(no subject)

[hexpiritus.livejournal.com]

"The style of resolution of inner conflicts is one of the strongest features of personality.

It is a common myth that each person is a unity, a kind of unitary organization with a will of its own. Quite the contrary, a person is an amalgamation of many subpersons, all with wills of their own. The "subpeople" are considerably less complex than the overall person, and consequently they have much less of a problem with internal discipline. If they are themselves split, probably their component parts are so simple that they are of a single mind-- and if not, you can continue down the line. This hierarchical organization of personality is something that does not much please our sense of dignity, but there is much evidence for it."

-from Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, specifically in a section written by Douglas Hofstadter (physicist, and professor of Cognitive Science, Computer Science, History, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology)

(x-posted)

Comments

[kasiya-system.livejournal.com]

subpeople?

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

This seems to be a rehash of the person as a gestalt entity, and not a direct reference to multiplicity except for systems in which the members consist of the separate sections that make up that whole.

There are also systems which are comprised multiple top-level gestalt entities. While the article may be of interest to the individuals, it may not be relevant to their multiplicity.

--Me/Us

[pengke.livejournal.com]

They're not talking about multiplicity. They're talking about the different aspects of someone's personality and how they can be in conflict. This guy is just taking it a step further and theorizing that everyone makes committee decisions with themselves.

I don't get why multiples always jump on these things. It's like pointing to inner child work as an example of multiplicity. They're not the same things. Even when the psychologists and philosophers are talking about multiplicity, they always get it wrong and turn it back into everyone in the system really being part of a whole which reflects to people having many aspects of their personality.

[thehumangame.livejournal.com]

To my knowledge Hofstadter never actually talks about multiplicity (though he does come quite a bit closer than this in some of his other books). Daniel Dennett (the other author of The Mind's I) does talk about multiplicity elsewhere, in Speaking for Ourselves (http://pp.kpnet.fi/seirioa/cdenn/speaking.htm) and also in the 13th chapter of Consciousness Explained. The chapter in Consciousness Explained is probably worth reading: it's a lot better than the earlier Speaking, and to my mind it's one of the few acceptable philosophical considerations of multiplicity from a materialist viewpoint (i.e. not involving souls).

Cognitive scientists in general are probably going to have the view of the mind as recursively decomposable from modules into submodules into subsubmodules, because the field is greatly influenced by computer science and that is how computer programs look. This is even more true of artificial intelligence researchers like Hofstadter.

[hexpiritus.livejournal.com]

On the whole, I believe this post has generated the type of discussion I was seeking on the topic concerning multiplicity and medians. I apologize to anyone this may have annoyed, but I did find the quote relevant to my situation, and I am fairly new at my situation, since I've only begun openly identifying and researching multiplicity for a little less than two years. I picked up Hofstadter's book at a friend's place and was intrigued with the ideas he presented. Thank you for the helpful responses.