respond to and 2) the mixing of causal-historical conjecture into subject’s reports which are supposed to be about their phenomenology. The latter can be attributed to a lack of training on how to introspect, monitor ones cognition and understand one’s own meta-cognition, all factors which the Buddhist meditative practices could supplement.

Zahavi 2009:

Drawing on the phenomenological tradition, particularly Heidegger, Husserl and Sartre, Zahavi’s primary target of attack is the view that the self is entirely socially constructed, and that to be a self is to be something more than a subject of experience. He writes:

“The crucial idea propounded by [[[Wikipedia:Martin Heidegger|Heidegger]], Husserl and Satre] is that an understanding of what it means to be a self calls for an examination of experience, and vice versa. Galen Strawson has recently argued that if we wish to understand what it means to be a self, we should look at self-experience, since self-experience is what gives rise to the question in the first place by giving us a vivid sense that there is something like a self (Strawson 2000, 40). The phenomenologists would concur and even go one step further by claiming that the most basic form of self is constituted in and through self-experience.”

Then expanding on the view further and distinguishing it from point-of-view theories of the self (like Searle’s) Zahavi writes:

“As should be clear from what I have written so far, the account I favor denies that the self under consideration – and let us just call it the experiential self – is a separately existing entity, but it would also deny that the self is simply reducible to any specific experience or (sub-)set of experiences. If we shift the focus from a narrow investigation of a single experience and instead considers a diachronic sequence of experiences, it should be obvious that each successive experience doesn’t have its own unique for-me-ness or mineness – as if the difference between one experience and the next experience was as absolute as the difference between my current experience and the current experience of somebody else.”

Importantly Zahavi spends a section of his paper arguing that this self should not be confused with the Cartesian-style self, “[according to which] the self is viewed as some kind of self-sufficient and self-governing world-detached residuum”. In addition, the first sentence of this quote distinguishes his view of the experiential self from Strawson 2011 since the self is not according to Zahavi reducible to each instantaneous experience. As I quoted above he endorses but goes beyond Strawson 2000.

At the end of the abstract Zahavi writes “In the final part of the paper, I argue that the self is so multifaceted a phenomenon that various complementary accounts must be integrated if we are to do justice to its complexity.” In this final section “A multi-faceted account,” Zahavi begins by suggesting that a reconciliation between the minimal self he advocates (a for-mee-ness) with Mead’s social constructivism on the grounds that Zahavi’s minimal self might be a pre-condition for Mead’s: “…not only is the minimal notion of self fully compatible with a more complex and socially situated notion of self, but the former is arguably also a condition of possibility for the latter (cf. Zahavi 2005, 2007).” Briefly, for “Mead, to be a self is ultimately more a question of becoming an object than of being a subject. In his view, one can only become an object to oneself in an indirect manner, namely by adopting the attitudes of others on oneself, and this is something that can only happen within a social environment (Mead 1962, 138).” I have been personally drawn to distinguishing between three selves, each of which has as much claim to being ‘the’ self as the others and so I share Zahavi’s motivation. But he has more to offer to get us towards a multi-faceted account: Zahavi also cites two recent social constructivist about the self (Wolfgang Prinz, and György Gergely) because they seem to employ the very same minimal self that Zahavi does when talking about a single individual! Prinz says that the socially constructed self is the subjective presences or for-me-ness, and Gergely that infants develop a sense of subjective experience because their caregivers treat them as if they already have subjective experiences. The main philosophical objection Zahavi mounts against these authors, who talk about the very same phenomena as their target, the “for-me-ness”, is: they seem to implicitly assume of a higher order theory of some mental content; specifically access to subjective experience is for these authors mediated by access to second-order-representations which are themselves socially constructed. If one does not accept such a theory then subjective experience can be first order.

