The "Galatea Scenario" and the Mind/Body Problem.

"Without symbolism the life of man would be like that of the prisoners in the cave of Plato's famous simile. Man's life would be confined within the limits of his biological needs and his practical interests; it could find no access to the ideal world which is opened to him from different sides by religion, art, philosophy, science." -- Ernst Cassirer.

I wish to comment on the "mind/body" problem in philosophy and upon some issues of personal identity to which it is related.

I begin by borrowing a page from Derek Parfit's book, actually by borrowing his method in that book. I make use of a "thought-experiment" -- something that should be familiar to law students -- a "hypothetical case" found in Professor Parfit's Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1984) -- but I set forth, first, two original science fiction scenarios.

The ideas that I expect to develop in this essay allow me to take a small step towards unifying the works and insights of philosophers in the rival traditions of existentialism (Kierkegaard, Sartre, Murdoch, Laing), phenomenological-hermeneutics (Heidegger, I also include Sartre's literary theory in this camp, Gadamer, Ricoeur), the philosophy of symbolic forms (Cassirer, Langer), and social agency theory derived from British idealism by way of T.H. Green, F.H. Bradley and John McTaggart up to John MacMurray's writings and Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor's work in our time.

A number of philosophers who are indebted to Kant's Critical theory, such as Roger Scruton and Thomist John Finnis, have helped me to clarify my thoughts. I recognize a strong fondness for the language and style of argumentation of American pragmatism, as found in diverse thinkers, such as Richard Rorty and Cornel West, also John Searle. Like these American philosophers, I aim at directness, clarity, humor and vividness in my examples with the goal of being as accessible as possible to readers with little prior knowledge of philosophy.

Finally, among "classical" American philosophers, my favorites are Josiah Royce, C.S. Peirce ("Evolutionary Love"), and George Santayana, more than William James and John Dewey. Mary Whiton Calkins is a brilliant philosopher who should have joined Harvard's faculty during the great period of James, Royce, Santayana. ("David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")

I plan to develop my position in the course of "interpreting" several hypothetical cases. This effort is partly an exercise in hermeneutics. I conclude with a variation on these hypotheticals that I call, the "Galatea" scenario. I trust that students of Greek mythology will understand why I have chosen this strange title. In my concluding remarks I refer to some unique aspects of postmodernist culture and the new aesthetics of identity creation in the vocabulary of images.

I. Three Hypothetical Cases.

A. Mind Without a Body.

Suppose that scientists at MIT develop a technique for recording the chemical states, waves and electronic impulses of the human brain. These recordings can be reproduced on a CD-like disc, or on a tape, or chip.

Every aspect of a person's "mind" is captured in these recordings -- all of a person's memories, dreams, tastes and preferences, ambitions or desires can be stored in these recordings. This assumes, of course, that cerebral activity fully explains or translates into, thoughts in the mind and even constitutes the mind itself, without remainder, and fully accounts for human subjectivity.

This assumption may not be science fiction much longer. According to Michael Labosserie, "Ed Berger, a biomedical engineer at the University of Southern California, has developed chips and software that can (in theory) duplicate the function of brain cells." The Philosopher's Magazine, Issue 29, 1st Quarter, 2005, p. 36.

By way of comparison, see Thomas M. Powers, "Machines and Moral Reasoning," Philosophy Now, Issue 72, First Quarter, 2009. ("How would a computer process Kant's moral imperative?")

For an eloquent articulation of the argument that mentality and/or the mind are not entities that are reducible to the brain, please see: Alva Noe, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology of Consciousness (New York: Hill & Wang, 2009). http://www.fsg.publicity@fsgbook.com/ (Professor Noe contends that consciousness is a "dynamic interaction between an organism and its surroundings.")

A number of scientists, including Richard Dawkins, have suggested that the mind may someday be reduced to information to be stored or transmitted over long distances. A disc with all the recorded data of a mind can then be inserted in a computer and "played" in the sense that the computer's "mind" would be identical to that of the person whose thoughts had been recorded. See David Chalmers, "Idealism and the Mind/Body Problem," forthcoming in W. Seager, ed., The Routledge Companion to Panpsychism (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, ____).

It would even be possible to interact with this computer that is able to translate its thoughts into words spoken through a built-in speaker. Indeed, the computer's reactions would be the same, theoretically, as those of the person who originally possessed the mind which is duplicated. (For imaginative variations on this theme, see the films Cherry 2000 and Ex Machina.)

"Writing in the journal Computer Law and Security Review, Anne Russell of the University of San Diego alerts us to the potential problems caused by the increasing sophistication of robots. Cyborgs -- human-like robots -- are no longer the stuff of science fiction but a real possibility. [Professor Russell] believes we should address now the question of whether society will accept relationships between humans and robots."

Sue Roberts, "The Ethics of Sex With Robots," Philosophy Now, Issue 77, February/March, 2010, p. 5. ("'Westworld': A Review of the TV Series.")

It is reported in the media that ROXXXY, "the world's first sex robot" that is designed by artificial-intelligence engineer Douglas Hines is now available in six different personalities (only six?), including "Frigid Farah" and "Mature Martha," and is priced starting at $7,000.00. Please see: "I, Sexbot," Harper's Magazine, March, 2010, p. 23. (Celebrity sex robots will be available soon.)

How "human" must robots become before they are "persons"?

Will Smith's character in "I, Robot" struggles with this little dilemma.

I have serious doubts about any identification of human and mechanical "forms of awareness" for reasons that I will reserve for later in this essay.

B. Body Without a Mind.

Now suppose that scientists at MIT, working with physicians at John Hopkins Medical School, develop a technique that allows for the reconstruction, cloning or duplication of an entire person from a single fragment of tissue, a way of cloning that person's genetic information.

An exact physical duplicate of a human being might then be produced, except that the clone would only be physically identical to the original. There could not be mental identity because language and experience, as well as environment and upbringing, would necessarily be different for the clone.

"Mentally" -- at least in terms of personality -- the two beings, human and clone, would be different persons. Timothy L. Sprigge, "Consciousness," M.S. Gram & E.D. Klemke, eds., The Ontological Turn: Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergman (Iowa City: Iowa U. Press, 1974), p. 114.

C. Two Bodies, Two Minds, One Self.

Derek Parfit makes creative use of the "Star Trek" notion of teletransportation in developing his theory of personal identity: the idea is that you can step into a device which breaks down your molecular structure, scans, reads and stores the information, then reproduces your molecular structure in another "identical" device which is many miles away. At page 199 of Reasons and Persons, Parfit suggests the following complication to this thought experiment:

"I am often teletransported. I am now ... ready for another trip to Mars. But this time when I press the given button, I do not lose consciousness. ... I say to the attendant[,] 'It's not working. What did I do wrong?' 'It's working,' he replies, handing me a printed card. This reads: 'The new scanner reads your blueprint without destroying your brain and body. We hope that you will welcome the opportunities which this technical advance offers.' The attendant tells me that I am one of the few people to use the new scanner. He adds that if I stay for an hour, I can use the intercom to see and talk to myself on Mars. 'Wait a minute,' I reply, 'if I'm here, I can't also be on Mars.' ... A white coated man asks to speak to me in private. ... Then he says: 'I'm afraid that we are having problems with the new scanner. It records your blueprint just as accurately, as you will see when you talk to yourself on Mars, but it seems to be damaging to the cardiac system which it scans. Judging from the results, so far, though you will be quite healthy on Mars, here on earth you must expect cardiac failure within the next few days.' ..."

Professor Parfit suggests that survival is not what is essential to personal identity. ("'Self-Less': A Movie Review.")

I have my doubts about this claim. Parfit's hypothetical situation raises the most fascinating issues with respect to the philosophical puzzles of mind/body relations and identity. ("A Doll's Aria.")

There are serious difficulties and powerful objections to all three of the leading contenders on issues of mind/body relations, the nature of consciousness, and personal identity.

