Consul wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 2:46 pm
Gertie wrote: ↑May 24th, 2020, 5:45 am
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.
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"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)
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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.)
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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
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.
OK, so you think the substrate is the Subject, the Self which does experiencing. To have a go at summarising -
You believe the self is located in the body, and when the body is having experiential states, becomes a Subject. (Noun doing Verb).
When in a dreamless asleep, the body is no longer a Subject, but a potential Subject, till it wakes up and starts experiencing again. But the body is still where the Self is located, even when asleep or dead, just not in Subject mode?
Hence you say you can't have an experience, without a Substrate-Self to experience it.
Are you a materialist who believes experiences are or aren't reducible to physical processes? And how does that tie in to the Experience-Experiencer dichotomy?
My position is that it is the inherent nature of experiential states which create A Sense of being a Self. So it's more like experiencing introduces 'a sense of self' to the substrate's processes.
Namely - A sense of being a discrete, unified being with a first person pov, recognising correlation with a specific body moving through space and time, navigating an 'external'/third person pov world of of objects, other subjects, stuff happening,etc.
In effect, locating 'Selfness' in the particular ways in which experiential states can manifest.
But not necessarily always. There might be less complex creatures, which don't possess the particular features of experiential states humans do, and I'd say they don't have A Sense of Self, of being a discrete, unified Subject in a world of Objects. For example a moth might (or might not) experience a difference between light and dark only, but not have this Sense of being a Self. But it would be a Subject-Self for you, because it has a body which is experiencing.
Would you roughly agree with that summary.?