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Thomas Metzinger: Yes, it's actually not so provocative, it's not an original idea at all. Many philosophers, David Hume, in the Anglo Saxon universe have said that for a long time. Who am I? The physical body certainly exists, the organism exists, but organisms are not selves. I don't deny that there is a self-y feeling. I certainly feel like someone, but there is no such thing. There is neither a non-physical thing in a realm beyond the brain or the physical world that we could call a self, but there's also no thing in the brain that we must necessary call a self.

Of course Buddhist philosophy had that point 2,500 years ago. So the idea that, as philosophers say, the self is not a substance, that it is something that can stay and hold itself in existence, even if the body or the brain were to perish, that's not a very breathtaking and new idea. What I am interested in is to understand why we just cannot believe that this is so. We have the feeling there is an essence in us, a deepest, inner core. We have this feeling that there must be something that is just not right about neuro-scientific theories about self consciousness, there's something beyond it. And I want to understand what that deepest core is because that's the origin of the subjectivity of consciousness.

But the experience of looking, of being directed to one's own feelings or to one's sensory perceptions of the outside world, this is itself an image. There is nobody looking at the image, it's like the camera is part of the picture or the viewing is itself a part of the process of viewing. This is how a first-person perspective emerges in our own case, the question is, okay, if it's not a thing, if it's not something in the brain, what kind of a process is it? And I think it's a process, as philosophers say, of representing, that is of making an image, and that process is not there all the time. You know you have a conscious self in dreams, you have one in your waking life. During anaesthesia or during dreamless sleep there is no such thing as this process of self-ing, if I may call it like that.

On the one hand I believe that we could have much better science and a much better science of consciousness if many of the involved researchers would do things like meditating or other practices in, say, altered states of consciousness, but as a philosopher I don't believe that in a strict sense that we can just look into our own minds and find facts there. I usually keep this completely separate, this is my private life, but I am also first a long-term meditator and just by chance in my early 20s I've had six or seven spontaneous out-of-body experiences. Nothing dramatic, just when falling asleep. They made me think a lot because I was just writing my PhD thesis on the mind/body problem and I just found out that everybody on the research frontier is a materialist...

Natasha Mitchell: So they locate the mind in the body and very much in the brain.Thomas Metzinger: Or to the point that they say that there has never been anything like a mind, that's the most ruthless form of eliminative materialism, as we call it.

for most people this only happens when they try to sit up or so, jump up, and then they suddenly really jump up and they float out and then they realise this physical body is behind them. That would be a very simple and natural out-of-body experience that hundreds of thousands of people have had on the planet. Then you suddenly have the experience that your self, your centre of thinking, of attending, is located out of your physical body for the first time and often you experience a second kind of bodily shape, an ethereal light body in which you can fly around. That is of course, or so I have claimed, the root of our belief in souls because human beings have had these experiences at all times and in all cultures, long before there was science or philosophy, and people have made theories about what could that be because it's pretty realistic, at least as realistic as your lucid dreams are. It's at least as realistic as waking life, and then you have a problem. I mean, are you going to tell people about this or are they going to send you to the psychiatrist...

atasha Mitchell: Exactly, you've spent many years trying to explain it, but scientifically. And in fact you describe yourself in your new book as an intrepid philosophical psychonaut. It sounds like you've tried all sorts of experiments on yourself, as well as in collaboration with scientists and their subjects. You got your surgeon to alter your anaesthetic regime when you went under surgery once.Thomas Metzinger: Yes, they were really cynical. They said, 'So young man, you've been writing your thesis about the mind/body problem. Observe yourself now!' And they knocked me out and it was very nasty, it was a very death-oriented waking up phase, there was nothing that resembled an out-of-body experience, it was in parts frightening. No special discovery there. But if you want to enhance your lucid dreaming, one thing you could do, a simple old classic, is stop drinking at noon, then stare at a glass of water just before you go to sleep in a really thirsty condition, then you place half a tablespoon of salt in your cheek and go to sleep and make a firm commitment as soon as you are there again and you realise you cannot lift it to drink, you will become aware that you're dreaming now. I can guarantee what's going to happen.

