Grice's Alter Ego

Was hisself, yesterday. In "Personal Identity" he says that "I" is best understood as a _bunch_ of "I"s as they travel in the mnemonic flow of memory.

"The wider forms of alter-egoism
(so-called altruism, which is really égoisme
à deux, à trois, etc.)."
_Mind_ 45, 1936, p. 72

Kramer is right. Dawkins is wrong. Genes do have a personality defect. They are not altruistic enough.

Makes you wonder if someone who acts for the benefit of her _alter ego_ is [sufficiently] (morally) evolved? (cfr. _Mind_ (uncredited) quote above). (I append below the OED def. and quotes for 'alter ego', 'alteregoism' and 'alteregoist').

For Aristotle it was SO easy.

The Grecians were pretty promiscuous. Vide "Gricean Love". One eromenos here, one erastes, there, etc.

Aristotle was so bored about it that he shouted: "Stop it!" And the next thing was to have all his students in the Lycaeum repeat his more boring adage:

a happy man needs only ONE friend.
More than enough is too much.
This friend is his soulmate. His alter ego.


From the OED. "alter ego". Latin expression, used by Cicero), from "alter",
another, "ego", I. Cf. Gr. "allo ego", "heteros ego".

Definition:
i. a second self.
ii. an intimate and trusted friend
iii. a confidential agent or representative.

-- Hence "alteregoism", altruism; "alteregoistic", altruistic.

Quotes:

1537 R. Layton Let. 4 June in Lett. Suppress. Monast. (1843) 156
"Ye muste have suche as ye may trust evyn as well as your owne self, wiche
muste be unto yowe as alter ego."

1622 Mabbe tr. Aleman's Guzman d'Alf. i. ii. 24
"She would tell him, that I was his alter ego, that he and I were one."

1650 Trapp Comm. Gen. ii. 18
"One..that may be to him as an Alter-ego, a second-self."

1652 N. Culverwel Lt. Nature 10
"We use to call a friend Alter ego."

1872 Geo. Eliot Middlem. v. li. 148
"These people might not take that high view of you which I have always
taken, as an alter ego, a right hand."

1880 Meredith Trag. Comedians I. v. 93
"The pleasure she had of the sensational comparison was in an alteregoistic
home she found in him, that allowed of her gathering a picked
self-knowledge."

1886 Law Times Rep. LIV. 856/1
"He who makes the contract agrees to the condition that it shall not be
binding on the person whose alter ego or representative he is if he has
made any misrepresentation, or has been guilty of any concealment."

1901 M. F. Libby in Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. XII. 470
"The social affections in Shaftesbury generally mean the alteregoistic
affections."

1901 M. F. Libby in Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. 485
"His tendency to see patriotic and cosmic affections as an expansion of the
narrower forms of alteregoism, as shown in love, family, and party
relations."

1926 D. H. Lawrence Plumed Serpent i. 10
"`Isn't that fun!' `No,' said Kate, her little alter ego speaking out for
once."

1936 Mind XLV. 72
"The wider forms of alter-egoism (so-called altruism, which is really
égoisme à deux, à trois, etc.)."

1939 A. J. Toynbee Study Hist. VI. 44
"The One True God whose alter ego Alla¯h was now proclaimed to be."

fig. 1856 S. Dobell Eng. in time of War 80
"Methinks the fruit But alter ego of the root."

Etc.

Grice would later expand on this when he speaks of 'conversation'.

In conversation, he writes, 'we better be benevolent'. "In private talk, who cares?".

But I do!

Etc.

JLS