This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole.
The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives.
The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal.
Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, etc.?
Leibnitzian monads, here we come!
The other alternative would be to say that the unity of the whole person is not merely apparent.
The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives.
The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal.
Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, etc.?
Leibnitzian monads, here we come!
The other alternative would be to say that the unity of the whole person is not merely apparent.
Comments
Let's take this sentence, for example:
"(If A>B, and B>C, then it is NOT true that A>C. So The conscious-identity-of-C is a conscious subset of B, and the conscious-identity-of-B is a conscious subset of A, then it does not follow that the conscious-identity-of-C is a conscious subset of A.)"
It starts off clearly enough, but gets unintelligible to me starting with the second sentence. I encourage you, my friend, to write more clearly. Great ideas can be said without seeming incoherent to those without an couple of degrees in science.
Straw man.
Here is a way in which mathematics can be used to address the issue of personal identity. If you understand the same mathematical equation today that you wrote as a comment to my blog yesterday, well, then there's a you who recognizes the sameness of that equation. If there were no you, then there would be no referring back to the same thing.
Evidence of personal identity is found -- not through introspection -- but through the recognition that things and abstract objects (like mathematical equations) retain their own identity and can be repeatedly cognized.
You can describe identity abstractly as a group, but that would be a mistake. If a group of people make different scientific observations, there is no scientific report until the observations are put in one place that can be read by one person. It's the unity of the person that makes scientific reporting possible. You are missing that.
I think you jump around quite a bit in your thought. It seems like you are having a conversation with yourself and I am watching you. Real communication takes discipline. You have to empathize with the other person. Imagine their ignorance of what you are already thinking. Try to figure out how to move them from ignorance to knowledge. Focusing on how to achieve this change in the other will help you write more clearly.