E.G.

I saw Mickey 17 in the theater the other day, and it made me worry about whether I might be wrong in my belief that we have relationships (relationships of the folk sort) with ourselves. I won't bother to summarize the scene that made me have this worry, but if you've seen the movie, you might have a guess which scene it is. It's not a good movie, by the way.

Obviously, if 

Relationships require non-identity: S1 has a relationship with S2 only if S1≠S2,

then we can't have relationships with ourselves. The question is whether we've got any reason to believe that relationships require non-identity. The argument that interests me looks something like this:

The distance argument against relationships with ourselves
(1) The Distance Requirement: S1 has a relationship with S2 only if there is a certain kind of distance between S1 and S2.
(2) That kind of distance is impossible if S1=S2.
Therefore, S1 has a relationship with S2 only if S1≠S2.

I'm drawn to the Distance Requirement. We say of some relationships that they are "close" and we say that some of our relationships are "closer" than others. You've got a relationship with your mailman and you've got a relationship with your spouse, and the second relationship is closer than the first. But it seems to me that every relationship, no matter how close, could be even closer. If this is right, it implies that every relationship involves some sort of distance. This is the kind of reasoning that leads me to want to endorse the first premise of the above argument. The key question for me, then, is whether the second premise is true.

***

I suppose we should consider whether the Distance Requirement should be interpreted in spatial terms, like this:

The Spatial Distance Requirement: S1 has a relationship with S2 only if there is spatial distance between S1 and S2.

If the Spatial Distance Requirement is true, then we can't have relationships with ourselves. But I don't think the Spatial Distance Requirement is true. It's too crudely physical. And what about imaginary cases where immaterial beings have relationships with one another? It seems possible for ghosts to be friends with one another, even though there is no spatial distance between ghosts, because ghosts aren't spatially located.

Given that ghost friendship is possible, the Spatial Distance Requirement is false. So I think we should look for ways to interpret the Distance Requirement in non-spatial and non-physical terms.

***

If you are close to someone, you will usually have a good understanding of how they are feeling now, how they have felt at various times in the past, how they would feel in various real and hypothetical circumstances, etc. But we never have a complete understanding of others' emotions, no matter how close they are to us. The same is true of others' beliefs, desires, intentions, and experiences.

Maybe we should say that 

S1 is at some mental distance from S2 if and only if S1's access to, or understanding of, S2's inner life is limited.

And maybe the Distance Requirement should be interpreted like this:

The Mental Distance Requirement: S1 has a relationship with S2 only if there is mental distance between S1 and S2.

This interpretation of the Distance Requirement would be good news for those of us who want to reject the second premise of the distance argument, because it is generally true that we are at significant mental distance from ourselves, i.e., our understanding of our own inner lives is severely limited. In fact there are many cases where we have a much better understanding of others' inner lives than our own inner lives. 

However, I think the Mental Distance Requirement is false. Many people believe that divine omniscient beings can have relationships with one another. But there would be no mental distance between such beings; they would have a complete understanding of one another's minds. In part for this reason, I do not think the Mental Distance Requirement is a good interpretation of the Distance Requirement.

***

I wonder if the relevant notion of distance should be understood not in physical or mental terms, but in moral terms.

Perhaps it is the case that: We say that S1 and S2 have a "close" relationship when S1 and S2 need one another and, in virtue of that fact, have moral obligations to one another, such that they are each capable of seriously wronging the other.

This way of thinking about things could make sense of the fact that we do not want all of our relationships to be extremely close, i.e., we often want to have significant distance from others. We don't always want to need others, or to be needed by others, in morally significant ways.

This could also make sense of the fact that, even when we have a very close relationship with someone, we might not want the relationship to be maximally close. You might be happy to be needed by your spouse in a wide variety of morally significant ways, but you might also want some of your spouse's needs to be her responsibility rather than yours.

This way of thinking suggests a notion of moral distance which might be defined as follows:

S1 is at some moral distance from S2 if and only if S1 is not morally obligated to attend to all of S2's needs.

And we might then render the Distance Requirement as follows:

The Moral Distance Requirement: S1 has a relationship with S2 only if there is moral distance between S1 and S2.

If we understand things like this, then I think it will be possible to save the possibility of relationships with ourselves. I like the idea that you are morally obligated to attend to some of your own needs, but it seems clear to me that you are not morally obligated to attend to all of your own needs, so I think it is highly plausible that you are at some moral distance from yourself.