Dialogues

The in(human) gaze and robotic carers

Google search “robot carers” and you’ll find extremely hyped up articles and think pieces on either how robot carers are just another way of dying even more miserably or how robot carers are saving the elderly from the lives of loneliness and nothing much in between. Not much nuance. Neither is right, of course. Robot carers shouldn’t be dismissed at first hand as the end of human connections and neither should they be overhyped as the flawless substitutes for human care.

I think they can be useful and practical and even preferable to a human carer in some cases while they cannot (and most likely never will) substitute human care and connection in other aspects. The human gaze is my reason for thinking that.

But first let me say a little about the Inhuman Gaze conference, which provoked me to think about robot care givers. The conference took place last week (6th – 9th June) in Paris. It was a diverse and multidisciplinary conference that brought together philosophers, neuroscientists, psychiatrists (scholars and practitioners alike) with the common theme of the inhuman gaze. Over the four days, speakers presented their philosophical arguments, empirical studies and clinical case studies, each from their own perspective, what the human/inhuman gaze is and its implication for the sense of self. I, myself, presented my argument for why other’s gaze (human or otherwise) is a crucial constituent to “self”. I looked at solitary confinement as an example. In solitary confinement (complete isolation or significantly reduced intersubjective contact), prisoners suffer from negative physical and psychological effects including confusion, hallucination and gradual loss of sense of self. The longer (and more intense) the solitary confinement goes, the more the pronounced the negative effects, leading to gradual loss of sense of self.

The reason for gradual loss of self in the absence of contact with others, Bakhtin would insist, is that the self is dependent on others for its existence. The self is never a self-contained and self-sustaining entity. It simply cannot exist outside the web of relations with others. Self-narrative requires not only having something to narrate but also having someone to narrate it to. To be able to conceptualize my self as a meaningful whole, which is fundamental to self-individuation and self-understanding, I need an additional, external perspective – an other.  The coherent self is put under threat in solitary confinement as it is deprived of the “other”, which is imperative for its existence. The gaze of another, even when uncaring, is an affirmation of my existence.

So, what is an inhuman gaze? A gaze from non-human objects: like the gaze of a wall in a solitary confinement? The gaze of a CCTV camera (although there often is a human at the other end of a CCTV camera)? or a gaze from a human but one that is objectifying and dehumanizing? For example, the gaze from a physician who’s performing an illegal organ harvesting where the physician treats the body that she’s operating on like an inanimate object? Let’s assume an inhuman gaze is the gaze of non-human objects for now. Because the distinctiveness of the human gaze (sympathizing, caring, objectifying or humanizing) is important to the point that I am trying to make. The human gaze, unlike the inhuman gaze, is crucial to self-affirmation.

channel-4s-new-sci-fi-robot-series-humans

From Channel 4’s sci-fi robot series Humans

Robot caregivers and the human gaze…

Neither the extreme alarmist nor the uncritical enthusiast help elucidate the pitfalls and potential benefits of robot caregiving. Whether robotic caregiving is a revelation or a doom depends on the type of care one needs. Roughly speaking, we can categorize care that robots can provide into two general categories. First one is physical or mechanical care – for example., fetching medicine or changing elderly patients into incontinence wear. The second one, on the other hand is companionship (to elderly people or children) where the aim might be to provide emotional support.

Now, robotic care might be well suited for the physical or mechanical type of care. In fact, some people might prefer a robot dealing with such physical task as incontinence care or any similar task that they are no longer able to perform themselves. Such care, when provided by a human, might be embarrassing and humiliating for some people. Not only is the human gaze capable of deep understanding and sympathy but also the potential to humiliate and intimidate. The robotic gaze, on the other hand, having no intrinsic values, is not judgemental. So, in the case of physical and mechanical care, the absence of the human gaze does not necessarily result in a significant negative effect. In fact, it might be desirable when we are in a vulnerable position where we feel we might be humiliated.

