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The mind's “I”
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I can be aware of myself, and thereby come to know things about myself, in a variety of different ways. But is there some special way in which I—and only I—can learn about myself? Can I become aware of myself by introspecting? Do I somehow show up in my own conscious experiences? David Hume and most contemporary philosophers say no. They deny that the self shows up in experience. However, in this paper I appeal to research on schizophrenia—on thought insertion, in particular—to argue that Hume and his follows are wrong: The self does, in fact, show up in experience.
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 27-34
JOHN CAMPBELL (1999) has recently maintained that the phenomenon of thought insertion as it is manifested in schizophrenic patients should be described as a case in which the subject is introspectively aware of a certain thought and yet she is wrong in identifying whose thought it is. Hence, according to Campbell, the phenomenon of thought insertion might be taken as a counterexample to the view that introspection-based mental self-ascriptions are logically immune to error through misidentification (IEM). Thus, if Campbell is right, it would not be true that when the subject makes a mental self-ascription on the basis of introspective awareness of a given mental state, there is no possible world in which she could be wrong as to whether it is really she who has that mental state.
Notice the interesting interdisciplinary implications of Campbell's project: on the one hand, a fairly precise notion elaborated in philosophy such as IEM (and the related notion of error through misidentification [EM]) is used to describe a characteristic symptom of schizophrenia. On the other hand, such a phenomenon, described in the way proposed, is taken to be a possible counterexample to a sort of philosophical dogma such as IEM of introspection-based noninferential mental self-ascriptions.
In the first section of the paper, I will point out the characteristic features of EM and explain logical immunity to error through misidentification of introspection-based mental self-ascriptions; in the second section I will consider the case of thought insertion in more detail and show why, after all, it is not a counterexample to the view that introspection-based mental self-ascriptions are logically IEM. Finally, I will offer a redescription of the phenomenon of thought insertion.
Error Through Misidentification and Logical Immunity to Error Through Misidentification
For our purposes, it is enough to characterize error through misidentification as a kind of error that can affect both physical and mental self-ascriptions, as well as judgments about other objects and individuals, once these judgments are causally and rationally grounded on a belief in an identification component. For instance, the judgment "My hair is blowing in the wind" can be based on the observation of myself on a shop window. In such an event, by forming the judgment, I also acquire a related structure of beliefs (that I need not entertain in a process of conscious inference, but that are such that I should have the conceptual resources to entertain them) such as "That person's hair is blowing in the wind," where I am that person. Now, if a mistake occurs in the latter identification component, then EM will affect the resulting I judgment. Hence, a judgment is liable to EM if and only if its grounds contain an identification component and it is affected by EM if and only if that identification component is wrong.
For our purposes it is enough to characterize IEM as follows:
For instance, if the subject judges (e.g., "I am in pain") on introspective awareness of her pain, her judgment cannot be wrong (at least) as to whether it is she herself who is in pain. The question is why such a self-ascription is IEM and, moreover, is so in any logically possible world. The distinction between de facto and logical IEM is due to Sydney Shoemaker (1968) and was originally understood as follows : some self-ascriptions such as bodily ones made on the basis of somatic proprioception are IEM in this world; they are IEM if they are made on the basis of information received from the body in which one's brain is located. However, they could be affected by EM if they were made in a logically possible world in which subjects are hooked up to someone else's...
Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of "first-person authority"--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran argues for a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person. Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being "objective" toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others.
Kant describes the concept of freedom as “the keystone of the whole structure of a system of pure reason, even of speculative reason.” Kant’s theory of freedom thus plays a foundational and unifying role in all aspects of his philosophy and is thus of significant interest to historians of Kant’s philosophy. Kant’s theory of freedom has also played a significant role in contemporary debates in metaphysics, normative ethics, and metaethics. This volume brings historians of Kant’s philosophy into conversation with contemporary metaphysicians and ethicists with the aim of representing the current state of scholarship on Kant’s and Kantian accounts of freedom while at the same time opening new avenues of exploration. The volume includes papers by leading scholars on a range of historical and contemporary topics centrally related to the Kantian theory of freedom, including transcendental idealism, determinism, Kant’s normative ethical theory, Kant’s conception of cognition, Kant’s theory of beauty, Kant’s conception of logic, and many others.
