The dispensable lexicon that we are:
To arrive at any scientific destination our departure begins
with a subjective struggle with human biases – rivalry within an imagined
social hierarchy not being the least of them. In this struggle, if we forbid
the word “ego,” any effective human strategy
will require that we substitute another word of equal subjective utility, which
of course will be equally irrelevant after
arrival at our destination -- a formal presentation of our ‘science’ – all of which however was wholly dependent
upon getting around our human biases.
I am a “mechanist” and so I hold that within a formal scientific presentation there is no substantial basis to
mentalisms such as “Ego” or “Self” or even an “established Neuroscience.” The entire journey however from human bias to
scientific discovery is still only the distance from one end of subjectivity to
another, separated only by “mentalisms” that do not have “substantial basis.”
These mental concepts however help
each of us navigate our unavoidable subjectivity.
We can infer a mechanical projector
with a corresponding projection that we experience as a self, an ego, a
subjective struggle, or a developing science. We can then infer that this Ego must not
really exist, but we do not and cannot thereby sponge away our subjective experience
… since that experience is the
projection: all of consciousness is a projection.
‘Words, words, words.’ Ego belongs
to the subjective word-set; science to the objective word-set. But
“elimination” of the former, as a useful and
ever-relevant concept, by the sudden imposition of the latter is a
misunderstanding at best. We never get to the other side of cognition. We can switch words here if we like, but if we believe that in doing so we sponge away
the unavoidable subjective experience of “Ego” or “Self” then we cover a vast,
unexplored body of knowledge with a merely true statement in one context, with
a strawman fallacy in another context.
For example, the key difference between Newton’s and Einstein’s views of the universe is that Einstein put the fact of separate subjective experiences back into the equation, giving birth to the theory of “relativity.” Two individuals can experience time and space differently. Of course, the idea of “relativity” has no substantial basis in formal neuroscience and of course that is not a refutation of relativity. Likewise, of course “ego” has no substantial basis in formal neuroscience and of course that is not a refutation of observations of human self-interested behavior, here referred to conveniently as “Ego.”
For example, the key difference between Newton’s and Einstein’s views of the universe is that Einstein put the fact of separate subjective experiences back into the equation, giving birth to the theory of “relativity.” Two individuals can experience time and space differently. Of course, the idea of “relativity” has no substantial basis in formal neuroscience and of course that is not a refutation of relativity. Likewise, of course “ego” has no substantial basis in formal neuroscience and of course that is not a refutation of observations of human self-interested behavior, here referred to conveniently as “Ego.”
Most important of all, as a human
strategy, it is of tremendous
disadvantage to forbid the inclusion of a concept of self, even when when forming the
most rigid, formal scientific conclusions: our human biases will have their way
with us.