Self, Self-Awareness, Self-Reference

The Man in the Mirror and Belief De Se

The following can happen. You see yourself but without self-recognition. You see yourself, but not as yourself. Suppose you walk into a room which, unbeknownst to you, has a mirror covering the far wall. You are slightly alarmed to see a wild-haired man with his fly open approaching you. You are looking at yourself but you don't know it. (The lighting is bad, you've had a few drinks . . . .) You think to yourself

1) That man's fly is open!

but not

2) My fly is open!

Now these thoughts or propositions are different. For one thing, they have different behavioral consequences. I can believe the first without taking action with respect to my fly, or any fly. But if I believe the second I will most assuredly button my fly. A second point is that one cannot validly infer (2) from (1). That is because (2) says more than (1). For (2) says that BV's fly is open AND that I am BV. When I refer to myself using 'BV' I refer to myself in the third person using an abbreviation (or a name) that both I and others can use. When I refer to myself using 'I,' I refer to myself in the first person using a word that only I can use to refer to myself.

So (1) and (2) are different propositions. I can believe the first without believing the second. But how can this be given the plain fact that 'that man' and 'BV' refer to the same man? The demonstrative phrase and the proper name have the same referent. Both propositions predicate the same property of the same subject. So what makes them different propositions?

If propositions are Russellian, then BV, all 170 lbs of him, is a constituent of both propositions, which implies that these propositions are one and the same. But the propositions are distinct as has already be shown. So they must be Fregean. BV himself cannot be a constituent of such a proposition: he needs a surrogate entity, a Fregean sense, to stand in for him in the proposition and to represent him. (Note that this sense is both a representative of BV and a representation of BV.)

As noted, (2) analyzes into a conjunction of

3) BV's fly is open

and

4) I am BV.

Here is the point at which I am flummoxed and reach an impasse. (4) says more than

5) BV is BV.

(5) is a miserable tautology. It is a logical truth, true in virtue of its logical form. Its negation is a contradiction. (4) is in some sense 'informative,' 'synthetic.' It smacks of a certain 'contingency': might I not have inhabited a numerically different body? Might not my epistemic access to the world have been mediated by a different body and brain?

(5) differs in cognitive value (Erkenntniswert) from (4). But I am at a loss to say what this I-sense is. It has to be a sense, an abstract item of sorts, but what is it? What is the sense of this sense? It appears utterly ineffable. The sense of 'I' when deployed by BV is unique to him: it somehow captures his ipseity and haecceity which are of course 'incommunicable,' as a scholastic might say, to anyone else.

How eff the ineffable? Hegel: there is no ineffable to eff. Tractarian Wittgenstein: Es gibt allerdings das Unaussprechliche. 'There is, however, the inexpressible."

Do We Love the Person or Only Her Attributes?

Substack latest.

Gleanings from a passage from Pascal.

This supplements and deepens the recent discussion of subjective and objective views of death.

Sam Harris on Rational Mysticism . . .

. . . and whether the self is an illusion.

Top o' the Stack.

The Christian ‘Anatta Doctrine’ of Lorenzo Scupoli

Buddhism and Christianity both enjoin what I will call moral self-denial. But Buddhism is more radical in that it connects moral self-denial with metaphysical self-denial. Thus Buddhism denies the very existence of the self, whereas Christianity in its orthodox versions presupposes the existence of the self: Christian self-purification falls short of eliminativism about the self. Nevertheless, there are points of comparison between the 'No Self' doctrine of Buddhism and the Christian doctrine of the self. Just as the full appreciation of the mother tongue comes only to those who study foreign languages, the full appreciation of the 'mother religion' comes only to those who study foreign religions.

In his Combattimento Spirituale (1589), Lorenzo Scupoli writes:

You my mind, are not mine: you were given me by God. Neither are the powers active within me — will, with its energy — mine. Nor does my feeling, my ability to enjoy life and all my surroundings belong to me. My body with all its functions and requirements, which determine our physical well-being, is not mine either . . . . And I myself belong not to me, but to God. (Unseen Warfare, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995, p. 172)

I'll hazard a gloss: I am not the master of my fate nor the captain of my soul. Everything I have I have from God who created me ex nihilo and sustains me moment-by-moment. I am not my own man. I do not have property-rights in my body nor in any attribute or adjunct of what I take to be my self. For this very reason, suicide is a grave sin. If a substance is anything metaphysically capable of independent existence, then I am not a substance: only God is a substance in the plenary sense of the term.

