The Sparrow that Died Today was just a Sparrow
Written as capstone for my undergraduate philosophy degree when I was 39 in Spring 2021.
[footnotes in brackets]
(citations in parentheses)
The Sparrow that Died Today was just a Sparrow
. . . Hippocrates relates at large in his Epistle to Damagetus, wherein he doth express, how coming to visit him one day, he found Democritus in his garden at Abdera, in the suburbs, under a shady bower, with a book on his knees, busy at his study, sometimes writing, sometimes walking. The subject of his book was melancholy and madness; about him lay the carcasses of many several beasts, newly cut up by him and anatomized; not that he did contemn God’s creatures, as he told Hippocrates, but to find out the seat of this atra bilis, or melancholy, whence it proceeds, and how it was engendered in men’s bodies, to the intent he might better cure it in himself, and by his writings and observations teach others how to prevent and avoid it. –Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
We can then no longer say anything in good faith, and all rational action becomes a lifeless banality; violence alone is still honest, but only gratuitous violence is authentic action. Having arrived at this stage, the modern intellectual will include himself in his nauseated contempt for the moral and cultural futility of his time. Having rendered the universe utterly meaningless, he himself dissolves in a universal wasteland. –Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge
If I were crazy, wouldn’t I want something? It seems to me madness is a kind of importuning, a clutching at the sleeve. I seriously question the value of this account to my madness, if it is that, since I require nothing of anyone who will hear it. I need nothing and ask for nothing. My only worry . . . my only worry . . . is that I’ve given myself so completely to the narrative that very little of my life is left for whatever else I might intend for it . . . and that—it’s really an uncanny feeling—when the story ends, I will end. –E.L. Doctorow, The Waterworks
1. Introduction
Houses are classed, I beg to state,
According to the number
Of Ghosts that they accommodate:
(The Tenant merely counts as weight,
With Coals and other lumber).
–Lewis Carroll, “Phantasmagoria”
Why should a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease be troubling? It seems that something essential and valuable—something more than just agency—is stolen from a body-brain system as the Alzheimer’s degeneration does its inexorable work. Why is this important, beyond the loss of what might be termed, the necessary components to being an agent? I don’t have an answer except to say that I think something more than agency is lost and I think it is important. In the following discussion I hope to defend the existence of the something more—I will call it the patient self. In taking this position I will be considering the views of Iris Murdoch in opposition to Christine Korsgaard’s “Constitutional Model,” which equates identity with practical identity and self with agent. But before moving into a comparison of Murdoch and Korsgaard I want to say a few words about awareness.
The key assumption that informs the direction of this paper is that the persistent flow of thoughts which provides the “stuff” of our mental life is in no way a product of agency. The flow of thoughts is much more like sensory experience or the passage of time—something that happens to us. Even a brief attempt at sustained single-pointed focus will reveal the steady appearance of unwanted “chatter” that fills the mind as background noise. We certainly have the ability to engage with our thoughts through concentration, recall, demands of a task, etc. But control in these instances is limited, and it seems, in my experience, to be equal parts luck and discipline. In what follows I make the assumption that much of the time attachment and identification are pre-consciously selecting our conscious thoughts from the chatter, and that when we act as agents we are unavoidably under the influence of this aspect of our patient selves. I make the further assumption that through awareness practices (e.g., contemplation, meditation, etc.) it is possible to experience the something more which underlies the significance of the patient self, and to encounter the limitations of the agential self. Discussion of the psychology of awareness practices is beyond the scope of this paper. However, these assumptions are what led me to question Korsgaard’s otherwise persuasive theory of agency.
