Is the face the surface of the self? If there is a self, where is it?
I don’t know which came first here, the chicken or the egg. Either the word surface comes from the anatomical use of the word face or the anatomical use of face comes from surface, in the sense of “outermost boundary of an object.” However, we ought to wonder, since it is the outermost boundary of an object, what is the object that our faces are the outermost boundary of?
This paragraph is going to be a bit silly and pedantic but please bear with me because the pedantry will be worth it. I think quibbling about whether I’m applying the wrong definition of “face” to the anatomical feature is the wrong way to go. Even if we use a more direct definition, like “the surface of the front of the head from the top of the forehead to the base of the chin and from ear to ear,” we will eventually get to a similar question: why do we consider this anatomical feature the surface, and what is it the surface of? I will also submit that that definition perhaps ought to read just “the surface of the top of the forehead to the base of the chin and from ear to ear,” since what part of the head is the front is as relative as any geometric orientation. Like if I’m facing your ear, then that’s your front to me. To say that the front is always the face begs the question; asking what is the front of the head would be correctly responded with “the face” but, then, asking what is the “face” would be correctly responded with “the front of the head.” See how that does not settle my question, depending on where my eyes are oriented relative to the person’s head? The authors of the definition recognize this and, therefore, they add the rest of the definition, “the top of the forehead to the base of the chin and from ear to ear,” but then this fulfills the function I was seeking in the first place of correctly pointing out what part of the person we are referring to, such that I don’t need the bit about “the front.” Now–and this will bring me back to my point–you might think that I am hypocritically begging the question by accepting “forehead,” “ears,” and “chin,” but these may be defined more or less functionally such that we can pick out the objects we’re seeking without referring to orientation. That brings me back to my point: if we are defining the face functionally and saying that the face serves as the front or outermost boundary of something, what is it the outermost boundary of? Since the skin full-stop would be the outermost boundary of the body; the head would be the outermost boundary of the brain–or maybe just the end of grey matter would be. The question remains.
The answer to the question is not obviously magical; we will have to do a bit of digging to see why it is fun. Obviously, for practical purposes of communication and empathy, we are hardly going to be looking at the surface of someone’s arm. While those practical reasons do not settle the question at hand, they at least show obvious reasons to be concerned with this particular surface, that is, the face. Still: what are we communicating, what are we communicating to, and what are we empathizing with? What object or thing? It’s obviously not the body, since the surface of that would just be the skin. So, long story short, we’re communicating some bit of ourselves to some bit of someone else’s self.
On some level, this has been a circuitous monologue to get us to the question of what is the person or the self–but not really. While I often find that question intractable, I’m wondering something different here: let’s suppose that there is a self; where, then, is it? In my toes? Probably not. In my stomach? Maybe. Perhaps the most significant part would be around my face but more so behind it. Still, the self cannot be constituted only of the mind or cerebral anatomy, nor even of things within my body, since certainly if there is a self, then my memory is a part of it. But my memory is spread about in places not connected to my body; for instance, much of my memory about astronomy is written down in my astronomy notebook from college. One might retort that the words written in my notebook are not my memory but, rather, trigger my memory or memories.
There are two reasons that retort fails.
First of all, if something that “triggers” a memory is not itself constitutive of memory, then we’d be hard pressed to find anything that is, since we are in a constant fluctuation of retrieving memories, which retrievals are caused by (“triggered” by) both mental and non-mental phenomena, and memories themselves. Even if we should distinguish between those mental and nonmental phenomena when talking about memory, it doesn’t follow that not both of them are memorial phenomena. Then, I will have to bite the bullet that says that my amplifying of memory is too broad; almost any object or mental phenomenon I experience may trigger a memory in this way, such that anything I experience is part of my memory. That is OK to me. It does not make me an absolutely infinite being; not all objects I come across trigger memories. For instance, the TV in the background as I write this might remind me that I go through periods of life whereof I mindlessly put on some subscription after work, rather than unwinding on my own (I’m not saying that that’s always bad). Certainly, there are parts of this room that never trigger memories for me–like some fiber under the couch that I’m not aware of (as long as I am unaware of it). To the extent that something so reminds me, it is part of my memory. (To be discussed in a later post, this version of personal identity also does well to explain remembrance and social practices of memory; for instance, statues, memorials, and our performative usage of them.)
Second, I also hold the albeit extreme but I think ultimately correct ontological position that any B that has been caused by A is A to the extent that it has been caused by it. For example, I am my parents to the extent that I was caused by them–and influencing might be a kind of cause, such that I have also been caused by my friends and my community. The divergence in my identity from theirs is a complex conjunction of vicissitudes and what-have-yous but, to a large extent, I am them. I don’t think it’s wishful thinking to say that someone never dies inasmuch as they are imbued in the people they influence; however, that’s because I think this is a less hopeful idea than it sounds like. They cease to experience in the way that more obviously living people do and in that sense die. Though I have a theory I take from Socrates about why that’s not so bad, either.
For a bit of an aside, and as you could extrapolate from the above if certain topics were on your mind, I find it far less plausible than contemporary common sense would lead us to believe that a sufficiently powerful computer or biological mechanism could recreate me. Well, it’s logically impossible according to Leibniz’s nonidentity (or identity) principle, but it’s also banally unsatisfying to think about because we don’t even know what a self is yet so we obviously couldn’t create a machine that could make them. (The same goes for “happiness machines,” augmented simulations, and the like.) To make clear the logical impossibility, in order to recreate me, this mechanism would have time travel to 1993, and somehow induce the conditions whereunder I was born without also being there or being causally effective, since no such machine created me–you see, it’s just not logically possible. It’s downright incoherent. Now, I’m not saying that some forms of cloning or deep simulation are not interesting. But don’t fret that something could take total control in the way that scientists and engineers would like you to believe. I believe that time travel is impossible, which is an idea I will develop in future posts. Basically, I am a “b” or “c” theorist about time. Thus, something that antecedes something cannot also follow from that same something. The nonsensical timeloops found in movies about time travel are poetic and fun but serve to show that time travel is impossible because it entails logically impossible worlds, and anything that entails logical impossibility is itself logically impossible. I will not go over those impossible worlds right now; they are likely familiar to you if you reflect for a bit.
To be sure, I do not like to discourage creativity so calling an invention impossible takes a bit out of me. It feels wrong. But, when something is logically, not just practically, impossible, it’s just not possible. I’m talking about the following kind of possibility: 2+2=5. Circle-squares. No inventor could invent something that could cause two plus two to equal five. I’m not saying that a time-machine would do that but, rather, that it would have to do something similar in the relevant ways. So I’m not saying don’t be creative or believe in yourself. I’m trying to guide the creativity and belief in the right direction.
Asking why the face is the surface, rather than asking what it is the surface of, raises the infinite regress of division I suppose. A Matryoshka doll of sorts. Should we even say that the surface of the metatarsals is the skin? You would think it would be the bone. But why stop there? The limits are vague and may regress to the origin of all things. Such is the case for the self or personal identity; what constitutes its surface is not clear and may entail objects outside the body, and could indeed return all the way to the mysterious origin as well.
In a future post I hope to develop a few of those ideas. Why do I believe that if something has been caused by something else, then they are one another to some extent? Doesn’t that cause an infinite regress of things’ being defined by their causes? On another note, when we try to communicate ourselves, do the things we use to represent the parts of ourselves we wish to communicate suffice? The former is a long question that entails, frankly, somewhat of a ritualistic explanation from me. The latter, however, is artsy and fun; it has to do with my concept of the “persona” and “personality” as compared and contrasted with the “person” or “self,” and a bit about what is lost in sentences and language.