Apart from the references to God, this meditation of Scupoli, of which the above is merely an excerpt, bears a striking resemblance to the Anattalakkhana Sutta. Buddha there examines each of the khandas, body, feeling, perception, etc., and concludes with respect to each of them that "This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am." In Scupoli we encounter virtually the same litany: body, feeling, mind . . . of each of which it is true that "This is not mine," etc. Of course, nothing depends on the exact taxonomy of the khandas or personality-constituents. The point is that however one classifies them, no one of them, nor any combination of them, is veridically identifiable as one's very self. I say 'veridically,' since we do as a matter of fact falsely identify ourselves with all manner of item both within us (feelings, memories, etc.) and without us (property, progeny, etc.) My house, my child, my brilliant insights. A theologian might identify himself with his theology, when he must know that his theology could be light-years away from God's theology (God's self-knowledge).

These false self-identifications are part of what our ignorance/sinfulness consists in. (The forward slash in my typography stands for inclusive disjunction, the inclusive 'or.')

Thus Scupoli (whom I take to be a representative Christian, and who is of interest here only as such) and Buddha agree with respect to the (negative) thesis that nothing in one's outer or inner experience is veridically identifiable as one's very self. Thus nothing that we ordinarily take to be ourselves (our bodies, our thoughts, feelings, memories, etc.) can in truth be one's self. But there is also similarity in their reasoning. One way Buddha reasons is as follows.

If x (body, feeling, perception, etc.) were my very self, or were something that belonged to me, then I would have complete control over x. But it is evident that nothing is such that I have complete control over it. Therefore, no x is either my self or anything that belongs to me. This could be called the 'complete control argument' against the existence of the self. Scupoli has something similar:

Let us remember that we can boast only of something which is a direct result of our own will and is done by us independently of anything else. But look how our actions proceed. How do they begin? Certain circumstances come together and lead to one action or another; or a thought comes to our mind to do something, and we do it. But the concurrence of circumstances does not come from us; nor, obviously, is the thought to do something our own; somebody suggests it. Thus, in such cases, the origin or birth of the thought to do something cannot or should not be an object of self-praise. Yet how many actions are of this kind? If we examine them conscientiously, we shall find that they almost all start in this way. So we have nothing to boast of. (174)

This passage suggests the following argument: One cannot justifiably take credit for or take pride in anything (an action, a physical or mental attribute, etc.) unless one originates it "independently of anything else." But nothing is such that one originates it in sublime independence of all else. Therefore, one cannot justifiably take pride in anything. Here is a reason why pride is listed among the Seven Deadly Sins.

But does this amount to a metaphysical denial of the very existence of the self? Not within Christian metaphysics. For that what is needed is the Buddhist assumption, crucial to the reasoning in the Anattalakkhana Sutta, that a self is an entity that has complete control over itself. Such a self could justifiably take pride in its actions and attributes. For it would be their fons et origo. So if one cannot justifiably take pride in any of one's actions or attributes, then one is not a self in the sense in which this term is employed in the Anattalakkhana Sutta.

In sum, both Buddha and Scupoli set the standard for selfhood very, and perhaps unattainably, high. Both claim that no one of us is a self for the reason than no one of us is in complete control of any of his actions or attributes. None of the things which one normally takes to be oneself or to belong to oneself (e.g., one's body, habits, brave decisions, brilliant insights, distinguished career, foolish mistakes, etc.) is such that one has originated it autonomously and independently.

Having set the standard for selfhood so high, Buddhism must deny that we are selves. Christianity, however, is far less radical, holding as it does that we are selves all right, but ontologically derivative selves: we derive our being from the Creator, who is Being itself. (Deus est ipsum esse subsistens.) We are creatures of the one and only Absolute Self who brought us into being and sustains us in being. On Buddhism, nothing at all has 'self nature' in the eminent and plenary sense; on Christianity, one thing does, God. For Buddhism, there is no Absolute Self, there is in reality nothing like the Hindu Atman. For Christianity, there is an, or rather, the uniquely unique Absolute Self, namely, God.

