We can't see light  

I am reading an introduction to cultural anthropology. The following passage about a woman from the Mixtech people (who live in Mexico) struck me as philosophically important:

The Mixtec like other Mesoamerican people believe that living things that come into the world at the same time are fundamentally linked to one another. An animal and a human born at the same moment will thus share life experiences, are often said to have a single soul, and will at times share a consciousness. This latter most often occurs through dreams, which may be interpreted as the world seen through the eyes of one’s co-essential animal (so labeled because the animals and their human counterparts are essentially linked). In Nanuu Maria's case, her kiti nuvi is a small, playful, furry creature called a coati. (This has been determined years beforehand through divination and because, like the cootie, she had a special liking for bananas.) It was on one of its nocturnal journeys that the coati had been hit by lightning.

     The idea of the co-essential animal is something that to us seems a bit far-fetched. But the Mixtec case is far from unique, and ethnographers report many examples of traditions that hold that things not physically attached to the body are an intimate part of the self. For the Mixtec, the concept of the co-essential animal is at least as complex and comprehensive as the Id or super ego and has no less basis in empirical science: it explains good and bad luck, sudden and even deadly illnesses, the nature of dreams, and even why some individuals have more wealth and power than others, since those with big ferocious animals such as jaguars stand higher in the social hierarchy than those with small, innocuous animals such as rabbits.

      Mixtec thus clearly conceived their selves – their essential being in the world – is not being bounded by the body. Maria is linked to her kiti nuvi, not as one discreet hole is linked to another, as one of us feels linked to a lover or a child, but as a fellow creature whose experiences are hers and who shares her experiences in its own dreams, both in a physical as well as a psychic way. In contrast, we in the West tend to view ourselves – and our selves – as consisting at the core of an essentially unitary whole, unique and enduring. Generally, this shows that even so fundamental a facet of our experience of life as our concepts of who and what we are, concepts that seem to constitute a primary basis for common sense are in fact subject to extraordinary variation from culture to culture. This, in turn, has profound consequences for the ways in which societies are constituted socially, economically, and morally. When we in the West see ourselves as persons, we tend to see ourselves as autonomous individuals, each of us master of our own destiny and not part of a wider continuum of entities that might include a coati. Coming out of that kind of conception of ourselves – and our selves – is a sense of limitless possibility. Children in the United States, for example, are often told in elementary school that anyone can grow up to be a president. Historical and political reality to one side, this notion points to a concept of personhood, and here we use the term person to refer to the way ideas about the self articulate a more comprehensive political ideology – which bases personhood on shared capacities and rights. In other words, persons in this context are defined based not on what makes us different, but on what makes us the same. This view of persons is enshrined in the United States Constitution, which endows all citizens with the same social and political rights. In fact, the most recent amendments to the Constitution have all been concerned with denying the relevance of class, ethnic, racial, religious or gender differences in social arrangements, economic decision making and political participation. [emphasis mine]

   John Monaghan and Peter Just, Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000), p. 131-132.

     

   This interests me because it implies that our conceptions of self – of human nature, of who and what we are – might make sense (or not) of our lives in a particular world-matrix (lifeworld) but have no basis in science. Here mythical thinking and metaphysical thinking merge.

    In it curious that in “philosophy of the mind” as it is taught and practiced in philosophy departments in North America and Europe, there is no theory of “co-essentialism.” You get theories like these:

1.    Physicalism: Also known as materialism, this theory posits that all mental states and processes are ultimately reducible to physical processes in the brain. It suggests that the mind can be fully explained by neuroscience and the laws of physics.

 

2.    Functionalism: According to functionalism, mental states are defined by their causal roles in relation to inputs, outputs, and other mental states. It focuses on the functions and operations of the mind rather than its physical substrate.

 

3.    Dualism: Dualism proposes that the mind and body are distinct substances, with the mind comprising non-physical or spiritual elements that are separate from the physical brain. Variants include substance dualism and property dualism.

 

4.    Identity Theory: Identity theory asserts that mental states are identical to specific brain states. It suggests that each type of mental state corresponds to a particular type of neurological state, offering a type of reductionism while maintaining a monistic perspective.

 

5.    Eliminative Materialism: This theory contends that common-sense understanding of mental states and processes is fundamentally mistaken, and that they will ultimately be eliminated or replaced by a matured neuroscience. It proposes that our current folk psychology is inadequate to explain the mind.

 

6.    Panpsychism: Panpsychism suggests that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, present in all things to some degree. It proposes that mental properties are inherent in all physical entities, from subatomic particles to complex organisms.

 

7.    Epiphenomenalism: According to epiphenomenalism, mental states are byproducts of physical processes in the brain, but they do not have any causal influence on physical events. Instead, mental events are caused by physical events, but cannot cause physical events themselves.

 

8.    Emergentism: Emergentism posits that complex systems, such as the brain, give rise to novel properties (like consciousness) that cannot be reduced to the properties of their constituent parts. Consciousness emerges from the interactions of simpler elements.

 

I like the last one: it leaves the nature of what emerges completely open – co-essentialism could emerge as well as any other. Panpsychism may also be consistent with the Mixtec beliefs.

    The point: the Mixtec metaphysical understanding of the self is no more or less a possible subject of scientific inquiry as any of the others. None have a purely factual basis. All attempt to make sense of aspects of our self-conscious lives – as embodied in particular cultures. In the end, the only reason the Mixtec belief seems far-fetched to us is that it can play no role in our form of life. But the Western liberal belief in the autonomous individual, the belief in an immaterial soul, or the Catholic belief in the soul as the living form of the body – none of these would make sense of the Mixtec form of life. There is no external reality beyond our conscious experience (always embedded in a form of life) – no fact of the matter – to which to refer these different ways of making sense. Prove the Mixtec woman didn’t have a coati as a co-essential animal! Prove by some scientific text that we are autonomous individuals – or prove that we are purely physical entities ruled by the equations of physics! You can’t. Nobody can. The  belief in an immaterial soul or a self-brain identity or an autonomous self with rights is no more objectively rational than Maria’s belief that she shared consciousness with a coati. All are equally…magical, when seem from a perspective from outside the forms of life where they may make sense.

        As Schopenhauer put it: “That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject.”  Consciousness of always consciousness of something, taken in a certain way: but being conscious of consciousness is impossible. The self – consciousness of oneself as a self – is always a representation, or an interpretation of that which cannot be directly experienced (like a bit of God). We can only make sense of its effects in the world as we experience it. It is the light that opens up the world for our vision – our minds and spirits. But you can’t see the light. You can only interpret it, or speculate about it, on the ground of what it reveals.