Notes on the self
I'm reading Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness. Three versions of the self appear:
1. Descartes' self: An entity that has a logical status. It's needed to make sense of the experience of doubt. Suppose you have the experience of throwing a ball. The experience implies a self that has intention, but there's not much accompanying theory of the self.
Maybe this self is a result of the subject/object, cause/effect structure of thought. To explain a thing is to divide it into parts and then relate the parts.
2. The mid-20th Century Cartesian self. Per Hagberg, the collection of things we call Cartesianism is actually a production of the 20th Century and projected back on Descartes (although some sort of dualism has always been around). This Cartesian self resides in an internal sanctum. It's directly known and language is a tool for expressing the (pre-existing) content of this internal realm.
I think this self might play a role in the emergence of a mechanical, materialistic perspective. The self, once broadcast all over the world as divinities, is now relegated to the nowhere of the psyche. It's either a soul that partakes of holiness, or it's a figment of the imagination, so this is the self of behaviorism.
3. Anscombe's first person. This self is related to practical reasoning and practical knowledge of the sort you will have immediately after I ask you what you're doing right now. You don't know it because of some transcendent vantage point. You may not be able to explain how you know your own intentions and how they relate to your actions now and in the future, you just do. So this isn't exactly a logical entity, it's not disconnected from the world, but since Anscombe was a student of Wittgenstein, it's not something that comes with a theory.
I'm sure there are more versions. Add on if you like.
1. Descartes' self: An entity that has a logical status. It's needed to make sense of the experience of doubt. Suppose you have the experience of throwing a ball. The experience implies a self that has intention, but there's not much accompanying theory of the self.
Maybe this self is a result of the subject/object, cause/effect structure of thought. To explain a thing is to divide it into parts and then relate the parts.
2. The mid-20th Century Cartesian self. Per Hagberg, the collection of things we call Cartesianism is actually a production of the 20th Century and projected back on Descartes (although some sort of dualism has always been around). This Cartesian self resides in an internal sanctum. It's directly known and language is a tool for expressing the (pre-existing) content of this internal realm.
I think this self might play a role in the emergence of a mechanical, materialistic perspective. The self, once broadcast all over the world as divinities, is now relegated to the nowhere of the psyche. It's either a soul that partakes of holiness, or it's a figment of the imagination, so this is the self of behaviorism.
3. Anscombe's first person. This self is related to practical reasoning and practical knowledge of the sort you will have immediately after I ask you what you're doing right now. You don't know it because of some transcendent vantage point. You may not be able to explain how you know your own intentions and how they relate to your actions now and in the future, you just do. So this isn't exactly a logical entity, it's not disconnected from the world, but since Anscombe was a student of Wittgenstein, it's not something that comes with a theory.
I'm sure there are more versions. Add on if you like.
Comments (38)
Neat topic.
Better to stop at Anscombe.
Notice how many of the threads here are about self, but take the first or second definition as granted? All that silly stuff about starting with perception and the thing-in-itself only has traction if one ignores the fact that we are ineluctably embedded in community.
In a way, the Cartesian self belongs to both religion and science. When we want a theory about the self that goes beyond art and poetry, we immediately conjure this isolated Perceiver. It comes from wanting to say something. :grin:
I don't agree with the latter. Science is also an essentially communal activity.
So is religion. If you noted Michael's support for indirect realism, it was based on science. Science bears the marks of its Cartesian heritage
As is the rejection of indirect realism from Austin.
Are you taking your own thread off topic?
Could be. Another version of the self is the world itself. If you want to know who you are, listen to what you say about the world. The world is a mirror.
But probably the more powerful anchor to the dualistic self is morality. Morality places the lone self on a pedestal. It's the image of this isolated entity that forms the horror surrounding abortion. We imagine the powerful emotions of love and hatred must have a substantial seat and object.
Have you read Charles Taylors Sources of the Self?
Must it necessarily lack a theory? Reading your description of it, I was thinking that "you just do" is giving up too easily. Do you know of any philosophers who have accepted Anscombe's basic idea of the self and attempted to place it within a larger context?