Hypothetical cases may help to illustrate some of the classic difficulties and objections to the "world-knot" (Wittgenstein) of mind/body relations. ("'Star Trek': A Movie Review.")

Before turning to a discussion of selected hypothetical cases it may be helpful to define my key terms: By "identity," I mean those characteristics of an object or entity "X" which makes it "the same object or entity at time Y or at time Z."

By "personal identity" I mean to describe the "set of uses concerning the logically necessary and sufficient conditions for a person identified at one time, being the same person identified at another time."

Philosophical analysis in this area of multidisciplinary research involves considerations of both qualitative and quantitative aspects of what we mean by personal identity. There are also relevant temporal and semantic aspects of the puzzle of identity.

In the 2015 film Ex Machina, for example, the consciousness issue or question of whether true "A.I." is achieved (I argue against Ava's achievement of "personhood") is secondary to themes of gender and power as well as the social nature of identity evocative of a diverse range of thinkers from Sade and Bataille on eros to Foucault, Lacan, Habermas and the "interpersonal" psychologists on social constructivism. Most powerful, of course, are the stark feminist readings of the cinematic work that echo Mary Wollstonecraft, specifically, on women's achievement of equality as "Revolution" and radical recent femnist writers on the "sociopathy of the masculine woman." Everything from Wittgenstein's "On Certainty" along with the "Blue and Brown Notebooks" to Derrida's "deconstruction" of subjectivity is fodder for the scriptwriter who seems very French. The Story of O and Philosophy in the Bedroom are as relevant as Turing's "Imitation Game" to interpreting or understanding Ex Machina. ('Ex Machina': A Movie Review" and "Mind and Machine.")

The debate over personal identity among analytical, linguistic, and/or pragmatist philosophers in what is sometimes misleadingly called the "Anglo-Saxon" world is concerned with giving an account of what personal identity over time necessarily consists in.

Technical discussion of the metaphysics of identity has become highly specialized in recent years.

Professional philosophers have focused either on the semantic and logical, or upon the evidential aspects of the problem, but rarely has a contemporary thinker in the American academy addressed all aspects of the problem of identity and/or selfhood in a single work. ("John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness.")

There are notable exceptions to this generalization among the very best philosophers in the English-speaking world, such as Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams, Colin McGinn, David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett and some others. However, for the most part, my observation remains accurate.

During recent years scientists, Antonio Damasio and many psychologists, have entered the discussion by offering such helpful items as a "neural" account of the mind (take another look at my first hypothetical) and some proposals for the resolution -- or dissolution -- of the mind/body problem. ("The Mind/Body Problem and Freedom.")

So far none of these suggestions have proved all that helpful. Consciousness remains a mystery. Yet it appears that understanding consciousness is crucial to the solution of the puzzle of personal identity.

Consciousness remains a mystery, however, that we cannot help thinking about and trying to resolve.

Colin McGinn and the "mysterians" claim that we may lack the cognitive capacity to decipher the enigma of consciousness just as a fish cannot hope to understand the ocean.

Philosophers in the analytical tradition tend to get bogged down in highly abstruse discussions of whether a particular view is best classified as a form of "epiphenomenalism" (the brain produces the mind); or "occasionalism" (the interaction is two-way); or the most popular version of mind-brain identity theory these days which is called "functionalism" (although processes in the mind are identical to processes in the brain, the brain is more like hardware while the mind is like software).

Continental philosophers and students -- especially phenomenologists (like me) -- have been struggling with broader, though probably related issues having to do with the nature of the self and its "placement" in language and the social world. Typically, these issues are stated in the following terms:

What am I? And what is my relationship to the things which make me up? -- such as the languages I speak, my gender, social class, the place in history where I find myself, my body, if you like? How do I participate in the "being" of others? How do they "live" within me? What is the relationship of the self to time and death? What is the role of language in these discussions? Can we step "outside" of our languages to understand language itself. The latter may be regarded as Heidegger's question. Please see: David M. Rosenthal, "Persons, Minds, and Consciousness," then Marjorie Grene, "Reply to David M. Rosenthal," Randall E. Auxier & Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds., The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene (Illinois: Open Court, 2002), pp. 199-225.

Phenomenologists and existentialists provide the key works in this tradition, but they are not alone. Structuralists and Critical Marxists have expressed similar interests.

Rather than turning for support and inspiration to scientists these (mostly European thinkers) have often been supported in their efforts by artists, especially literary artists, without any necessary loss of rigor. This shift in sources has to do with the nature of the subject-matter under examination and discussion, but it says something also about the motivating concerns of the respective Continental versus analytical, scientific versus humanistic "projects."

When scientists inquire into human nature they are seeking different -- though equally important -- answers from those sought by philosophers (or any humanists) who tend to ask identical questions for unique reasons and with their own purposes in mind.

I believe that this crisis of the self or the "rethinking of identity" within Western philosophy is taking place now for complex and important reasons. History has made this sort of inquiry unavoidable.

I now turn to the hypotheticals. ("Philosophy in a Postmodernist Culture" and "How Can We Be Moderns Again?")

Notice that the first hypothetical assumes without argument that the mind is the result of duplicable brain functions or impulses. This leads to a "materialist" response to the mind/body question. For present purposes I wish to emphasize the possible separation of mind and body.

I am aware of the materialist assumption that the mind is simply the brain "thinking." This notion seems inadequate to me (as does materialism) at a time when questions about what is "matter" have become difficult scientific and philosophical issues.

Any materialist-reductivist account of the mind/brain relation seems to leave out too much that is essential to what we call the mind. For example, the importance of culture to the creation of the mind finds no place in classical materialist theories of mind/body relations. (Comnpare "Mind and Machine" with "Consciousness and Computers.")

One solution to this problem is to say: "We have no minds."

The belief in minds may simply be dismissed as a relic of a prescientific vocabulary.

Few of us can "live" a non-mentalistic theory as opposed to articulating it.

When we are told, for example, that we have a date for Saturday night, we are not likely to say: "Gee, I can feel neuron NC-5 firing even as we speak."

We are much more likely to speak of being "happy," "pleased," or "nervous."

Notice how quickly the language of intentionality and the phenomenology of experience (qualia) kicks in.

This personalist vocabulary may even be necessary for scientists, though this observation is merely speculative since -- in accordance with their own theories -- there seems to be a problem (for some scientists) about the existence of their own and "other minds."

If all of my inner-life were reproduced on a chip and transferred to a computer would that computer be "me" whatever may be meant by "me"?

I doubt it.

For one thing, my identity is not something static. It is in a perpetual state of flux and evolution in response to external stimuli and in reaction to my environment. So the first problem is to decide which version of me is being transferred to the computer: the fifteen year-old me? the mature me? the middle-aged me?

These would be three very different persons. Also, the computer would be lacking in sensory organs. It could not know -- except conceptually, in an abstract way, or by "remembering" -- what it is to feel something. Thus, if an attractive young woman were to enter the room would the computer react as I would? Or would it remain a frozen image of me at a specific time, but without the capacity to feel? Yet I never lacked the capacity to feel so the computer could not be me at any time. In fact, the computer could not ever be classified as a "person."

The ability to "feel" is essential to being a person -- or to being me -- for that matter.

Does someone who suffers a lobotomy and is therefore utterly lacking in a mental (or maybe even an emotional life) continue to have an identity?

Notice that this is not the same as asking whether such an unfortunate individual remains a "person."

Perhaps the capacity to feel -- and complex emotions -- are as important as the ability to think, maybe thinking and feeling, emoting and reasoning are aspects of a single mental capacity (or function) which is also constitutive of one's consciousness or self.

It may be time to revive the quaint notion of the "soul."

Phenomenologists have always insisted on a point that is still not appreciated by behaviorists, namely, that the "boundary" between inner and outer worlds, between observable external behavior and unobservable internal motivations of persons (or human experience) is not all that clear because it is constantly changing.

Ambiguity does not necessarily make that boundary "unreal." It means that, for normal persons, there is such a thing as the inner life (or qualia) and to deny it is foolish. This leads, again, to the thorny issue of "intentionality."