2. Korsgaard’s Constitutional Model
We can understand the neat logic of either economic reciprocity or the show of pure power. But we are mystified by the endless complexities of human motives and the varied compounds of ethnic loyalties, cultural traditions, and social hopes, envies and fears which enter into the policies of nations, and which lie at the foundation of their political cohesion. –Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
Christine Korsgaard, drawing on the ideas of Plato and Kant, introduces what she calls the “Constitutional Model” of the soul to explain how human beings constitute an identity capable of agency, i.e., a practical identity. “Constitutional Model” takes its name from Plato’s Republic and Socrates’ comparison of the ideal city and the ideal soul. Korsgaard begins her chapter on the Constitutional Model by setting it in opposition to the Combat Model. She distinguishes two versions.
Combat Model version 1 describes reason and passion in a battle for dominance where our practical identity is the ongoing product of the outcome(s). This version is easier to conceive of from an external perspective. Consider Sophia. Maybe she is a coworker. For simplicity’s sake suppose all you directly know about Sophia are those things which you have observed her to do, or heard her to say. On version 1 of the Combat Model your impression of “Sophia,” that is, the person that she is as far as you know, is actually a collection of victories by one force or another [1]. And so: That weekend last month when Sophia worked extra shifts to process a backlog of orders instead of going for a hike? Reason won over passion. At last year’s holiday party when she sprained an ankle on the ropes course to get her team the win? Passion won over reason.
What is Sophia’s internal experience according to version 1? The analogy is imperfect but I imagine it is like being a passenger in a small plane where one does not, and cannot, interact with the pilot: there are experiences of turbulence, course adjustments in response to the buffeting of powerful winds, periods of refueling. . . the experience of going somewhere and things happening on the way. Or perhaps this is too detached, too much like a virtual reality simulation. Maybe instead of a passenger imagine Sophia is the pilot, but she must consistently consult a coin toss and adhere to the result as she flies. Whatever analogy is used, version 1 seems difficult to conceive from an internal perspective because it lacks the very capacity which allows us “to take on a perspective” different from our own. In fact, the intuitive sense in which the perspective of Combat Model version 1 does seem “different from our own” is good evidence that some revision is required.
Combat Model version 2 is similar except for the addition of a self which chooses between reason and passion, similar to the way a juror decides after hearing both sides of a case. Version 2 recalls the familiar image of the angel on one shoulder and the demon on the other. This model has a more intuitive appeal from both an internal and external perspective. Sophia may at times succumb, as we all do, to temptation against her better judgment, but she is for the most part thoughtful and deliberative. Combat Model version 2 seems to be consistently coherent from both your external perspective—Sophia the coworker—and from an internal perspective—putting yourself in her place. Despite version 2’s addition of a deliberative self, Korsgaard rejects both version 1 and version 2.
Version 1 fails, Korsgaard says, because “. . . action cannot just be the result of forces working in or on an agent” (134). This seems to be a straightforward conclusion after the difficulty encountered in trying to imagine what our internal experience would be like if it were true. However, Korsgaard’s reason for rejection carries more significance than just intuitive appeal. For her, agency requires autonomy. And so Combat Model version 1 is too tightly deterministic: we don’t have reasons even for the victory of reason; we don’t have actions so much as outcomes. That is, we lack the ability for self-determination which is at the very heart of the concept of agency.
Combat Model version 2 fails because of two, Korsgaard presumes, unanswerable questions:
For what is the essence of this person, in whom reason and passion are both forces, neither of them identified with the person herself, and between which she has to choose? And if the person identifies neither with reason nor with passion, then how—on what principle—can she possibly choose between them? (134)
When Korsgaard asks “what is the essence of this person” she is pointing out a certain strangeness in the idea of a deliberative self separate from reason and passion. Combat Model version 2 seems to suggest internal forces analogous to physical forces, such as gravity. And although we can, for the most part, easily conceive of our bodies as an “essence” distinct from, but interacting with, gravity, this distinction is not so clear internally. Yet this need to conceive of some essence is more than an artifact of grammar needing a referent for the model. If a model of agency is to succeed it needs to yield a coherent conceptual essence. Korsgaard avoids exploring a substantive soul as a candidate for essence, and rejects the will as something capable of choosing [2], although both, if taken together, yield a coherent conceptual essence given certain assumptions to underlie Combat Model version 2. And although I do not subscribe to these assumptions, I think that if one does, Combat Model version 2 becomes a useful way of understanding agency that gives place and significance to the patient self.
