Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!demon!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: Self
References: <38ucm1$ms7@portal.gmu.edu>
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs
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Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1994 11:26:08 +0000
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In article <38ucm1$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?

Literal minded as I am, I pull this into bits:

"Self" in the immune system:
     This comes in two flavours. As you are aware, the immune system consists 
     of a family of cells. Within two important classes within this family, 
     individuals are either descendents of a clone (having identical genes) or 
     are potential progenitors of such a clone (having genes which have been 
     shuffled such that the immunological properties of any one cell is 
     distinct). Flavour One consists of weeding out those cells which random 
     events have made autoimmunogenic - that attack the body's own natural 
     constituents. "Self" consists of a mechanism which recognises those 
     progenitor cells which are self-reactive and which eliminates these. The 
     mechanism is broadly understood. The problem is addressed piecemeal and 
     there is no overarching "self" against which the system is benchmarkeed, 
     save the big blob of protoplasm in which it all occurs: you, me and the 
     kitten.
     
     The second flavour is concerned witht he recognition of not-self. In 
     effect, those cells which pass the auto-immune check float about until 
     they detect the complex (and again, reasonably well understood) symptoms 
     of foreign-ness. Some families of cells react to general inflamation and 
     invasion, others to minutely tuned responses to particular antigens - 
     foreign compounds. They respond witha stereotypes set of responses once 
     their triggers have been pulled. There is, therefore, no overarching sense 
     of self, but rather the ensemble properties of a set of distinct 
     mechanisms on the prowl. Place a roast chicken in the African savannah and 
     it will be eaten by something. This does not mean that Africa has a "self" 
     that decides to get fed.

"Self" in the world of sense and sensibility.

     I experience a sense of my own identity. What I perceive leads me to 
     believe that there are other people and higher animals which have a 
     similar sense of their own existence on the stage of life, albeit a stage 
     played out within a self-generated representation of something knowable 
     only by means of abstract models, data representations and the bellows and 
     purrs of the raw sensoria. One would suspect that everyone's subjective 
     sense of being is closely similar: that the "me" that you feel your self 
     to be is identical to the "me" which I am experiencing as I type. I have 
     the illusion of continuity, that this "me" is continuous; bit all reason 
     and careful introspection suggests that in practice, it dips in and out of 
     a broader and supporting sea of structures upon which it rests; sometime 
     rampant, sometimes quiescent, sometimes - as in micro-sleep - absent.

Th eprimary difference between the knitted structure represented by the imune 
system or the ecology of Africa and what we know of awareness is that the one 
has no focus or co-ordinating role (but in acting, offers up consistent results 
which act on other systems as a unitary force) whilst awareness is little more 
*than* a co-ordinating role which is distinct from and largely unable to act 
upon its supporting structures. Both are, however, emergent propoerties of a 
myriad of small systems acting in pursuit of local logic and wide systems of 
abstract feedback. Both have roles which transcend the properties of their 
component parts. Neither have loci: there is no "organ of immunity" any more 
than there is an "organ of ecology", hind-brain Gaia-fanciers aside. One 
suspects that there is no "organ of awareness" either: that what we feel 
ourselves to be bounces, like a pingpong ball on a water spot, never off the 
same molecule twice; but always in step with the same innate dynamics. 
 
_________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