On the contrary, if companionship and emotional support are the types of care that we are looking for, the value and judgement free robotic gaze will simply not do. We are profoundly social, dynamic and embodied beings who continually strive to attribute meaning and value to the world. If we are to ascribe an ‘essence of the human condition’, it is that that our being in the world is thoroughly interdependent with the existence of others and context where we continually move and negotiate between different positions. True companionship and emotional connection requires intrinsic recognition of emotions, suffering, happiness, and the like. A proper emotional and ethical relation to the other (and the acceptance of genuine responsibility) requires the presence of a loving and value-positing consciousness, and not a value-free, objectifying gaze.

True human companionship and emotional support cannot be programmed into a robot no matter how advanced our technologies can become, for companionship and emotional connection require sense-making and a value-positing consciousness. Sense-making is an active, dynamic and partly open undertaking – and therefore a never-ending process – not a matter of producing and perceiving mappings of reality which can then be codified into a software.  The human gaze affords mutual understanding of what being a human is like. Recognition of emotions, suffering, etc., requires recognition of otherness based on mutual understanding. The human gaze recognizes an ‘other’ human gaze. As Hans Jonas has put it succinctly in ‘The Phenomenon of Life’, “only life can know life … only humans can know happiness and unhappiness.” 

 

 

A foetus is not a person

As the referendum on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland fast approaches, misinformation and misunderstanding (both deliberate and unintentional) continue to circulate on a massive scale, both on social media platforms and on the forest of posters that line every road and street. The rhetorical weapons used by the Vote No campaign are subtle and powerful. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish fact from mere propaganda, and sound argument from mere rhetoric.

Unsurprisingly, the stakes are high. For those seeking to remove the Eighth Amendment, the basic right to bodily autonomy for women and girls is at stake. For those seeking to maintain the status quo, the power to control, limit and punish women and girls – the basic aims of misogyny – seem to be slipping away. Emotions run high.

One clearly fallacious argumentative strategy used by the Vote No campaign is the use of various “slippery slope” arguments. For example, they argue that if abortion is legalized, then it will lead to terminations of all pregnancies with life limiting conditions; or that if abortion up to 12 weeks is legalized, then there is no guarantee that it won’t be extended to 20 weeks, or to 9 months, or indeed lead to the legalisation of infanticide.

There are a number of problems with these arguments. First, they are empirical, causal arguments: they tell us that if such-and-such state of affairs comes about, then a certain effect will follow. But we should only believe such arguments on the basis of empirical evidence: in particular, only if the relevant kind of state of affairs really has led to the relevant sort of effect in the past. And this evidence simply does not exist: there is no evidence that once the termination of pregnancy under certain circumstances is legalised in a jurisdiction, the effects claimed in the various slippery slope arguments come about.

Moreover, the first example above – that if abortion is legalized, then it will lead to terminations of all pregnancies with life limiting conditions – assumes that the only purpose of abortion is to terminate pregnancies with life limiting conditions. How does termination of pregnancies for reasons other than life limiting conditions fare based on this logic? A foetus’s life limiting conditions is not the sole reason for abortion, and prohibiting abortion in general in order to prevent termination of pregnancies with life limiting conditions makes no sense, since not all terminations are due to life limiting conditions of the foetus.

Furthermore – and this cannot be emphasised enough – abortion happens whether it is legal or not. So criminalizing abortion does not solve any problems – it simply creates more misery and suffering. Criminalizing abortion deprives women and girls of access to safe and legal abortion, and forces them to seek other unsafe means of terminating unwanted pregnancies.

This is an important point: the effect of legalising abortion is not to allow access to abortion where there was none, but rather to make abortion safe.

Finally, voting no to repeal the Eighth Amendment is actively deciding to take away a woman’s right to autonomy over her body. Since legalizing abortion is giving women the right to decide for themselves, neutrality is an expression of satisfaction with the status quo – which currently either forces women either to travel to seek termination, to go through the procedure illegally and unsafely, or forces (using the power of the State) women to carry pregnancy to full term.

