Single thought
It's funny, I did so many interesting things today. Lunch, iMac browsing and grocery shopping with Will and my mum, music lesson, art exhibition and ambient piano playing at school, movie and after-movie socializing...but there were only really a few thoughts that stuck in my mind. Well, one. Either this means that I have a very bad memory, or I do not think a great deal. Either way, it's not great.
Anyway, the thought that stuck came from watching Anger Management just now, which was a great film, by the way, so it's a bit strange that the thought that stuck came from such an insignificant and largely irrelevant part of the film (spoiler coming). It's Dave's (Adam Sandler) first day at Anger Management therapy, and Buddy (Jack Nicholson) asks Dave: "Tell us who you are". Dave proceeds to describe his career, hobbies and interests, and keeps getting interrupted by Buddy, who tells him that he doesn't want to know what his career, hobbies and interests are, but who he is.
It's a pretty run-over philosophical concept (because it's so fundamental to the question of the self), but that just made me think, during the film: who is anyone? Is it what we do, what we like and what we don't like that define who we are? Is it even our personalities that define who we are? If someone asks you "who are you?", would it be a sufficient answer to reply "I'm a fairly nice guy, get along with people, have a nice girlfriend" (as Dave in Anger Management did)?
The question is also dealt with very briefly in The Little Prince, which is a brilliant book by a guy whose name is French and I have trouble spelling, so I won't try to. Saint Antoine something. Anyway, he said that when "adults" want to know someone, they ask what car they drive, what they do for a living, where they live. Etc. And when "children" want to know someone, they ask the "important" things like their favourite games, and whether they "collect butterflies" or not. However, both inquiries (enquiries? what's the damn difference anyway) assume that a person is definable by what they do or what they like, or even how they respond to things around them, rather than what they are intrinsically.
And is there even an "intrinsic" aspect that would be an adequate answer to "who are you"? In Anger Management, the question is never adequately answered by either Buddy or Dave (Dave just ends up getting angry :P). If philosophers want to say that people aren't defined by what they do and how they respond to things, then can they be defined at all? Or are philosophical thinkers just making things difficult for themselves? How can we define a person?
There are so many responses to "who are you" that philosophy finds inadequate, somehow. Take the case of someone who points at a newborn infant and says "Who is that?". The answer will probably be either the name of the baby, or the name of the parents. Does that really tell anything about the infant? No, because the infant hasn't done anything - there is nothing to define. Surely that means that people are in fact defined by what they do...? But isn't that a scary thought - it means that if there were only one human being left in existence, that person would be nothing, because his "self" has to be defined in relation to what he does and how he interacts with others. If he does nothing and knows no one, he is no one...
Well, I don't know. It's late, and I'm probably talking nonsense. It's all clear in my head, I promise. Perhaps the most adequate answer to "Who are you" or "who is that" is the most common answer: a shrug.