Unity of self

So the self what's that all about. The common conception is the self is the essence of human, something that has come through time in a form called human nature and is described in linguistics by the unity that is the word I, it is the unity that makes my life mine, after all whose else could it be.

So the contention here is that there is no unified self and the only reason that we might talk about it is out of a need for the narrative coherence unity brings. The only reason we talk about human nature is that we have a common interpretative framework.

This is obviously heresy to most people, but that's the stakes when you hold up light to the axioms that we use and see them to be useful sure, but just not true.

So we will notice that in experiencing the self as a notion is posed after the fact. So if I am sitting in the bar two things happen one I get the experience of this, its shapes and sounds and after the fact I describe it as mine. The self that is posited is derived from the intention that I have, so that the self that I posited is a relaxed, slightly tired one. If I drill down into this self there are a myriad of ways in which I can describe it.

The outcome of this is that the self posited is unique. So lets have a little look at this unique self, which is incredibly well known to us. Well I can remember one of the things I can do when needing to relax is to go to the pub. Thus it becomes a possibility for me in so far as it is part of my past. I give myself to this event in so far as I understand myself as a man who has worked hard is now relaxing with a beer. This is such a familiar story, having been told by countless people and in countless films and all it needs is a hard worker, a beer and a pub. Its a nice little story of someone rewarding themselves with a little escapism.

The trip to the bar only functions as it does as I have previous experience of doing this. To understand this a little better remember the first time you went to a pub you had none of the thoughts and feelings you currently do about a pub visit. It was only after having a past to choose this option from and to have a familiarity with the story that it works. Indeed when you first skulked into a pub significantly under the legal drinking age then it was a completely different story, one of rebellious youth.
So apart from a past experience of this, to make the story work we need an actor, a unity to make the narrative meaningful. This being the major driver for the unified notion of self. If we thought that we continually reconstruct the self, which is what I'm proposing, then we would be groundless and therefore meaninglessness. If we had no unified self we would have no actor and therefore no story and therefore be meaninglessness.

Meaninglessness is a huge fear for humans. When humans didn't understand and faced meaninglessness they invented explanations sun gods , humours that controlled the body and cameras that stole souls. We associate meaninglessness with depression, it is not something we can tolerate and will see us buying personalised number plates as being a meaningful preference to a random string of numbers.

The standard defences of a unity of self are, bodily ,memory, and a self knowledge approach. Lets start bottom up shall we, ok self knowledge. I know I'm a unity as I always act in the same way, okay I change over the years but at each point I have an enduring self image, so I might say of myself I am generous, kind and do not lie.
When then you act in ways that contravenes these values then either the self has to change or you have to see yourself as not responsible for the action.
Thus you might excuse yourself as being drunk or angry or in war time you might say you were just following orders. However as you can see you are interpreting your actions and attributing some to your unified self and others you are casting off as aberrations. If the latter is too pronounced split personalities can ensue that take over. So with this act of interpretation then we construct the self.
Okay maybe unity of character doesn't quite cut it.
What about the body it is a unity so why don't we say that the unity of self is coextensive with the unity of body, I am my body. Oh dear if that were the case then we would be in a very awkward place with things like phantom limbs, and the feeling that anorexics have with always feeling bigger than they are. I suppose as with any contradiction you could write it off as an aberration, but then once more you would be constructing the self out of bodily interpretations, these I consider part of my embodiment part, this part not.

So what about memory we appear to have a continual sequence of memories that I am the owner of. There are two parts of memory the factual content and what it means to me. whilst some would want to collapse these two to interpretation lets leave them as they are and talk about the facts as fixed. Take also the idea that we remember far more than we know and that we have what many claim to be unlimited storage but restricted recall. Evidence of this would be bringing back long since buried facts through hypnosis or therapy. There are also experiments where people undergoing brain surgery have had certain parts of their brain stimulated and they repeatedly had recall in full Technicolor a long forgotten memory. Point all these three make is we remember far more than we can recall and possibly everything.
So what makes us have the memories that we do. Well we need memory to support our lifestyle, I need to know about my house, my job and wife in a way that I don't need to know about any of their previous incarnations. We also remember things that have been significant, being given the bike when I was six or my first love when I was 7.
So how's about this what our memory is or rather what we recall are those things that provide us utility or what amounts to the same thing meaning.
Now what a person requires in terms of utility and meaning change and as such so will the memories that you select to support that and crucially so will the interpretation of the factual element of that memory. Therefore whilst we have a finite number of factual memories what we select and how we interpret them is determined by our current projects. The self that is provided from memory is one that can constantly reinvent itself.
People like to talk about a human nature about characteristics that exist through the ages that evolutionist can be proud of. Why is that? Indeed we can read Shakespeare and when he talks about love, vanity and pride why is it that we recognise these traits if not that there is a human nature that exists through time. Ok here's the thing, human memory is two fold one personal and two social. The same rules that I've mentioned above from the personal apply to the social. The reason why Shakespeare still talks to us is through sedimented interpretation, i.e. we continually go back to the same sources to give our lives meaning. Social memory is known better by the phrase history. There are enough fights between various political groups to show that history is about interpretation not fact
So there you have it there is no unity of self rather a continually interpreted one to suit ones current affairs in as far as they project into the future. Radical stuff but what does it mean, well it means you're free and this generally is both a good and a bad thing. As a bad thing there is no self that we can fall back on, we are groundless and this is going to feel scary we need both order and meaning to stave off anxiety. The good news and trust me people this is a hallelujah moment is you don't need to be a victim to your past. Within your faculties within all the possibilities that exist to you in your world you can and ought to be and that my friends is huge.

References
Ernesto Spinelli, The Interpreted world