This book presents the first extensive analysis in English of Kant's systematic criticism of dogmatic accounts of the mind as a distinctive object.
This criticism has been much admired, especially in Anglophone circles, but interpreters have rarely paid attention to its full historical context and the many different dimensions of its treatment of the mind.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant organizes his criticism in terms of four fundamental fallacies or ‘paralogisms’ of ‘rational psychology’, and he discusses these under the heading of four traditional topics: substantiality, simplicity, identity, and ideality of the soul.
A close analysis of Kant's earlier work, including notes from his lectures on metaphysics (most of which have been only recently published in German), demonstrates that Kant's most fundamental views here concern several topics that are not listed as one of the four explicit paralogism headings.
In particular, his views on causality, judgement, and the mind's immateriality, independence (freedom), and immortality have a hidden and central importance.
Throughout his career, Kant's views evolved on these topics, especially in the period of the extensive revisions of the paralogisms for the second ed. of the first Critique, when Kant published his major works on ethics, the Groundwork and the second Critique.
In this period, he also developed his most sophisticated discussions of apperception and transcendental idealism.
The volume outlines and evaluates the history and structure of each of Kant's major arguments in this area, and it comments on their relation to major lines of interpretation and developments in contemporary philosophy.
It concludes that Kant's ultimate position on most doctrines concerning the mind is much closer to rationalism than is generally appreciated, and that this position also maintains, for the most part, a revolutionary critical perspective that remains highly relevant for current discussions.
In this book, G. Lynn Stephens and George Graham examine verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of what they call "alienated self-consciousness." In such cases, a subject is directly or introspectively aware of an episode in her mental life but experiences it as alien, as somehow attributable to another person.
Stephens and Graham explore two sorts of questions about verbal hallucinations and thought insertion. The first is their phenomenology—what the experience is like for the subject. The second concerns the implications of alien episodes for our general understanding of self-consciousness. Psychopathologists look at alien episodes for what they reveal about the underlying pathology of mental illness. As philosophers, the authors ask what they reveal about the underlying psychological structure and processes of human self-consciousness.
The authors suggest that alien episodes are caused by a disturbed sense of agency, a condition in which the subject no longer has the sense of being the agent who thinks or carries out the thought. Distinguishing the sense of subjectivity from that of agency, they make the case that the sense of agency is a key element in self-consciousness.
Bradford Books imprint
A long line of writers on Evans – Andy Hamilton, Lucy O'Brien, José Bermúdez, and Jason Stanley, to name just a few – assess Evans' account of first-person thought without heeding his warnings that his theory comprises an information and an action component. By omitting the action component, these critics are able to characterize Evans' theory as a perceptual model theory and reject it on that ground. This paper is an attempt to restore the forgotten element. With this component put back in, the charge of Evans' theory as a perceptual model of such thoughts falls apart, and the theory turns out to have enough merit to project itself as a legitimate contender for a plausible account of ‘I’-thought.
Rationality Through Reasoning answers the question of how people are motivated to do what they believe they ought to do, built on a comprehensive account of normativity, rationality and reasoning that differs significantly from much existing philosophical thinking. Develops an original account of normativity, rationality and reasoning significantly different from the majority of existing philosophical thought. Includes an account of theoretical and practical reasoning that explains how reasoning is something we ourselves do, rather than something that happens in us. Gives an account of what reasons are and argues that the connection between rationality and reasons is much less close than many philosophers have thought. Contains rigorous new accounts of oughts including owned oughts, agent-relative reasons, the logic of requirements, instrumental rationality, the role of normativity in reasoning, following a rule, the correctness of reasoning, the connections between intentions and beliefs, and much else. Offers a new answer to the 'motivation question' of how a normative belief motivates an action.
