Daniel
Dennett’s Where Am I? invites viewers
to imagine themselves in a situation where their brain and body are in two
separate locations and where they consider themselves to be; where the brain
is, or where the body is. Dennett poses four hypotheses to help answer the
question ‘where am I?’; You are where your brain is, you are where your body
is, you are wherever you think you are or you are just a sum of your parts.
There is also a pre-existing thought experiment that may help answer this
question; Ibn Sina’s Flying Man thought
experiment. However, for every hypothesis and thought experiment there is a
flaw or a rebuttal. As with everything in philosophy, there is no real, solid,
hard-fact answer to the question.
Dennett’s first hypothesis suggests
that we are our consciousness and memories and that even though our bodies
change we stay numerically identical to our earlier selves. The flaw in this
argument is that there are cases where this would be inapplicable (for instance
people with multiple personalities in the same brain and body). Dennett’s
second hypothesis proposes the contrary; that we are our physical form. The
flaw here is simply: if I have a brain transplant into a new body, I am still
me – a different version of me, but still me. Dennett’s third hypothesis- we
are wherever we think we are- is flawed in the sense that we can often be
mistaken in where we think we are and we can use technology to change our
perspectives (if I watch a VR video of the Bahamas, I’m not actually in the
Bahamas). Dennett’s final hypothesis suggests that a unified self is a surreal
concept and that we are just a collection of our parts. While this hypothesis
seems to be the closest to a full logical answer it is still flawed; if my arm were
to be amputated, would my amputated arm still count as part of me lying in a
limb disposal somewhere?
Whilst Ibn Sina’s Flying Man thought experiment may help
us consider Where Am I? in the scope of
‘Mind-Body Dualism’ his argument is fundamentally flawed. Ibn Sina argues that
the self is not numerically identical to the body. The flaw is his premise; he
proposes in his experiment that the self of the flying man is aware of existing
without being aware of his body and yet, humans were aware of water without
being aware of its chemical structure and the two are one and the same - numerically
identical.
I believe that it is possible to
answer Dennett’s Where Am I? if we
build on his fourth hypothesis – we are a sum of our parts - and combine this
concept with ‘Mind-Body Duality.’ First of all, to address the issue of the
amputated arm; You may consider what remains of you to be a new version of you
and the arm – whilst still yours – is no longer a part of your ‘self’ (much
like when you lose a tooth). With that now resolved we must consider our ‘parts’
to not mean just our brain and body, but to extend to our mind (taken to mean consciousness)
and soul (if you believe in one). Once we consider this trinity (or duality) to
be ‘The Self’ we can better define where we are. We must also expel the idea
that we must be in one place. If you and your family are all in one house, you
may say that your family is in this house. But if your mother were to travel to
Cambodia, your father to Australia and you remain in the house, you would say
that your family is all over the globe – in more than one location at the same
time. Consider the trinity (or duality) of the self to be like this family; In
most cases you are united in one place, but should you be separated, you would
be in more than one place at once.
-Aly Zein Mohamed