Full lucidity means that you become aware of your own agency, that you can control the dream world and your own body, you can go through walls or make experiments, and there are very interesting experiments. For instance, you could ask, as a philosopher, another dream figure if they actually think they have a conscious mind of their own or if they actually think they're a subsystem of your dreaming brain right now.

Thomas Metzinger: But more seriously what I'm of course interested in is the functional building blocks of what I call the human self model. So in the transition from the ordinary to the lucid dream, for instance, you gain all these memories you have lost, who you are in waking life, that you have had lucid dreams perhaps before, and most importantly perhaps you can control the focus of your attention, focus your own mind. I don't know if you've ever realised this but in ordinary dreams you cannot really control your attention. And then it's of course an amazing, a unique state of consciousness from a theoretical point of view because it's the only state of consciousness where you are not a naïve realist, where you actually experience everything as an internal simulation and you lose this feeling of moving in a real external world. Then you know you are moving in a simulation and you can try all kinds of things.

Thomas Metzinger: Because one of many elements of the conscious self I need to understand is the sense of ownership. Long before language and concepts you have the feeling 'this is me', and we also have this, for instance, in using tools. It may be very important when you use a rake or a stick for the period while you use it to actually incorporate it into your body image. What I was interested in was is there something like a global sense of ownership. Not just a feeling of owning your hand or maybe owning a thought, but owning the body as a whole, and can that be experimentally manipulated, that was the question.

My theory—big, unintelligible philosophical theory—says that we identify with this image of our body because we cannot recognise it as an image. And if my theory is correct, there should be just this one element of global identification and it should be easy to control it experimentally. That was the idea behind it. But I must also...one warning, the idea of global ownership for our body as whole is a dangerous idea because it introduces a second self, like a little man that does the owning.

what do you think was most adaptive about...most beneficial to us as a species about this unique sense of selfhood that it seems that we possess?Thomas Metzinger: Well, in general of course it's good for an animal to have a model of its own body. How fast can I run? Should I pick a fight with this guy? Or better not? How far can I jump to the next branch? How heavy am I? What are my collision properties? That was important. So I think bodily self models have been on this planet for a long time. The next invention was emotions, to know what is in your own interest and in the interest of your offspring, to have the experience of being...I guess, bonding, you say in English, to other conscious selves.

In your work you're also very concerned about our changing conception of consciousness with the help of neuroscience, and this is something you're very enthusiastic about, given your partnerships with scientists for many years, but you're calling for a new field of ethics, Thomas, a ethics of consciousness. What would be the focus of such an ethics and why do you see it as being so crucial?Thomas Metzinger: We do have this brand new discipline since 2002 of neuro-ethics where one investigates the ethical consequences of new technologies that come out of neuroscience, like new lie detectors, cognitive enhancers, brain implants and so on. Our image of ourselves, the image of man, of humankind, is changing faster and more dramatically then through any other scientific revolution in the past. In a way we are destroying a lot of what mankind has believed in during the last 4,000 years, but it's also clear that in this emerging vacuum neuroscience will not be able to put something new into this vacuum.

how will our culture actually react to a naturalistic turn in our image of man, if there's no supernatural root even in our minds anymore, and we actually have to come to terms with the fact that not only our bodies but also our minds are results of a process that had no goal, that was driven by chance events...I mean, how are we going to come to terms with this? Will we develop a culture of denial, or will we all become vulgar materialists? And I think something that could help us to take this step in integrating all this brand new knowledge and the new potentials for changing our brains and our minds technologically...

Thomas Metzinger: And pharmaceutically, that's what we're researching in my cognitive enhancers group...how are we going to make this historical transition in an optimal way? And I think, to put it very simply, we could do it by just thinking not only about what is a good action but what is a good state of consciousness. What states of consciousness do we want to show our children? How can neuroscience help us with optimising education? What states of consciousness are we allowed to impose, to force upon animals? Are all these experiments in, say, primate research, in consciousness research, in neuroscience ethically tenable? What states of consciousness should be illegal in our society? New drugs. What states of consciousness do we want to foster and cultivate?