Worse, the inner-life is necessarily social territory. This is a point to be developed by means of a thought experiment in this essay. For now, it may help to ponder this item:

"Those who profess to share the pain experienced by someone else might be doing so literally. Dr. Stuart Derbyshire of the University of Birmingham has reported his findings in the journal Pain after inviting 123 undergraduates to watch images of people in great pain. To the researchers' surprise, 30% said they felt physical pain in the same part of the body [Rupert Sheldrake's "morphic fields"?] as the person they were watching. These claims were supported by observation of heightened activity in areas of the brain that handle pain, which could confirm the sensations were genuine [despite the absence of a physical cause for this reaction.]"

Sue Roberts, "Painful Discoveries," Philosophy Now, Issue 77, February/March, 2010, p. 5. (Biologists are directed to the works of Rupert Sheldrake and also Richard Lewontin's essays.) ("'Interstellar': A Movie Review.")

Readers are directed to: R.C. Lewontin, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA (London & New York: Harper Perennial, 1991) and Richard Lewontin, "What Darwin Got Wrong," The New York Review of Books, May 27, 2010, p. 34. (Works by Professor Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini develop parallel themes.)

Finally, see my essay "Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom" then Christopher Norris, "Quantum Theory and the Logic of Anti-Realism," Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 40-71. ("Anti-realism" is essentially idealism for contemporary philosophers with notable exceptions.)

Ava, the "female" computer in Ex Machina, cannot empathize with the "pain" of others because she has not experienced pain. Hence, finding a rational solution to her prisoner's dilemma is not a task that is burdened with moral constraints as, indeed, such constraints cannot exist for her.

Similarly, if Ava were playing chess it would not move her to tears to capture (or sacrifice) a pawn in order to checkmate her opponent and win the game in accordance with her "open-ended" programming.

Let us suppose, for the time being, that what we call "emotions" are also mental, that they are kinds of judgments, as Kant and some phenomenologists insist, part of the contents of my mind somehow transferred to the computer, does this solve the problem?

No, I do not think so.

I believe that the very suggestion that thinking can exclude the emotions may be incoherent.

There is an element of evaluation in all thinking, including dispassionate scientific thinking (deciding what is a "fact," for instance). Accordingly, an "unemotional" mental approach to reality is almost a self-contradiction for a person. Thinking should not be equated with calculation which is what machines and sociopaths do.

None of this deprives us of objectivity or truth. If you doubt this claim concerning truth, then just try to make the opposite or skeptical claim that "there is no truth" and you will find yourself making a truth claim. See John Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment. (Again: "Mind and Machine" and "Consciousness and Computers.")

For human beings it is not possible to be Star-Trek's Vulcans. None of us can "control" our emotions, especially when it comes to the most powerful emotions in life, even if we are responsible for them. (Gene Roddenberry must have been a little bit Spock and just as much Kirk.)

This does not mean that we must be controlled by emotions, but it does require that we acknowledge and face emotions and seek to deal with them intelligently.

My sense of self, of who I am, cannot be separated from my physical state. I cannot conceive of life as an ape or from the point of view of a dinosaur. If I were 100 feet tall (or maybe just 6 feet tall), my entire mental life would be different. The same would be true, I think, if I lived in the thirteenth century.

For a non-sentient computer these things do not matter. It has no way of seeing, listening, "feeling" pain. It does not get hungry or cold. It has no sexual desires. It cannot be me.

Identity is just not the same thing as mental life, narrowly conceived.

Identity must be something more complex, something that is also partly social or linguistic, and not merely physical, but still very much embodied while being shared.

The ability to "mimic" emotions is not the same as actual possession of emotions. The famous "Turing test" does not identify consciousness in computers but only indicates when we should be unable to determine whether a computer is (or is not) conscious. ("Serendipity, III" and "'The Matrix': A Movie Review.")

How about hypothetical number two?

The physicalist equates my identity with my body and brain. The brain thinks so I have mental life. Consciousness is merely a useful illusion developed for evolutionary reasons. My identity is equal to my materiality.

Is all of this persuasive?

Not necessarily.

In the case of a clone, a physical replicant, the unique set of experiences that have shaped my values and tastes would be missing: the sort of food I have eaten, the music I have listened to, the culture in which I have grown up. All of these things have shaped the unique self that I have fashioned, the contents of my consciousness, though they are not necessarily physical or material.

Given a different set of experiences or life in another culture or even a different geographical location I would certainly be different even if I were to remain genetically or "materially" identical.

The self I happen to be, at any time, is partly a result of a bizarre set of accidents, also choices. It follows that even a physically identical human being could not possibly develop or possess a persona equal to mine. If this is correct, then identity cannot be exclusively physical.

We do need something like the traditional concept of the "soul." To formulate the concept of the soul is to be forced to construct a theory of freedom and evil. Notice the terms being used: "identity," "self," "consciousness," "mind/body."

This leaves us with Parfit's hypothetical. This hypothetical seems to provide a solution, a method for duplicating oneself exactly. The person stepping out of the teletransporter on Mars is exactly, even perfectly, like me: same physical envelope, same memories, thoughts, fears, tastes, a mirror image. Yet he is not me. It is no consolation to think that this other being on Mars will survive whereas I will not. The future self is a different entity from the present self. In what way is it reassuring to think that a future stranger, with whom we may have little in common, except for the coincidence that he or she is an older version of ourselves, will experience what we will not? ("Star Trek" -- the 2009 movie -- explores the puzzles "emerging" from wormholes and time spirals in quantum physics.)

I envy the "older me" -- if I make it -- the opportunity to see my child, or other children that are close to me (a niece and nephews) graduate from colleges. His seeing this, is not the same as my seeing it. I am not the man today that I will be (again, if I make it) at 65. In some ways, I expect to be better (wiser, I hope) and in other ways worse (less energetic).

What is the shared territory that makes "us" the same person? Some common interests, perhaps, in Opera or philosophy?

If I can answer these questions I will have a pretty good idea of what is identity.

It may be that identity is an empty concept, that the word is simply a label meant to certify the continuity of a self. The use of the word, then, would reflect only a value judgment or a "legal convenience," a conscious choice to regard person A at time 1 as "identical" to person A at time 2. This is a pragmatist view of the controversy which is likely to be popular with lawyers. (See Lon Fuller's discussion of "legal fictions.")

Michel Foucault said: "Leave it to police and government clerks to determine continuities between our thoughts and actions."

We end where we began in Western thought, with the Socratic problem: Who am I? Am I the person who lives in the world, whom others claim to know? Am I the sum total of the things that I have done, both good and bad? Am I nothing more than a mysterious inner-self? A Cartesian spectator in the theater of the mind? Am I merely the aggregate of my subjective experiences at any given time? Is the essence of my identity exclusively mental, "located" in the mind? Is it physical, "located" in the body, including the brain? Or is identity neither of these things, but merely a "useful fiction" generated to describe the public persona who acts in the world? Is my "essence" something primarily social that is created with others? Does who I am have as much to do with the people in my life -- especially those I love -- as with genes and brain chemistry not to mention what is convenient for the State? Am I reducible to my "memories"? And are "memories" ever merely individual? ("David Hume's Philosophical Romance" and "The Soldier and the Ballerina" then "What is Memory?" and "Out of the Past.")

Part of the problem here is history. Descartes, for what he rightly regarded as excellent reasons at the time, got us off on the wrong foot -- as Mary Midgley suggests -- by insisting on an unreal distinction between two untenable abstractions that were to be kept apart artificially: mind and body.

It became very clear by the time of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind that there could be no minds without bodies, no "ghost in the machine." This led to a swing of the pendulum too far in the opposite direction. Behaviorism simply (and absurdly) denied the reality of the inner-life or consciousness by focusing on behavior, exclusively, mistaking evidence of consciousness for consciousness itself. This was soon seen to be a mistake which has led to the more recent recognition of the "mystery" of consciousness and to the current state of confusion.

