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TONTO’S QUESTION
Copyright © 2003 by Robert C.W. Ettinger
From one point of view there is only one question in life. Some may remember the Lone Ranger radio series, in which Indian sidekick Tonto would often ask the masked man, “What we do now, Kemo Sabe?”
What should you do (or think) next? That is the basic question of philosophy, encompassing all the others. The answer of course cannot be given in one sentence—unless you use a really, really large number of semi-colons—and cannot yet be given with assurance in any case, in this primitive era. But we can greatly improve the answer(s) previously available.
Philosophers of antiquity always failed badly at their main job, but at least they often understood what the job was—viz., to offer a life strategy and rationale. (A “philosophy” often is taken to mean a viewpoint or outlook—weltanschauung—and that in its broadest sense is indeed the best definition of the word.) Modern philosophers often are much more scientific and consistent than the ancients and medievalists, but narrow almost to the point of invisibility, almost totally ignoring the primary needs of the individual. Let’s look at the magnitude of the problem, and then nibble at it, maybe a bit like a dung beetle attacking a brontosaurus turd.
THE DEEP DARK
Karl Popper and others have avowed awe at the chasms of ignorance that keep widening even as we attempt to bridge them. Ernie Harburg voiced part of the plaint in his lyrics to Offenbach’s music in the Broadway musical The Happiest Girl in the World.
Here we are, adrift on a star, alone in a silent sky.
Lost in space, together we face the wonder of how and why.
The moon, the clouds, the years—they go drifting along.
Music of the spheres, are there words to your song?
Our world is a little like that of the Red Queen in Alice, who observed that, in her country, one had to run as fast as one could just to stay in the same place.
The capper is centuries old—Descartes’ observation (or implication) that we know nothing for sure except our own immediate feelings (qualia). Everything else—including our firmest convictions about the interior and external world—is based on interpretation, which could easily be wrong.
NO MAMA, NO PAPA
Despite our ignorance, we have to get on with it, which means we must perforce act as though we know what we’re doing. Nothing beyond your own feelings is certain, but some things are more likely than others, based on experience. It’s always a numbers game—guessing the odds, and trying to shift them in your favor.
Now this is anathema to almost everyone. Who wants to believe that there is only the stormy sea, no star to steer by and no known safe harbor either? Who wants to accept total responsibility? Dostoyevsky wrote, “Men prefer peace, even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil.”
As children we relied on our parents for wisdom and protection. Well, the people of my generation are literally orphans, and every adult is figuratively an orphan. No more infallible Mama or Papa. So most of us, most of the time, invent substitutes in the form of institutions or ideologies or just plain habit. Sadly, there are very few genuine adults. The real meaning of adulthood is serenity in the face of uncertainty. It means total self reliance (which can nevertheless profit from companionship and society).
YOUNIVERSE
My current work in progress (first draft finished) is called YOUNIVERSE: Toward a Self Centered Philosophy. Its modest claim is to offer the individual the best available guidelines for living, in a unique package.
In the U.S. Declaration of Independence, life is associated with the pursuit of happiness. This was and remains a very radical notion—much more radical than political independence from Britain. Few down the ages have dared admit that happiness is a worthy or defensible goal or end. Aristotle agreed, in some of his writings, but contradicted himself in others. The hedonists and epicureans started out on the right track, but quickly lost their way and have been long discredited by the majority. The utilitarians also had it partly right, but then became bogged down. The doctrine of enlightened self interest has a respectable history, but has previously fallen short, encountering seemingly insuperable obstacles.
Roadblocks remain, and there are still no guarantees, but there is now a scientific frame of reference. To begin the orientation, let’s look at the main problems.
SOME UNKNOWNS
In order to know what we ought to do, we need first to know who or what we are, in order to figure out what we want or need and what we ought to want or need. We don’t.
In order to plan for survival, we need to know the criteria of survival. We don’t. We don’t even know the criteria for criteria.