Personhood: The Western Christian View vs dialogical views

Arguments about how Irish society’s most vulnerable (working class women, women of colour) are most affected by the lack of safe and legal abortion, or how the criminalizing of abortion in Ireland deprives women of their reproductive rights, are ongoing and familiar within the abortion debate.

What we want to address here is the (mis)conception (which is the basis of some anti-abortion arguments) that a foetus is a person with a right to life equivalent to that of a fully-fledged adult. This follows from the argument that life begins at conception, and that life guarantees personhood. It is a consequence of this line of thinking that as soon as conception occurs, there exist two independent lives (the foetus and the pregnant woman) with equal rights.

Even if we grant that life begins at conception, the idea of equating of life with personhood is a wholly misguided one, which has its roots in the Western Christian notion of a soul. A person, according to this doctrine, is a totally autonomous, self-contained entity that exists independent of others. This view is generally known as “individualistic” and to a large extent attributed to the 17th-century French philosopher, René Descartes. This conception of selfhood is not only problematic but on a closer inspection fails to provide logical support for the argument that a foetus is a person. A foetus is clearly not a totally autonomous and self-sufficient entity, and therefore cannot be granted personhood.

Ubuntu-Empathy-the-New-Paradigm-for-Humanity.jpg

Alternatively, dialogical perspectives of selfhood provide a radically different view of personhood – one that views other people as imperative pillars of the self. According to dialogical perspectives, which stand in sharp contrast to the individualistic notion of personhood, we need and rely on others in order to construct and sustain our sense of self. We are inextricably inseparable from those around us, and continually develop and change through intersubjective interaction with others. Our self-knowledge comes from others and continually develops through our daily intersubjective interactions with others and our environment. As the Russian intellectual Mikhail Bakhtin put it:

“Within my own consciousness, my “I” has no beginning and no end. The only way I know of my birth is through accounts I have of it from others; and I shall never know my death, because my “self” will be alive only so long as I have consciousness – what is called my death will not be known by me, but once again by others. While the birth and death of others appear to be irreversibly real.”

Without others, the very core of our existence is threatened and solitary confinement is a grim and harrowing example of this. With the view of a person as a process (rather than an entity) continually developing and changing and interdependent with others, we might then grant a foetus some status of personhood but one that is not on a par with a fully-fledged adult and, furthermore, one that is entirely dependent on others (the pregnant woman or girl to be specific) for its existence and identity.

The idea of a continually changing self (which is dependent on others for its existence) can be troubling, especially since it seems to remove the apparent total autonomy that we typically take for granted, especially within individualistic cultures.

In non-individualistic cultures – where others are seen as pivotal constituents of the self, communal values are prior to individual ones, and we are before I am (or as the Kenyan-born philosopher John Mbiti put it ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am’) – the collective comes before the individual. Responsibility, for example, is distributed among every member of the community, and not something that is left up to individual parents.

In Ethiopia, for example, where I grew up, the manifestation of the sentiment ‘the collective before the individual’ can be seen in the values placed around abortion and child-rearing. While less emphasis is put on the status of the foetus (and the decision mainly left up to the grown adult – the pregnant woman or girl –  who is not equated with a foetus) more emphasis is put on the responsibility of each member of the community in raising a child. If, for example, an adult sees a school child skipping school, responsibility to advise that child and send them back to school is assumed. Members of that community are active participants in the upbringing of all children. This is in stark contrast to more individualistic cultures, where people make it their business to monitor pregnant bodies during pregnancy and (in the Irish case) force women or girls to carry pregnancy to full term, but take little or no responsibility for a baby when it has been born.

Coming back our point about abortion and the implication of the idea of personhood as a process that continually develops with complete dependence on others (gradually becoming less dependent) is that the foetus, being the early stage of the process, in not a person similar to that of a fully-fledged adult.