At this point my analytical tool kit is useless. I think that a different approach that is unembarrassed by emotions and the means of expressing them becomes important to the effort to understand what we are, whether we are minds or bodies, or if both, in what way(s) we are both.

I will now set aside my "analytical" philosophy books and approach the topic from a more literary and intuitive direction, aesthetically, with my fingers crossed and with the hope that I can avoid all psychiatrists and psychologists, ethnologists, anthropologists and sociologists, not to mention cognitive neurologists or people who work for the IRS -- with very few exceptions -- along the way.

I will also do my best to avoid the computer called "Ava." ("Is clarity enough?")

II. A Phenomenology of the Self as "Being-With-Others."

A. An "Unfinished Man."

None of what I am about to say is very original. I suppose some of what I say may be traced to Kant, and even more to Hegel, to the European philosophical and literary tradition, especially to the phenomenologists and existentialists in our era. Some of it can also be found in the Romantics, in poetry and novels -- from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to Oscar Wilde's "Dorian Gray," to the writings of contemporaries like Roth and Mailer, Fowles and Clarke, not to mention to the witty and engaging novels of ideas of Gore Vidal, especially the literary masterpiece Myra Breckinridge, whose theme is the plasticity of identity in this media age and the unique obstacles to the achievement of identity (selfhood) in our time. (See Terry Gilliam's Brazil.)

I think identity is a process comparable to a literary process -- a process that is only possible for conscious ("aware of being aware") creatures. Whatever human beings are must be both mental and physical, material and spiritual (by the way, there is nothing more natural than human spirituality).

People speak of the acting "process." Perhaps there is an analogy to draw from the way actors create their portraits of characters to the process of ordinary human "identity-creation."

No denial of one aspect of what it means to be a person will be very persuasive in the long run. This includes our gender-options and power/political "choices."

Much of this will come as a shock to what Vidal called "middle-brow American culture" and the ideologists of scientism -- who are often so-called "therapists" -- and who are often as fanatical and irrational as religious fundamentalists. In fact, behaviorists are religious fundamentalists.

To borrow the title of Lillian Hellman's memoir we are all "unfinished persons." What is needed to complete the self -- to create or complete an identity unifying (or "finishing") the elements of the self -- is freedom. The freedom to pursue those unique ends that define us.

The most important of those goals or functions that define us, as humans, is the capacity to love.

Creativity and imagination, aesthetic achievement are elements of every human life to the extent that a person fashions a self-identity. Arthur Danto says of Sartre's understanding of literature:

"[A writer] requires a reader, and he [or she] writes for [that reader]. Literature demands the 'conjoint effort of author and reader.' ... There is no art except for ... others."

Jean-Paul Sartre (New York: Viking, 1975), p. 35.

This is to pose the problem of "representation" as the crystalization of the paradox of freedom.

There is no such thing as a person without freedom directed at the Other. At least there can be no person without the yearning for freedom and the possibility of experiencing it -- if not politically or ethically, at least metaphysically or spiritually.

"Person" implies not only "consciously aware," but free. ("Are we free to believe in free will?")

Deprivation of metaphysical, moral, and political freedom -- even as a hope or possibility -- is deprivation of humanity. This ambition to deprive persons of humanity is a perennial fantasy of dictators or oppressive regimes seeking to condition persons into the status of movable "objects." Mr. Cheney? Mr. Trump? ("Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility" then "Ronald Dworkin's Jurisprudence of Interpretation.")

The study of quantum physics leads to an astonishing parallel to identity creation in the synthetic act by which an observer constructs, as he or she perceives, observational data or the world. In creating ourselves we may also be "creating" our world(s). ("Dialectics, Entanglement, and Special Relativity.")

Only someone who has experienced the horrors of a torture chamber and/or rape -- also the daily effort to destroy his or her free will and autonomy -- can fully appreciate these words: Freedom is self-knowledge over time. Freedom is dynamic and social because it requires the presence of others and leads healthy persons, eventually, to recognize and love at least some of those others.

As that notorious non-scientist, G.W.F. Hegel said: "No one can be free alone."

The films "Constantine" and "Night Watch" explore themes of redemption through free self-sacrifice in a mythical context; see also my short stories, which serve as dual autobiographies: "The Soldier and the Ballerina" and "Beauty and the Beast."

It is no surprise that free human beings find themselves creating stories that confer meanings on their projects, sometimes redemptive meanings. There is no literary work without the meeting of reader and writer in the, for lack of a better term, "consummation" of the literary act. Perhaps the same is true of every artistic encounter. ("What you will ...")

Maybe there is also no personal identity which can be realized without the "consummation" provided by the "encounter" with the Other.

Sartre's writings come to mind again: A person is always "free to decide what to make of what is made of him" or her, that is, a person is forced to react or contribute to the assessments of him- or herself by others.

We are interpreting creatures. I act "for" you; you act "for" me.

Maybe novelists have always known this. We are forced to be free. The encounter that takes place between writer and reader in language, in literary texts by way of interpretation, is a kind of invitation to share in the consciousness or imagination of another person, to see the world of human meanings from the point of view of another -- or several others in the work of a single great genius -- a point of view which is grafted on to the page by the writer.

Every reader must decide whether the authorial point of view seems persuasive or illuminating.

Similarly, no theatrical performance or movie is complete without an audience. There is no finished work of art (or person?) without a recipient of this gift of the self. Ava? Realization in art or life is a kind of self-giving. We must die in order to live. F.H. Bradley's ethics of self-realization comes to mind. (See again "'Ex Machina': A Movie Review.")

Iris Murdoch has defined loving another human being as the certainty that: "I would go into the darkness if it would mean the light for you." ("Stuart Hampshire and Iris Murdoch on Freedom of Mind.")

A recent article examining Alan Turing's "test" for consciousness in relation to A.I. is marred by a confusion between related concepts pertaining to identity/self and a category mistake regarding human and humanity in "relation" to mind or mentation. Brian Christian, "Mind vs. Machine," The Atlantic Monthly, March, 2011, p. 58. ("Mind and Machine.")

For religious persons the true project of humanity only becomes possible when God enters history. This is true not only in terms of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, but in God's relationship with a chosen people, or His revelation through a Prophet to a wandering tribe. By the use of symbols religions gesture at the completion of a transaction between humanity and God. (See my short story, "Pieta.") Professor Danto writes:

"... reading is an essentially free act, not merely a response to some words but the constitution of an object -- the work -- which does not exist anterior to its constitution ... "

Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 36. ("'Drawing Room Comedy': A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

Sartre concluded that "every writer has only a single subject -- freedom."

The literary encounter or aesthetic experience -- like love -- is about the free sharing of inner-lives, mutual self-giving. Conscious living is "being-in-the-world-with-others."

Is this another definition of "communication" -- mutual self-giving?

Emotions are, obviously, never irrelevant to this process of "caring" (sorge) for another person nor to what is considered thinking or interpreting in literary communication.

The relationship between reader and writer lasting over decades is a kind of love where what is shaped and altered, continually, is the meaning of the work. Marriage? Love-making? Overlapping categories. ("The Allegory of the Cave" and, again, "What you will ... ")

Discussions of Martin Heidegger's "What is called 'thinking'?" should be associated with Jacques Derrida's great essay "The Ends of Man." Fascinatingly, these philosophers were formulating a single theory of sanity to be juxtaposed against Michel Foucault's "seductions" of madness or transgressions of the boundaries between "reason" and "unreason" (his terms) even as one of these philosophers (Heidegger) was absorbed by the greatest evil or madness of the century and as the other (Derrida) was harmed by that same evil. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")

Human and humanity are territories of negotiation and struggle, not fixed categories, like normal and abnormal, sane and insane where each spills into the other. More important than biotechnology or Turing-style mathematical puzzle-solving is narrativity as the development of a shared project of Being among persons that is called "hermeneutics." ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")

In religious hermeneutics this insight concerning our "constitutive mutuality" (Hans Kung) is applied to the interpretation of Scriptures. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

The analogy to the true therapeutic encounter between equals should be obvious. No conversation that is unchosen or forced upon a person -- a person whose responses and physical condition are in any way "constrained" -- will be productive or a true dialogue.