The other piece of interest in Korsgaard’s objection is “identification.” In the context it is used “identification” picks out another strange element in the idea of a separate self: We have ability to label something as “me” or “not me,” even though both those things that are “me” and those things that are “not me” are part of a continuous internal experience. This is different from “identify” in the sense of relation (as in, “Yeah, I can relate to that, I can identify with that”), and more in the sense of sameness (as in, when I look in the mirror I can say “that is me”—I identify with my reflection).
So Korsgaard is asking if neither reason nor passion are the same as “me,” how can I choose between them? This is not asking “how can I choose” in the sense that the choice is difficult, but in the sense that, if I am choosing between reason and passion, by what capacity do I make that choice? And to suppose some further capacity in answer to the question would, in Korsgaard’s view, simply be begging the question. For the point of importance in Korsgaard’s view is that we are a unified agent, a well-ordered self. And as long as the self is separated into “me” and “not me” an agent will fail to constitute. Therefore, instead of “by what capacity” Korsgaard asks by what principle because it is only by adopting a ruling principle that unity can be achieved. From the point of view of the patient self, however, Korsgaard’s theory overlooks the wonderful question that runs through the movie “I Heart Huckabees” and that is: “How am I not myself?”
It will be useful at this point to explicate some of Korsgaard’s terms before explaining the Constitutional Model. “Action,” as defined by Korsgaard, means a unified agent doing an act for an end. In order to be an agent it is necessary to have autonomy and efficacy. And the agent must constitute those properties according some law or principle in order to achieve the unity necessary to be an agent. The following passage is illustrative:
. . . the hypothetical and categorical imperatives are constitutive principles of volition and action. Unless we are guided by these principles—unless we are at least trying to conform to them—we are not willing or acting at all. The conception of action that yields this conclusion is Kant’s conception: that action is determining yourself to be the cause of some end. The hypothetical imperative binds you because what you are determining yourself to be when you act is the cause of some end. The categorical imperative binds you because what you are determining to be the cause of some end is yourself. (Korsgaard 81)
The “we” in “we are not willing or acting at all” in the quoted passage is key. The reason that “we are not willing or acting at all” is that “we” have failed to constitute ourselves if we fail to meet Korsgaard’s criteria. Korsgaard says “. . . in the relevant sense there is no you prior to your choices and actions, because your identity is in a quite literal way constituted by your choices and actions” (Korsgaard 19). “Relevant sense” means a practical identity. She distinguishes this relevant identity at the beginning of the next section: “The identity of a person, of an agent, is not the same as the identity of the human animal on whom the person normally supervenes” (Korsgaard 19). So you the person, the agent, can fail to be constituted, but the human animal on which the Korsgaardian you will potentially supervene might still be active in some sense. This, with crisp clarity, demonstrates the lack of significance for a patient self in the Korsgaardian view. “You,” the patient, are not you, the agent. This sense of separateness does not seem to be a problem for Korsgaard in the same way the separateness of the Combat Model was, although this fact is somewhat eclipsed by the conceived potency of the agent in Korsgaard’s model.
