Abstracts

Abstract :

Many usages of the term 'self-consciousness' seem to imply an awareness of ourselves as purely psychological entities. Largely unexplored is the relation of self-consciousness to bodily awareness. This book attempts to fill that gap. It contains contributions from philosophy, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, clinical psychology and sensory psychology and neurophysiology. It focuses on the different kinds of self, what is required for different kinds of self-consciousness (a self-world distinction, memory) and how they may arise from various sources (perception, action, social interaction) as mediated through the body and representations of it. Central to many chapters are explorations of different conceptions of a body image and body schema. Most contributions are interdisciplinary and relate theoretical issues to data. An introductory chapter interrelates the chapters and contextualizes them in terms of issues of representation and the relation between self as object and as subject.

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Abstract :

This introductory chapter attempts to contextualise the contributions to the book in an interdisciplinary manner, organised around two theses integral to Descartes' "cogito": (a) that the self is a persisting object referred to by "I"; (b) that being self-conscious is linked to certain ways of knowing one's own states, which leave no room for error as to the subject of those states. The first part examines what it is to represent oneself as an object distinct from others and from the environment, what is necessary for these representations and how they may come about. The second part (a) distinguishes proprioceptive systems, proprioceptive information and proprioceptive awareness, (b) examines different representations of the body in terms of their explanatory use, (c) explores the distinctive phenomenology and spatial content of bodily experience and sensations. The final section examines the relationship between the distinctive ways we have of knowing ourselves, the sense of ownership (e.g. of sensations) and the elusiveness of awareness of oneself as a subject. Throughout psychological and philosophical concepts are related to empirical data.

Marcel, A.J. 1992. "The personal level in cognitive rehabilitation." In N. von Steinbüchel, D.Y. von Cramon & E. Pöppel (Eds.) Neuropsychological Rehabilitation (pp. 155-168). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Abstract :

This paper focuses on the 'Stimulation' approach to recovery of function, which attempts to re-elicit impaired abilities. Data are reviewed which suggest that the availability and performance of impaired abilities often depends on (1) the nature of the patient's intention, (2) what the behaviour or deficit represents to the agent in personal and social terms, and (3) motivation. These phenomena suggest the role of the 'personal level' in the availability and execution of 'subpersonal' processes. The personal level encompasses intentionality, propositional attitudes, subjectivity, phenomenal experience, and unity of personhood and viewpoint. The subpersonal level is functional and causal and does not imply subjectivity, agency or unity. Suggestions are made for two roles of the personal level in therapy, and for limitations on applicability of such principles to types of neuropsychological disorder. Finally, a problem is indicated in terms of the personal level: in certain kinds of impairment present therapies have difficulty in helping the patient to become an independent agent or to regain appropriate phenomenal experience, which may be the main problem.

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Marcel, A.J. 1993. "Slippage in the unity of consciousness." In Ciba Foundation Symposium No. 174 - Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Consciousness, edited by G.R. Bock & J. Marsh (pp. 168-186). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Abstract :

Many psychological studies assume a unity of consciousness. Doubt is cast on this assumption by two kinds of phenomenon. (a) Psychophysical studies in normal and blindsight subjects show simultaneous dissociation of different modes of report of a sensation (but no dissociation when guessing). (b) In clinical studies, anosognosic patients provide contradictory indices of their awareness of their own states. These and other phenomena are interpreted to imply two kinds of division of consciousness: the separation of phenomenal experience from reflexive consciousnesss, and the non-unity of reflexive consciousness. Reflexive consciousness is taken to be necessary for report and is associated with the self, as the subject of experience and agent of report. However reflexive consciousness is only operative when we attend to our own states. When we are involved in the world reflexivity intervenes less and our consciousness is more unified.

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Marcel, A.J. 1994. "What is relevant to the unity of consciousness?" In C. Peacocke (Ed.), Objectivity, simulation and the unity of consciousness: Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 83 (pp. 79-88). The British Academy.