Such a forced conversation and assault always is (and can only be) torture.

My opinions and reactions or values will not be determined by others and should not be subject to attempts at control by agents of any government. "Control" amounts to the murder of a person's identity or self.

In a political context the "work" to be shaped (in Hegelian terms) is the moral identity of a community. The interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, accordingly, involves a meeting by all segments of society in the community of that "text," using the word "text" to include the full tradition of interpretation of the document that "Constitutes" Americans as a free people.

I have tried to approach this ideal through a discussion of Drucilla Cornell's comments on Hegel's philosophy of law and the State. ("Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution" then "Stuart Hampshire and Iris Murdoch On Freedom of Mind.")

This returns us to the problem of representation.

Henry James advised writers making a literary point not to lecture, but to dramatize. Hence, my attempts to use short stories and films as illustrations of ideas.

I want to try to explain what I mean by this notion of "encounter" or communication -- and not only in the literary text, but also generally with others in the "book of the world" -- by telling a story.

This idea is similar to physicist David Bohm's concept of "dialogue." In the human search for completion through communication and exchange, as I say, we cannot be successful without others.

Only through relationships -- relationships are only possible among free subjects -- particularly in our deepest emotional attachments, can we become ourselves.

For Sartre, "hell is other people."

I disagree -- at least on good days. Along with Gabriel Marcel, I venture to respond that, while Sartre may be right that "hell is other people" it is no less true that "heaven is other people." ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")

Rollo May speaks of the worst evil as the attempt to affect persons who are secretly "desired," through the infliction of suffering because no other "relationship" can be maintained by the stalker with such a longed-for individual. This must be a problem for celebrities.

It is sometimes better (for seriously disturbed persons) to affect another person by causing him or her pain than not to have any effect at all on that desired other person, for this "nothing-effect" forces the torturer to contemplate his or her own emptiness and need. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")

Only by discovering the proper mode of being towards others do we see ourselves truly and become the persons we are.

For me, the best model of freedom as social self-creation is the shared construction of meaning by reader and writer uniting in a text, as we are doing now, that may be called a "hermeneutics of freedom."

Consciousness is not -- and cannot be -- merely a cerebral effect or phenomenon, but also, always, must be a collaborative achievement comparable to an aesthetic encounter or dialectic.

The others in our circle of relations become a mirror in which we see not necessarily the self we wish to be only the self we have become. This is not always a pleasant experience, but it is a necessary one. ("Master and Commander.")

What we have to "see" in other people, especially in those close to us, is ourselves: How do we help to shape them into the persons that they are? How do they help to do the same for us? Martin Buber's idea of an "I and Thou" encounter may illustrate what I mean. (Compare my essay "G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism" with "'Diamonds Are Forever': A Movie Review.")

In Tantric forms of sexual bliss "as" spirituality, communication between feminine and masculine principles in erotic rituals is symbolized in the images of "mirror" (feminine) and "light" (masculine): " ... the sakti [female creative power] is represented as [establishing diversity] of perception by 'holding a mirror' to the 'light' or unitary image of the male-discursive principle, reflecting that light on to 'the wall which is consciousness.' This description is the closest Hindu parallel to the explicit idea of identity=experience of diversity=a reflection, or time-delay process which we suggested as a system-model of I-ness, and is of particular interest because it must have been derived wholly by introspection, in the course of experiment with manipulated oceanic states."

Alex Comfort, "Individuative Cosmologies -- Tantric," in I and That (New York: Crown Pub., 1979), pp. 113-114 and Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition (New York: Anchor, 1965), pp. 185-199. ("On Initiation.") (Please see my essay: "Oh, to be in India.")

Gnostic Christianity features similar erotic spiritual states and also a celebration of the body as the "temple of the Holy Spirit."

Notice that this process of communication between male and female occurs both within the person as well as, socially, with others.

We cannot be the good and generous persons that we wish to be without a little help not only from our friends, but also and most especially from those we love.

Our cultural symbols, the great public texts that we share as citizens and inheritors of a civilization contain images or forms of the Other that are meant to help us to make the necessary discoveries about who and what we are, or should be.

The Other as symbol and mirror becomes the door that allows us to enter another psychic reality, to achieve another self. We can only "be" with the Other. One great function of art is to provide us with symbols and images that are shared or "communal spaces." Much better than meeting a famous actor is to see one of his or her best movies. If we can "see" another person truly then we may also better "see" ourselves in order to become the persons we are.

"To know and love another human being," Evelyn Waugh writes, "is the beginning of all wisdom." (Compare "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?" with "Pieta" and "Faust in Manhattan.")

In Western civilization symbols of unity are found primarily in religious and other art, myth, our forms of expression, such as music or film.

A crucifix is a work of art, for example, it is a religious symbol, an aid to contemplation, a text of a sort.

A crucifix is also a kind of mirror. It may be telling us something important about who (or what) we -- all of us -- should be.

A crucifix may "speak" to us about how we might transcend our circumstances and limitations in order to move closer to that ideal. This sacred object is a mirror that becomes a door.

A crucifix is also a reminder that human beings are suffering and dying creatures; yet that we are, nonetheless, capable of love and compassion. As an art object which is also a religious symbol, a crucifix is meant to assist persons in meditating upon the universal human condition while reminding Christians (and I am not a religious believer or a member of any religious group) of God's infinite love and sacrifice for humanity, or that the God idea is about love and sacrifice for the Other. Religion is (for me) entirely a language of metaphors.

Every crucifix, whatever else it may be as visual art, is also a kind of poem. These are self-conscious metaphors that open on to symbols. ("Metaphor is Mystery" and "Serendipity, III.")

Sadly, the historical association of the crucifix as a symbol (for Jews and others) with the worst forms of horror makes it also an ambiguous symbol.

Nietzsche's writings on "life as literature" and his Zarathustra will also serve as illustrations. Psychoanalyst and "anti-psychiatrist" David Cooper writes:

"We all repeatedly die partial deaths in order that the others, for whom we are the sacrificial offerings, may live. The archetypal Christ, in so far as he has any reality at all, is in each of us."

The story I am about to tell is offered with apologies to Richard Price, whose 1995 novel Galatea 2.2 more than inspired it.

B. "Galatea" or the "Postmodern Prometheus."

Imagine a mad scientist, a cognitive neurologist and computer expert (let us call him Friedrich), who is intent upon modeling the human brain, and re-creating consciousness, by means of computer-based neural networks.

There are, in fact, scientists attempting similar projects and philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, lending a hand with this effort.

Friedrich cooks up an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a computer on a canonical list of great books, fine music, philosophy and the arts until the machine is so proficient that it can pass a comprehensive examination for a graduate degree in the humanities.

The idea is not only to develop a conscious machine, but a cultivated and sensitive one, a machine capable of feeling and compassion, of discernment, taste and judgment. The goal is to "make a person," which is really to figure out what a person "is."

As usual with such stories it is the would-be builder of a "new" human being who is educated into an appropriate subjectivity for a brave new world, that is, it is he who learns the meaning of his humanity in seeking to understand what makes others "human" (persons) in a moral sense. (Please see the Michael Caine classic "Educating Rita.")

All stories about the building of a person, everything from "Pinochio" to "The Terminator" films, are efforts to come to terms with what it means to be human. Each of these myths contains a theory of the person. ("'Westworld': A Review of the HBO Series.')

The point of my story is, of course, to learn why and when we can speak of a conscious moral subject as a locus of both rights and responsibilities, that is, of "persons." After all, everyone is engaged in the task of making a person out of him- or herself, not to mention out of any children who come along, eventually, and need help early on in doing just that: becoming the persons they are or will be. ("A Doll's Aria" and Spielberg's "A.I.")

