Being An Exploration of Existential Solace as a Consequence of Perdurantism and Eternalism
In David Velleman’s prominent paper on the ‘perduring’ self, “So it Goes” – title borrowed from a famous Vonnegut novel in which time and its many parts seem to behave in strange ways – the philosopher examines the Buddhist claim that it is the illusion of an enduring self which is to blame for all of life’s many sufferings and, furthermore, makes the original position that in fact it is the illusion of the passing of time (what has largely been dubbed “A-theory” temporal philosophy) which is to blame for, rather than many or even all, some of life’s sufferings. This paper aims to corroborate the claim that Velleman, rather than in some manner conflicting with present claims regarding temporal consolation, actually elucidates (albeit better) philosophical positions and consequences which already exist inherently in present claims as a result of their loyalty to either A-theory or B-theory. Furthermore, this paper seeks to cast doubt on Velleman’s eventually conservative or rather weak claim in favor of a more radical principle.
Velleman traces philosophical debates in the oft-controversial realm of Persistence, noting that some thinkers believe the self to be an ontologically sound and singular intact entity, present at all times not in parts but as a whole (what philosophers call “Endurance”). Other thinkers such as Derek Parfit, however, believe ‘the self’ to exist ultimately only as a construction of psychologically contiguous states, and that this ‘self’ exists in temporal parts existing at different temporal times (what philosophers call “Perdurance”).
“We can’t explain either the unity of consciousness at a time, or the unity of a whole life, by referring to a person,” wrote Parfit, “Instead we must claim that there are long series of different mental states and events – thoughts, sensations, and the like – each series being what we call one life.”[i] Velleman himself falls into this later camp, believing as many do that the ‘self’ in fact perdures rather than endures – but it is not the Perdurance-Endurance distinction with which Velleman’s paper is concerned.
Instead, Velleman concerns himself with the consequences of Perdurantism and Endurantism as they relate to solace – that is, the existential consolation an individual could perhaps find in the truth of their being either an enduring whole or, as Velleman believes, a collection of distinct but contiguous parts and experiences. An admitted Perdurantist, Velleman presents a compelling account for the intuitive plausibility of Endurantism whilst admitting it to be a near-impossible illusion to abandon, questioning, “What would be the consequences of truly shedding our sense of being enduring objects and learning to conceive of ourselves as perduring instead?”[ii]
To start, Velleman examines – and contends with – philosopher Derek Parfit’s views on the solace of Perdurantism. “I seemed imprisoned in myself,” wrote Parfit regarding his experience with Endurantism. “My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view,” he wrote, speaking of his turn to Perdurantism, “the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air.”[iii] Elsewhere, as Velleman notes, Parfit elaborated:
“Egoism, the fear not of near but of distant death, the regret that so much of one’s only life should have gone by – these are not, I think, wholly natural or instinctive. They are all strengthened by the beliefs about personal identity which I have been attacking. If we give up these beliefs, they should be weakened.”[iv]
Egoism, the fear not of near but of distant death, the regret that so much of one’s only life should have gone by – these are not, I think, wholly natural or instinctive.
derek parfit
Interestingly, Parfit – sometimes called ‘the Oxford Buddhist’ – finds resonance with his ideas in Buddhist philosophy and particularly in the key Buddhist tenet of ‘anatta,’ the idea that no ‘Self’ truly exists and that the illusion of this ‘Self’ accounts for pain and suffering.[v] To shed this ‘Self,’ then, is to attain enlightenment. Consider the following excerpt from Siddartha, the tale of the Gautama Buddha’s enlightenment as told – importantly – by a German writer, Herman Hesse.
“What was meditation? It was a fleeing from the self, it was a short escape of the agony of being a Self, it was a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life…”[vi]
Significantly, the above citation comes to the reader as part of Siddhartha’s pre-enlightenment history – but his enlightenment, too, marked or rather emerged from another divergence from Self. Thus Parfit’s claims to existential consolation via ersatz-Buddhism find a happy home in Buddhism itself.
This is not to suggest that Hesse’s Siddhartha portrays a comprehensive portrait of Buddhism, which is certainly not the case, but rather to indicate a core Buddhist tenet that has indeed been corroborated by many practitioners of Buddhism, and which finds reverberation in some of Parfit’s claims. Parfit’s views differ from Buddhism, however, in their roads to enlightenment – while practitioners of Buddhism believe enlightenment necessitates much meditation, often decades of it, Parfit believed “that the consolations of his view can be claimed by attending to the philosophical arguments for it.”[vii]
Velleman disagrees with Parfit, both in his claim that enlightenment – or altered experiential states which provide solace from the pains and anxieties of life – can be achieved through philosophical practice and that this experiential state in question would provide solace rather than something less optimistic.