The Constitutional Model is persuasive in that it offers an answer to the question of “who am I as an agent?” that overcomes the episodic character of discrete choices, and personal changes over time. This is necessary for Korsgaard’s argument since unity is required for the constitution of agency, and with the discounting of the patient self one cannot rely on an inborn ground identity to provide unity via continuity [3]. The model is summarized well here:
. . . the agent is something over and above her parts in the way that the constitution of a city is something over and above the citizens and officials who live there. If the agent conforms to the dictate of reason, it is not because she identifies with reason, but rather because she identifies with her constitution, and it says that reason should rule. (Korsgaard 135)
It can be seen that this summary cleanly addresses both objections to Combat Model version 2. The essence of the agent is something like a constitution, and the principle by which the agent decides is her constitution. Korsgaard’s Constitutional Model is impressive in many respects, but the bright Kantian agent depicted by it seems too thin to me; it doesn’t allow for the value of a full person, that is, a self that is both patient and agent. I think it also fails to account for the influence of those mostly pre-conscious forces encountered during meditation such as attachment and stimulus craving, and therefore fails to meet its own criteria of conscious autonomy. And in the next section I will present the view of Iris Murdoch which addresses these objections.
3. Murdoch’s Vision
The soul wanted what it wanted. It had its own natural knowledge. It sat unhappily on superstructures of explanation, poor bird, not knowing which way to fly. –Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler’s Planet
Korsgaard’s model, for all of its focus on practical identity, is, it seems to me, specifically impractical in our moments of greatest need: when we are faced with death, loss, failure, despair—when life is happening to us. During those moments, down in the “rag and bone shop of the heart,” we don’t need a principle to follow, we need a new way of seeing: an opening of our eyes to a moment of beauty—a vision of the rainbow, the dove—an experience of grace.
Iris Murdoch argues for metaphors of seeing and vision, over the typical Kantian emphasis on movement and action, to conceive a model of self that is both agent and patient [4]. She describes it this way:
What we really are seems much more like an obscure system of energy out of which choices and visible acts of will emerge at intervals in ways which are often unclear and often dependent on the condition of the system in between moments of choice. (Murdoch 54)
This cuts right to the heart of the difference between Korsgaard and Murdoch. For Murdoch, not only do we persist without needing to constitute, what is most important actually happens between choices. She makes the point again here:
We act rightly ‘when the time comes’ not out of strength of will but out of the quality of our usual attachments and with the kind of energy and discernment which we have available. And to this the whole activity of consciousness is relevant. (Murdoch 91-92)
What these quotes illustrate, I think, is that agency springs from something more than agency alone. Contrast this with Korsgaard’s model where both essence and principle came from one’s constitution. This collapsing of self-identity to practical identity sets up what Murdoch calls a “void” before the choices wherein agency is constituted. When we limit the self to a practical identity our choices are somewhat like islands, and we have only our principles to bridge the distance between them. I think this “distance between islands” is what Murdoch is referring to when she says “an obscure system of energy” and “the whole activity of consciousness.”
This oceanic activity of consciousness is fickle and untrustworthy though. On at least this point both Korsgaard and Murdoch agree [5]. Murdoch paints an evocative portrait of our fickle consciousness here [6]:
The psyche is a historically determined individual relentlessly looking after itself. . . . The area of its vaunted freedom of choice is usually not very great. . . . It is reluctant to face unpleasant realities. Its consciousness is not normally a transparent glass through which it views the world, but a cloud of more or less fantastic reverie designed to protect the psyche from pain. It constantly seeks consolation . . . I think we can probably recognize ourselves in this rather depressing description. (Murdoch 78-79)
This steers us into an interesting turn in our comparison between Korsgaard and Murdoch. Distrustful as she is of the liabilities of such a consciousness, Korsgaard seems to follow in the tradition of other Kantians, as Murdoch describes them, and presents a character of agency somehow transfigured by vaulted ambition, glorifying the self-determined self-in-action. And though Korsgaard wants to pick out an agent that is neither a “good dog” nor a “reformed miserable sinner,” [7] her ideal agent seems to fit a third archetype, again as described by Murdoch:
. . . free, independent, lonely, powerful, rational, responsible, brave, the hero of so many novels and books of moral philosophy. . . . He is the offspring of the age of science, confidently rational and yet increasingly aware of his alienation from the material universe . . . In fact Kant’s man had already received a glorious incarnation nearly a century earlier in the work of Milton: his proper name is Lucifer. (Murdoch 79-80)
And it is Milton’s iconic Luciferian line “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven” that summarizes my objection to Korsgaard’s Constitutional Model. Reflecting its Kantian roots, the Constitutional Model insists on self-directed action, and in so doing seems to define freedom as autonomy. It seems this “self-direction” is true in both senses of the term, and so often leads to a self-obsession, or to align with the Lucifer comparison, prideful conceit—the need to reign, rather than serve. Questioning the trustworthiness of this autonomous, Luciferian self Murdoch says:
. . . look again at the powerful energy system of the self-defensive psyche in the light of the question, How can we make ourselves better? With such an opponent to deal with one may doubt whether the idea of the proud, naked will directed towards right action is a realistic and sufficient formula.” (Murdoch 83)
What should we take as an alternative though? Curiously, Murdoch (for she, even more explicitly than Korsgaard, seems to question the existence of a substantive soul) puts forward religion as offering a strategy that can help us.