Wikipedia says this about Taylor:
Quoting wikipedia
I agree with Taylor here, but think about the way it conflicts with this passage from the Tractatus:
Quoting Tractatus
No. We can hypothesize, theorize, draw diagrams with different perspectives about intention, we can get scientific, religious, etc. It's possible that every one of these trails will lead to insurmountable conundrums for the very reason Wittgenstein explains: Tractatus 5.632 "The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world."
What I'm curious about is the different dimensions to our myths about the self. Why do we always fall reflexively back to a Cartesian perspective? I agree with Taylor above that morality and the emotions associated with it are the real power source for the self. My question is: is that always going to be a Cartesian self? I think it might be that everytime we go to explain the self, we'll automatically conjure some kind of independent soul. What do you think?
I don't want to distract from your discussion, but I wanted at least to mention this. I won't take it any further if you're not interested.
I think one of the places where philosophy runs up on shoals of science is on the subject of consciousness/self. They tend to get mixed up. This is from "The Feeling of What Happens" by Antonio Damasio.
So, how, if at all, does this type of description fit into this discussion?
It makes the diagram bigger. Damasio sees identity as an ever changing aggregate. For instance, if you're staring at a woman and you ask yourself who you are, the answer might include the idea of being male, because that's what you are relative to her (or the opposite if you're female).
But if you're staring at a butterfly, your identity might change to include mammal. A rock: you're alive, and so on.
This ever-shifting collage is identity, and it's somehow made available to the "main distribution board" called the core self.
I think Damasio would be across or orthogonal to Davidson, Chalmers, and Wittgenstein. I dont know if he would sit with the behaviorists or not.
By the way, if anyone knows of a book that has this kind of diagram in it, let me know. I'd like to see it.
Do you think Damasio's description is consistent, or possibly consistent, with each of the three views you described in the OP?
It's sort of a third viewpoint. It's not mysterian or Cartesian. I guess my theory is that Cartesianism is lurking in the shadows unless he's a behaviorist, which he might be. I'll have to investigate further.
I don't think there's any way Damasio could be described as a behaviorist. He's about as anti-behaviorist as I can imagine. He explicates what is going on inside the black box of behaviorism.
You may be right. Would you say he's reductionist wrt consciousness?
He's a cognitive scientist, and he is primarily interested in the neurological and structural aspects of mental processes, including consciousness. I often use him to make my case against the "hard problem." Does that make him a reductionist?
I am not entirely happy with Seth's account of the self (which is a chapter, not just 5 bullet points!) but I find it easier to understand Seth than Damasio. It would be nice to have some kind of diagram where Damasio's and Seth's ideas appeared fairly close together, because they are of the same general type, and the three in the OP appeared somewhere else.
I do take the hard problem seriously, and (unlike @T Clark) I would not use either of their accounts to argue against that. Seth says he's interested in the 'real' problem of consciousness, not the hard problem.
We could start with three headings:
1. Consciousness is at least potentially explainable
2. Mysterian (it's not explainable)
3. Don't know or don't care
It would be normal for any scientist to pick number 1. We might divide scientists by whether they believe science as it currently stands is capable of explaining it, that is, do we just need to complete work on the models we have? Or are we going to need new paradigms?
I think most religions offer some type of theory of consciousness in that they explain why it's here and what it's for.
Mysterians are philosophers like Kant, Wittgenstein, and Chomsky.
Now that I've looked further (with help from my friends), I don't see Cartesianism lurking as profoundly as I thought.
How would you characterize the difference between Damasio and Seth?
I wasn't presenting Damasio's work as the correct view on consciousness, I was using it as an example of a type of description. I asked
Quoting T Clark
I think of different selves as being nothing more than different kinds of disposition or orientation. Do we need a notion of soul to understand that or simply the notions of distinctively individual awareness, focus and intelligence?
FWIW, this simple diagram is from Research Gate*1, and not directly related to Damasio or Seth. It does show Mind & Body as separate categories (boxes) within the general concept of subjective Self.
The Self-Concept is an object of internally-directed conscious attention, not an external material object as represented subjectively by the brain. To represent Introspection you can rotate the externally oriented "I" Arrow to point toward either Mind or Body.
Everything within the dashed circle is imaginary. Ironically, the material body can be seen as external to the self, or vice-versa, as in the Body Transfer Illusion*2. I suppose the Conscious Observer is the mysterious Me*3 in the middle. :nerd:
Diagram : Structure of the self.