What about us? One thing is clear to both Buddhists and Christians: no one of us is identical to the Absolute Self. For Buddhists, there is no Absolute Self, and for Christians, while there is an the Absolute Self, no one of us, no finite self, is or ever becomes identical to it, not even in the Beatific Vision. If the visio beata involves a participation in the divine life, this does not involve a total assimilation: the finite self never loses its self-identity or individuality. In the Beatific Vision, creator-creature duality is mitigated, but never wholly eliminated.

The main difference between Buddha and Scupoli is that the latter maintains that God gives us what we do not have under our control, our derivatively real selves. Thus for Scupoli, what we do not have from ourselves, we have from another, and so have. But for Buddha, what we do not have from ourselves, we do not have at all.

So in what sense does Scupoli embrace a 'no self' (anatta, anatman) doctrine? In the sense that in orthodox — miniscule 'o' — Christian metaphysics no one of us enjoys selfhood in the plenary sense of the term.

Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?

Retorsion (retortion) is the philosophical procedure whereby one attempts to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who denies it. It is as old as Aristotle and has been put to use by philosophers as diverse as Transcendental Thomists and Ayn Rand and her followers. Retorsion is something like an ad hominem tu quoque except that the homo in question is everyman, indeed every rational being. Proofs by retorsion have the following form:

Proposition p is such that anyone who denies it falls into performative inconsistency; ergo, p is true.

Suppose a person asserts that there are no assertions. That person falls into performative inconsistency: the propositional content of the speech act is 'inconsistent' with the performance. *There are no assertions* is the propositional content, or content, for short. The speech act of asserting is in this case the performance. The inconsistency is not strictly logical, which is why I employed scare quotes. Strictly logical inconsistency/consistency obtains between propositions, and a performance such as asserting is not a proposition. Performances belong to the category of events, not that of propositions. And yet it is clear that there is some sort of analog of inconsistency here, some sort or analog of 'contradiction.' The content asserted is falsified by the act of asserting it. The performance 'contradicts' the content.

Continue reading “Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?”

Body, Soul, Self

Tony Flood writes:

Hard to imagine Hitchens at almost 73, had he lived. Great post, but I have a question.

Briefly, why do you refer to the soul as one's "true self"? Genesis 2:7 reports that from the dust of the ground (ha-adamah) God created ha-adam, i.e., "the man." The man became a living soul (le-nephesh hayyah) when God breathed the breath of life (nishmat hayyim) into him. The pre-animated ha-adamah was neither dead nor a "less-than-true" or incomplete human being; the animating nephesh is not the man's self or ego. When God withdraws the breath of life from a soul, that soul dies. I think know your non-Genesis source, but I want to hear it from you. Your passing comment reminded me that I had written quite a bit about this earlier this year.

Also interested in knowing whether there's anything you want to share from your retreat.

Tony is referring to this sentence of mine: "Those of us who champion free speech miss him [Hitchens] and what he would have had to say about the current state of the world had he taken care of himself, or rather his body, his true self being his soul." What I wrote suggests that there is a difference between body and soul in a person, and that the soul is the person's self. But why true self? Well, if I can exist without a body, but I cannot exist without (being identical to) a soul, then 'my' soul, or rather me qua soul is 'my' true self. There are a number of different questions here, all very difficult.

To begin, we need to clarify our terminology. 'Soul' (psyche, anima, Seele) is ambiguous. It could refer to the life-principle in living things. 'Soul' could also be used to refer to the subject or possessor of a person's mental states. For the Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne, "Each actual human being is essentially a pure mental substance . . . " and ". . . a person has mental properties because their [sic] soul has mental properties." (Are We Bodies or Souls? Oxford UP, 2019, p. 80)

Now ask yourself which of the following is true:

(A) I am (identical to) a substance the form of which is my soul and the matter of which is my body. Anima forma corporis: the soul is the form of the body.

(P) I am (identical to) a purely mental substance that contingently possesses a living human body.

