Philosophy Discussion Forums

Gertie wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2020, 5:55 pm

''…To suppose that an item of mentality could occur without a subject of mentality would be as absurd as supposing that there could be an instance of motion without something that moves, or an instance of smiling without something that smiles.'' – John Foster

This might be the case, but it's not a logical certainty in the way it's absurd to have a smile without a smiler.

An experience without an experiencer is as absurd as that!

Gertie wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2020, 5:55 pmCan there be mental experiencing (verb) without an Experiencer (noun)? The structure of our grammar, the way we think, makes it look absurd, and the fact that our experience has a first person perspective located in a body adds to the impression of Experiencer having experiences.

But when we look at the physical correlates, we don't find a Self correlate located in the brain, no Command and Control Centre watching the Cartesian Theatre play out and issuing orders.

Instead we see lots of subsystems doing their thing and interacting with others. And presumably some process whereby this massively complex cacophany becomes a unified field of consciousness, with a first person perspective moving through space and time, and the ability to focus attention and create something useful and coherent.

The question then is, I think, is there anything more to being a Self than that, or is this set of processes what amounts to a sense of being a self, an Experiencer (noun)?

That's an open question imo.

If you're a monist, you might answer one way, if you think mental experience isn't reducible you might answer another.

Being a kind of experience itself, self-experience is part of the experiential content of "a unified field of consciousness"; but the experiencing self or subject is not. The subject of a field of consciousness or stream of experience isn't immanent in and constituted by its content; it is content-transcendent, content-external. That you cannot introspectively find yourself within your field of consciousness/stream of experience doesn't mean that you aren't there, because you are there as a nonexperience, and thus as something that isn't part of but underlies your introspectible consciousness/experience.

The concept of an experiencer, of a subject of experience as such is highly general, because it doesn't presuppose a "homunculus" ("homuncular self") and a "Cartesian Theatre" in the mind/brain. Nor does it presuppose a particular conception of subjects as a particular kind of entities (apart from their not being experiences themselves). Moreover, it doesn't even presuppose a materialistic conception of subjects. For example, Berkeley accepts the ontological distinction between experiences and subjects of experience, or, more generally, between mental items ("ideas") and mental subjects, the latter of which are immaterial souls or spirits according to him. He rejects the "bundle view" of subjects as represented by Hylas (and Hume):

(Hylas:) "Notwithstanding all you have said, to me it seems, that according to your own way of thinking, and in consequence of your own principles, it should follow that you are only a system of floating ideas, without any substance to support them."

Berkeley's own view is represented by Philonus, who denies that subjects (selves, egos) are nothing over and above bundles of mental items or ideas—and is right with his denial:

(Philonus:) "How often must I repeat, that I know or am conscious of my own being; and that I myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas. I know that I, one and the same self, perceive both colours and sounds: that a colour cannot perceive a sound, nor a sound a colour: That I am therefore one individual principle, distinct from colour and sound; and, for the same reason, from all other sensible things and inert ideas."

(Berkeley, George. Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonus, Third Dialogue. 1713.)

Consul wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2020, 9:00 pm An experience without an experiencer is as absurd as that!

How can people still take this position, when it was refuted by science and psychology 50-100 years ago (and it was refuted by Oriental philosophy thousands of years ago)?

Atla wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 12:28 am

Consul wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2020, 9:00 pm An experience without an experiencer is as absurd as that!

How can people still take this position, when it was refuted by science and psychology 50-100 years ago (and it was refuted by Oriental philosophy thousands of years ago)?

Well, they still can because this position was NOT "refuted by science and psychology 50-100 years ago" and it was NOT "refuted by Oriental philosophy thousands of years ago."
It's just plain silly to postulate experiencerless experiences, self-experiencing experiences, or experiences experienced by other experiences. Experiences are events of experiencing, and experiencings are passive affections or passions (in the good old Aristotelian sense of the term "pathos" or "passio"), which cannot exist without patients that aren't passions themselves but their subjects. John Foster is absolutely right when he says that "mental items can occur only as elements in the lives of mental subjects," and that "for an experience to occur is for a subject to experience something."

Consul wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 1:43 am

Atla wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 12:28 amHow can people still take this position, when it was refuted by science and psychology 50-100 years ago (and it was refuted by Oriental philosophy thousands of years ago)?

