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From: kmc@netcom.com (Kevin McCarty)
Subject: Re: Self
Message-ID: <kmcCyJ3uC.A63@netcom.com>
Organization: self
References: <38ucm1$ms7@portal.gmu.edu> <38v6ae$s7i@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 08:34:59 GMT
Lines: 26

In article <38v6ae$s7i@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
> In <38ucm1$ms7@portal.gmu.edu> herwin@science.gmu.edu (Harry Erwin) writes:
> 
> >Has anyone (other than Paul Prueitt) ever looked at the relationship
> >between the 'self' as defined in the philosophy community and the self
> >as defined by the immune system? Are the mechanisms similar?
> 
> Consider the case of identical twins.  Immunologically, they are both
> part of the same self.  Philosophically, they are distinct.
> 

Immunological function depends both on genetic constitution and history of
exposure and actication.  As soon as an immunological system starts
responding to environmental exposures, it develops sensitivities which
differentiates the self it recognizes from that recognized by another
system with the same genetic constitution.  Doesn't current thinking
hold that certain auto-immune disorders (failures of recognition of
immunological self) can be triggered by a history of exposures to various
chemicals?

Or perhaps you are referring to the fact that immunological self seems to
be defined functionally-- that which the immune system recognizes, whereas
numerically distinct instances of functionally identical systems are
counted as distinct selves from the philosophical point of view.
-- 
Kevin McCarty (kmc@netcom.com)