A substance may be defined as any individual entity metaphysically capable of independent existence, where 'individual' implies unrepeatability and impredicability.

(A) is the Aristotelian-Thomistic view. A person is one substance, the individual human being, the soul of which is not a substance.

(P) is the Platonic-Cartesian view. It is substance-dualist. In the book mentioned, Swinburne defends substance dualism according to which "each human consists of two parts — a soul (a pure mental substance) and a body (a physical substance)." (p. 141)

So, when I wrote in my Substack entry about Hitchens taking care of himself, or rather his body, I signaled my inclination to accept the Platonic-Cartesian view. You can destroy your body with hooch and weed, but not your soul.

Now which of the two views above is more biblical? This, I take it, is the question that exercises Tony, and I suspect that his view is either (A) or neither. I suspect that Tony's view is that the Platonic-Cartesian view is wholly unbiblical and thus that Christianity has little or nothing to do with Platonism.

Serendipitously, Tony's question ties in nicely with a discussion I had with a man at the monastery about Mark 12: 18-27 and Christ's argument against the Sadducees re: bodily resurrection. Don't we need Platonic souls during the time between hora mortis nostrae and general resurrection?

Combox open.

I Know My Limits

I know my limits, but I also know that I have limits that I don't know. Complete self-knowledge would require both knowledge of my known limits and knowledge of my unknown limits. Complete self-knowledge, therefore, is impossible.

(Note how 'I' is used above. It is not being used as the first-person singular pronoun. It is being used as a universal quantifier. As above used, 'I' does not have an antecedent; it has substituends (linguistic items) and values (non-linguistic items). The above use of 'I' is a legitimate use, not a misuse.)

Ernst Mach and the Shabby Pedagogue: On Belief De Se

1. In The Analysis of Sensations (Dover, 1959, p. 4, n. 1) Ernst Mach (1838-1916) offers the following anecdote:

     Not long ago, after a trying railway journey by night, when I was
     very tired, I got into an omnibus, just as another man appeared at
     the other end. 'What a shabby pedagogue that is, that has just
     entered,' thought I. It was myself; opposite me hung a large
     mirror. The physiognomy of my class, accordingly, was better known
     to me than my own.

When Mach got on the bus he saw himself, but not as himself. His first thought was one expressible by 'The man who just boarded is a shabby pedagogue.' 'The man who just boarded' referred to Mach. Only later did Mach realize that he was referring to himself, a thought that he might have expressed by saying, 'I am a shabby pedagogue.'

Clearly, the thought expressed by 'The man who just boarded is shabby' is distinct from the thought expressed by 'I am shabby.' After all, Mach had the first thought but not the second. So they can't be the same thought. And this despite the fact that the very same property is ascribed to the very same person by both sentences. The second thought is the content of a belief de se. Such a belief is a belief about oneself as oneself.

One can have a belief about oneself without having a belief about oneself as oneself.

The difference emerges even more clearly if we alter the example slightly. Suppose Mach sees that the man who has just got on the bus has his fly open. He thinks to himself: The man who has just boarded has his fly open, a thought that leads to no action on Mach's part. But from the thought, I have my fly open, behavioral consequences ensue: Mach buttons his fly. Since the two thoughts have different behavioral consequences, they cannot be the same thought, despite the fact that they attribute the very same property to the very same person.

But if they attribute the same property to the same person, what exactly is the difference between the two thoughts?

Linguistically, the difference is that between a definite description ('the man who just boarded') and the first-person singular pronoun 'I.' Since the referent (Frege's Bedeutung) is the same in both cases, namely Mach, one will be tempted to say that the difference is a difference in sense (Frege's Sinn) or mode of presentation (Frege's Darstellungsweise). Mach refers to himself in two different ways, a third-person objective way via a definite description, and a first-person subjective way via the first-person singular pronoun.