It's also a question of preserving our dignity in the face of these sometimes very sobering discussions, and in developing a cultural response to it. Can modern science help me? It's not only about defending ourselves, it's also about what I call riding the tiger; can all this new knowledge help us to improve our autonomy, maybe also our rationality? How can I take responsibility and charge for the way I deal with my own brain? Can it help us to die better deaths? Who knows? But I think we should all, not only philosophers and scientists but all of us, start to think about what we want to do with all these new brain/mind technologies. Just looking the other way won't make it go away.

Mistaking the language of Chinese philosophy for, in Richard Rorty’s phrase, a “mirror of nature” is like mistaking the menu for the food. The essence of kung fu — various arts and instructions about how to cultivate the person and conduct one’s life — is often hard to digest for those who are used to the flavor and texture of mainstream Western philosophy. It is understandable that, even after sincere willingness to try, one is often still turned away by the lack of clear definitions of key terms and the absence of linear arguments in classic Chinese texts.

In the art of kung fu, there is what Herbert Fingarette calls “the magical,” but “distinctively human” dimension of our practicality, a dimension that “always involves great effects produced effortlessly, marvelously, with an irresistible power that is itself intangible, invisible, unmanifest.”

Pierre Hadot and Martha Nussbaum, partially as a result of the world-historical dialogue of philosophy in our time, have both tried to “rectify the name” of “philosophy” by showing that ancient Western philosophers such as Socrates, the Stoics and the Epicurians were mainly concerned with virtue, with spiritual exercises and practices for the sake of living a good life rather than with pure theoretical endeavors.[3] In this regard, Western philosophy at its origin is similar to classic Chinese philosophy. The significance of this point is not merely in revealing historical facts. It calls our attention to a dimension that has been eclipsed by the obsession with the search for eternal, universal truth and the way it is practiced, namely through rational arguments. Even when philosophers take their ideas as pure theoretical discourse aimed at finding the Truth, their ideas have never stopped functioning as guides to human life. The power of modern enlightenment ideas have been demonstrated fully both in the form of great achievements we have witnessed since the modern era and in the form of profound problems we are facing today. Our modes of behavior are very much shaped by philosophical ideas that looked innocent enough to be taken for granted. It is both ironic and alarming that when Richard Rorty launched full-scale attacks on modern rationalistic philosophy, he took for granted that philosophy can only take the form of seeking for objective Truth.

This kung fu approach shares a lot of insights with the Aristotelian virtue ethics, which focuses on the cultivation of the agent instead of on the formulation of rules of conduct. Yet unlike Aristotelian ethics, the kung fu approach to ethics does not rely on any metaphysics for justification. One does not have to believe in a pre-determined telos for humans in order to appreciate the excellence that kung fu brings. This approach does lead to recognition of the important guiding function of metaphysical outlooks though. For instance a person who follows the Aristotelian metaphysics will clearly place more effort in cultivating her intelligence, whereas a person who follows the Confucian relational metaphysics will pay more attention to learning rituals that would harmonize interpersonal relations. This approach opens up the possibility of allowing multiple competing visions of excellence, including the metaphysics or religious beliefs by which they are understood and guided, and justification of these beliefs is then left to the concrete human experiences.

If philosophy is “a way of life,” as Pierre Hadot puts it, the kung fu approach suggests that we take philosophy as the pursuit of the art of living well, and not just as a narrowly defined rational way of life.

Havel regards "home," following Patocka,2 as an existential experience that can be compared to a set of concentric circles on various levels, from the house, the village or town, the family, the social environment, the professional environ-ment, to the nation as including culture and language (Czech or Slovak), the civic society (Czechoslovak), the civilization (Europ-ean), and the world (civilization and universe). Havel stressed the equality among all concentric circles, especially the national, civic, and universal ones with their corresponding national self-determi-nation rights, civic rights, and human rights.