Although I begin with a brief look at the idea that as a faculty of mind, apperception must be grounded in some (noumenal) power of the soul, my focus is on claims about the alleged noumenal import of some of Kant’s particular theses about the faculty of apperception: it is inexplicable, immaterial, and can provide evidence that humans are members of the intelligible world (and so possess the noumenal freedom required for morality). I argue that when the claim of inexplicability is placed in the context of Kant’s standards for transcendental psychological explanation, it has no noumenal implications. Similarly, when understood in the context of his views about scientific explanations, Kant’s claim that the faculty of apperception cannot be understood in materialist terms has no important metaphysical payoff. The case of freedom is different, because for a long time, Kant believed that he could establish the freedom required for morality by appealing to the freedom required for thought. In the end, however, he abandoned this hoped for noumenal implication of the faculty of apperception.
The paper shows against Lichtenberg that having the concept expressed by the first person pronoun is necessary to fully articulation fundamental, apriori aspects of the concept of reason, and even to being a fully realized person. Apriori understanding of the concept of reason requires the first-person concept. That concept is the only concept that marks conceptually those attitudes in reasoning where implementation of a reason (thinking or acting in accord with a reason) is made immediately incumbent, and is immediately motivated, by the rational evaluation given by the reason. The concept both designates the agent of thought and makes rational evaluation of a thought immediately relevant to changing it or maintaining it. The argument for this view is supplemented, in the second part of the paper, by a sketch of a position that takes first-third-person asymmetry to reside in a nonempirically warranted sensitivity to the difference between commitments that are one's own and commitments that are not one's own. The sketch suggest an argument that non-empirically warranted knowledge of other minds is possible through non-empirically warranted understanding of speech.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant refers often and with no apparent hesitation or sense of ambiguity to the mind (das Gemüt). He does so not only in his justly famous destruction of rationalist proofs of immaterialism, but throughout his own, positive, ‘transcendental’ account in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic. In the first edition of the Critique, he even proposed what he adventurously called a ‘transcendental psychology’ and, although this strange discipline seemed to disappear in the second edition, he left in that edition all his frequent references to forms ‘lying in the mind,’ and to the mind, or the self, or the subject of experience, or the ego, doing this or that. Curiously, though, despite an extensive secondary literature, there is in that literature relatively little discussion of what these expressions, in a proper, strictly Kantian sense, are supposed to refer to. There are two imaginative, extremely suggestive articles by Sellars, some hints at connections with eighteenth century psychology offered by Weldon, a tenebrous book by Heidemann, and some recent attention to the general issue of ‘Kant's theory of mind’ by Ameriks and Kitcher.
Although there can be no doubt regarding the centrality of the concept of freedom in Kant's thought, there is considerable disagreement concerning its proper interpretation and evaluation. The evaluative problem stems largely from Kant's insistence that freedom involves a transcendental or non-empirical component, which requires the resources of transcendental idealism in order to be reconciled with the “causality of nature.” There is also, however, a significant interpretive problem posed by the number of different conceptions of freedom to which Kant refers. In addition to “outer freedom” or freedom of action, and a relative, empirically accessible or “psychological” concept of freedom, which admits of degrees, Kant distinguishes between transcendental and practical freedom, both of which seem to involve indeterminism in the sense of an independence from determination by antecedent causes. Moreover, within this sphere he conceives of freedom as both absolute spontaneity (negative freedom), which is a condition of rational agency as such, and as autonomy (positive freedom), which is a condition of the appropriate moral motivation (acting from duty alone). Given this complexity, the present discussion must be highly selective. Specifically, it will focus initially on the nature of and relation between freedom as spontaneity and as autonomy. But since both of these senses of freedom affirm (albeit in different ways) an independence from natural causality, this necessitates a consideration of the relationship between freedom (in both senses) and transcendental idealism. And to situate Kant's views in their historical context, I shall frame the discussion with a brief account of the treatment of free will by some of his predecessors, on the one hand, and his idealistic successors, on the other.