Well, they still can because this position was NOT "refuted by science and psychology 50-100 years ago" and it was NOT "refuted by Oriental philosophy thousands of years ago."
It's just plain silly to postulate experiencerless experiences, self-experiencing experiences, or experiences experienced by other experiences. Experiences are events of experiencing, and experiencings are passive affections or passions (in the good old Aristotelian sense of the term "pathos" or "passio"), which cannot exist without patients that aren't passions themselves but their subjects. John Foster is absolutely right when he says that "mental items can occur only as elements in the lives of mental subjects," and that "for an experience to occur is for a subject to experience something."

Of course it was refuted. The ancient subject-object dichotomy was a fairly reasonable, intuitive idea back then. But now we know that it's either made up, or if it isn't made up, then there is no sign of it.

Consul

Re Berkeley - I'm not talking about Idealism here, I'm assuming bodies, brains and the world 'out there' are real.

Being a kind of experience itself, self-experience is part of the experiential content of "a unified field of consciousness"; but the experiencing self or subject is not. The subject of a field of consciousness or stream of experience isn't immanent in and constituted by its content; it is content-transcendent, content-external. That you cannot introspectively find yourself within your field of consciousness/stream of experience doesn't mean that you aren't there, because you are there as a nonexperience, and thus as something that isn't part of but underlies your introspectible consciousness/experience.

I'm suggesting that such a framing might be a way of thinking, reflected and reinforced by grammar, which might not be appropriate here.

It's a natural way to think when we look at the material world, we see subjects and objects do thing. That's our ingrained everyday way of thinking.


But it might not be the same for non-material experience. A sense of self, an experiential sense of being a discrete , unified entity located in time and space, with a specific first person pov correlated with this body, might all there is to it.


What actually is the difference between an ongoing experiential sense of self, deriving from the ways experiential states manifest I outlined previously, and a Subject-Self Experiencer?

because you are there as a nonexperience, and thus as something that isn't part of but underlies your introspectible consciousness/experience.

Can you tell m what aspect of my Self is there if/when I'm not experiencing?

Gertie wrote: ↑May 22nd, 2020, 4:23 pm

Hmm, not too reliable this interface is it. Not really the same as directly observing experiential states at all.

You invented a context where a subject was purposely interfering with the scientific inquiry. That's not a valid objection to the role language plays, when tied with other measurements, in understanding how the nervous system creates consciousness.

Greta wrote: ↑May 22nd, 2020, 6:16 pm As for grand claims made about the claustrum, just to jog your memory, here are some headlines from a few years ago:

Those are headlines, mostly created by hysterical journalists and editors trying to get attention. To repeat: there was NEVER a time when a majority of cognitive neuroscientists were converging on a consensus that the claustrum was going to solve the problem of consciousness. But there has been such a consensus around some version or other of the global neuronal workspace model, since the 1990's.

Consul wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2020, 5:33 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2020, 4:43 pmYes, but for the umpteenth time, I'm really only interested in quotations if you're going to defend them against objections (in a directed, specific manner rather than just searching for more quotes).

Let's hear your objections to what Unger, Foster, and I say!

Sure, so let's start with the first objection and see how you'd counter it:

Unger says:

""Hume's bundle theory of ourselves may be seen, I think, to be perfectly absurd. Indeed, to my mind, the simplest consideration against the view is perfectly decisive: We must acknowledge the possibility of just a single thinking, or a solitary perceiving, or a lonely experiencing. As such a lonely experience is so perfectly solitary, it can't be part of any bundle or collection of perceptions."

This comment, on the face of it, seems completely ridiculous and seems to not at all understand bundle theory. There's also a problem with suggesting "a single thinking"/"a solitary perceiving"/"a lonely experiencing" without specifying examples. Presumably, he's positing something with only "one property" and with "no relations" (assuming such a thing is possible/would make sense). But bundle theory isn't saying that entities must be more than one property, it's just saying that they're no more than their properties. If there's just one property, then that's what it is.

Unger's objection almost seems like the naive (well, or frankly idiotic) misunderstanding of set theory where one thinks that a set must have more than one item. But of course that's not the case. Sets can have just one element, or can even be empty.

