Do You Persist? The Minimal Continuity Thesis Explained Simply.

I thought an interesting thing to do on this blog, after uploading such a dense essay as I just did, would be to explain dense analytic philosophy in digestible words. A problem with philosophy that has existed since its inception, and perhaps has gotten worse as the discipline has become more mathematical, technical, and specialised, is a lack of understanding for a public audience. Perhaps the main "selling point" of my brand is accessible philosophy, so this could be a fun way to practice and prove my understanding of the difficult topics I analyse, as Einstein famously said: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough".

First, let me clarify the essay's focus: Galen Strawson. The discussion is part of ongoing debates in the philosophy of selfhood, whether metaphysical or phenomenological, about the self's location. Several accounts have emerged over the last 50 years:

1. The Mental Account (The Self as a mental phenomenon.)
2. The Embodied Account (The Self as not only mental, but embodied as our bodies and mind are one.)
3. The Narrative Account (The Self is created within social environments, humans are more tabula rasa, informed by their surroundings).

Strawson defends the mental account, though with a unique basis. Strawson is a staunch materialist, meaning he believes that everything in reality is fundamentally physical. Anyone reading this who is educated on the Philosophy of Mind might have supposed that the mental account was strictly Cartesian (separating the mind and body as two separate entities), but Strawson grounds all things mental within a physical body; the self here is as real as a rock, a star, or a river, just located within consciousness. That relation defines it as a purely mental conception; consciousness here is produced by physical factors but enabled by our mental concepts.

I largely agree with Strawson's theory of the self, which is a seemingly unpopular opinion in contemporary Philosophy of Mind and Selfhood. Within my Minimal Continuity Thesis, I synthesise embodied and narrative accounts as expressions of a fundamentally mental self, rather than a separate account. I locate selfhood within that first-personal awareness of consciousness, the ability to perceive yourself as an "I" who persists through time. Where Strawson and I diverge, however, is within his "pearl-view" thesis. Strawson argues that there is no continued, diachronic self, rather that humans exist within a state of episodic selfhood. Our consciousness is not consistent; we are never one continuous self, just several different selves who exist in different episodes of consciousness.

While I believe there is a very interesting ontological argument for an episodic selfhood/personhood, or about continuity in general, I wager to argue that if we are discussing the metaphysics AND phenomenology of selfhood, we must acknowledge a very particular kind of persistent selfhood. That of temporal awareness (the awareness of the passage of time) I argue for a thesis of minimal continuity, as the episodic view is actually much harder to argue against intuitions aside, it is rigorously accounted for, and all the opposite accounts fit squarely within Strawson's framework.

I was particularly inspired by my research into the metaphysics of time, and my argument rests upon the idea that we as subjects, are aware of us as a singular being that passes through time: "I gave a talk in March in Exeter, and I will give another in January in London". That simple notion is the grounds for my argument, of course this is formulated with formal logic, and a lot of technicality, but to understand the gist of the minimal continuity thesis, I believe this should suffice.

Full essay here: https://ahmed-iskander.ghost.io/is-there-a-persistent-self-the-minimal-continuity-thesis/