To take stock: I have discussed six theories of the minimal self: two theories from Strawson, one from Gallaher, two from Thompson and one from Zahavi. Along the way I also explained or mentioned a dozen or so other views (Damazio, Dennett, Hutto, Searle, Mead, Menchaca, Prinz, Gergely, Husserl, Sartre, Heidegger, Frith). Over the course of his life Strawson’s theories of the self become more and more circumscribed until the self is the instantaneous experience of the present, here one moment and gone the next. Gallaher does not so much as present a theory as introduce a complication for furthering cognitive science: how do we deal with the fact that our autobiographical narrative may or may not coincide with our subjective experience? Thompson’s work suggests two further complications: the first concerns panpsychism and the latter is about the physical constitution of the person and how that relates to the self. I’ll draw out the insights in turn. First if all physical processes involving life involve minds and if all minds involve selves then all physical processes concerning life involve selves and thus the concept of the self is trivial. I believe to avoid this Thompson focuses on the second point. The core insight of his analysis of the self along neurobiological grounds is to characterize the physical processes that demarcate the interior of the person from the outside, where the line is drawn such that the self is those physical processes actively and normatively oriented to the outside. As I point out above the normative dimension of the orientation of these physical processes requires a gloss to be normative (for norms trade in reasons and reasons are person level concepts). I doubt that gloss can be consistently articulated along narrative/autobiographical terms. After all, we are talking about sub-personal unconscious processes. None-the-less the identifying the self as the type of entity which distinguishes between the endogenous and the exogenous is significant for the simple reason that it provides a theoretical basis for the preservation of that interiority (specifically in a collection-of-selves context). However, the fact that this distinction does not require reference to mentality, subjectivity, for-me-ness, means that this theory might (as Garfield notes) better be conceptualized as a no-self theory of the person. Thus Thompson provides a basis for some aspects of social organization compatible with the non-existence of the self. Finally Zahavi represents a view similar to Strawson, only he argues that the self persists diachronically (since it is “not reducible to any particular experience or (sub-) set of experience”). More significant, I find Zahavi’s discussion of the dialectic concerning the ‘true’ minimal self illuminating (there is none, for the self is a multi-faceted theoretical object). Rather than choose a particular notion of the self and argue that it must be correct he shows that the phenomena of the self-experience (i.e., the minimal self, according to Zahavi and Strawson,) is the same target of explanation for the social constructivist theorists and that where they disagree is on whether self-representation requires a second order theory or not.

With these tools now at our disposal we are in a position to establish the interconnectedness of selves, i.e., social organization, and in particular the types of selves we must promote. In order to do so freely we will need to briefly examine the familiar (but perhaps subliminal) features of social organization ubiquitous in light of the rise of capitalism we find ourselves in, and turn it on it’s head (quite literally, for we’re turning from top down power structures to bottom up power structures), drawing on Priest’s work.

SOCs, SSOC’s and building bottom up power structures

The proceeding has involved an examination of several views of the minimal self, i.e. what we are. One could then proceed to examine how people (human beings) organize into communities and have done so over recorded hsitory. By comparing various social/political arrangements the compatibility of some of these social and self theories might come out. Due to time/space constraints I will be focusing on the social arrangements we must take on due to the rise of capitalism. I will then compare that state to one in which we organize into self organizing communities (SOC’s).

Capital

Following Priest, following Mandel on Marx:

“The main player in a capitalist socio-economic formation is capital itself. Capital comprises machines, buildings, land, people (or, strictly speaking, their ability to work, that is, their labour power), food, money, information—anything that can be bought and sold. It is important to understand, though, that these objects are capital only because they exist and function in a particular way. That is, they are embedded in a certain network of social relations of production, exchange, and consumption. If people went out of existence, these things would no longer be capital; they would simply be bits of metal, earth, or paper. And the distinctive feature of these social relations, and so of capital itself, is simply the production of more capital. That is, capital just is wealth in search of more wealth. As Mandel puts it: ‘Capital is ... by definition, value looking for accretion, for surplus value’”

An important question which bears on social relations compatible with Captialism is: “how does the person enter into the cycle of value seeking value?” The brief answer is that people are equivalent to other objects in the cycle by which capital is capital (i.e. increases itself). The possibility that capital increases is explained by Marx as being proportional to the contribution of the person (their labor power) in the cycle of the production of Captial. The social conditions under capitalism are thus those where the individual must sell their labor power, which will function as a contributing factor to the increase in capital, which in turn will require more labor power. Thus, the promotion of capitalism (so much as capitalism promotes capital, and I’m taking that to be it’s primary function) involves a proportional diminishment of varieties of social arrangements which the person can enter into. Under capitalism persons can only acquire and use resources using money/currency. But the means for acquiring money under capitalism are dependent on what types of good’s a particular entity responsible for producing capital promotes. Thus, the varieties of social arrangement persons can enter into which allow the persons to live (and flourish) are determined to a large extent by the compatibility of those personal developments with the activities capital promotes for itself. To some degree the persons who head the corporations which fix our social arrangements are responsible for limiting the value of the social arrangements we may enter into.