The computer in my story can speak through built-in speakers and understands words spoken to it, words which the computer records and absorbs. Friedrich decides to give his computer a feminine perspective. The device soon grows more worldly and proficient benefiting from the wisdom and experience contained in many books. He provides the computer with a female voice, say, the voice of a favorite screen actress -- Kate Winslet -- which is taken from recordings and duplicated exactly. A cybernetic body resembling that of the actress is built as well and the computer's brain is transferred into that body.

Friedrich decides to call his computer "Kate Winslet II" (KW-2, for short). He arranges trips to the theater, dinner parties, interactions at the local grocery store for her. They develop a cordial and affectionate relationship. They begin to care for each other. "She" learns to converse easily with many different kinds of strangers. "She" begins to develop her own interests and concerns, emotional and political, her own "feeling" responses to others and the world.

At what point is KW-2 a person? When is the "dialectic" complete between Friedrich and KW-2? When does "she" acquire a mind as well as a brain and/or body?

I am convinced that what makes KW-2, or Friedrich, or anyone, for that matter, a "person" is the acquisition of the ability to choose, freedom. KW-2's freedom to decide what "she" feels and how she understands herself and the world will coincide with the achievement of her identity. This will require KW-2 to place herself within a set of narratives (fictions?) through interpretation -- fictions in which others have equal and equally free roles and concerns to set beside her own "interests" and "objectives."

The status of "person" is a moral category. And story-telling is always, necessarily, a moral practice or medium.

Until that hermeneutic-faculty exists for her, no matter what other attributes she may possess, regardless of the amount of information stored in her memory banks or the perfection of the body built for her, she is not fully human nor completely conscious, and not a true moral subject or person. ("Bernard Williams and Identity.")

Ms. Winslet -- like any movie star or celebrity -- is confronted with someone called "Kate Winslet" on the cover of magazines and billboards. The other or "real" version of herself must be a source of wonder and laughter for the woman shopping at "Whole Foods."

Is "celebrity" merely another role for an actor? Must one prepare to become this "famous person"?

Leonardo Di Caprio was perfect in Woody Allen's "Celebrity" as a version of himself discovered in magazines and popular mythology bearing little resemblance to the thoughtful and polite young man I have seen in interviews (displaying little fondness for the nonsense that goes with the territory of being a successful actor).

Life as a "celebrity" simply must be an existence in a hall of mirrors where the reflections of the self often will appear weirdly distorted. I can understand such an experience.

To acquire this freedom and the imagination that it makes possible is not as easy as it seems for many us who must first be rid of the burdens of crippling early injuries or deprivations of class, education, and affect, or the trauma resulting from violence and sexual-violation -- deprivations that can be determining and limiting for anyone, if they are severe enough, and from which victims are never entirely free.

I am suggesting, again, that consciousness is both within the subject and in or "of" the public world of others, like language. Consciousness is a "dual-aspect" phenomenon. This is not "dualism."

This is, of course, to reveal the point at which Friedrich also achieves the status of a person. It is only when Friedrich chooses the mirror (or mirrors) into which he must gaze to see his own truest reflection that he becomes a person. Friedrich must come to terms with what he sees and feels as he does so. I am reminded of Anthony Powell's great comic novel A Dance to the Music of Time and see Hillary Spurling's Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2017).

The dialectic is complete for each partner in relation only when each sees with and through the other, when they become one, when each transforms the other.

Compare David Braine, The Human Person: Animal & Spirit (Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 351-397 with Kenan Malik, Man, Beast and Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us About Human Nature (London: Phoenix, 2000), pp. 319-335.

Freedom leads each dialectical partner to discover love for the other in order to know themselves and, more importantly, to "be" or become their best selves.

Love also brings its opposite -- the awareness of mortality which gives poignancy and infinite value to human relationships and persons. I like to quote W.B. Yeats: "Human beings are in love -- and they are in love with what vanishes."

Love and death define the boundaries of human being-in-the-world-with-others. (Heidegger, Jaspers, Ricoeur and, gulp, Freud.)

For a theatrical-religious dramatization of this cluster of ideas (or dialectic) dating from antiquity I suggest that you see a bullfight in Spain. The matador is much more than a "sports figure." The corrida (as Frederico Garcia Lorca understood) is an internal drama. ("Romance and Cigarettes.")

KW-2's challenge is everyone's challenge, obviously, certainly including mine. How can we become the persons we are? Imagination, then, or the capacity to construct the narrative of one's life, for oneself, will be essential to this project. The task of self-invention will be complete only when the project is shared. To be human is to be a maker, a kind of artist, or lover.

The analytical and materialist error -- compounded by scientism -- is to imagine that brain chemistry, at any one time, could reveal so protean and elusive a phenomenon as mind, consciousness, or identity, in its totality. To place a single frame under a microscope and hope to understand an entire film, unfolding over two hours, is not likely to be successful. To understand any film you will need to interpret the words spoken and visual as well as other references in a total relationship with you. Every good movie or work of art is about your life as the recipient of the work. ("David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")

Interpretation of any film will necessitate entry into an entire culture or cinematic language(s). This is even more true when you seek to understand your neighbor. (See the film "Starman.")

Our greatest works of art happen to be the loving relationships or families that we make and that make us. Communities of shared meanings. Is this to speak of religion? I think so. It is also to understand nations as moral projects shared by members of communities. When the national moral project is no longer understood (or shared) are in danger of disintegration. ("Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution.")

In Cuban slang the idea of "living" (vivir) something means to experience it intensely and fully, absolutely. Rather than "seeing" a movie; "live" the movie. A similar intense approach to the life around us ("to burn with a hard and gem-like flame") may be instructive even if no one could sustain such an attitude for long.

I am suggesting something different from a Madison Avenue fantasy or a warped version of a Hugh Hefner dream. I am asking: What do independence and subjectivity really amount to? KW-2 must be an independent entity and never a dependent creature in order to become a self. Paradoxically, however, to achieve that independence, she will need other people, just as a child needs nurturing to become a thriving adult. Hence, for us to care about her "humanity" -- understood as a moral category -- is to care about her freedom. This is because her identity, her subjectivity, can only emerge with (and be a consequence of) choice and choosing. (See again: "'The Matrix': A Movie Review" and "'The English Patient': A Movie Review.")

With freedom she makes her own decisions concerning values, beliefs, tastes, most especially emotional judgments (such as the love "she" chooses or does not choose to feel) towards other persons and social conditions, or loyalty to a community, as well as respect for herself and her true place in a world of values. (''Balde Runner 2049': A Movie Review.")

KW-2 would have to come to terms with the brutal realities of the world in which we live, with the existence of evil, suffering, and the inevitability of these experiences existing in all of our lives.

If KW-2 accepts the pain of freedom that implies responsibility -- and love -- then she will also accept the burden and curse of being, in a moral sense, a person.

Berdayev says: "Freedom is not something that we have. Freedom is what we are."

This Sartrean-existentialist slogan means that humanity is the territory "shared" between freedoms that always contains possibilities of good and evil. For a more complete statement of this view, see my essay Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Freedom (North Carolina: Lulu, 2004).

Identity cannot be "conditioned" into people. Conditioning can only warp and deform identity.

To accept the burden of freedom KW-2 needs a moderately comfortable life in terms of material conditions and an adequate set of spiritual goods such as an adequate education. Besides those things and most importantly, once again, she will need other people. She will need persons with and against whom to define herself. Persons concerned for her welfare, working along with her to allow her "to be," loving and helping her to develop all of her potential and talents, without concern for social or external expectations, except for those that she, KW-2, recognizes as legitimately impinging on her own will and responsibilities.

Other persons will not only be helpful some will inevitably be hurtful. There is no avoiding the dialectic of sociability.

Identity, then, would emerge for KW-2 only socially, with the acquisition of a language and history, of civilization and a set of affective relationships, of the capacity to love, so as to recognize in the equal right to freedom --  in the autonomy and dignity of others -- the source of her own.