Religion normally emphasizes states of mind as well as actions, and regards states of mind as the genetic background of action: pureness of heart, meekness of spirit. . . . The believer feels that he needs, and can receive, extra help. . . . [and] whatever one thinks of its theological context, it does seem that prayer can actually induce a better quality of consciousness and provide an energy for good action which would not otherwise be available. (Murdoch 83)
The human capacity for self-deception is profound. Even an agent nobly self-directed at “creating the kingdom of ends” is not immune from the influence of self-deception. In fact, such an agent may be acutely vulnerable to such influence believing that objective principles enable one to “see” things objectively.
This is why, I think, Murdoch chooses to work in metaphors of vision over action. In the realm of knowing it seems natural to assume that to know the Truth is to see it, in the sense that, ever after, one has a vision to guide the search for Truth. This cannot be said for the opposite situation though: to see the Truth is not necessarily to know it. Murdoch clarifies:
By opening our eyes we do not necessarily see what confronts us. . . . Our minds are continually active, fabricating an anxious, usually self-preoccupied often falsifying veil which partially conceals the world. (Murdoch 84)
The key to remember about this description is that the “veil” is difficult to perceive as such; that is, as the veil colors and shapes and obscures the world we take it to be the world. This makes even the principled “right action at the right time for the right reason” subject to this consoling veil’s false vision, especially at crucial moments of suffering when we are at our most desperate for consolation.
How is one meant to be free of this veil, aside from a hope and a prayer? Interestingly both Korsgaard and Murdoch find inspiration for their positions in Plato’s Republic. For Korsgaard it was Socrates’ comparison of the ideal city and the ideal soul. For Murdoch, it is the allegory of the Cave (92). It is well known so I will be very brief in summary: We are bound in the darkness of the cave, watching shadows play out a melodrama on the wall. We take this to be our real lives until something causes us to turn and see that the shadows are cast by a fire shining light on mere silhouettes. If we continue past the fire and out of the cave, and endure through the period of painful disorientation, our vision adjusts to see things in the light of the sun, and eventually the sun itself. And, of course, the sun here signifies the Good.
It might be asked though, what is the good of seeing the Good? What does it do for me? Murdoch answers that seeing the Good purifies the vision to recognize Truth—to help us to see the Truth, and to know it:
The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence . . . (Murdoch 93)
In Murdoch’s view the self is something to be overcome. At one point Murdoch identifies the fire in the Cave as representing the self, and describes the Kantian view as successfully turning away from the shadows on the wall only to be enchanted by the warm glow of the fire [8]. The Good, as Murdoch presents it, is something we experience, something which acts on us. We take action to leave the Cave, but once we are out, we receive the light of the sun.