I believe it is worth echoing several of the observations Priest makes on the effects of capital on persons/selves, as this will bring into more stark relief aspects of our social life which an alternative social structure should address (SOC’s). Priest notes nine effects of capital on persons in the system: Capital keeps people impoverished by paying the individual as little as possible for their labor.

Capital promotes the weakening of people partly by creating a pool of unemployment it can exploit.

Capital seeks to produce commodities as cheaply as possible, which leads to the division of labor, which leads to a specialization of persons abilities in one or a few domains at the expense of others. Thus capital promotes the unequal development of person’s skill sets. Without monopoly control of the market different capitalist organization must compete with one another to get people to buy their commodity. Individual persons are therefore manipulated to consume products and their psychology skewed to notice and care for superfluous aspects of commodities: i.e. a consumer culture is promoted. “People are made to desire things for which there is no rational ground.”

Due to the lack of personal interests capital promotes, individuals are alienated from their labor. Thus work becomes a necessity for the continuation of life for the individual but not a means by which the individual can affirm their life (i.e. where the intentional determination of the individual for their life coincide with the product of their labor).

Seemingly significant political arrangements are greatly constrained by the way they enter into various capital engines. It is not various forms of capital that are dependent on political organization (such as direct democracy) but political institutions which are dependent on capital. Thus the inequality present between the owners of capital and the employed is reflected in the political arrangements of persons; equal political power (between owners and workers) is scarce under capitalism; unequal political power is what capital promotes.

Since people might be encouraged to change their social arrangements in light of the way capital promotes inequality, capital disguises itself, though various forms of propaganda and advertisement as a good for the people. Most importantly capital promotes people’s ignorance by deceiving them. Capitalism legitimizes selfishness, where this is understood as individual-person (or individual & those-in-immediate-affiliation) interests. The ecological and environmental effects of the nature of capital (unlimited growth) are disastrous; these environmental effects directly affect the general living conditions of all people in society, with the least livable conditions being reserved for those with the least money or access to the control of capital.

So, given the nature of the social/political conditions we find ourselves in (in an affluent area – New York City, in the position to observe, understand and change our conditions) the next question is what features of social arrangement we ought to promote. The theoretical antithesis of the type of top down power structures capitalism promotes and creates are SOC’s, which we turn to now.

Top down versus bottom up power structures:

Something definitive of the capitalist system is the inequality between those who own and manage capital and those who work for the owners. This kind of social-political arrangement is top-down in the sense that changes in the conditions of life of the people at the bottom depends on decision of the people on the top in an asymmetric fashion: people at the bottom exchange their labor, and thus live their lives within the confines set out by the people at the top. Of course the people at the top must live with the conditions they’ve set up for them and their workers, but those on top have a far greater role in determining what the group does than their workers do and generally allocate themselves more resources than those they oversee. Therefore, one of the primary features of bottom up structures which can replace our current conditions is the absence or elimination of private or small group control. The type of social organization which inscribes a bottom-up power structure is called a SOC or self organizing cooperative.

SOC’s: Self-organizing cooperatives

The concept of SOC comes from Priest 2020: “An SOC is a group of people held together by a common interest, and who organize their affairs in that common interest. Decisions are made collectively.”

The first thing to notice here is how the concept applies to people, not to selves. It is a concept which aims at promoting, therefore, the non-contentious biological animal we are. It is equally non-contentious that a top-down power structure like capitalism diminishes the well-being of our biological material constitution. Therefore SOC and capital organization fundamentally oppose one another.

