@Procrastinator PhD Thesis:
Targeting the Subconcious: Sandwiches as Subjectivity of Intellect

A Sub, such as that shown in the photo, is an amalgam and a unity at once. For one, when cutting a sandwich in two, you have either two halves or two sandwiches. In the McAc scenario presented in the photography above, you can tell that the conjunctin of parts makes up a whole which represents a bigger version of each part. This is, in short, one of the biggest issues faced by the philosophy of identity: the relation of whole to part and part to whole.

When you break a stick in two, you have two sticks. You do not have a half-stick. Furthermore, when you remove a sandwich from the amalgam of sandwiches, you still have the “big sub.” What is the limit? If all but three little subs in a row were left, would you still have a sub that consists of the magical unity of all three?

Metaphysics would suggest much. But I am shifting the gears a littl to what I would like to call Meatphysics. Is consists of an analysis of food’s relation to human notions of completeness.

Chapter I: The Notion of the “I”

There is a lot to lose in our time. What I mean here is the very sense of “I” that permeates our universal grammar. The idea that we are ourselves amalgams, of neurotransmitters, perhaps, is dangerous to the idea of autonomy. Without autonomy, of course, the question of why we should respect individuals becomes a non-question. There simply are no individuals in any sense that would make them the recipients of an absolute respect and moral “pricelessness” as is found in theories such as Kant’s which play a prominent role in the groundwork of liberal theories that emphasize rights, dignity, equality, and so forth.

Are we, or are we not, a single substance? Are we we? The latter is what becomes the question. In the era of post-Cartesian thought, we were in a sort of haven: there is an “I” and solipsism is a myth. The “I” and “you” framework is essential in different currents of philosophy which include the Hegelian.

What I propose is not a theory of the absolute, though. Don’t think I will go in that direction. I only wish to pinpoint some of the aspects of what our relativism and skepticism has brought us to.

The sub, in all its glory, shows us what I mean. We are composed of different components. That has been obvious since time immemorial. But are we those components put together and nothing else? Or is there something that exists beside that in its own special way?

The sub that we see in the pictures poses an interesting question. At 712 feet, imagine it consists of 712 foot-longs. Remove 3 of them and it is still one gigantic supersub, just a little shorter. But remove 710 of them, then you have something substantially different. And if you remove 711, you have just one part that also serves as one whole. Of course, if one part is enough to suffice as the whole. Then do 712 parts imply that the supersub is a myth? If so, how can we relate that to ourselves? Are we just our brains (or minds?), or do we need our entire bodies to produce the “I”? Obviously you can clip your nails and you would still be yourself. But replacing your brain for another, might be an interesting question.

Postmodern identity seems to be something which suggests a certain mythical delusion lies in the thought that there is such a thing as an “I”. It could be a result of mere language. Or maybe it doesn’t. But who creates the language? Is it the “I” or is it just a part of the brain which in conjunction with other parts constructs this thing we might call a self?

There are many, many questions in these lines which should force one to question one’s very oneness. Are we all individual parts of individual parts which collectively create humanity? Is humanity a part of nature? Or is the notion of nature what is the non-human?

A beaver makes a dam, that is natural. A man makes a building, that is unnatural. Clearly there is a leap of logic. There is some idea, an underlying assumption, that somehow our ability to cogitate on what we do makes what we do belong outside the sphere of nature. Surely, then, Kant would think that the sublime is related to this being-outside-of-nature. But what if it is all an illusion of the mind?

Political thought is impossible without metaphysics, unless one lies or convinces oneself that viable systems of justice can be created on the basis of contracts, conformity, convenience, etc. There is a lot to lose in this age and the sub shows us why.

In the end the question of whether there is an “I” or whether humanity is a myth becomes the question of whether we are “sub-human,” “human,” or “post-human.” Of course, writing that very sentence is paradoxical, for it manipulates language into presuming an I-we paradigm which simply may be difficult to justify outside the realm of language that may be creating it.

As such, I have written quite a bit. I wonder, of course, if the sub is still present. Now presuming that it has entered individual “bodies” (a controversial notion in itself), one should ask if the supersub still persists in any form. The answer may belie the absurd notion of common sense.