Every circle, every aspect of the human home, has to be given its due. It makes no sense to deny or forcibly exclude any one stratum for the sake of another; none should be regarded as less important or inferior. They are part of our natural world, and a properly organized society has to respect them all and give them all the chance to play their roles. This is the only way that room can be made for people to realize themselves freely as human beings, to exercise their identities. All the circles of our home, . . . are an inalienable part of us, and an inseparable element of our human identity. Deprived of all the aspects of his home, man would be deprived of himself, of his humanity

Having cleared some confusions of "home" with fixed resi-dence and place of birth and having seen that home may be a struc-ture of several single level homes (on different and identical levels) which may change in time, it is time to attempt a more positive analysis of home. In "home is where the heart is;" "at the turn of the century Vienna is my real home;" and "my marriage was a home-coming," "home" is marked by an emotional attachment: to a place, a person, an intellectual environment, etc. "I am at home in Prague, reading Patocka, listening to a Mahler symphony, with my love in my arms," as well as the sentences identifying the homes of Socrates, the British monarch and Franz Kafka stress the strong relation between personal identity and home (as Havel claimed in the above quotations). Home is where we could or can be ourselves, feel at ease, secure, able to express ourselves freely and fully, whether we have actually been there or not. Home is the reflection of our subjectivity in the world. Home is the environment that allows us to fulfil our unique selves through interaction with the world. Home is the environment that allows us to be ourselves, allows us to be homely. Since in a home environment we can express our true iden-tity, home is the source of home truth. Home may be an emotional environment, a culture, a geographical location, a political system, a historical time and place, etc., and a combination of all the above.

We are all descendants of immigrants. The natural home of humanity is the dry land of the planet. People, unlike trees and bushes, are not "rooted" -- people are born with legs. The fact that we are born with legs and intelligence opens to us ever new spacial and intellectual horizons. The human race, like other animals, is a migratory specie, from our ancient ancestors who, as we are told by anthropologists, migrated from Africa’s planes to settle the globe some three million years ago, to present day refugees and migrants. The human ability to migrate has been one of our basic assets for survival, allowing us to free ourselves of geographic constraints, from bondage to the earth. Bosnians, East European refugees in German hostels, Chinese, Haitian and Vietnamese refugees, like our ancestors and ourselves, whoever we may be, are searching for a home. This search for home is a basic trait of being human. It seems though that in today’s inhospitable world, the search may end in homelessness rather than in homecoming.

Abortion wasn’t legalized to grant a woman the “right” to a dead fetus. Rather, legislatures or courts — depending on the country — determined that a woman’s right to control her own body should trump the fetal right to life. That being so, once the baby is born the entire issue of protecting female autonomy evaporates and the issue of abortion becomes factually irrelevant.

On the other hand, not only [personal] aims but also well-developed plans are concepts that certainly apply to those people (parents, siblings, society) who could be negatively or positively affected by the birth of that child. Therefore, the rights and interests of the actual people involved should represent the prevailing consideration in a decision about abortion and after-birth abortion.

In other words, babies are not people

A bureaucratic check list has even been published — including in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine — known as the Groningen Protocol, by which Dutch neonatologists determine which sick and disabled babies qualify to be euthanized. Indeed, according to two articles published in The Lancet, about 8% of all babies who die each year in the Netherlands (80-90) are killed by their own doctors.

In place of intrinsic human dignity as the foundation for our culture and laws, advocates of the new bioethical order want moral value to be measured individual-by-individual — whether animal or human — and moment-by-moment. Under this view, we each must earn full moral status by currently possessing capacities sufficient to be deemed a “person.” As the authors of “After-Birth Abortion” put it, “We take ‘person’ to mean an individual [not just a human] who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.” In other words, if you can’t value your own life, your life has less value.

This means that you can be a person today but not tomorrow, and not be a person today and be killed before you become one tomorrow.

Even more radically, according to some personhood theorists, higher mammals — dogs, dolphins, chimps, pigs — are persons and hence have greater value than human non-persons. Princeton’s notorious bioethicist Peter Singer is perhaps the world’s most famous advocate of this view — arguing, for example, that patients in a persistent vegetative state should be used in medical experiments in place of animals with higher cognitive capacities.

Bioethics isn’t about abstract argument. It uses discourse to transform philosophical views into societal action. And while personhood theory is certainly not the unanimous view, I think it is fair to say that it represents the consensus in the field — at least among the majority of bioethicists who don’t have a modifier such as “conservative” or “Christian” in front of their title.

Obamacare has centralized control of health care into the federal bureaucracy, including by establishing a plethora of cost/benefit boards that will start operating within the next several years. Who do you think will be tapped to fill many of these powerful government positions that could ultimately decide what medical procedures will and won’t be covered by insurance — perhaps even which patients will and won’t receive them? Bingo! “Experts” trained in bioethics.