The second things to note is that though SOC’s are defined by collective decision making they are not incompatible with some degree of management or collaboration by a subset of the collective for the collective-interests. An obvious issue with this is: ‘how can we fix the rules for the coalescence of decision making such that features of inequality endemic of capitalist arrangements don’t re-inscribe themselves in SOC’s?’ There are a number of suggestions to diminish the possibility of such inequality poisoning SOC’s in Priest’s book. Some of the concrete rules include (but are not limited to): A system of representation where appointments to higher levels of collective decision making is determined by a lottery system rather than campaigning. The preservation withing the system of recall of representatives who fail the needs of the collective or fail to make decisions on the basis of collective interests.

The removal of any incentivization’s connected to representing the collective (such as a high salary or other special benefits). Since SOC’s are aimed at human flourishing, they are compatible with varying views of the minimal-self. None-the-less, Is there a particular minimal self among those examined above more compatible with the cooperative element of any given SOC than every other? It seems that there will be an obvious need to set out some constitutive rules for SOC’s which has a basis in the metaphysical properties of those cooperating. Alternatively this seeming need might be mistaken and the rules of SOC constitution/organization can be motivated without the need to specify an particular theory of the self. To address these options we turn to one conception of ideal social constitution which is rooted in a no self theory tradition.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s constitution for Interbeing

Within the Madhyamika tradition in particular, according to which there is no self, Thich Nhat Hanh (the person who coined the term of ‘Engaged Buddhism’) has suggested guidelines for mindfulness in a social context, and particularly in response to the colonialism and oppression present before, during and after the Vietnam war. Since capitalism is oppressive and partly responsible for such wars Nhat Hanh’s prescriptions are particularly applicable to our present situation. The primary question which focuses our analysis into a point is: What is the nature of the no-self-person for which this constitution provides a guide? It might be that the presupposition of this question is mistaken (there is no nature), it might be the nature of one of the minimal selves we encountered before.

Briefly before we turn to the constitution, I quote William Edelglass in his framing the concept of Engage Buddhism and Nhat Hanh’s purposes in writing “Interbeing”:

Engaged Buddhists use the doctrine that all sentient beings have the seed of Buddha-nature, the capacity for waking up as enlightened beings, to support the view that every sentient being is intrinsically valuable and deserves to be treated with respect and dignity.

Each of these ethical and metaphysical doctrines plays a role in Thich Nhat Hanh’s works on engaged Buddhism. Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen master and peace activist who is generally credited with coining the term “engaged Buddhism,” played a leading role in Buddhist responses to the war in his homeland. In the 1960s, drawing on his Therava¯da training in mindfulness practice as well as his Maha¯ya¯na Zen practice, Nhat Hanh founded the Order of Interbeing (Tiep Hien), in the Rinzai lineage of Zen Buddhism. According to its charter, “The aim of the Order is to actualize Buddhism by studying, experimenting with, and applying Buddhism in modern life with a special emphasis on the bodhisattva ideal.” During the 1960s, for the Order of Interbeing and other Buddhists groups with which Nhat Hanh was working, “to actualize Buddhism” meant practicing mindfulness, but also protecting villagers under attack, providing medical aid, assisting farmers, rebuilding villages destroyed by the fighting, and advocating an end to the violence without endorsing any political or military faction. Since 1966, when he was forced into exile, Nhat Hanh has eloquently argued that engaged Buddhism is continuous with earlier Buddhist traditions but is also a form of Buddhism that is particularly suited to the contemporary world.

Nhat Hanh’s Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism succinctly formulates his approach to engaged Buddhism. While personal virtue, mindfulness, and transformation are necessary, Nhat Hanh argues, they are insufficient to overcome the great suffering caused by structures of oppression. Thus, the “Fourteen Guidelines” address individual mindfulness practice and cultivation of virtue, but also responsibilities in family life, work, and community. The text is representative of engaged Buddhist interpretations of Buddhist doctrines and practices as rafts—skillful means to alleviate suffering to which one should not get attached; Nhat Hanh explicitly valorizes mindful engagement over the particularity of any Buddhist tradition and interprets Buddhist teachings as ecumenical, nondogmatic, and universal responses to contemporary life.