One can see there is a tone of spirituality in Murdoch’s view quite different from Korsgaard’s, though Korsgaard’s view is still deeply humanistic in its way. Murdoch comes through more as what might be called a Platonic naturalist: pessimistic about human nature, and skeptical of any external human telos, yet hopeful of the human ability to recognize virtue and become virtuous. This Platonic naturalism shines through most clearly in Murdoch’s passage on love:
Love . . . when it is even partially refined [by the Good] . . . is the energy and passion of the soul in its search for Good, the force that joins us to Good and joins us to the world through Good. Its existence is the unmistakable sign that we are spiritual creatures, attracted by excellence and made for the Good. It is a reflection of the warmth and light of the sun. (Murdoch 103)
I think as Murdoch describes this process of transcendence she is describing what I alluded to at the beginning of the paper when I said “something more.” It is hard to imagine feeling love as Murdoch describes it and not feel that there is something more. Love under this description is not an action so much as an experience, and not just an experience, but one that is impossible to reduce—one that is, perhaps, unique. I would connect this description of love—this something more feeling—to our sense of connection, to our sense of meaning in the face of meaningless suffering. And so I ask again, what is lost to Alzheimer’s disease, beyond the necessary components for agency? Our loved ones. I think our loved ones are lost to Alzheimer’s disease, right before our very eyes.
4. Epilogue
I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for . . . –Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Having made my case for the patient self, I ask you to consider one last question concerning the “something more” with which I began: Do you care what happens to your body after you die? Fiddle with the knobs for all I am able and I cannot get the referents of the two “you’s” and the “your” in that question to align in focus as a singleton. And yet the answer for the majority of humans seems to be an unhesitating “yes.” Think of the varied and significant funeral rites of the world. Have you ever felt the need to gather and honor the shed husks of cicada nymphs? Did you know that the annual migration of monarch butterflies is a multi-generational cycle: three generations to go north; one on the return trip south. Do we care about our bodies after we die because something continues on, or because something is ended?
The value of living things can only ever be received and loved—never made, and never taken. The value of the living is ephemeral, maybe truly ineffable; what E.E. Cummings pointed to with the line “the grave frailty of daisies.” There is something essential and valuable in us. The self is not just agency, it is also the patient experience of humility and grace. So perhaps instead use Murdoch’s strange term “unself” to describe that “something more” lost to Alzheimer’s disease, along with agency, and so much else.
Works Cited
Korsgaard, Christine M. Self-Constitution. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Kundera, Milan. The Art of the Novel. Harper & Row, 1988.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. Schocken, 1971.
Korsgaard speaks specifically of reason and passion, so for consistency of convention suppose “reason” and “passion” to be umbrella terms with broad connotation. The point of relevance here is that the forces are in opposition.
“The will is not a faculty that makes self-determination possible; the will is the capacity for self-determination” (Korsgaard 99).
It would lead to a significant digression to give the subject its due, but Korsgaard thinks that agency is as much about uniting ourselves over time as it is uniting ourselves at a particular moment of decision. A constitution avoids the problem of renewing the sovereignty of a ruler with each generation because the law is the ruler, and the person is its delegate. So too with an agent: I acted according to the categorical imperative last Wednesday, and I do so again today, regardless of how I feel—see Korsgaard pp.72-80; 157.
“The development of consciousness in human beings is inseparably connected with the use of metaphor. Metaphors are not merely peripheral decorations or even useful models, they are fundamental forms of our awareness of our condition: metaphors of space, metaphors of movement, metaphors of vision. . . . [and] it seems impossible to me to discuss certain kinds of concepts without resort to metaphor, since the concepts are themselves deeply metaphorical . . .” (Murdoch 77)
Korsgaard argues for the universality of the categorical and hypothetical imperatives, and against particularist willing—“. . . we can only attach the ‘I will’ to our choices if we will our maxims as universal laws” (76).
Murdoch uses the term “psyche.” The distinction between “psyche” and “consciousness” is assumed for my purposes to be one of grammatical ease. In other considerations this may not always be the case.
See Korsgaard pp.3-7.
“One’s self is interesting, so one’s motives are interesting, and the unworthiness of one’s motives is interesting” (Murdoch 68). Compare: “Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down” (Kundera 31).