Possibly crucial elements of the underlying physics are unknown, including the nature of space and time and whether they are discrete or continuous. Other possibly crucial elements of physics include cosmology and cosmogony, for reasons that are not altogether obvious. We don’t know whether the universe (or multiverse, whatever) is finite or infinite or semi-infinite in time or space, and these possibilities are all loaded with significance.
Crucial elements of biology are unknown, especially the biophysics of feeling (qualia). Life as we know it is characterized by the capacity for subjective experiences, which underlies consciousness, and we are only beginning to investigate this is a systematic way.
Quantum coupling may enter into the equation. If indeed every subset of the universe is immediately linked to every other, there are profound possible philosophical implications. In fact, quantum physics has several unsolved philosophical problems, including the meaning—if any—of the wave equation (if any) of the universe, which presumably cannot have a probabilistic interpretation.
Even abstruse considerations of mathematics may have relevance. Are there “things” in the world (ontology) or only relationships, as Lee Smolin and others suggest—and what does that mean? If relationships are modeled in math, and math (e.g. Cantor’s set theory) is on shaky ground--as indeed it is--then where are our foundations? We don’t even know how many orders of infinity there are. Perhaps early humans, and certainly prehumans, could not have guessed that progress depended on knowing how to count; and we could easily be blind to the implications of higher orders of infinity.
However, some of the supposed obstacles are mere misunderstandings of language or myopia, and I have investigated some of these. Perhaps the most striking is the “incompleteness” conclusion of Gödel, whose work—glorified by two generations of mathematicians to this very day—is not profound, but trivial. (Not simple, but nevertheless trivial.) Here I omit that—and of course the bulk of Youniverse.
SOME POSITIVES
The “unknowns” above sound pretty formidable, and indeed at first glance the situation may seem just about hopeless. But from a practical, rational standpoint not only is optimism justified, but even a degree of euphoria! Here’s why.
In earlier eras, experience could lead any rational person only to a funk of pessimism. Almost every person—not to mention almost every individual of the lower orders—lived a life of preponderantly unpleasant experiences, with the terminal phase the most miserable and not very long delayed. Only a few lives were mostly enjoyable, and only a few deaths were relatively quick and painless. Most lives featured struggle and hardship. Most deaths were from predation, disease, starvation, or exposure, with a few “lucky” ones just decaying into oblivion through the “normal” process of senescence and too dazed to suffer much. This has begun to change.
“Civilization” is usually thought to have begun with the advent of agriculture, roughly 10,000 years ago, approximately at the end of the last ice age or beginning of the current interglacial period. It’s ironic in a way, because “civilization” has been responsible for much of the worst of human experience, including the many forms of tyranny and oppression and mass murder. But it also brought wealth and progress and populations large enough to allow specialization and significant advances. In recent times--in the U.S., Canada, Europe and parts of the Orient, at least—relatively large numbers of people have been able to enjoy relatively comfortable lives for considerable periods. After all, in the U.S. now, even the poorer homes are almost certain to have central heating, indoor plumbing, and color TV, and far from starving, the poorer people tend to run to fat. The future prospect is of accelerating improvement and eventually wealth without limit.
The most important of prospective improvements, from a common-sense point of view, is simply the prevention and cure of disease, most especially the disease of senescence, the debility of “normal” aging. A minor sidelight in history, but the primary hope for a substantial number of individuals, is cryonics—cryopreservation or biostasis for those clinically and legally dead, kept “on hold” until future technology (along with the resources of the cryonics organization) is equal to their needs.
In short, a case can now be made for a realistic chance at immortality—personal, physical immortality, in the sense of indefinitely extended life—for large numbers of people now living. This is a whole new ball game—so new that the rules must be changed.
EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION
We did not evolve to be immortals, and there is a fundamental tension between some of our traits and the immortalist revolution.
Big Mama, Dame Nature, cares nothing for the happiness or even the survival of individuals or species, except in the short run. “Success” in evolutionary terms means survival and proliferation under existing conditions. But conditions constantly change and adaptation is never perfect. So far, every individual of past generations has died, and 99.9% of all species have become extinct. Our psyches, both inherited and acculturated, are mostly adapted to death, and that is our challenge.