I'm assuming that Unger can't be that dumb, though, and that either what you're quoting isn't very well-written (it's not very well-explained) or that we're missing surrounding text that would be needed to make the quoted bit clearer.

Okay, so before I spend hours presenting objections like this to every sentence or two for everything you're quoting, let's see how you support Unger's comments against my objections for this one simple thing first.

Also, you should probably comment on the fact that you're apparently taking me to simply be suggesting Hume's bundle theory wholesale? That wasn't what I was doing. You can't assume that I'm simply forwarding someone else's views on anything. Even with the philosophers I'm a fan of, or with the philosophers I agree with the most (those two categories aren't always the same), I still disagree with them more often than I agree. Hence why I'm not really in the rooting section for anyone. I'm the only person I agree with more often than not. The views I express are my own.

Atla wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 2:53 amOf course it was refuted. The ancient subject-object dichotomy was a fairly reasonable, intuitive idea back then. But now we know that it's either made up, or if it isn't made up, then there is no sign of it.

I've been talking about the subject-content difference, the difference between the subject and the content of consciousness/experience. The object of (perceptual) consciousness/experience is something else, something different both from the subject and from the content. For example, visual perception essentially has three different elements: the seer (subject), the seeing (content), and the seen (object).

Consul wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 11:45 am

Atla wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 2:53 amOf course it was refuted. The ancient subject-object dichotomy was a fairly reasonable, intuitive idea back then. But now we know that it's either made up, or if it isn't made up, then there is no sign of it.

I've been talking about the subject-content difference, the difference between the subject and the content of consciousness/experience. The object of (perceptual) consciousness/experience is something else, something different both from the subject and from the content. For example, visual perception essentially has three different elements: the seer (subject), the seeing (content), and the seen (object).

Oh so you are using two made-up dichotomies? Neither of them exist for the same reasons.

Atla wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 11:54 am

Consul wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 11:45 am

I've been talking about the subject-content difference, the difference between the subject and the content of consciousness/experience. The object of (perceptual) consciousness/experience is something else, something different both from the subject and from the content. For example, visual perception essentially has three different elements: the seer (subject), the seeing (content), and the seen (object).

Oh so you are using two made-up dichotomies? Neither of them exist for the same reasons.

On your view there aren't both people and other things in the world?

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 1:09 pm

Atla wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 11:54 am
Oh so you are using two made-up dichotomies? Neither of them exist for the same reasons.

On your view there aren't both people and other things in the world?

You mean that people exist but other things don't exist, or vica versa?

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 10:26 amSure, so let's start with the first objection and see how you'd counter it:

Unger says:

""Hume's bundle theory of ourselves may be seen, I think, to be perfectly absurd. Indeed, to my mind, the simplest consideration against the view is perfectly decisive: We must acknowledge the possibility of just a single thinking, or a solitary perceiving, or a lonely experiencing. As such a lonely experience is so perfectly solitary, it can't be part of any bundle or collection of perceptions."

This comment, on the face of it, seems completely ridiculous and seems to not at all understand bundle theory. There's also a problem with suggesting "a single thinking"/"a solitary perceiving"/"a lonely experiencing" without specifying examples. Presumably, he's positing something with only "one property" and with "no relations" (assuming such a thing is possible/would make sense). But bundle theory isn't saying that entities must be more than one property, it's just saying that they're no more than their properties. If there's just one property, then that's what it is.

Unger's objection almost seems like the naive (well, or frankly idiotic) misunderstanding of set theory where one thinks that a set must have more than one item. But of course that's not the case. Sets can have just one element, or can even be empty.

I'm assuming that Unger can't be that dumb, though, and that either what you're quoting isn't very well-written (it's not very well-explained) or that we're missing surrounding text that would be needed to make the quoted bit clearer.

Okay, so before I spend hours presenting objections like this to every sentence or two for everything you're quoting, let's see how you support Unger's comments against my objections for this one simple thing first.

Also, you should probably comment on the fact that you're apparently taking me to simply be suggesting Hume's bundle theory wholesale? That wasn't what I was doing. You can't assume that I'm simply forwarding someone else's views on anything. Even with the philosophers I'm a fan of, or with the philosophers I agree with the most (those two categories aren't always the same), I still disagree with them more often than I agree. Hence why I'm not really in the rooting section for anyone. I'm the only person I agree with more often than not. The views I express are my own.

