Scattered thoughts on self-identification

Among other things, I am a mathematician and a Wacoan. It is moderately important to my self-image, my “identity”, that I practice mathematics and that I live in Waco. But there is an important difference between the two contributions. My identifying as a mathematician also includes a certain kind of “fellow feeling” towards other mathematicians qua mathematicians, a feeling of belonging in a group, a feeling as of being part of a “we”. But while I love living in Waco, I do not actually have a similar “fellow feeling” towards other Wacoans qua Wacoans , a feeling as of being part of a “we” (perhaps I should). It’s just that I do not exemplify the civic friendship that Aristotle talks about.

An initial way of putting the distinction is this:

1. identifying with one’s possession of a quality versus identifying with being a member of the group of people who possess the quality.

This correctly highlights the fact that self-identification is hyperintensional, but it’s not quite right. Two finalists for some distinction can identify with being a member of the group of people who are finalists, and yet they need not—but can—have a “we”-type identification with this group.

It seems to me that the distinction I am after cannot be captured by egocentric facts about property possession. The “we”-type of identification is not a self-identification of oneself as having a certain quality. It seems to me that we have two different logical grammars of self-identification:

2. (a) identifying with one’s possession of a quality versus (b) identifying with the group of people who possess the quality.

I think some people go more easily from (a) to (b), and some people—including me—go less easily.

I wonder if it is possible to have (b) without (a). I don’t know, but I suspect one can. It may be that some herd animals have something like (b) without having anything like (a). So why couldn’t humans?

I think the move from (a) to (b) tends to be a good thing, as it is expressive of the good of sociality.

There are also second- and third-person analogues to (2):

3. (a) identifying a person with their possession of a quality versus (b) identify them with the group of people who possess the quality.

Regarding (b), I am reminded of Robert Nozick’s remark that people in romantic relationships want to be acknowledged as part of a “we”. In other words, people in romantic relationships want second- and third-person identification of them as part of the pair (a kind of group) of people in the particular relationship. I wonder if that’s possible without (a). Again, I am not sure.

I think 3(a) and 3(b) have a potential for being dangerous. One thinks of stereotyping here.

I think 2(a) and 2(b) also have a potential for danger, albeit a different one. The danger is that both kinds of self-identification lead to an inflexibility with respect to the quality or community. But sometimes we need to change qualities or communities, or they are changed on us. I suppose 2(a) and 2(b) are not so problematic with respect to qualities or groups that one ought to maintain oneself as having or belonging to (e.g., virtue or the Church).

The value of communities

A men's lacrosse team has twice as many members as a basketball team. But that fact does not contribute to making a men's lacrosse team twice as valuable as a basketball team. Likewise, China as a country isn't about 500 times as valuable as Albania just because it is about 500 times as populous. This suggests that an otherwise plausible individualist theory about the value of a community is false: the theory that a community's value resides in the value it gives to individuals. For the kind of value that being on a basketball team confers to its players, being on a lacrosse team confers on twice as many; and the kind of value that being Albanian confers on its members, being Chinese confers on almost 500 times as many people. One possibility is to see the relevant goods as goods of instantiation: it is good that the values of there being a lacrosse team (or at least of a pair of lacrosse teams: a single team being pointless), there being a basketball team (or a pair of them), there being a China and there being an Albania be realized. But I think that isn't quite right. For while changing the rules of basketball to admit twice as many players to a team wouldn't automatically double the community good, doubling the number of basketball teams does seem to significantly increase the community goods by making there be twice as many basketball communities.

In fact, there seem to be three goods in the case of basketball: (a) the good of instantiation of there being basketball teams (and their playing); (b) the community good of each team; and (c) the good for each involved in these communities. Good (a) is unaffected by doubling the number of teams (unless we double from one to two, and thereby make playing possible); good (b) is doubled by doubling the number of teams; good (c) is doubled both by doubling the number of teams and by doubling the team size. Thinking about the behavior of (b) gives us good reason to think that this good does not reduce to the goods of the individuals as such.