The book presents Kant's theory of the cognitive subject. It begins by setting the stage for his discussions of the unity and power of 'apperception' by presenting the attempts of his predecessors to explain the nature of the self and of self-consciousness, and the relation between self-consciousness and object cognition. The central chapters lay out the structure of the transcendental deduction, the argument from cognition to the necessary unity of apperception, and the relations among his theories of the unity and power of apperception, the 'psychological ideal,' and the 'noumenal' self. Later chapters draw on this material to offer a more precise account of his criticism that the Rational Psychologists failed to understand the unique character of the representation 'I-think' and to defend Kant against the charges that his theory of cognition and apperception is inconsistent or psychologistic. The concluding chapters present Kantian alternatives to recent theories of the activities of the self in cognition and moral action, the self-ascription of belief, knowledge of other minds, the appropriate explananda for theories of consciousness, and the efficacy of 'transcendental' arguments.
This is a book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context. Specifically, Eric Watkins argues that a grasp of Leibnizian and anti-Leibnizian thought in eighteenth-century Germany helps one to see how the critical Kant argued for causal principles that have both metaphysical and epistemological elements. On this reading Kant's model of causality does not consist of events, but rather of substances endowed with causal powers that are exercised according to their natures and circumstances. This innovative conception of Kant's view of causality casts a light on Kant's philosophical beliefs in general, such as his account of temporality, his explanation of the reconciliation of freedom and determinism, and his response to the skeptical arguments of Hume.
Boghossian offers his thoughts on what constitutes inference in philosophy. He believes that no Dispositional account of rule-following can hope to succeed. However, even without arguing against a dispositional account of rule-following in general, I think we are in a position to see why no such idea can help us
Broome thinks Paul Boghossian's expression taking something to be a reason takes Boghossian further than he would want to go. It implies that normative thoughts are necessary for reasoning. It is also further than he should go. You cannot take something to be a reason unless you know what it is for something to be a reason. Yet that piece of normative knowledge is not required simply for you to be able to follow a rule. In particular, it is not required if you are to be able to do reasoning.
This is a response to Paul Boghossian’s paper: What is inference? (doi:10.1007/s11098-012-9903-x). The paper and the abstract originate from a symposium at the Pacific Division Meeting of the APA in San Diego in April 2011. John Broome was a co-commentator.
Rich in precursors (Kant and Frege) and stimulated by Castañeda’s study in the logic of self-consciousness and Shoemaker’s seminal paper ‘Self-reference and self-awareness’, the work of the past thirty-five years on self-reference and self-awareness has generated a wealth of deep, sophisticated philosophy. This volume explores the historical anticipations in Kant and Frege, brings four classic contributions together in one place, and offers five new studies. (Series A)
In this paper, I explore the implications of adopting one model of self rather than another in respect to one particular feature of our mental life. The need to explain synchronic unity in normal subjectivity, and also to explain the apparent and puzzling absence of synchronic unity in certain symptoms of severe mental disorder, I show, becomes more pressing with one particular model. But in the process of developing that explanation we learn something about subjectivity and perhaps also something about brain functioning.
I argue that a variety of influential accounts of self-knowledge are flawed by the assumption that all immediate, authoritative knowledge of our own present mental states is of one basic kind. I claim, on the contrary, that a satisfactory account of self-knowledge must recognize at least two fundamentally different kinds of self-knowledge: an active kind through which we know our own judgments, and a passive kind through which we know our sensations. I show that the former kind of self-knowledge is in an important sense fundamental, since it is intimately connected with the very capacity for rational reflection, and since it must be present in any creature that understands the first-person pronoun. Moreover, I suggest that these thoughts about self-knowledge have a Kantian provenance.