What is it to accept Hume's bundle theory, but not "wholesale"? To contend that subjects are partly experiences and partly nonexperiences?

When Hume says that subjects are "nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions," he arguably doesn't use "bundle" and "collection" in the modern logico-mathematical sense of "set", in which sets are abstract objects that are different from their members, such that they can be empty. Bundles and collections in the non-set-theoretical, i.e. mereological, sense are sums or aggregates of things; and one thing cannot be a sum or aggregate of things, so correspondingly a bundle or collection of perceptions cannot consist of only one perception. By speaking of a bundle or collection of different perceptions, Hume actually presupposes that it consists of at least two perceptions (experiences), thereby excluding the possibility of the occurrence of one "lonely experience" that is unaccompanied by any others, such that "it can't be part of any bundle or collection of perceptions." And, as Unger says, we won't "be helped in avoiding absurdity…by a clever logical dodge, as with defining 'minimal bundle' comprising just one single experiencing."
Unger then argues that it's "obviously absurd" to postulate subjects which are nothing but one single perception (experience)—which is not to say that it isn't equally absurd to postulate subjects consisting or two or more perceptions (experiences).

Gertie wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 5:45 am

Consul wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2020, 9:00 pmBeing a kind of experience itself, self-experience is part of the experiential content of "a unified field of consciousness"; but the experiencing self or subject is not. The subject of a field of consciousness or stream of experience isn't immanent in and constituted by its content; it is content-transcendent, content-external. That you cannot introspectively find yourself within your field of consciousness/stream of experience doesn't mean that you aren't there, because you are there as a nonexperience, and thus as something that isn't part of but underlies your introspectible consciousness/experience.

I'm suggesting that such a framing might be a way of thinking, reflected and reinforced by grammar, which might not be appropriate here.
It's a natural way to think when we look at the material world, we see subjects and objects do thing. That's our ingrained everyday way of thinking.

I don't accept the objection that the substance-attribute (object/subject-attribute) ontology is based on nothing but an erroneous projection of grammatical categories onto reality.

QUOTE>
"There is an argument against substrata that Locke did not anticipate that deserves brief consideration.
The argument is that we come to believe in the need for substrata simply because it is suggested by the subject-predicate form of our language (and also, presumably, by the (Ex) of quantification in logic). Then it is argued that some languages (and also, presumably, some logics) don't have this subject-predicate form. So, the conclusion seems to be that the notion of, and supposed need for, substrata is due only to, and suggested by, a local, parochial linguistic form.
It is very difficult to see the force of this argument. First, the claim that some languages lack anything like a subject-predicate form is not the proven linguistic fact that it is argued to be. However, the argument cannot be at all conclusive, even if this claim were true. Because, secondly, if some languages suggest a substratum and some do not, the question should still arise 'Which are right?' Then the argument for substrata, and against alternative theories, would have to be considered."

(Martin, C. B. "Substance Substantiated." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 58/1 (1980): 3–10. pp. 8-9)
<QUOTE

Gertie wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 5:45 amBut it might not be the same for non-material experience. A sense of self, an experiential sense of being a discrete , unified entity located in time and space, with a specific first person pov correlated with this body, might all there is to it.
What actually is the difference between an ongoing experiential sense of self, deriving from the ways experiential states manifest I outlined previously, and a Subject-Self Experiencer?

What exactly is a "sense of self"? Is it a kind of experience or a kind of self-awareness/self-consciousness, a kind of self-belief or self-knowledge?
Whatever, my central point is simply that no matter what kind of entity I am, it's an a priori knowable, ontologically necessary truth that I as a haver or undergoer of experiences am not an experience myself but something else. My experiences depend on me as their experiencer. Its ontological dependence on an experiencer is part of the essence of an experience.