But perhaps this reason isn't decisive. For maybe the goods of individuals can overlap, in the way that two Siamese twins seem to be able to share an organ (though the right ontology of shared organs may in the end undercut the analogy), and in such a case the goods shouldn't be counted twice even if they are had twice. For in these cases, perhaps, the numerically same good is had by two or more individuals. If you and I are both friends of John, and John flourishing, then John's flourishing contributes to your and my flourishing, but it doesn't contribute thrice over even though this flourishing is good for three--we should count overall value by goods and not by participants. Maybe. This would be a kind of middle position between the individualist and communitarian pictures of the value of community: there is a single good of type (b), but it is good by being participated in by individuals.

I don't know. I find this stuff deeply puzzling. I have strong ontological intuitions that communities don't really exist (except in a metaphorical way--which may well be importNt) that pull me towards individualist pictures, but then I see these puzzles...

Popular devotions

It is good to participate in a popular devotion because the devotion is popular (of course, this is defeasible: theological unsoundness would be a particularly important defeater). When one participates in a popular devotion because it is popular, one is thereby united in will with the community in which the devotion was popular. This is true even if the devotion involves something kitschy or a little garish, and such cases highlight the need to see the devotion from the point of view of the community which gives the devotion its life.

When the devotion is centered on a saint, that deepens the community aspect by extending it beyond death.

From this point of view, I think I can now understand the ways in which we pay respect to Mary under many appellations like "Our Lady of Czestochowa", "Our Lady of Mount Carmel" and "Our Lady of Perpetual Help." For the different appellations connect one with the different overlapping communities (ethnic, monastic, etc.) that are inspired by that aspect of our Lady's character and life. And part of the

richness of the life of a large vibrant community like the Church (or a nation, for that matter) are the overlapping smaller synchronic and diachronic communities found within it. Just as it is good to have particular friends, it is good to identify with multiple particular communities. All if this fulfills us as the social animals we are.

Thus, those Christians, especially Catholics, who focus on the horizontal aspects of the Christian life, who take the notion of community as central, should love popular devotions. (One thinks here of Fr. Andrew Greeley as an example of this love.)

Confidentiality

You ask me: "Did Owen tell you in confidence that he is looking for another position?" He didn't, and in fact Owen and I have never talked about the question. What can I say? It seems I can truthfully and with a clear conscience answer: "No." After all, Owen never confided in me, so I owe him no duties of confidentiality.

But if I make it a policy to answer such questions honestly in cases where Owen has reposed no relevant confidence in me, then I make myself into a non-intentional betrayer of secrets. For you can then tell whether Owen has shared a relevant confidence in me simply by asking me about it—if I answer, then he has not, and if I do not answer, then he has. Moreover, in typical cases you can also deduce, with some probability, what the confidence was. For it is more likely that Owen would take the trouble to request confidentiality about his looking for a new position than about his being satisfied with his present post.

By answering in the negative when no confidence has been reposed in me, then, I decrease my ability to keep confidences on other occasions. It seems, then, that a good thing to say is: "If he did tell me so, I wouldn't be able to share it with you. And if he did not tell me so, I still shouldn't tell you that, since then you'd be able to tell when confidence has been reposed in me."

But what is kind of tricky is that there are cases where this response does not seem satisfactory from Owen's point of view. Suppose that Owen never committed a certain pecadillo, but I am such a close friend of his, that had he done it, he would have immediately told me about it in confidence. If I am asked whether Owen confessed the pecadillo to me, and he had not, then it seems the very best thing for Owen's reputation is a clear denial from me. But a policy of such denials makes me a poorer keeper of confidences for my friends. So there is a bit of a dilemma here.

Presumably, the thing to do is to say that the duty to remain an effective keeper of confidences when one has not had a secret confided to one is only a prima facie duty. It is, simply, a good thing to be an effective keeper of confidences, but sometimes we need to act in ways that makes us less effective at keeping secrets, just as sometimes we need to act in ways that will make us less good racketball players (a philosopher I know gave up a professional racketball career to go into philosophy). To be an effective keeper of secrets is a genuine good, but there are incommensurable goods that might justify becoming a less effective keeper of secrets. There is nothing surprising here. In fact, examples are easy to find. Learning to keep a poker face, for instance, makes one a more effective keeper of secrets, but increases one's temptations to dishonesty.