If this is right, then although there are two different thoughts or propositions, one indexical and the other non-indexical, it might seem that there need only be one fact in the world to serve as truth-maker for both, the fact of Mach's being shabby. This is a non-indexical fact. It might seem that reality is exhausted by non-indexical facts, and that there are no such indexical or perspectival facts as those expressed by 'I am shabby' or 'I am BV' or 'I am the man who just got on the bus.' Accordingly, indexicality is merely a subjective addition, a projection: it belongs to the world as it appears to us, not to the world as it is in itself, in reality. On this approach, when BV says or thinks 'I,' he refers to BV in the first-person way with the result that BV appears to BV under the guise of 'I'; but in reality there is no fact corresponding to 'I am BV.'

2. But is this right? There are billions of people in the world and one of them is me. Which one? BV! But if the view sketched above is correct, then it is not an objective fact that one of these people is me. That BV exists is an objective fact, but not that BV is me. BV has two ways of referring to himself but there is only one underlying objective fact. Geoffrey Maddell strenuously disagrees:

     If I am to see the world in a certain way, then the fact that the
     world seen in this way is apprehended as such by me cannot be part
     of the content of that apprehension. If I impose a subjective grid
     on the world, then it is objectively the case that I do so. To put
     it bluntly, it is an objective fact about the world that one of the
     billions of people in it is me. Mind and Materialism, 1988, p.
     119.)

Maddell's point is that the first-person point of view is irreducibly real: it itself cannot be a subjective addition supplied from the first-person point of view. It makes sense to say that secondary qualities are projections, but it makes no sense to say that the first-person point of view is a projection. That which first makes possible subjective additions cannot itself be a subjective addition. That which is at the root of the very distinction between the for-us and the in-itself cannot be merely for-us. (Maddell might not approve of this last sentence of mine. It sounds a little 'Continental.')

Consider the phenomenal redness of a stop sign. It makes sense to say that this secondary quality does not belong to the sign itself in reality, but is instead a property the sign has only in relation to a perceiver. In this sense, secondary qualities are subjective. But to say that subjectivity itself, first-person perspectivity itself, is a subjective projection is unintelligible. It cannot belong to mere appearance, but must exist in reality. As Madell puts it, "Indexical thought cannot be analysed as a certain 'mode of presentation', for the fact that reality is presented to me in some particular way cannot be part of the way in which it is presented." (p. 120)

3. Trouble for materialism. According to materialism, reality is exhausted by non-indexical physical facts. But we have just seen that indexical thoughts are underpinned by indexical facts such as the fact of BV's being me. These facts are irreducibly real, but not physically real. Therefore, materialism is false: reality is not exhausted by non-indexical physical facts.

Romantic Postscript

That most mysterious of all pronouns, the first-person singular, is the key, or one of them, to the riddle of the universe.

A Discussion with Lukas Novak about Transcendental Idealism and the Transcendental Ego

The extended comment thread below began life in the comments to Why Did I Move Away from Phenomenology? (13 October 2020)

………………………..

Dear Bill,

You have exactly nailed my fundamental problem with transcendental idealism by this:

What is this transcendental ego if it is the purely subjective source of all ontic validity, Seinsgeltung? Does it exist? And in what sense of 'exist'? It cannot exist as a constituted object for it is the subjective source of all constitutive performances (Leistungen). But if it is not an indubitable piece of the world, then it cannot exist at all.

Of course, transcendental idealists will standardly respond something along the lines like:

The problem that you raise in this post only arises because you are asking the question, “What is the transcendental ego?” and expecting an answer which posits some kind of object or other;

but the problem is that the question asked does not "expect some kind of object", it simply asks whether the transcendental ego is something at all, whether it recedes [proceeds?] from pure nothingness, or not. Transcendental idealism is an effort to find some room between reality and nothingness, an attempt to declare this basic dichotomy as a mere artifact of the "natural attitude" – as if pure logic could be thus confined.

Now I wonder: you label it "Aporetic Conclusion". Why? Isn't it rather a reductio of transcendental idealism, leaving a clear way out – viz. a rejection of TI? Why can't we just conclude that "transcendental ego" is an incoherent notion and revert back to noetic realism, where both the subject and the object are just ordinary parts of the world?