*1. ResearchGate is a European commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shanyang-Zhao/publication/278066526/figure/fig1/AS:391771524747264@1470417018018/Structure-of-the-self.png
*2. Body Transfer Illusion :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_transfer_illusion
You Tube : https://youtu.be/sxwn1w7MJvk?si=tsKNydlCLjFNkRXt
*3. Self/Soul :
[i]The brain can create the image of a fictional person (the Self) to represent its own perspective in dealings with other things and persons.
This imaginary Me is a low-resolution construct abstracted from the complex web of inter-relationships that actually form the human body, brain, mind, DNA, and social networks in the context of a vast universe.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page18.html
I don't know about Seth, but Damasio's model of the self is based on specific anatomical structures and neurological and mental processes. It's not that I think the model you've shown is wrong, but it is not comparable.
How is Taylor not consistent with Cartesianism? Taylor says we cannot offer a meaningful description of the human condition without describing our drivers for moral behavior. To be sure, our desire for morality and appreciation of it is unique among the other creatures in the world, or, if not truly unique, hyper developed comparatively. For that reason, I'd agree with Taylor regarding the idea we must analyze morality if we want to analyze people.
What I don't see though is why I could not be a Cartesian and fully agree with Taylor. Cartesian dualism posits a mind that has a free will that is subject to moral evaluation. Wouldn't Descartes agree with Taylor's assessment of the significance of understanding morality if one wanted to understand humanity then?
Per Descartes, if the self is defined as having free will, and it is through this free will that morality arises, then to understand the self would require an understanding of morality, and this would be in agreement with Taylor, true?
1. I recall someone saying way back that the truer interpretation of Descartes was "I doubt therefore I am". Intention is merely a means of throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. The information gleaned from such actions ripple out dependent upon our temporal attention. A child may have no real intention when throwing a ball other than 'play'. The excess energy/time is basically a kind of freeform 'experimental' moment (play).
Quoting frank
I think it is more or less a much further reaching aspect than that. I think how we can see chain reactions from a particular instances allows us to delineate some sense of 'self'. If we only think in of and about the moment there is no 'self'.
2. Quoting frank
The old issue of what is meant by "language". If you are referring to this kind of here written form rather than something much broader, then no. "Language" is not really about expressing anything much, it is just a vehicle for passing information NOT understanding it.
Quoting frank
The preliterate aspects of so-called religious practices are key. It is all about mnemonics and imagination. Literacy helped in many ways and hindered in others.
3. I would just put it that the 'self' is underpinned by the temporal retreat of attention. We drag ourselves around imagined/representational 'landscapes' and when the agent absconds from the 'dragging' we possess self-realisation.
The "self" is then, basically, the experience of the temporally felt gap between loci. Think of memory palaces, flims or novels. They are contained as a whole and understand as a whole rather than as atomised words, sentences, characters, plots or themes. It is felt holistically as much as it is partitioned - yet in relation to - from the whole.
Obviously, a part is a part because we have a relation to the whole. If not we see nothing. Even an absence is a part of the whole because it is perceived as a hole not a whole.
I'd pick 1, but I don't like the much misused word paradigm. I agree with Chalmers that we need to add an extra ingredient to science, and I think that can be done without upsetting existing science. Maybe split (1) into: (a) nothing new needed (b) an extra ingredient needed (c) something more revolutionary needed.
Quoting frank
Damasio's selves are more hierarchical. The proto-self is at the bottom, the core self builds on that, and the extended self (which includes an autobiographical self) builds on that. The proto-self is unconscious, the others go up towards consciousness.
Seth's bodily self seems to be at the bottom, and his social self at the top, the other three seem to sit alongside one another (in my view). In all these selves, most of what goes on inside them is unconscious, but some of each one, including the bodily self, is conscious, so there isn't the same sense of moving up through selves towards consciousness. It is easier to understand what each of Seth's selves achieves for an organism.
Quoting Gnomon
That is a diagram of something else, but it is good to see reputation being mentioned. (I might say more later.)
Quoting T Clark
Fine.
Here's a Diagram of the Self as proposed by Damasio --- also from ResearchGate. It's much more complex than the previous image, but may be more like what you had in mind. Click or Double-click the image to enlarge.