The response that is often raised by the anti-abortionists to this is that “when does a foetus become a person?”, “at what point does transformation from foetus to a person occur?”

This unfortunately is an ill-framed and irrelevant question, philosophically speaking. Personhood is a process that develops over time through intersubjective dialogical relationships with others. Not an all-or-nothing entity that either exists or doesn’t. Not something you have or don’t have. Looking for a specific time when a foetus becomes a person is therefore misguided.

The anti-abortion argument that a foetus has a right to life in the same sense that a pregnant woman or girl has then lies on philosophically erroneous conceptions of personhood. Given that personhood is a process of continual development that is sustained in interaction with others, it is a mistake to think that the foetus (which is considerably less developed and immensely dependent on the pregnant women) is a person in the same way – and to the same degree – that the pregnant woman or girl is.

This blogpost is co-written by Abeba Birhane, Cognitive Science PhD candidate at University College Dublin and Dr. Daniel Deasy, Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Dublin.

Afrofeminist epistemology and dialogism: a synthesis (work in progress)

Embodied, enactive and dialogical approaches to cognitive science radically depart from traditional Western thought in the manner with which they deal with life, mind and the person. The former can be characterised as emphasising interdependence, relationships, and connectedness with attempts to understanding organisms in their milieu. Acknowledgements of complexities and ambiguities of reality form the starting points for epistemological claims.  The latter, on the other hand, tends to strive for certainty and logical coherence in an attempt to establish stable and relatively fixed epistemological generalisations. Individuals, which often are perceived as independent discreet entities, are taken as the primary subjects of knowledge and the units of analysis.

Collins’s proposed black feminist epistemology, hereafter “Afrofeminist epistemology”, opposes the traditional Western approach to epistemology as well as the largely Positivist scientific view inherited from it.  As such, it is worth drawing attention to the similarities between Black feminist thought and dialogical approaches to the cognitive sciences. In what follows I seek to reveal a striking convergence of themes between these two schools of thought. In so doing, I intend to illustrate that the two traditions – cognitive sciences, especially the dialogical approach to epistemology, and Afrofeminist epistemology, particularly, the type proposed by Patricia Hill Collins (2002) – can inform one another through dialogue.

General characterization of classic Western approach to epistemology and the Cartesian inheritance

The classic Western approach to epistemology tends to be monological; meaning it tends to focus on individuals and their cognition and behaviour. When relationships and interactions enter the equation, individuals and their relations are often portrayed as distinct entities that can be neatly separated. Dichotomous thinking — subject versus object, emotion versus reason – persists within this tradition. Ethical and moral values and questions are often treated as clearly separable from “objective scientific work” and as something that the scientist need not contaminate her “objective” work with. In its desire for absolute rationality, Western thought wishes to cleave thought from emotion, cultural influence and ethical dimensions. Cognition, evaluation and emotions are treated as if they are entities that shouldn’t be contaminated. Abstract and intellectual thinking are regarded as the most trustworthy forms of understanding and rationality is fetishized.

In the classic Western epistemological tradition, abstract reasoning is taken to be the highest cognitive goal, and certainty as a necessary component for knowledge.  Since the ultimate goal is to arrive at timeless, universally applicable laws, establishing certainty is pivotal for laying the foundations. Although there are historical antecedents leading up to and contributing towards what is generally regarded as Western tradition – in particular, Plato in his dialogues Meno and Phaedo – Descartes represents the pinnacle of Western thought (Gardiner 1998, Toulmin 1992). The subject as autonomous and self-sustaining entity or a Cartesian cogito, which we have inherited from Cartesian thinking, remains prevalent in most current Western philosophy as well as in the background assumptions of the human sciences. The way the individual self is taken as the unquestioned origin of knowledge of the world and others is a legacy of this tradition (Linell 2009).