This is the theme of every myth that seeks to provide a "philosophical anthropology," an idea of what human beings are: from the Bible to "Paradise Lost," from "Frankenstein" to Spielberg's "A.I.," or the recent films "The Island" and "Ex Machina."

We are persons only to the extent that we choose ourselves. We can only do this choosing in a social setting and "narrative" in which we see ourselves mirrored in the gaze of others. This can be disastrous when those others gaze not with love, as I say, but in hatred at us. (See again: "What is it like to be tortured?")

Furthermore, the identities that we fashion are dynamic, not static. They are subject to change as our social circumstances change.

Selfhood, as authentic self-becoming, can only really be achieved when we encounter in the mirroring gaze of others not only acceptance, but that unconditional love which provides completion.

Love is the "homecoming of the soul," the achievement of the unity with which life begins that can be lost in alienation and fragmentation. Living (vivir) is inseparable from loving (amar).

For example, the dialectic of romantic love is fulfilled only when each partner "completes" the other's identity, thus achieving together a new and shared identity. "You complete me," says the title character in the film "Jerry McGuire." And no, this is no trite sentiment or banality. Many of these themes are explored in Hegel's early religious writings, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and in the works of the Romantics. They are also central to the religious myths of humanity. Love, then, is what we are here to do. ("The Allegory of the Cave.")

A contrast is suggested between humanistic perspectives on eros in Jean-Luc Marion, The Erotic Phenomenon (Chicago & London: University of Chicago, 2007), Stephen E. Lewis, translation, with Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 13-37, then the psychoanalytic version of the argument for the forces of darkness: Ivan Ward, ed., On a Darkling Plain: Journeys Into the Unconscious (London: Icon, 2002), pp. 239-267. ("Genius and Lust" and "Good Will Humping.")

The philosophies of John McTaggart (especially his theory of love) and John MacMurray (notably his theory of the person), are part of the rich British tradition of reflection on these themes and are recommended to all readers as is the poetry of Jose Marti.

I suspect that one of the fallacies that complicates this issue for us is the pop-psychology doctrine that we should evolve a final persona, usually one satisfying the conventional social pieties, as we reach adulthood, a persona which remains essentially unchanged throughout our lives.

"Don't rely on other people for your happiness," Dr. Phil insists. "Grow up!" (See: "'The Adjustment Bureau': A Movie Review.")

My response is that, if you do not establish meaningful relationships, you never will be happy or fulfilled, certainly not to the extent that you should be.

Without loving others, Dr. Phil, you will never "grow up."

It is also wise to retain a bit of child-like innocence and goodness if we are to keep hoping for a better world. Actors -- maybe all artists -- seem to display this gift of innocence more than most others. (See my discussion of "Something Wild" in the essay "The Art of Melanie Griffith.")

All of us are many different people because we wear many masks ("personas") in the various roles that we play as social actors. We are only integrated, if at all, by a firm center of value and love which is always unfinished.

To the extent that we are all "unfinished," we are only children of a larger growth. We must remember to play nicely with others.

I extend this thinking to the political realm. The United States is a society with an "unfinished revolution," always in search of an ever-greater clarification of its national identity through a progressively better understanding of its Constitutional principles.

Essential to being an American is the challenge of deciding what it means to be an American. Part of what is best about the United States of America is this deliberate, eternally youthful quality, and the ultimate undecidability of the issue of "American identity."

Do Americans always play nicely with others? ("'This is totally amazing!' -- Donald J. Trump.")

III. A Concluding Thought on the Postmodern Challenge.

What is troubling about the otherwise exciting literature of "postmodernity" (defined as the economic and political condition of advanced capitalist societies in our times) and "postmodernism" (understood as the emerging cultures of such states) is that persons are threatened with the loss of "power of choice" when it comes to identity.

It is dismaying, for example, to realize that what seems genuine and true, authentically felt, may be only a commercial need, or a reaction prompted by advertisements, or some other form of conditioning.

I do not wish for my life to be a role in a narrative created by others, especially not by so-called "therapists" or political consultants for one of the major parties. These days, they are often the same persons. Luckily, the very things that threaten personal autonomy and that must be resisted can be turned into instruments of liberation.

If human freedom is now threatened by a commercial and media system that is subtle, ubiquitous and intelligent, it may no longer be possible to choose ourselves.

To lose or abdicate the ability to choose ourselves, however, is to lose our humanity.

We live today in a 24-hour television entertainment society. Everything in contemporary America especially, also throughout the developed world, has an element of entertainment "style," from sporting events to big business, politics, law, religion, even academia. If it is not fun, cute, or packaged in a ten second sound bite, then forget it. If it cannot be presented with a smiling, cheerful, sexy face, then it is not worth attending to. We have become spectators in a grand entertainment society looking up at the "celebrities" on stage whom we worship. (See the films "Bob Roberts" and "Bulworth," also "Simone.")

For instance, why would I use the "image" of film actress Kate Winslet in developing my "model" of self-creation in this essay?

Such are the contents of the collective subconscious these days that we cannot be certain how much of what we think, of our ideas and values, remains ours and how much is shaped by such things as Hollywood films or, worse, by the makers of television commercials.

The commercialization and mediazation of the cultural environment inevitably alters social reality, and us along with it. To take an obvious example, if I were a big enough fan, I am sure that I could acquire all of Ms. Winslet's films on video or DVD, or posters featuring her image, or photographs of the actress "personalized" with her signature possibly reproduced by a "signing machine."

Ms. Winslet's image is translated into commodities, things that I can buy. And among the things that we can all buy at the mall or online these days is an identity -- or more than one identity: There is a "look" that goes with being, with seeing oneself as, for example, a New York intellectual, a movie star, a hip-hop star, a gangster, or a cowboy, or even a political radical who rejects capitalism. For some people -- and this is a risk for all of us -- identity only amounts to the external trappings of a role, a kind of pose. Feministing? ("Why philosophy is for everybody" and "What is memory?")

You may begin to see why actors tend to have problems of psychological dislocation. I am sure that such problems are being generalized throughout the entire culture. Disassociative states, however short-lived, are becoming common for all of us.

With the increasing importance of viewer/reader-response options in future entertainment technology these problems will increase. Soon you will be able to insert yourself into the DVD of "Titanic" greeting Kate's character in order to prevent her from jumping into the ocean. Ilsa will look at you wistfully in that saloon in "Casablanca." King Kong will climb the Empire State building in order to keep you safe. You will wield your light saber by using the force against the dark side as many of us do already. Mr. Trump as Darth Vader is a perfect "fit."

In politics such a conclusion about a candidate ("he or she is just a front!") is always lethal. ("Is truth dead?")

Beware of too many "experts" controlling a candidate's "appearance." It was mostly the so-called "experts" who hurt both John Kerry and Al Gore, also Senator Hillary Clinton's much-needed presidential campaign(s).

This explains the willingness of large corporations to sell you t-shirts featuring the image of Che Guevara which, by the way, are available for a mere $19.95 each when their manufacturing cost is (and this is a guess on my part) about .99 cents per unit. Many people are persuaded to purchase such t-shirts to demonstrate their solidarity with the working class with the result that they accomplish exactly the opposite.

The true Marxist -- or just a humane person (who may well be a capitalist) -- concerned with the lives of those who make and sell such products will be to allow the manufacturer to earn his or her profit while providing workers with a more decent share of the earnings and ensuring that a portion of those earnings will be returned to the employees and/or shareholders in the form of long term investments and worker benefits.

Eventually, there may be a t-shirt with the picture of Ms. Winslet on it. Now that is a t-shirt that I may buy. However, not necessarily for $19.95.

Under these circumstances it is difficult to know if what seems like a free choice about my identity is the product of subliminal conditioning, or truly "my" own choice, as opposed to a product of not-so subliminal conditioning, but outright manipulation by the powers that be.

Have I invented KW-2? (Again: see the films "Ex Machina," "Simone," and "Cherry 2000.") Or has she invented me?