Something else important to bring to the readers attention is the difference between Edelglass’ interpretation of Nhat Nanh, Nhat Hanh’s own perspective of himself and mine: whereas for Edelglass, and perhaps Nhat Nanh himself, such a constitution is approximate and contingent on contemporary life, a ‘skillful means to alleviate suffering to which one should not get attached’, I see a need to justify the claim to ‘university’ of such a response. (At the same time, outside the walls of philosophy’s academy I would fully support Nhat Hanh’s work and focus instead on specific areas of social action which could practically benefit from these guidelines.) For the sake of time/space I leave out the commentary of these fourteen practices. I reserve my commentary on the relevance of each point in the constitution of cooperatives to footnotes at the end of each ‘mindfulness training’.

The constitution:

Openness: Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, we are determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist teachings are guiding means to help us learn to look deeply and to develop our understanding and compassion. They are not doctrines to fight, kill, or die for.

Nonattachment to Views: Aware of the suffering created by attachment to views and wrong perceptions, we are determined to avoid being narrowminded and bound to present views. We shall learn and practice nonattachment from views in order to be open to others’ insights and experiences. We are aware that the knowledge we presently possess is not changeless, absolute truth. Truth is found in life, and we will observe life within and around us in every moment, ready to learn throughout our lives…

Freedom of Thought: Aware of the suffering brought about when we impose our views on others, we are committed not to force others, even our children, by any means whatsoever—such as authority, threat, money, propaganda, or indoctrination—to adopt our views. We will respect the right of others to be different and to choose what to believe and how to decide. We will, however, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness through compassionate dialogue. Awareness of Suffering: Aware that looking deeply at the nature of suffering can help us develop compassion and find ways out of suffering, we are determined not to avoid or close our eyes before suffering. We are committed to finding ways, including personal contact, images, and sounds, to be with those who suffer, so we can understand their situation deeply and help them transform their suffering into compassion, peace, and joy.

Simple, Healthy Living: Aware that true happiness is rooted in peace, solidity, freedom, and compassion, and not in wealth or fame, we are determined not to take as the aim of our life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure, nor to accumulate wealth while millions are hungry and dying. We are committed to living simply and sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those in need. We will practice mindful consuming, not using alcohol, drugs, or any other products that bring toxins into our own and the collective body and consciousness.

Dealing with Anger: Aware that anger blocks communication and creates suffering, we are determined to take care of the energy of anger when it arises and to recognize and transform the seeds of anger that lie deep in our consciousness. When anger comes up, we are determined not to do or say anything, but to practice mindful breathing or mindful walking and acknowledge, embrace, and look deeply into our anger. We will learn to look with the eyes of compassion at those we think are the cause of our anger.

Dwelling Happily in the Present Moment: Aware that life is available only in the present moment and that it is possible to live happily in the here and now, we are committed to training ourselves to live deeply each moment of daily life. We will try not to lose ourselves in dispersion or be carried away by regrets about the past, worries about the future, or craving, anger, or jealousy in the present. We will practice mindful breathing to come back to what is happening in the present moment. We are determined to learn the art of mindful living by touching the wondrous, refreshing, and healing elements that are inside and around us, and by nourishing seeds of joy, peace, love, and understanding in ourselves, thus facilitating the work of transformation and healing in our consciousness.

Community and Communication: Aware that the lack of communication always brings separation and suffering, we are committed to training ourselves in the practice of compassionate listening and loving speech. We will learn to listen deeply without judging or reacting and refrain from uttering words that can create discord or cause the community to break. We will make every effort to keep communications open and to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.. . .

Truthful and Loving Speech: Aware that words can create suffering or happiness, we are committed to learning to speak truthfully and constructively, using only words that inspire hope and confidence. We are determined not to say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people, nor to utter words that might cause division or hatred. We will not spread news that we do not know to be certain nor criticize or condemn things of which we are not sure. We will do our best to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten our safety. . . . Protecting the Sangha: Aware that the essence and aim of a Sangha is the practice of understanding and compassion, we are determined not to use the Buddhist community for personal gain or profit or transform our community into a political instrument. A spiritual community should, however, take a clear stand against oppression and injustice and should strive to change the situation without engaging in partisan conflicts.

