Once, when I was in high school, my philosophy teacher was talking about the concept of essence. "A thing's essence," he said, "is that which, if it were to be removed, the thing would no longer be what it once was. Take the clock, for example. The clock is blue, but would it still be a clock if you took away the 'blue' and left it colorless? Certainly: you could still tell time by it. But what if you were to remove the hands from the clock? Then, I would argue, you have removed the very 'essence' of the clock -- its ability to measure the passage of time.And propranolol; good for what ails you. It's a pill that interferes with the formation of traumatic memories; you can still remember the events but don't have the emotional symptoms associated with them."Here's another example," he continued, picking up a drinking glass. "What is the essence of this glass? Its shape? I'd say not. But what if we were to remove the bottom of this glass? I submit to you that, if we were to remove the bottom, this glass would lose its essence."
"I dunno," I said. "I don't think that argument holds water."
Great for post-traumatic stress disorder, but philosophically interesting. Say I am in a car crash and am treated with propranolol - I will still be able to remember the crash, but won't have panic attacks while remembering it, be unable ever to get into a car again, etc. What if it were used as a prophylactic for guilt? Say I commit some atrocity in a fit of rage and then take the pill. I would still remember what I had done, but would I truly feel guilt and remorse, even if I thought I should be feeling them? Can one make oneself feel regret?
3 comments:
When under anaesthetic, are you unconscious, or are you awake, but paralysed, and feeling every slice of the scalpel but unable to store any of the experience to memory?
I hate that.
That reminds me. Remember our putative horror/detective story plot about the rogue surgeon that kidnaps people and returns them alive with cryptic clues tattooed on their internal organs?
Turns out that ortho surgeons actually do sign their work: I heard from a medical friend that there was a case recently where a body was identified by the initials on its artificial hip - from that they found the surgeon and were able to deduce who the patient must have been. Creepy.
Well, propranolol is a beta-blocker - blocks the 'anxiety' actions of adrenaline - so it's useful, for example, in dental surgery for very nervous patients. You don't experience panic at the time and you don't reinforce ideas about dentists being incredibly scary.
But I'm not sure it would work as you say. Let's say you suffer a bereavement, you are really not coping and are given beta-blockers (I don't know if they do prescribe them for grief, but it's just an example). It would, presumably, make you calmer at the time, but in the long run, your loved one is still dead and that is still just as upsetting and has as much impact on your life, which you have to come to terms with over time.
Presumably if you committed some atrocity, while doing it you might be simply angry, or in whatever emotional state. What causes regret/guilt/etc is the realisation afterwards, over time, of the impact of your actions. Don't you think?
Having never committed an atrocity (as far as I know) the best example I can come up with is doing something embarrassing while drunk. At the time you're completely fine about it (arguably alcohol is taking the place of the propranolol in your example) it's when you remember it the next day that the difficult emotions start to be associated with the memory...
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