We have heard about the “instinct for self-preservation,” and indeed there is such a thing—but it rarely manifests itself in modern conditions. Anyone will try to dodge a tiger or a taxi, but how about the mortal dangers of smoking, overeating, failing to save money, and all the other threats that are not certain and immediate?
On the other side, evolution has bred into us (in varying degree, as usual) a tendency to self-sacrifice. Animals that fight to protect their young, even at risk to themselves, sometimes have an evolutionary advantage. Societies whose young men are willing to be soldiers tend to survive and grow. So every one of us contains both tendencies—self preservation and self sacrifice. But conditions have changed, and in any case the sane individual will always limit or subordinate the urge to self sacrifice.
ME-FIRST AND FEEL-GOOD
The conventional wisdom says you “can’t derive an ought from an is.” Even David Hume, one of history’s clearest thinkers, fell for that. Richard Feynman and a large majority of moderns have agreed. Science and logic, we are told, can only tell us what is, not what ought to be—only means, not ends. Values are arbitrary.
Poppycock.
First, we must state clearly the difference between individual values and morality. Morality or ethics has to do with society. Individual values concern the well being of the individual, with benefit or harm to others, or to society, being only secondary or of indirect importance. The only thing of direct importance to you (almost certainly) is what goes on in your own head. Nothing (probably) matters except a certain subset of conditions/events in your brain, those related to feeling and consciousness.
The iron-clad bases of a value system for the individual are therefore me-first and feel-good. (Again, certain possible exceptions relate to remote possibilities of physics, bypassed here.)
Easy to say—but difficult to understand and apply.
Even “me-first” is more obscure than might at first appear. You are directly concerned only
with yourself—but who and what are you? We don’t yet even have complete assurance that “you” persist from day to day in the ordinary course of events. Certainly it is a stretch to imagine that you are the “same” person as your infant self, or your far-future superhuman self, if it comes to that. On the other hand, it is remotely possible that “you” exist in more than one instantiation through all of spacetime, which would be a whole different ball game again.
As for feel-good, the primitive hedonists failed because they knew nothing of the anatomy and physiology of subjective conditions. All they knew was that you are likely to get into trouble if you try to grab every swivel-hipped temptation that rhumbas by.
We know only a little more, but at least we have the attitude (some of us) and are developing the tools to get the job done. We will eventually sort out the types and degrees of feel-good and potential feel-good (and feel-bad), place them in hierarchies and otherwise classify them, and ultimately reach a logic of rank and exclusivity.
Meanwhile—common sense, what else? Save yourself, if you can, by any means at hand. Serve yourself, and devote some time and energy to strategy for that. Sculpt your persona, if that seems needful and feasible—but don’t overlook the difficulties and costs of bucking tradition. It’s hard to do brain surgery on yourself with a mirror and a hacksaw. Try to do what you believe you must do, but try to understand your realistic limits.
THE BOAT OF THESEUS;
BINDING SPACE AND TIME
Now just a bit of backtrack, leading up to a tentative solution to the problem of identity or of criteria of survival.
An ancient thought experiment concerned a certain boat that underwent repairs and partial replacements from time to time—boards, rigging, whatever, maybe even a different name painted on the prow. At a later time, is it the “same” boat?
Few people will find this much of a problem. It’s just a matter of language and custom, nothing profound, and we opt for the “quantitative solution”—it’s the same in some ways and some degree, different in some ways and some degree. So what? There could conceivably arise legal problems and so on, but there is no “philosophical” problem. The owner may feel that “she” is the same boat, but a bit of harmless sentimentality is his privilege.
Can and should we apply the same reasoning to people—the quantitative solution, later versions (or even copies) being partly the same and partly different? That isn’t so easy, because there are serious questions of how much loyalty or consideration you owe your previous and later versions, and indeed whether there is any value-related connection between them.
A complete, assured, and final answer is lacking, but my suggestion is as follows.