What is kind of interesting to me about this case is that it seems one has prima facie duties of confidentiality towards people whose confidences one does not actually possess. I think this is because one has good reason to be ready with the offices of a friend (understood broadly—we should be a friend or neighbor to all), and hence to act in ways that make one a more effective friend. Maybe we should see this reason as grounded in what one owes fellow human beings, or maybe in what one owes oneself, or maybe in what one owes God.

And confidentiality is not the only such case. For instance, one likewise has reason to avoid budgeting one's money and time in such a way that one has no margin to help friends in need.

There is nothing earthshaking or deeply surprising here. I just wanted to think through these issues, and as often, my way of thinking them through is by writing.

Knowledge, community and eternity

When I figure out or learn something, I typically find myself with an urge to share it--with family, friends or blog readers. The new knowledge just pulls me to sharing. Some of the pull is vanity. But I don't think it's all vanity. Even if I had to share the knowledge anonymously, without ever having the satisfaction of knowing if anybody ever appreciated it, I would still feel the urge to share it. This isn't a decisive argument that it's not all vanity, but it is evidence. I think I am not alone in this.

While some goods can be enjoyed alone almost as well as together with others, much of the value of knowledge seems to be the value of communal knowledge--and when I talk of "knowledge", I mean to include here "understanding", "insight" and the like. It is natural to share knowledge--that is in large part why we have language. (Self-concealment correlates with psychological and physical problems, but apparently there is insufficient evidence at present to determine what the causal relationship if any there is here--see The Psychology of Secrets by Anita Kelly. And in any case, when I talk of what is natural, I am talking of a normative naturalness, not a statistical normalcy.)

Even those who want to have an esoteric secret doctrine tend to want to have a community of cognescenti with whom they can share it. Or at the very least, and most annoyingly, they want others to know that they have secret knowledge that no one else has.

The good of knowledge is, then, incomplete when the knowledge is solitary. Likewise, the good of knowledge is incomplete when the knowledge is evanescent. While eating a chocolate can be satisfactory even though the chocolate disappears in a few seconds, and the memory fades in minutes to hours, to know something for a short bit of time and then forget it completely is to miss out something important about knowledge. Knowledge is supposed to be a stable and lasting good. We see this in Plato (though he drew from this the wrong conclusions about what can be the object of knowledge, in large part because he was an A-theorist). Suppose we were to learn the answer to some difficult scientific problem, and if we were to about to die and live never again (of course, I believe that death is not the end of life, but this is a hypothetical question), and we could pass the answer to no one. This could be quite tormenting, and it might almost have been better not to know the answer. And, no, this is not just about bragging rights.

One of the things I have wondered about is how much of the meaning of our lives would remain if death were the end of life, and all humanity were to return "again to the nebula" (to use Russell's phrase). Perhaps some valuable things might not lose that much of their savor under that hypothesis. But knowledge, I think, would be much impoverished if it were all coming to an end. One reason for that is the structure of human knowledge. Finding things out always opens more new questions, and so knowledge points to more questions which in turn point to more knowledge--Nicholas Rescher talks about this really nicely. But I think there may also be something about knowledge itself, about the connection between knowledge and eternity.

The good of knowledge, thus, seems to point to community and eternity, being incomplete without either.

For the Christian, this reflection might point to the Trinity (God's self-knowledge is essentially shared between three Persons who have one intellect), the Incarnation and beatific vision (this self-knowledge is graciously shared with us), and eschatology (our knowledge will, indeed, last--and even our bodies will rise again, so even the kind of knowledge we have as embodied beings will return). Love is greater than knowledge (in its fullness it includes knowledge but goes beyond it), but knowledge (or at least understanding, and justified true belief) is theologically significant as well. After all, Christ is Logos and Sophia.