Black feminist criticism of dominant approach and the proposed alternative

Contrary to the classic Western epistemological tradition, in Afrofeminist epistemology ethical and moral values and questions are inseparable from our enquires into knowledge. Similarly, knowledge claims and knowledge validation processes are not independent of the interests and values of those who define what knowledge is, what is important and worthy of study, and what the criteria for epistemological justification are (Collins 2002). Such definitions and criteria are guarded fiercely by the institutions and individuals who act as the ‘gatekeepers’ of the classic Western epistemological tradition. This traditional Western epistemology, Collins points out, predominantly represents Western, elite, and white, male interests and values. In fact, a brief review of the history of Western philosophical canon reveals that knowledge production processes and the criteria for knowledge claims have predominantly been set by elite, white, Western men.

Scholars like Karen Warren (2009) have cogently argued that the history of classical Western philosophy has, for centuries, almost exclusively consisted of elite, white, Western European men giving the illusion that Western white men are the epitome of intellectual achievement. Women’s voices and perspectives were diminished, ignored, and systematically excluded from the canon. In her ‘recovery project’, Warren finds that women philosophers nonetheless have made important contributions throughout the history of philosophy and that you find them when you go looking for them. This, to a great extent, remains the case not only in philosophy, but also in much of the rest of the academic tradition. A brief look at any philosophy curricula would reveal that white European male philosophers and their views remain dominant and definitive.

Traditional approaches taken as the “normal” and “acceptable” ways to theorise and generalise about people’s lived experiences means that any other approaches to theorising about groups of people that are not aligned with canonical intellectual currents (often white European male) are dismissed as “anomalies”. For Collins, it is indisputable that different people experience reality differently and that all social thought somewhat reflects the realities and interests of its creators. Political criteria influence knowledge production and validation processes in one way or another.  Collins asserts, in studying Black women’s realities, the typical perspectives on offer have either identified black women with the oppressor, in which case Black women lack an independent interpretation of their own realities, or have characterised Black women as less human than the oppressor, in which case Black women lack the capacity to articulate their own standpoint. While in the first perspective independent Black women’s realities are seen as not their own, in the latter, it is seen as inferior. For that reason, the traditional epistemology is inadequate to capture and account for the lived experiences of black women – hence Collins’ proposal for an Afrocentric feminist epistemology which is grounded in black women’s values and lived experiences.

Black women’s lived experiences are different in important ways. The kind of relationships Black women have, and the kind of work they engage in are notable examples that demonstrate the differing realities and lived experiences. Intuitive knowledge, what Collins calls wisdom, is crucial to the everyday lives and survival of black women. While wisdom and intuitions, as opposed to abstract intellectualizing, might be excluded as irrelevant, and at best, less credible as far as the traditional epistemologies are concerned, they are highly valued within black communities:

“The distinction between knowledge and wisdom, and the use of experience as the cutting edge dividing them, has been key to Black women’s survival. … knowledge without wisdom is adequate for the powerful, but wisdom is essential to the survival of the subordinate.” (Collins 1989, p. 759)

The desire for complete objectivity and universally generalisable theories in the dominant Western tradition has led to a focus on abstract analysis of the nature of concepts like ‘knowledge’ and ‘justification’, with little to no grounding of complex lived experience. Its portrayal of reason and rationality in direct contrast with emotions – the former to arrive at pure, objective knowledge –  has led to dichotomous thinking, thus blinding us to continuities and complementarities. Consequently, “reason” has been privileged over emotions. This in turn has impeded emotional and bodily knowledge, what Foucault (1980) calls ‘subjugated knowledge’ often expressed through music, drama, etc., as less important. However, ‘subjugated knowledge’ is crucial and is part of a way of life and survival for black communities. Such knowledge, grounded in concrete experiences and recognised through connectedness, dialogues and relationships, is what is of real value for Black women.