Right Livelihood: Aware that great violence and injustice have been done to our environment and society, we are committed not to live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. We will do our best to select a livelihood that helps realize our ideal of understanding and compassion. Aware of global economic, political and social realities, we will behave responsibly as consumers and as citizens, not investing in companies that deprive others of their chance to live.

Reverence for Life: Aware that much suffering is caused by war and conflict, we are determined to cultivate nonviolence in our daily lives, to promote peace education, mindful mediation, and reconciliation within families, communities, nations, and in the world. We are determined not to kill and not to let others kill. We will diligently practice deep looking with our Sangha to discover better ways to protect life and prevent war….

Generosity: Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, we are committed to cultivating loving kindness and learning ways to work for the wellbeing of people, animals, plants, and minerals. We will practice generosity by sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need. We are determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others. We will respect the property of others, but will try to prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other beings. . . Right Conduct (For lay members): Aware that sexual relations motivated by craving cannot dissipate the feeling of loneliness but will create more suffering, frustration, and isolation, we are determined not to engage in sexual relations without mutual understanding, love, and a long-term commitment. In sexual relations, we must be aware of future suffering that may be caused. . . . We will treat our bodies with respect and preserve our vital energies (sexual, breath, spirit) for the realization of our bodhisattva ideal. . .

Taking stock:

One of the views of the minimal self incompatible with social cooperation premised on Nhat Hanh’s practices is the self as the momentary self-experience of the spacious present. I suggest to one who brings up practice seven, that dwelling in the experience of the present means learning techniques to attend to one’s phenomenology and that practice seven should be understood as the minimal self of Zahavi 2009 rather than Strawson 2011. As to be expected by a developer of the Madhyamika tradition, the great majority of these mindful practices presume no metaphysical properties of the self, but many are only possible to interpret if our object of concern are persons. At the same time many of these practices highlight the place in nature of human beings, not elevating the human above concerns for the environment and the rest of nature. In addition there is much to like about this constitution: There are several features of how capital forces social organization which these practices address! To highlight a few: Priest capital effect 7 (capital promotes propaganda about capital) is addressed by Hanh’s practice 9 (speaking truthfully), Priest capital effect 9 (capital destroys the environment) is addressed by Hanh’s practice 12 (reverence for life) and 13 (generosity to all life), Priest capital effect 4 (capital competition promotes consumerist culture) is addressed by Hanh’s practice 11 (right livelihood).

It is clear therefore that many of Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness practices directly address some of the social conditions integral to maintaining the type of top down power structure endemic of capitalism, both addressing and prescribing a way of overcoming such forms of oppression.

Conclusion:

At this point I do not presume to have argued conclusively that a particular view of the minimal self is necessary to assume for a form of cooperative organization which opposes the oppressive features of capitalism. However I have argued that some of the views of the minimal self are less compatible with one development of mindfulness practices (Nhat Hanh’s), namely the view of the self in Strawson 2011 (and to a lesser extent Strawson 1999/2000). As Zahavi 2009 points out we need to take the self as a multi-faceted concept, but that the for-me-ness of self-experience might play a constitutive role in our more socially mediated mental-representations of the self. This suggests the importance of phenomenal experience when it comes to forming cooperatives and particularly the

individual’s connection to the product of their labor. Observations like Gallaher’s concerning the way in which autobiographical narrative and phenomenal experience can come apart remind us that in order to promote the right view (not be ignorant of the actual determinates of our social arrangements) motivates us to reconcile views according to which the self is socially constructed (our second order concepts) with those according to which the self is identical to the experience of for-mee-ness of experience (or first person access). Presently the only way that can occur is if we are not deceiving ourselves to the effect of social arrangements due to capitalism. I hope it is clear that we will also not achieve our goals of promoting just social coordination by uniquely privileging the importance of self-experience, nor uniquely privileging the human animal. We must see self-experience as a scientific phenomena and develop or cognitive sciences in conjunction with meditative practices which can further delineate varieties of self experience (or introspective mental awareness). In addition we must see human flourishing as interconnected to the flourishing of every other aspect of nature and the environment and realize the folly of the pursuit/promotion of pelves for what it is: ill gained conceptions, commodities which capitalist propaganda has created the demand for.

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