Did you look at the You Tube video? How do you think the Body Transfer Illusion is related to the Self Concept?
How would you interpret the Reputation element of the diagram? Does it refer to how a person sees himself, or to how the person thinks others see himself? This might be relevant to President Trump. :smile:
Three stages of self - Damasio
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Three-stages-of-self-Damasio-17_fig3_282489228
Thanks for the link. Note that the figure you provided is not Damasio's, it's one of the other figures from the linked article.
I think the Reputation element in the diagram is intended to be the person's reputation among others. It is their actual reputation which they cannot know themselves.
If it was either of the options you gave, it would be part of the Mind element. Now what I call the reputational self is internal and is about how you see yourself, and how you perceive (ie estimate, hypothesize) that others see you. I think those two things are closely linked and can be confused or conflated by the reputational self. And I mean everyone's reputational self, not just Trump's. The reputational self serves a function analogous to the public relations department of a large organization. Its job is to represent 'this brain and this body' to others. And we can all start to believe our own publicity.
The reputational self is naturally a part of Seth's social self, but he doesn't talk about reputation, or the related notion of status. I think this is a major omission.
Here is some of what he does say.
Descartes' self stays within the confines of the public relations department. What can the PR dept really trust? It can't be sure about the rest of the organisation or the apparent world out there.
The Cartesian self is the illusion arising within the PR dept that it is the whole organisation, and/or that it is in charge of the whole organisation.
I'll pass on Anscombe.
Quoting frank
I think that since the reputational self has the job of representing the organism to others, it must be able to explain the organism to other similar organisms, so it easily takes on the role of explaining the organism to itself. None of the other of Seth's selves has the wherewithal to talk about the organism. So you're kind of stuck with interacting with the reputational self, at least as a kind of gatekeeper to other selves, whether you're asking others about their consciousness, or introspecting your own.
Sorry. Under the heading of "Three stages of self - Damasio" I picked the one that looked most like a diagram instead of text-based tables. :yikes:
Some years ago, I worked with a woman who had a shapeless obese body, but a pretty face. She would take selfies that carefully excluded the body. I suppose the cropped pictures agreed with her "representational self".
Trump's political appearances seem to use a similar strategy to tobacco companies, promoting the myth instead of the reality. His "genius" is not in business, but in persona public relations. So, the voting public elected a presidential persona. :smile:
A persona is a public image of someone's personality, or the social role they adopt. It can also refer to a strategic mask of identity that someone uses in public.
___Google AI overview
The New York Times Confirms Trump Is a Genius :
[i]contrasting the Trump myth with the reality embedded in the tax returns. . . . .
Trump is a phony, who really is not that great at business after all. . . . .
Trumps image is a sham[/i]
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/29/the-new-york-times-confirms-trump-is-a-genius-422837
Trump Company public relations reputation :
The Trump Organization, the company led by former President Trump and his family, finished last in an Axios Harris survey of brand reputations for the second year in a row.
https://thehill.com/business/4016738-trump-organization-finishes-last-in-brand-reputation-survey-for-second-straight-year/
Taylor was brought up by Joshs. I think the idea was crime and victimhood are sources of the idea and experience of the self.
The little book I'm reading was written by Hagberg and his focus is the autobiological self. He brings up Cartesianism because he wants us to wake up to the way that paradigm secretly influences the way we think about the self (which among other things, has us imagining that we have a vantage point on the self) and he wants to talk about the psychological reinforcement for the idea. He talks about how Schopenhauer shows up in the Tractatus and how things were tweaked later on. I'm a fan of both Schopenhauer and the Tractatus, so I'm digging it.
Quoting Hanover
That's a good question. I don't know. Thanks for the questions!
Interesting and I agree. However, it seems to me that science is more deeply rooted in and more focused upon the "res extensa" than is religion. But of course there is nether science nor religion in the absence of the "res cogitans." I suspect Descartes would be uncomfortable with the contemporary radical separation of subject/object.
Through this thread I kind of changed my mind, though. The prevailing scientific view of the self isn't Cartesian is it? Except for a couple of physicists who entertain some kind of panpsychism, aren't most scientists non-reductive physicalists?
Quoting Arne
Hagberg says that view originates in the 20th Century and was projected back onto Descartes.