That knowledge claims should be grounded in concrete, lived experience rather than abstract intellectualising is crucial to Collins’s Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Collins’s Afrocentric epistemology prioritizes wisdom over knowledge and has, at its core, black women’s experiences of race and gender oppression. Black women have shared experience of oppression, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and apartheid as well as roots in the core African value system prior to colonization. The roots of Afrocentric epistemology can be traced back to African-based oral traditions. As such, dialogues occupy an important place. Dialogues, so far as the Afrocentric epistemology is concerned, are an essential method for assessing knowledge claims.

This Afrocentric epistemology, grounded in the lived experience of black women, that employs dialogues as a way of validating knowledge claims, stands in a stark contrast with that of the Eurocentric epistemology. Connectedness rather than separation is an essential component of the knowledge validation process. Individuals are not detached observers of stories or folktales, but rather active participants, listeners and speakers and part of the story. Dialogues explore and capture the fundamentally interactive connected nature of people and relationships.

Ethical claims lie at the heart of an Afrocentric feminist epistemology, in contrast to the classical Western epistemology that considers ethical issues as separate from and independent of ‘objective scientific investigations’. Afrocentric feminist epistemology is about employing emotions, wisdom, ethics and reason as interconnected and equally essential components in assessing knowledge claims with reference to a particular set of historical conditions.

Dialogical criticism to dominant approach and its alternative

The dialogical approach to cognitive science – inspired by Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin’s (1895 – 1975) thinking and further developed by dialogists such as Per Linell (2009) – objects to the dominant Western epistemological approach. Dialogical theories which have roots in the Bakhtin Circle, a 20th century school of Russian thought, have had a massive influence on social theory, philosophy and psychology. At the centre of dialogical theories lies the view that linguistic production, the notion of self-hood, and knowledge are essentially dialogic. Dialogical approaches are concerned with conceptualizing and theorizing human-sense making and they do so based on a set of assumptions some of which stand in stark opposition to traditional Western philosophy and science. These assumptions include: individual selves cannot be assumed to exist as agents and thinkers before they begin to interact with others and the world; our sense-makings are not separable from our historical antecedents and current cultural and societal norms and value systems. The interrelation between self, others and the environment are there from the start in the infant’s life and the awareness of self and others co-develop over time; they are two sides of the same process. Classical Western philosophy and science has tried to reduce the world to rational individual subjects in attempt to establish stable universals. The origin of knowledge of the world and of others is the discreet individual person. So far as dialogical approaches go, most traditional Western epistemological approaches are rooted in Cartesian individualism and are monological – meaning, that they only encompass individuals and their cognition and environments. Groups and societies are nothing but ensembles of individuals:

“Individuals alone think, speak, carry responsibilities, and other individuals at most have a casual impact on their activities and stances.” (Linell 2009, p. 44)

Dialogism[1], in contrast, insists that interdependencies, co-dependencies, and relationships between the individual and the world are most fundamental components in understanding the nature of selves and furthermore, of knowledge. The term intersubjectivity captures this concept well:

“The term “intersubjectivity”—or what Hannah Arendt calls “the subjective in-between”—shifts our emphasis away from notions of the person, the self, or the subject as having a stable character and abiding essence, and invites us to explore the subtle negotiations and alterations of subjective experience as we interact with one another, intervocally or dialogically (in conversation or confrontation), intercorporeally (in dancing, moving, fighting, or competing), and introceptively (in getting what we call a sense of the other’s intentions, frame of mind, or worldview).”  (Jackson 2002, p. 5)

Cultures and societies are typically conceived as objective, stable structures so far as Western epistemologies go. Dialogism by contrast conceives cultures and societies as dynamic, living and partly open, with tensions, internal struggles and conflicts between majorities and minorities and different value systems. “Knowledge is necessarily constructed and continually negotiated (a) in situ and in sociocultural traditions, and (b) in dialogue with others; individuals are never completely autonomous1 as sense-makers.” (Linell 2009, p. 46) The individual is not a separate, discrete, fixed and stable entity that stands independent from others, but rather one that is always in dynamical interactions with and interdependent with others. Knowledge claims and knowledge validation processes need therefore to reflect these continual tensions and dynamic interactions.