As Velleman writes, “Clearly, I am no closer to “losing myself” in this way on a lasting basis, despite being convinced, by the arguments of Locke and Parfit, that I am in fact a perduring rather than an enduring self. Truly assimilating the implications of those arguments would entail radical changes in my experience, changes of the sort that no argument can produce.”[viii] Parfit himself, however, never denied either the massive repercussions of such a supposedly enlightening philosophy – it was precisely this which he championed, and sought – nor the difficulty of truly realizing and incorporating such ideas into one’s lived experience.
Consider New Yorker writer Larissa MacFarquhar’s apt notes in her article, “How to Be Good,” a rendering of Parfit written a few years before his death in 2017:
“[Parfit] is in the business of searching for universal truths, so to find out that a figure like the Buddha, vastly removed from him by time and space, came independently to a similar conclusion – well, that was extremely reassuring. (Sometime later, he learned that “Reasons and Persons” was being memorized and chanted, along with sutras, by novice monks at a monastery in Tibet.)
It is difficult to believe that there is no such thing as an all-or-nothing self – no “deep further fact” beyond the multitude of small psychological facts that make you who you are. Parfit finds that his own belief is unstable – he needs to reconvince himself. Buddha, too, thought that achieving this belief was very hard, though possible with much meditation.”[ix]
Thus Velleman and Parfit actually fall into accordance on this issue – that such experiential and emotional change is no easy feat. They simply disagree on the manner of this change, and whether it would serve one in a truly optimistic sense. According to Parfit, we ought to be existentially heartened by the notion that we exist as perduring rather than enduring selves on account of a new understanding of the existential difference between the past, present, the future, or rather past ‘you,’ present ‘you’ and future ‘you.’ Why ought this distinction between numerous selves – or bundles of different temporal parts all belonging to the same ‘space-time worm’ – mitigate the pains of human life?
As MacFarquhar writes, “Most of us care about our future because it is ours – but this most fundamental human instinct is based on a mistake, Parfit believes. Personal identity is not what matters.”[x] The same can be said for the past – most of us care about our pasts because they are ours. Yet Parfit says they are not ours, nor really anyone’s. Similarly, Velleman accounts: “Parfit claims to derive consolation from shedding this belief because he no longer views his relation to the person lost in the past or to the person who will die in the future as a relation of identity.”[xi] Parfit himself queried, “Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling.”[xii]
Most of us care about our future because it is ours.
MacFarquhar
Yet it is not entirely clear precisely why divergence from the all-too-common illusion of a fundamental or enduring self ought to yield sentiments of such liberation. What does non-identity achieve? Velleman inquires:
“Why should a sense of partial alienation from past and future selves leave [Parfit] feeling relieved rather than bereft? It’s not as if he has come to realize that this isn’t his “only life”; he has merely come to realize that it isn’t even his in the sense that he previously thought. This realization provides only the cold comfort of having nothing to lose.”[xiii]
Thus Velleman finds Parfit’s account ultimately insufficient to generate solace derived from temporal philosophy and the understanding of the self as perduring. It is not enough, he argues, to speak of the perduring self – rather, just as Velleman himself turns deeper into the philosophical issues from which the perdurance debate emerges, he believes that Parfit, also, need wrestle with the more fundamental questions of time as they relate to the wider A-theory and B-theory debate.
Velleman writes, “Surely, the remedy for [Parfit’s] anxieties and regrets is not to live “in the open air”; the remedy is to stop moving…The remedy for Parfit’s distress, in other words, is to become an eternalist.”[xiv] Velleman’s work, then, doesn’t contradict Parfit’s – the two men do not inherently disagree. Rather, Velleman’s work accounts for what Velleman himself sees as an insufficiency in Parfit’s account.
Yet I believe that much of what Velleman uncovers – the consequences of eternalism as they relate to existential consolation – exist as embedded in Parfit’s account, perhaps even presupposed. Theories of perdurance do not necessarily demand adhesion to eternalism, but they do demand adhesion to B-theory temporal philosophy. Within B-theory philosophy, it becomes very difficult (if not impossible) to justify the existence of a fundamental and enduring self wholly present at every moment in time. Parfit himself, through many a thought experiment, has demonstrated this quite comprehensively. Thus Parfit’s original account merits reconsideration, and potentially a closer and more adaptable interpretation.
Pain provides one useful example. Many of life’s more mundane pains, and some more serious, may be reduced to varied token instances of physical distress or hurt. Consider a particularly merciless toothache. While you experience the toothache in the present, you may feel as if the pain will never end – yet a week later, you can’t seem to even imagine the pain from this toothache anymore.
