I think much of my argument wasn't clear. My final paragraph in the blog was meant to reinforce that I don't see the individual as currently obsolete. I'll explain more in my responses below.
This goes back to my car analogy and the problem of arbitrary definitions. You presented a compelling argument not long ago to dispel some of my cognitive dissonance regarding materialism and the individual. You are now arguing against what you previously argued for, although I don't think you've made the connection.
But isn't where/how we decide to call someone an individual entirely arbitrary? Modern research forces this arbitrary distinction into our faces, we just don't like to admit it (as I see it).
Just as we might dissect the individual body all the way down to the cellular level, this doesn't negate the individual. This just gives us a better understanding of the parts. We could, in theory, just handwave everything of practical concern and make a statement like "everything is mostly just carbon (or even more vaguely "matter") so what's the difference?" and be about as un-useful as I consider the attempts to deconstruct the individual in what is little more than abstract.
This is the Frankenstein scenario: where/how does the life force, or essence, or humanity of the thing emerge from disparate component parts? We could say that we make a mistake when we dissociate the parts from the whole; but of course, people still fit our definition of "individual" even if lose one of their limbs. Furthermore, if we do grant a separation between parts and whole, then we run into a whole slew of issues regarding our positions in the world. After all, we are only parts in a larger whole; but the health or well-being of the whole of which we are a part, and the health or well-being of the parts that make us up, are all subordinated to the health of well-being of the individual that is us. But where is this individual? How do we arrive at it?
That individuals do constantly change due to a variety of reasons we do not even fully comprehend or take into account, does not somehow invalidate the individual, anymoreso than our lack of understanding about the physical body negates/ed it.
To argue otherwise is to stray from materialism into esoterism.
The way I see it, continuing to promote the individual is the larger form of esotericism. We continue to privilege and elevate an arbitrary construction that has less basis in reality than matter itself. If I had to come up with an analogy, consciousness would be to the fictionality of a narrative as the material world is to the pages of the book in which it is contained. Representing ourselves as individuals means representing our lives as narratives; but this is myth, not reality. This is teleology, eschatology, and mysticism all rolled into one and presented as entirely natural.
We are partially products of the environment (depending on your definition of environment, maybe totally), but the environment is also partially a product of us. There is no "ceteris paribus" in real life.
Of course; just as our language is a product of what we say, what we say is also a product of our language. The individual isn't central anywhere in this scenario.
I don't see why there is a necessity for the individual to be eternal (IE an eternal "soul") to validate it.
Not eternal as in the sense of the soul; eternal as in a grounding concept, a term that always means what we think it means. When Foucault says that "man is coming to an end" (I'm paraphrasing) he's saying that the concept of man is coming to an end; man as a frame of knowledge is coming to an end. We've heard terms like "posthuman" and "transhuman" being used more and more; but it's very likely that when this form of life finally arrives (some would claim it already has), it won't call itself "posthuman" or "transhuman." It will simply call itself "human." This exposes the arbitrariness of the term "human" itself, and reveals that it actually means nothing except what it is currently being used for. Many people today still believe "human" defines some eternal, pristine concept, which is why we have issues of homosexuality, gender issues, racism, etc. These are deviations from the norm.
This extends beyond identity issues and into matter itself. The human always presupposed something eternal, and even the most liberal or enlightened people still presume something ineffable when they say "human." The point of my argument isn't to suggest something ineffable or esoteric about the human, but to reveal that we act this way every day, and to demysticize such action.
My primary authority for this type of argumentation, Manuel DeLanda, provides the best summary:
This led some philosophers to the erroneous conclusion that emergent effects could not be explained, or what amounts to the same thing, that an effect is emergent only for as long as a law from which it can be deduced has not yet been found. This line of thought went on to become a full fledged philosophy in the early twentieth century, a philosophy based on the idea that emergence was intrinsically unexplainable. This first wave of 'emergentist' philosophers were not mystical thinkers but quite the opposite: they wanted to use the concept of emergence to eliminate from biology mystifying entities like a 'life force' or 'élan vital.'
Based on the way this portion is written, I suspect you think my waste of time critique was based on a monetary, or wealth perspective. This is not correct. I mean that if there is no you or me to create , exchange, or receive, then all communication is pointless. "We" already know all, yet none of us know anything. None of us have anything. We have all. Your blog is pointless. Einstein is who gives a shit? Why are we even on this forum?
Again, I'm merely pointing out a direction that I believe society to be heading. Since we are still mired in the mythology of individuality, then of course our communication still occurs and is relevant. This doesn't mean that in years to come communication will occur the same way, or that cultures will be structured similarly, or anything of the sort. You're trying to twist my argument around on what I'm saying to invalidate it, but I'm not claiming that this is how the world "actually is." I'm saying that what we perceive as "actual" (i.e. consciousness) is virtual, and that we naturalize it. This doesn't invalidate any of my argument since all I'm saying is that more and more scientific, technological, and philosophical developments seem to be gesturing toward the obsolescence of the individual.
Deconstruction is not the same thing as obsoletion or replacement. So either you need a different word choice or to rethink the ramifications of inquiries and potential discoveries into the way the brain/body/consciousness works. I don't see how discovering that my brain does things faster than I can "consciously" comprehend it somehow makes me obsolete. It's certainly not materialist, whatever it is.
Deconstruction is a philosophy of displacement and difference. It's totally a philosophy of obsolescence and replacement, repetition and disappearance. The subsequent step is to remove the framework of metaphysics and acknowledge the fluidity of matter beneath.
The discovery that your brain works faster than "you" do doesn't make you obsolete. What will make the individual obsolete is when our culture reaches the point where these recent developments structure its institutions and organizations, so that the individual doesn't occupy the altar at center-stage. I'm not saying the individual is obsolete. The basic functioning of our contemporary culture should be enough to substantiate that. I'm suggesting that our current developments are moving in that direction.
And, finally, going off that last point, this coincides with the argument in my previous blog post that capitalism is actively in a process of becoming something that it is not, thus revealing that is isn't really any specific, pristine thing at all. We've merely reified/hypostatized one version of historical development and claimed it as the natural institutional way of being in the world.