Transcendental freedom consists in the power of agents to produce actions without being causally determined by antecedent conditions, nor by their natures, in exercising this power. Kant contends that we cannot establish whether we are actually or even possibly free in this sense. He claims only that our conception of being transcendentally free involves no inconsistency, but that as a result the belief that we have this freedom meets a pertinent standard of minimal credibility. For the rest, its justification depends on practical reasons. I argue that this belief satisfies an appropriately revised standard of minimal credibility, but that the practical reasons Kant adduces for it are subject to serious challenge.
The Ego and the Id ranks high among the works of Freud's later years. The heart of his concern is the ego, which he sees battling with three forces: the id, the super-ego, and the outside world. Of the various English translations of Freud's major works to appear in his lifetime, only one was authorized by Freud himself: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud under the general editorship of James Strachey. Freud approved the overall editorial plan, specific renderings of key words and phrases, and the addition of valuable notes, from bibliographical and explanatory. Many of the translations were done by Strachey himself; the rest were prepared under his supervision. The result was to place the Standard Edition in a position of unquestioned supremacy over all other existing versions.
Subjectivity as self‐acquaintance
- Duncan M.
Duncan, M. (2018). Subjectivity as self-acquaintance. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25(3-4), 88-111.
Consciousness and self-consciousness
- U Kriegel
Kriegel, U. (2004). Consciousness and self-consciousness. The Monist, 87(2), 182-205. https://doi.org/10.5840/
monist20048725
Contemporary philosophy of thought: Truth, world, content
- M Luntley
Luntley, M. (1999). Contemporary philosophy of thought: Truth, world, content. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Grush, R. (2018). “Understanding Evans.” <https://doi.org/10.21224/P47H32>
Self and nature in Kant's Philosophy
- A. W. Wood
- McKenna M.
Longuenesse focuses only on the Generality Constraint and ignores the role of Russell's Principle in Evans' view. See, for example
- Importantly
Importantly, Longuenesse focuses only on the Generality Constraint and ignores the role of Russell's Principle in Evans'
view. See, for example, Longuenesse (2017, 24-25).
This is not to say that Evans' position is entirely convincing. For one prominent criticism, see
- O'brien
This is not to say that Evans' position is entirely convincing. For one prominent criticism, see O'Brien (1995). For defenses
of Evans' position, see Grush (2018), Luntley (1999), and Zong (2017); compare Cassam (1997).
Both FUND and INT have prominent contemporary defenders. See, for example
Both FUND and INT have prominent contemporary defenders. See, for example, Boyle (2009), Burge (2013), and Moran
(2001).
Longuenesse claims that it is "nonsensical" to suppose that one could wonder whether "someone is thinking that p, but is it me?" (29); but this seems to be precisely the situation of the subject suffering from thought insertion. The distinction between "I" as subject
The subject/agent distinction has gained some prominence in discussions of the phenomenon known as "thought insertion" in contemporary psychology and philosophy of mind. The distinction is especially championed in Stephens and
Graham (2000) and subsequently taken up by a variety of philosophers and psychologists. See, for example, Radden
(1998), Campbell (1999), Gallagher (2000), Coliva (2002), Bayne (2004), Kriegel (2004, 202 note 10), and Duncan
(2017). Longuenesse claims that it is "nonsensical" to suppose that one could wonder whether "someone is thinking that
p, but is it me?" (29); but this seems to be precisely the situation of the subject suffering from thought insertion. The distinction between "I" as subject and "I" as agent helps us make sense of this phenomenon.
For some relevant discussion
- Wood See
For some relevant discussion, see Wood (1984), Pippin (1987), Ameriks (2000, ch. 6), Watkins (2005, ch.5), Watkins (n.d.),
Allison (2006), Pereboom (2006), Wuerth (2014), and Kitcher (2016).
Kant's compatibilism
- A W Wood
Wood, A. W. (1984). Kant's compatibilism. In A. W. Wood (Ed.), Self and nature in Kant's Philosophy (pp. 73-101). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
- Burge T.