Probably no physical system can exist at a geometrical point in space, if there is such a thing. Therefore “you” occupy a non-zero volume; you bind space.
Probably no physical system can exist at an instant of time, if there is such a thing—or at any rate you cannot experience anything in zero time. Therefore “you” occupy a non-zero interval of time; you bind time.
It follows that the successive versions of you overlap in time and space. You have more in common with your nearer predecessors and continuers than with more remote ones, but you are connected to them all. Presumably you can’t affect the welfare of your predecessors, but you “betray” them at your peril, for obvious reasons, which means you must be careful about abrupt changes in priorities. Your nearer future continuers are more important to you than the further ones, which is fortunate, since you can scarcely guess what would be best for those very distant successors.
So you try to guess what is best for your future self, and the weighting will not always be easy. Sometimes option A will be likely to yield a small benefit in the near future, while option B may produce a larger benefit in a more distant and uncertain future. Tough stuff, but nobody promised you a rose garden.
HOMUNCULI & THE SELF CIRCUIT
Even if you go along with all of the above, you may say that we still have bypassed important questions. In particular, what part(s) or aspect(s) of the person should be considered essential?
In 1962 (in the preliminary version of The Prospect of Immortality) I published a series of thought experiments, probably the most comprehensive ever at that time, looking at various possible criteria of identity, including identity of material substance, continuity of material substance, identity of personality and memory, and continuity of personality and memory. My tentative choice then was the quantitative solution—different systems (distinguishable by location in space and time) are the “same” in the ways that they are the same, and to the extent that they are the same, and there is no more to be said.
But there is more to be said. What is crucial, and how should we govern our behavior?
Certainly most of your body is inessential; a quadruple amputee is still a person and in most respects the “same” person. For that matter, most of your brain is just housekeeping—blood vessels and glial cells and so on. Maybe even most of the neurons and their activities are dispensable. After all, someone with considerable amnesia would usually be called the same person—and we all have degraded memories over time.
And now we encounter the “homunculus” problem. Philosophers have had endless difficulty in thinking about consciousness, and in particular in distinguishing between consciousness itself and the content of consciousness. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have been baffled in trying to characterize qualia. Many have clung to a notion of “viewer” and “viewed,” with an infinite regression of homunculi, always some smaller or more elemental observer inside the previous one. It has been thought that there must be a separation between the viewer and the viewed, like an observer and a TV screen. Qualia have been assumed to be representations of something, which doesn’t bring closure.
My tentative answer is that a quale (feeling or subjective condition) is not a representation of a feeling, but is the feeling itself. It is, in fact, your rock-bottom self. Physically, it may be something like a standing wave in the brain, binding space and time, with modulations for variation and change. In a sense, it is both the viewer and the viewed—but not in a sense involving any regress.
This may seem a bit bizarre, as the song goes. It appears to reduce even your habits and memories and most elements of your persona to baggage. And from a common-usage point of view, certainly a material change in your memories and personality would mean a “different” you, but we already knew that.
The world is not necessarily user-friendly, and there is no assurance that final answers will be to our liking, or even tolerable. In a Heinlein story, By His Bootstraps, a time traveler encounters a group of superhuman aliens, and almost loses his mind. Afterwards, he could remember nothing of what they looked like—only an inexpressible and overwhelming impression of tragedy, of sorrow inescapable and that a human mind is “no more fit to experience than an oyster is to play the violin.” (As I have said before, maybe that is the reason we have not seen advanced aliens—at a stage just a little beyond ours, the universe is revealed as hopelessly tragic, and the species self-destructs.)
THE FIRST THEOREM OF HOPE
But it is much, much too soon for despair, and I can even express that as a logical exercise:
Theorem: It is always too soon for despair.
Proof: We do not know our fates.
Of course, few of us are moved mostly by logic. We are moved mostly by instinct, indoctrination, habit, and hope. But if we can throw in a bit of common sense, and if we still have a few hormones active, we will have something more than rock soup.
God rest ye merry, Gentlefolk,
Let nothing you dismay.
With a little work, tomorrow
May be better than today.