QUOTE>
"Consider a subject of experience as it is present and alive in the living moment of experience. Consider its experience—where by the word 'experience' I mean the experiential-qualitative character of experience, experiential 'what-it's-likeness', and absolutely nothing else. Strip away in thought everything other than the being of this experience. When you do this, the subject remains. You can't get rid of the subject of experience, in taking a portion of experience or experiential what-it's-likeness and stripping away everything other than the existence of that experience. Concretely occurring experience can't possibly exist without a subject of experience existing. If you strip away the subject, you haven't got experience any more. You can't get things down to concretely occurring experiential content existing at a given time without an experiencer existing at that time. This is the Experience/Experiencer Thesis:

(1) Experience is impossible without an experiencer.

One shouldn't think that stripping away everything other than the being of experience can somehow leave something less than at complete subject of experience, something that has, as such, no right to the full title 'subject'. Experience is experiencing: whatever remains if experience remains, something that is correctly called a subject must remain. One can reach this conclusion without endorsing any view about the ontological category of this subject, or indeed of experience."
(pp. 253-4)

"Experience is necessarily experience-for—experience for someone or something. I intend this only in the sense in which it is necessarily true, and without commitment to any particular account of the metaphysical nature of the someone-or-something. To claim that experience is necessarily experience-for, experience-for-someone-or-something, is to claim that it is necessarily experience on the part of a subject of experience. Again I intend this only in the sense in which it is a necessary truth, and certainly without any commitment to the idea that subjects of experience are persisting things. This is the Experience/Experiencer Thesis.
Some say one can’t infer the existence of a subject from the existence of experience (see e.g. Stone 1988, 2005), only the existence of subjectivity, but I understand the notion of the subject in a maximally ontologically non-committal way: in such a way that the presence of subjectivity is already sufficient for the presence of a subject, so that 'there is subjectivity, but there isn't a subject' can’t possibly be true.
Consider pain, a well known experience. It is, essentially, a feeling, and a feeling is just that, a feeling, i.e. a feel-ing, a being-felt, and a feel-ing or being-felt can’t possibly exist without there being a feel-er. Again, I'm only interested in the sense in which this is a necessary truth. The noun ‘feeler’ doesn’t import any metaphysical commitment additional to the noun 'feeling'. It simply draws one's attention to the full import of 'feeling'. The sense in which it’s necessarily true that there's a feeling, and hence a feeler, of pain, if there is pain at all, is the sense in which it's necessarily true that there's a subject of experience if there is experience, and hence subjectivity, at all. These truths are available prior to any particular metaphysics of object or property or process or event or state."
(p. 258)

(Strawson, Galen. "The Minimal Subject." In The Oxford Handbook of the Self, edited by Shaun Gallagher, 253-278. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.)
<QUOTE

It needs to be mentioned that the Experience/Experiencer Thesis comes in two different versions: nonreductive realism about experiencers/subjects of experience and reductive realism about them. According to the former—which is the position I endorse and defend!—, experiencers/subjects of experience exist and they are different from their experiences. According to the latter—which seems to be endorsed and defended by Strawson—, experiencers/subjects of experience exist and they are identical with their experiences. I agree with Peter Unger, John Forrest, and others that it's ontologically nonsensical to say so, because no experience can possibly be its own subject or the subject of other experiences. Feelings cannot feel themselves or other feelings; thinkings cannot be thought by themselves or other thinkings.

Gertie wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 5:45 am

Consul wrote: ↑May 23rd, 2020, 9:00 pm…because you are there as a nonexperience, and thus as something that isn't part of but underlies your introspectible consciousness/experience.

Can you tell m what aspect of my Self is there if/when I'm not experiencing?

No object is an actual subject of experience unless it actually experiences something; so, for example, a dreamlessly sleeping person is not an actual subject. But s/he's still a potential subject as opposed to a stone or a clock, which inherently lacks the capacity for subjective experience.

Being a materialist and an animalist about psychological/phenomenological subjects/selves/egos/persons, who thinks that we are human animals, I think I exist independently of my experiences; so I'm still there as a material object when I don't actually experience anything due to being temporarily unconscious. I even think I'll still be there as a permanently unconscious dead animal until I'm cremated or naturally destroyed through decay.

Consul wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 1:55 pm Bundles and collections in the non-set-theoretical, i.e. mereological, sense are sums or aggregates of things; and one thing cannot be a sum or aggregate of things, so correspondingly a bundle or collection of perceptions cannot consist of only one perception.

Support for that claim?