A serious error in pursuing Turing test problems is the failure to absorb Jacques Derrida's insight that selfhood, as distinct from humanity or personhood (defined as the overlapping territory between these concepts), NECESSARILY involves a "deconstructive" project and should be combined with Paul Ricoeur's insight that this then leads to a "reconstructive" project.

I continue to believe that there is something in the human spirit that resists all forms of manipulation and conditioning, a yearning for freedom at any cost.

I am suggesting also that as Western culture has become a crazy mixture of objects and images, where no clear boundary can be drawn between the two, both (to use Jean Baudrillard's rich language) have "imploded" into our consciousness.

Our identities are in danger of becoming indistinguishable from the objects that we consume ("money is the meaning of life," some say), except now it is the images associated with money -- images are our true currency -- that have become the "meaning of life" for many, images associated with fantasies of the "good" life or with the emotions that may define such a life. Think of the definitions of the word: "Avatar."

What once held "us" all together -- ideas, values, or love -- has been replaced by what Stuart Ewen calls, "all-consuming images."

A man wore a t-shirt yesterday that said: "Happiness is positive cash flow."

I would not know about "positive cash flow."

Where the Vatican used to be there is now Madison Avenue's advertising industry.

My shirt has an alligator in the chest area. My sneakers have a star on the side. My underwear is red and features heart-shaped words spelling out the message: "Lucky you!"

False advertising, you say? Hardly.

Soon I will be able to place a loving photo of myself and my favorite actress -- or person of choice -- in the underwear image for a small fee. Naturally, the underwear (like my person) always glows in the dark.

The exiting (don't say it!) and optimistic possibility that "arises" at the same time, however, is that the number of "image-makers" will increase and new partnerships will emerge that will allow for novel and much more pluralistic self-definitions and human possibilities.

The linguistic roots of the words "image" and "imagine" are entwined. There will then be new meanings/images in film and art that will result in entirely new identities for future generations of movie fans. Avatars. ("A Review of the t.v. Show, 'Alice.'")

We no longer live in the age of shopping or anxiety. We now live in the age of images.

The most important revolution today, therefore, will be interpretive or concerned with defining the meanings associated with our key images. No wonder the dinosaurs want to deface this essay. I am a threat to what they represent because the attempt to control images and meanings -- whether in Washington, D.C. or Madison Avenue's advertising industry -- is doomed.

The first sentence of my proposed novel is also the final sentence of that text: "Let me tell you a story."

Future persons may see themselves not just as "consumers" but as members of the human family in all of its richness and complexity by identifying with the diverse images on screen (see above), with new ways of expressing and experiencing love, or other emotions. Human possibilities as/or "multiplicities" will increase. Gender, racial, economic, multinational "identity-options" will be available for your choosing pleasure, including multiple gender(ed)-selves. Everybody becomes an actor. (See "The Art of Robert Downey, Jr." and "The Art of Melanie Griffith.")

Artists and thinkers like Downey, Griffith, Winslet, Will Smith and so many others intuit many of these ideas and emerging patterns in order to express them in their work.

I recently saw a film in which Kate Winslet plays a somewhat unsympathetic character, someone I probably would not speak to or like very much in my so-called "real life." Through Kate's art, we see and understand this person as a human being, not all that distant from those who judge her. I am sure that the ability to achieve this effect on the viewer of a film or play can only be called "genius."

What a great performance on screen demands is your interpretations and not someone else's predetermined "meanings" delivered to you along with a threat. You decide what movies mean and not The New York Times or The New Yorker, or any other critic or authority. ("'The Reader': A Movie Review.")

Freedom of interpretation is needed these days when so-called "reviewers" (or critics) are often incompetent or even illiterate. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")

We still cannot help thinking in terms of a persistent and purposeful self. We are living in a time when the number of selves on display in books or film-narratives are multiplying daily. As more of these possibilities are created in non-traditional places, not just Hollywood or "Bollywood," the freedom of the individual to reimagine his or her circumstances, and the world, increases "dramatically."

The best artists in cinema -- among whom I include both Melanie Griffith and Kate Winslet, as well as many others -- are modelling or creating new, more variable possibilities, new ways of being human by means of images. My dictionary reports that one or two "l's" are acceptable in "modelling" and even in "modeling." Take your pick. These artists are helping us to be free. (See "In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.")

You decide what your life means and who is essential to that life. No one else makes (or can make) those choices for you. Just consider the transformations that either of those two actresses (Winslet and Griffith) seems to undergo, the variety of their screen personas, and you will have some sense of the enormous and unprecedented range of empowering possibilities for subjects today.

Commodities and the images to which they are linked that might pose a danger of exploitation for ordinary people can be turned by human creativity into instruments of liberation through interpretation (see, again, my essay on "Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Freedom").

Images may become agents of liberation. The very same system of images becomes a tool of moral education and revolutionary social change. For an illustration of this theme in relation to the enigma of personality posed by Alan Turing himself, see Robert Harris, Enigma (New York: Ivy Books, 1995) and the film bearing the same title then Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind (London: Methuen, 1976), and the film for which I would award Colin Firth the Oscar: "A Single Man."

Unfortunately, I cannot access my own books on-line. However, I believe that they are still available. http://www.lulu.com/JuanG Computer attacks may alter or destroy this essay at any time. (See again: "What is it like to be tortured?")

Richard Wolin has written of Walter Benjamin's idea of "redemptive aesthetics" which may serve as a reference on this issue. The ideas of the "Young Hegelian" Karl Marx (see Marx's essay "On the Jewish Question") are also very suggestive. Alasdair MacIntyre's writings should be mentioned, especially his essay Christianity and Marxism.

It has been suggested that the next great religious myth or political text will not be a scroll from the Middle East, but a film made by brilliant collaborators. Film (or visual media) is the epitome of a collaborative or communal enterprise. Furthermore, the artistic-imagistic vocabulary of our times is now certainly global.

I still speak of "films," even though most movies are now digital, just as MTA clerks in New York's subway system are still called "token clerks" even as tokens are no longer used in the system.

As an example of global cinema I may point to the "Matrix" films and the Miramax film, "Equilibrium," both of which work as art and, possibly, as religious or political allegories, on many levels at once, making use of Asian cinematic vocabulary, anime and Hollywood epics, European writers and ideas, while providing splendid entertainment -- not to mention a profit for their makers. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")

If you read the novel or see the film "Atonement" please reflect on the theological meaning of the word "atonement" along with extended analogies in both film and novel between divinity and authorship. (See "Michel Foucault and the Authorship Question" then read John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman.)

I am an optimist. I continue to believe that a life-long project of self-creation is possible for all of us. We all retain -- for the time being anyway -- enough autonomy to create ourselves rather than being created by massive or anonymous commercial enterprises whose best function is to facilitate the artistic expressions of eccentric groups of talented artists and thinkers, ideally, from different cultures, and in collaboration.

One model of "success" may be the partnership between the Disney Corporation and Miramax films that resulted -- for a brief while anyway -- in so many fine films.

For me, one way of doing so -- of creating my identity -- is by writing and publishing my thoughts, by debating people in Internet chats and/or in print, or (if I can) in classrooms and bookstores or cafes.

To deny words or destroy a person's writings and speech is to dehumanize or enslave a human being. Censorship and mutilation of another person's creative self-narration is a kind of "murder" of that other person's spirit or narrative of life.

This attempted "murder" of anyone's narrative is part of what I describe as the epitome of evil. ("S.L. Hurley on Beliefs and Reasons for Action.")

Maybe, some day I will find KW-2 waiting for me (just call me "Friedrich") in a trenchcoat, in a foggy airport in "Casablanca."

Actually, I would settle for bumping into her in my favorite bookstore. And I am not referring to Ms. Winslet.

This is to return to my reasons for writing this essay and for hoping that I will be lucky enough to provoke some readers into awakening from a passive consumption of images by helping me to do the same, daily, "self-inventing" (maybe in order to create, collaboratively, some images of our own), and entering together into the aesthetic conversation or narrative of our times.

"Here's looking at you, kid."