Erik Olin Wright was an American sociologist. Wright was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia,
and he died on the 23rd January 2019. Though he made many contributions to both sociology
and philosophy throughout his life, his final contribution was the blog that he kept during
his battle with cancer. In the blog, Wright talks about a great many things - life and
death, family and friends, love and kindness, and how the cancer was spreading throughout
his body. But perhaps the most interesting post was made just a few days before his death,
in which he talked about what it’s like being inside a body that’s dying.
“What I've come to realize is that when you're really sick, when the pain of your
illness takes over your life, or even when, as was the case last night I had uncontrollable
and really hurtful coughing that kept me up most of the night, when you're no longer in
your body in a comfortable way, that's not just a question of quality of life, that is
a question of life.”
As well as serving as a reflection of his situation at the time, this seems like a rather
odd statement to make. What does he mean when he says that he’s no longer in his body
in a comfortable way? To answer this question, we can turn to the branch of philosophy that’s
concerned with the nature of human experience - phenomenology - to really investigate how
Wright’s comment impacts the nature of human experience, and what it means to have a body
in the world. But before we get into some phenomenology,
I feel like I should explain what the hell the title of this video means. What is an
ontological ambiguity? Well, it means that the human body is really quite weird in how
it exists. This is because we can consider bodies as both objects in the world and as
subjects of experience. For example, if I took out my brain and placed it on the table
in front of you, then I would be… dead, for one. But you would be able to poke and
prod around my brain, and perhaps cut it open to see what’s inside. In other words, you
would be able to investigate my brain as an object. However, what you wouldn’t be able
to investigate would be my conscious, lived experiences. That’s something that can only
happen when my brain is inside my head, and even then they are only accessible to me.
So this dual nature is what we mean when we call something ontologically ambiguous. But
remember that we’re talking about the body as ontologically ambiguous, not the brain.
So why should we worry about the body in the first place? The brain is where all the information
processing and reasoning takes place, why not focus on that? This is essentially what
the brainbound theory suggests - that the mind is just the brain, and all our conscious
processes depend on the brain alone. Some philosophers use the brain-in-a-vat thought
experiment as evidence of this view. If we can imagine a disembodied brain that gets
fed all its experiences through some complicated wires, then this means that all our conscious
processes take place in the brain alone, and that the body isn’t really needed for consciousness.
However, some philosophers argue that the thought experiment doesn’t prove anything.
The brain in the vat still needs to be kept alive through some sort of protective fluid,
and it would still need some form of sensory input. All the complicated wires essentially
form a duplicate body, so the body is still needed for conscious processes. This is what’s
called an embodied response, and it’s the response often given by phenomenologists.
They argue that the body is important because it essentially shapes the way we experience
the world, and that a careful observation of our experience shows this to be true. For
the phenomenologists, the human mind is embodied throughout our entire organism, and it’s
embedded in, and continually interacting with, the world.
Okay, all this terminology can get a little complicated, so let’s do an experiment.
With both your hands, place your fingertips together, like you’re some evil Bond villain
about to unleash your master plan. When you do this, you will notice that you can feel
your fingertips as objects, but at the same time, you can also feel the sensation of your
fingertips pressing against each other. In other words, you can experience yourself as
both an object in the world and as a subject of experience, and this is what it means to
say that you have an ontological ambiguity. This can seem really weird the more you think
about it. Weirder still is that we can integrate external objects into our subjective experience.
For example, if you have ever driven a car down an extremely narrow road, then you might
know what it feels like to have the limits of your body extend to the outside of the
car. You seem to gain a sixth sense that allows you to navigate your car without it hitting
anything. Similarly, a blind man who uses a cane learns to incorporate the cane into
his body, and he receives a subjective understanding of the space around him. It literally feels
like he can sense things using the cane. In other words, he subjectively feels like the
cane is part of his objective body. This is called proprioception, when you have
an inbuilt awareness about the position of your limbs and the movement of your body.
You don’t need to look at your hands in order to know where your hands are, for instance.
However, this isn’t the case for everyone, and one famous example is the case of Ian
Waterman. When Waterman was 19, he suddenly lost all sense of proprioception from the
neck down. He felt as though he was just a disembodied head, with no awareness of the
rest of his body. Because of this, he lost the sense of his body as a subject, and was
forced to consider himself merely as an object in the world. This had some surprising consequences.
In order to walk, for example, Waterman has to look at his arms and legs, otherwise he
will lose his balance. The case of Ian Waterman is interesting for
phenomenologists, because it demonstrates the transcendental role of the body. Our entire
experience of the world, ourselves, and what we are able to think and do, is all affected
by the body, in ways that most people might find surprising. This brings us back to Erik
Olin Wright, and the discomfort he felt on his deathbed. It becomes clear after a little
phenomenology that Wright felt this discomfort because there was a separation between himself
as an object and as a subject. His ontological ambiguity had become even stranger, as his
body was actively working against him, and he perceived this as a discomfort. He was
absolutely right when he wrote that it’s not a question of the quality of his life,
it’s a question of his life. Most people don’t tend to think about themselves as
embodied minds, and the implications of being an object and a subject. But when there’s
a separation such as Waterman or Wright experienced, it can affect everything about their entire
lives. But I don’t want this to end this video
on a doom and gloom note. Rather, I’d like to end with a quote from Wright, that pretty
much summarizes the entire ethos behind this channel. “Atoms don't have experiences.
They're just stuff. That's all I really am is stuff. But stuff so complexly organized
across several thresholds of stuff-complexity, that it's able to reflect upon its stuff-ness
and what an extraordinary thing it has been to be alive and aware that it's alive and
aware that it's aware that it's alive. And from that complexity comes the love and beauty
and meaning that constitutes the life I've lived.” Thank you very much for watching,
peace and love, and I’ll see you in the next video.