Concluding remarks: drawing similarities between dialogical approaches and Afrofeminist epistemology

So, what are the implications, if any, of drawing these commonalities between Afrofeminist epistemology and dialogical approaches to epistemology, and their common refutation of traditional Western epistemology? Collins has described Afrofeminist and Western epistemological grounds as competing and at times irreconcilable:

“Those Black feminists who develop knowledge claims that both epistemologies can accommodate may have found a route to the elusive goal of generating so called objective generalizations that can stand as universal truths.”  (Collins 1989, p.773)  

The synthesis and incorporation of dialogism with Afrofeminist epistemology is, in a sense, not the discovery of that elusive finding into “objective generalization” or “universal truths” that satisfy both epistemologies. Rather such synthesis, I argue, is a means towards epistemological approaches that aspire to embed Afrofeminist values and dialogical epistemological underpinnings to our understandings of personhood and knowledge. Such epistemological approaches acknowledge that knowledge claims, knowledge validation processes and any scientific endeavours in general are value-laden and cannot be considered independent of underlying values and interests. A move towards epistemological approaches that acknowledge the role of the scientist/theorist which Barad (2007) captures concisely:

“A performative understanding of scientific practices, for example, takes account of the fact that knowing does not come from standing at a distance and representing but rather from a direct material engagement with the world.”   (Barad 2007, p. 49)

Connectedness and relationships rather than disinterested, disembodied, and detached Cartesian individuals form a central component of analysis. Great emphasis is placed on extensive dialogues and not to become a detached observer of stories. In so doing, individual expressiveness, emotions, the capacity for empathy and the fact that ideas cannot be divorced from those who create and share them need to be key factor for this epistemology. Such is an epistemological approach that aspires to embed Afrofeminist values and dialogical underpinnings.

Knowledge is specific to time and place and is not rooted in the individual person but in relationships between people. Individuals exist in a web of relations and co-dependently of one other, negotiating meanings and values through dialogues. As Bakhtin, pioneer of dialogism has emphasized, we are essentially dialogical beings, and it is only through dialogues with others that we come to realise and sustain a coherent – albeit continually changing –  sense of self. Reality is messy, ambiguous, and complex. Any epistemological approach that takes the person as fully autonomous, fixed, and a self-sufficient agent whose actions are guided by pure rationality fail to recognise the complexities and ambiguities of reality, time and context-bound nature of knowledge. At the core of this proposed Afrofeminist/dialogical approach to epistemology is an attempt to bring values as important constituent factor to the dialogical, intersubjective embodied, in a constant flux person and the epistemologies that drive from it.

[1] It is important to note that individuals do not disappear in dialogism, rather, the individual is a social being who is interdependent with others, “not an autonomous subject or a Cartesian cogito.” (Linell 2009)

Bibliography

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. duke university Press.

Collins, P. H. (1989). The social construction of black feminist thought. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society14(4), 745-773.

Collins, P. H. (2002). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1980). Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews. Cornell University Press.

Gardiner, M. (1998). The incomparable monster of solipsism: Bakhtin and Merleau-Ponty. Bakhtin and the human sciences. Sage, London, 128-144.

Jackson, M. (2012). Lifeworlds: Essays in existential anthropology. University of Chicago Press.

Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically. IAP.

Toulmin, S. E., & Toulmin, S. (1992). Cosmopolis: The hidden agenda of modernity. University of Chicago Press.

Warren, K. (Ed.). (2009). An unconventional history of Western philosophy: conversations between men and women philosophers. Rowman & Littlefield.

 

Solitary confinement deprives dialogicity and therefore deprives a coherent sense of self

Solitary confinement NYTI recently came across this extremely powerful and disturbing 3 minutes video of solitary confinement. Given my dialogically informed perspective, it made me reflect (as well as initiate conversations with others ;-)) on the concepts of self, other, and world. Solitary confinement, which is the absence of dialogical relationship with others, seems to have a devastating effect on one’s sense of self and this video is an unerring illustration.

