Sociality and solitude

Abstract

“How can I, who am thinking about the entire, centerless universe, be anything so specific as this: this measly creature existing in a tiny morsel of space and time?” This metaphysically self-deprecating question, posed by Thomas Nagel, holds an insight into the nature of personhood and the ordinary ways we value it, in others and in ourselves. I articulate that insight and apply it to the phenomena of friendship, companionship, sexuality, solitude, and love. Although love comes in many forms, I say, it always involves a sense of wonder at a finite creature thinking infinite thoughts.

Keywords:

• emotions
• Nagel, T.
• moral psychology
• ethics

Acknowledgements

Parts of this article were presented at “The Pentagram of Love” at the 2008 Eastern Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association. The author is indebted to Rae Langton for a very helpful conversation about that version of the paper, and for a subsequent conversation about this version. A conversation with Sharon Street helped the author to abandon the first and begin on the second. Extensive written comments on the present version were provided by Ruth Chang, who organized the APA session. It was then presented at a colloquium organized by Nancy Yousef at the City University of New York. The lecture was also presented to the philosophy department the University of Miami and in a workshop on the ethics of family relationships at the University of Bern.

Notes

I suspect the same of many phenomena in moral psychology (Velleman 2007).

See also Nagel 1979a, 1979b, 1980, 1984, Chapter IV. Nagel (1984) is perhaps the most widely read of these works, but its chapter on the “objective self” is, in my view, considerably watered down. I recommend Nagel (1983) instead.

Exactly how there can be such a self-conception is a vexed question, which, fortunately, need not be answered here. Especially fortunate is that forms of reflexive thought have been extensively explored by John Perry (see Perry 1990, 1998; see also Perry 1979). Note that whereas Perry focuses on the reflexive thought by which a person thinks of himself, I focus on that by which a person also thinks of this very reflexive thought. The phenomena of interest to me involve thoughts that are self-referring in the sense that they refer not only to their subjects but also to themselves.

I think it is possible that some of the higher apes have an objective self-concept. If they do, then they are persons, in my view. This consequence of my view does not strike me as a counterexample, since I think that some of the higher apes just might be persons.

Of course, plans do not make the future metaphysically open; they make it only epistemically open. I discuss this phenomenon in Velleman (1989).

I explore this research in Velleman (2008c).

Of course, an un-pitticine parrot would also need a second-person conception of his examiners. In addition to conceiving of me as “this creature”, he would have to conceive of those creatures as “you”. Whether the latter conception is possible without the former is another vexed question that, fortunately, need not be answered here.

This is Grice's (1989) analysis of assertion. Grice's analysis does not work as an analysis of assertion, since assertion does not necessarily involve the intention to be believed. Telling does involve that intention, however, and so it fits Grice's analysis.

I discuss this phenomenon, and its significance for the philosophy of action, in Velleman (2008b).

For discussion of this problem, including references, see the appendix of my work (1997).

This change need not involve the sensory content of your visual experience – the arrangement of colors and shapes in one's visual field. What changes is the representational content of the experience. This change in representational content may be experienced as a Gestalt-switch, as the relations between the represented items is perceived to change.

I discuss the emotion of shame in Velleman (2001).

Personhood involves many dimensions of psychic depth, of course. Taylor (1997, 114 ff.) explains “our ordinary use of the metaphor of depth applied to people” in terms of how a person evaluates his own motives. In this sense, only some people are deep. But being either deep or shallow in this sense requires objective self-awareness, which makes all persons deep in my sense.

The claim that love involves valuing personhood appears to be incompatible with the partiality of love. I address this problem among others in Velleman (1999, 2008a).

In his work (1971, 720) Nagel writes: “[H]umans have the special capacity to step back and survey themselves, and the lives to which they are committed, with that detached amazement which comes from watching an ant struggle up a heap of sand. Without developing the illusion that they are able to escape from their highly specific and idiosyncratic position, they can view it sub specie aeternitatis – and the view is at once sobering and comical”.