Abstract :

This paper discusses the use of psychological data to address the issue of the unity of consciousness. The first part focusses on data from split-brain patients which has been taken to imply "partial unity". It is suggested that such data are not necessarily relevant to the unity of consciousness or even to consciousness itself. The second part of the paper focusses on the normal (non-pathological) case, puts forward criteria of relevance, and discusses data fulfilling these criteria. These data are taken to imply non-unity as opposed to partial unity of consciousness. The general thrust of the paper is the difficulty in establishing the validity and theoretical relevance of empirical data, especially in clinical cases. The issue is also raised of what can justifiably be appealed to in judging the unity of consciousness, e.g. the criteria of normative and observed relations internal to the content of phenomenal states, and the means by which we know such states privately and publicly.

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More, Max. 1995. "The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Transformation." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Southern California.

From the Abstract: The Diachronic Self fills out and clarifies the account of personal identity presented by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. I go on to draw metaphysical and normative consequences of this psychological reductionist theory. Some of the normative inferences disagree with those of Parfit.

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Rovane, C. 1987. "The epistemology of first-person reference." The Journal of Philosophy 84, 3: 147-167.

Concerning first-person reference, the author supports a Fregean account according to which we use 'I' as we use other referring terms: by means of individuating descriptive beliefs about the referent (Frege's sense), and not by means of some unmediated self-consciousness, a "direct awareness of the activity of thinking [which] includes a direct awareness of oneself thinking" (158). She argues that special features of self-reference thought to set it apart, such as immunity from error through misidentification, exist because "speakers have enough true beliefs about themselves in virtue of which they are quite clear about their identities even though they have some false beliefs about themselves as well. . . The kind of knowledge I mean here does not amount to some ineffable understanding that "I am me," but, rather, to genuinely descriptive knowledge about which thing in the world I am, knowledge about my past, my spatial location, my relations to others, etc." (154). Rovane argues that we refer to ourselves by the same mechanism that we use to refer to other things.

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Popper, Karl and John Eccles. 1977. The Self and Its Brain. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Argues that the only alternatives to a metaphysical dualism (or what Popper and Eccles called `interactionism') are (i) causal epiphenomenalisms, which posit that consciousness is a byproduct of (and cannot itself cause) brain processes, and (ii) theories of strict psychophysical identity, which posit that `consciousness' does not mean anything other than `brain functioning.' In the view of recent philosophers of mind, this oversimplification of the theoretical options constitutes a false limitation of alternatives.

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Miller, Lawrence. 1990. Inner Natures: Brain, Self and Personality. New York: Ballantine.

Discussion of various correlations between neurophysiological and conscious processes. Miller shows that "Conscious appreciation of a particular sensory impression . . . depends not just on the sensory pathways conveying that sensation, but also on the participation of a separate collateral system, the reticular activating system . . . responsible for literally `directing attention' to incoming sensory information at different levels of processing. Damage to this system produces a curious dissociative condition where the sensory areas of the brain process the information normally (as shown, for example, by the EEG), but the person remains subjectively unaware of the stimulus; it simply doesn't `register' (173)." Miller states: "There are very few people who think what they think they think." He shows that this is one reason why cognition came to be regarded as a fundamentally unconscious process. In folk-psychological terms, we are obviously `aware' of having solved the problem, but this awareness seems useless in understanding how the problem was solved. It was thus assumed that consciousness is an epiphenomenon which contributes nothing to the understanding of how cognition functions.

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Shoemaker. 1985. "Introspection and the self." Midwest Studies in Philosophy , X, 101-120.

Argues that introspection cannot be the perception of a perception since there are no sense impressions of mental states.

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Strawson, P. 1959. Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics . London: Methuen & Co, Ltd.

Emphasizes the role of the body in perceptual experiences, but argues that we still need to know why perceptual experiences should be ascribed to any subject at all, and why they and the corporeal experiences should be ascribed to the same subject (1959: 93). In noting that bodily experience accompanies all perceptual experience haven't I simply multiplied the experiences which still, unaccountably, are ascribed to the self? And how do I know it is my body I experience? Part of what it is to understand that given entities are part of this world is to know their situation relative to one's own situation.

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