What if past you had a better idea, Parfit asks, of the experience of future you? What if this better idea became so fully realized that, even as you experience the toothache in the present, you suffer less on account of knowing that there exists a future you far more concerned with spilling their daiquiri than with the pain in their mouth, and that for this future you, painlessness permeates their entire lived experience? As Velleman himself notes, “It’s not the pain they’re in that makes them suffer but the prospect of its endlessly going on.”[xv]
Parfit’s theory, however, applies not only to the physical pains and trials of life but also to emotive issues of much more gravitas – the sufferings that make a human life. From the boredom of sitting in traffic to the grief of losing a loved one, Parfit’s theory seems to hold sway. At a certain point in the future, future you will no longer be sitting in traffic or stressed on account of work or school or anxious for the future; future you might be tanning in the sun, enjoying an ice cream or a successful day at work, or taking your dog on a leisurely walk in the shade. Likewise, past you still walks with your loved one along the beach, or gets tucked in at night by the loved one who still exists, simply in a different time. In fact, the entirety of your loved one’s life – every moment – still exists. They are still driving in to work, still laughing at your jokes, still getting married or perhaps divorced, still giving birth and raising children – all at once, all at different stripes in time. Thus Parfit’s theory seems to account for all the sufferings of a human life. Even Death, perhaps Parfit’s biggest concern, becomes trivial – why fear nonexistence when you, in all your different temporal parts, eternally exist? All of life becomes open air.
Interestingly, Parfit’s supposedly far-fetched idea finds resonance in everyday rhetoric. Consider the popular consolations, “The sun’ll come out tomorrow,” and, “Things will get better.” Yes, all of these consolations apply to Velleman’s account of eternalism, as well – but it seems as though Parfit’s view of the self as perduring necessitated much of this philosophical scaffolding from the beginning, if not the idea that all things in all times actually exist, then at least an understanding of ourselves as semantically bound temporal parts who will live to see another, perhaps better, day.
Yet Parfit’s view meets much skepticism and conjecture. While the ‘Oxford Buddhist’ claims that pain and suffering ought to dissolve in the face of a perduring self, the question of access remains. That is – a future you may experience painlessness, and a loved one may exist in the past, but present you retains neither access to this future nor access to this past, limited only to the psychology, physicality, and community of the present. Likewise, the person suffering in the present may not be ‘you’ in an ontologically fundamental sense, but it remains that the many parts of the perduring ‘you’ stand to suffer every blip and motion that happen to befall your present ‘mental and physical particulars’.
Perhaps worse, Parfit’s theory seems to imply that, in the moments where ‘you’ do in fact experience suffering, this suffering must exist and happen forever, even if limited to a small slice of time. Granted, it is not ‘you’ who suffers in that moment but a collection of your temporal parts that exist distinctly from you and in a manner not accessible to present you – but is the symmetrical fact that joy, too, lasts forever enough to mitigate the damage accomplished by this last and very unwelcome implication? Furthermore, it may be well and good to suggest that, while undergoing suffering, one might find consolation in the idea that their future selves are enjoying life – but one can just as easily and convincingly make the claim that, while enjoying oneself in the present, one ought to feel disheartened by the idea that it is very likely and almost certain that one will suffer at some point in the future. Thus Parfit’s view in no way meets uncontroverted acceptance.
Velleman argues that there is some merit to the idea that such non-identity views may yield existential solace – but he remains in disagreement with Parfit over what form this solace may take. “Once I know that the self doesn’t endure, and time doesn’t pass, then even when under the illusion to the contrary,” writes Velleman, “I can better follow the Buddhist injunction to be fully aware of the present moment. The realization that I am of the moment – that is, a momentary part of a temporally extended self – can remind me to be in the moment.”[xvi]
Ironically, however, it is Velleman who insists that Parfit extend his views from perdurantism to eternalism – yet Velleman’s purported solace remains confined to the present, despite theories of eternalism offering such radically potential solutions outside of an understanding of only the present. Velleman’s solace, then, is a conservative one – Parfit’s, on the other hand, strays closer to radicalism. Angst and suffering, however, do not concern themselves so much with mundanity – consequently, we might guess that a conservative solution will not do so much to disrupt their presence in our lives. It is radical solace which we must derive from new temporal understandings – if we are able – and not a more unadventurous form of consolation. Whether or not we are truly capable of achieving this solace, be it either through philosophical discourse and argumentation or arduous meditation, remains to be decided for the individual.
MacFarquhar, Larissa. “How To Be Good.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 19 June 2017, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/05/how-to-be-good.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Clarendon Press, 1987.
Parfit, Derek. “Personal Identity,” The Philosophical Review 80 (1971): 27.
Velleman, J. David. “So It Goes.” The Amherst Lecture in Philosophy I (2006): 1-23. http://www.amherstlecture.org/velleman2006/.
[i] Moore, Handout.
[ii] Velleman, “So It Goes,” p. 8.
[iii] Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 280.
[iv] Parfit, “Personal Identity,” p. 27.
[v] Moore, Handout.
[vi] Hesse, Siddartha.
[vii] Velleman, “So It Goes,” p. 3.
[viii] Velleman, p. 15.
[ix] MacFarquhar, “How to Be Good.”
[x] MacFarquhar, “How to Be Good.”
[xi] Velleman, p. 15.
[xii] MacFarquhar, “How to be Good.”
[xiii] Velleman, p. 15.
[xiv] Velleman, p. 16.
[xv] Velleman, p. 19.
[xvi] Velleman, p. 20.
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