Solitary confinement is the complete isolation of prisoners from others or significantly reduced intersubjective contact with others or technically speaking, physical isolation for 22 to 24 hours per day. Solitary confinement is often referred as “Administrative segregation” in prisons. It is a common practice across the globe. In the US alone there are 80,000 to 100,000 inmates held in solitary confinements everyday. Similarly in Canada, “On any given day, there are 850 offenders (about 5.6% of the prison population) in solitary confinement. Some of these inmates have been isolated for more than four months. Many are young. Many have serious mental health problems.”

I don’t think there can be much disagreement regarding the disturbed state of most of the prisoners in the video. Solitary confinement deprives us of intersubjective contact with others which is imperative for constructing and sustaining our sense of self. Alexis de Tocqueville and Charles Dickens have described the prisoner in isolated cells as “buried alive” and subjected to “immense amount of torture and agony” through a “slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain”. Looking at solitary confinement from a phenomenological perspective, Gallagher (2014), has identified a long list of substantial negative health effects associated with solitary confinement:

“anxiety, fatigue, confusion, paranoia, depression, hallucinations, headaches, insomnia, trembling, apathy, stomach and muscle pains, oversensitivity to stimuli, feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, withdrawal, isolation, rage, anger, and aggression, difficulty in concentrating, dizziness, distortion of the sense of time, severe boredom, and impaired memory.”

Solitary confinement can alter or eradicate sense of self. “The person subjected to solitary confinement risks losing her self and disappearing into a non-existence”. Nonetheless, such effects of solitary confinement are often understated perhaps due to our individualistic perception of self and our tendency to underestimate the importance of others as constituents of self. In fact, as Foucault in Discipline and Punish reminds us, the original purposes of solitary confinement, was as a positive instrument for reform. Solitary confinements were thought to rehabilitate the prisoner as a social and moral individual through reflection in isolation – a way for the prisoner to reflect on their crimes and return into his inner ‘true’ self. Given time to introspect in a solitary confinement, the prisoner was expected to turn their thoughts inward, repent their crimes, and eventually return to society as a morally cleansed citizen.

“Thrown into solitude, the convict reflects. Placed alone in the presence of his crime, he learns to hate it, and, if his soul is not yet blunted by evil, it is in isolation that remorse will come to assail him”

(Tocqueville in Foucault 1979: 237)

At the centre of this viewpoint is an underlying assumption which views the individual as something that exists and is capable of reasoning and functioning in isolation from others – a notion of the individual that is self-sufficient and self-contained where the necessarily interrelatedness of self, other, and world is overlooked. For philosophers such as Gardiner, this individualistic notion of the self is something we have adopted from the Western Christian notion of the soul through Cartesian-inspired philosophies. Contrary to this notion of solitary (which is built upon individualistic assumptions) as a means to come back to the inner self, deprived from contact and interaction with others, the very core of our existence is threatened.

‘‘Just as the body is formed initially in the mother’s womb (body), a person’s consciousness awakens wrapped in another consciousness … Individuality is created by and through others and the Other is part of the self.”

(Bakhtin, 1990)

Coming back to my brief musing, the fact that our sense of self seems to erode when we are deprived of interaction with others reinforces the Bakhtinian dialogical viewpoint that self and others co-develop and are two sides of the same coin. It is through our dialogical and embodied interactions with others that we are able to form and sustain a sense of coherent self. Others are essentially involved at all social and individual lived experiences. Through our encounters with others, we are able to evaluate and assess our own existence. Depriving the person of ‘others’ by subjecting them to solitary confinement, denies that essential additioal external perspective, the means by which a coherent self-image is maintained and the person risks losing the ‘self’ and disappearing into a non-existence.