Another great spot-on complaint of yours is that in phenomenology, we never get the real thing: we never get real transcendence, real objectivity etc., everything is merely constituted-as-such-and-such. I would add here: which deprives us of our epistemic rights to make any claims whatsoever about what the objective matter-of-fact really is with matters we are talking about (the nature of transcendental ego, the mechanisms of constitution, etc., whatever). In all seriously meant philosophical claims a phenomenologist is making statements about what the object of his talk (such as transcendental ego, the various structures and mechanisms claimed to be "described" etc.) is, really, an sich – and not merely qua constituted by the particular phenomenologist's ego. For else — why should such subjective constructs be of any relevance to philosophy, or to me?

In other words, the self-destructivity of transcendental idealism reveals itself not only with respect to the transcendental ego, whose Seinsgeltung cannot be merely constituted-by-the-ego but somehow original or genuine; but also with respect to the meta-question, what kind of objectivity is claimed for the transcendental idealist's philosophical statements. Either it is genuine objectivity, but then TI claims its own falsity, or a mere constituted objectivity, and then such statements are not part of philosophical discourse concerning life, universe and everything. In both cases we arrive at the conclusion that TI cannot ever be consistent and thoroughgoing: there must be a residual of realism, i.e. of a claimed capability to cognize reality as it is in itself, rather than merely qua-constituted, qua-a-priori-formed etc.

But perhaps you would not be willing to go thus far in your critique?

Posted by: Lukáš Novák | Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 12:22 PM

Dear Lukáš,

It is indeed a pleasure to find you in agreement with me since you are one of the smartest people I know. I hope you and your family are well. I have fond memories of my time in Prague and the Czech Republic.

>>Transcendental idealism is an effort to find some room between reality and nothingness, an attempt to declare this basic dichotomy as a mere artifact of the "natural attitude" – as if pure logic could be thus confined.<<

That's right. In Sartre, for example, consciousness is no-thing, thus nothing. A "wind blowing towards objects" but blowing from no direction and without any cause or ground. Hence the title *Being and Nothingness.* But of course consciousness is in some sense something since without it no objects would appear. So consciousness is both something and nothing — which certainly looks like a contradiction.

Butchvarov, too, is tangled up in this problem.

Central to Heidegger's thinking is the ontological difference between das Sein und das Seiende (taken either collectively or distributively). But if Being is other than every being, and from the whole lot of them taken together, then Being is nonbeing, nichtseiend. So Sein und Nichts are the same, although not dialectically as in Hegel. But das Nichts ist kein nichtiges Nichts; it is not a nugatory nothing, but some sort of reality, some sort of positive Nothing — which is structurally the same problem we find in Husserl, Sartre, and Butchvarov.

Also structurally similar is the notorious 'horse paradox' in Frege: "The concept HORSE is not a concept."

Posted by: BV | Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 01:32 PM

Dr. Novak:

>>Now I wonder: you label it "Aporetic Conclusion". Why? Isn't it rather a reductio of transcendental idealism, leaving a clear way out – viz. a rejection of TI? Why can't we just conclude that "transcendental ego" is an incoherent notion and revert back to noetic realism, where both the subject and the object are just ordinary parts of the world?<<

Fair question, and the right one to ask. But not easy to answer. Since you are a scholastic realist, perhaps I can soften you up by citing Aristotle, De Anima 431b20: "in a sense the soul is all existing things." Here perhaps is the charter for all subsequent transcendental philosophy. Accordingly, the soul is not merely the life principle of a particular animal organism. It is the transcendental subject to which the body and its states appear as well as the animal's mental states such as fear, lust, etc.

If this is right, then the subject cannot be "just an ordinary part of the world."

I need to hear more about your "noetic realism." Presumably you do not mean we are just parts of the material world and that all of our intellectual and spiritual functions can be accounted for naturalistically. Perhaps you will agree with me that not even sentience can be explained adequately in terms of physics, chemistry and other positive sciences.

Posted by: BV | Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 02:09 PM

>>Another great spot-on your complaint that in phenomenology, we never get the real thing: we never get real transcendence, real objectivity etc., everything is merely constituted-as-such-and-such. I would add here: which deprives us of our epistemic rights to make any claims whatsoever about what the objective matter-of-fact really is with matters we are talking about (the nature of transcendental ego, the mechanisms of constitution, etc., whatever). In all seriously meant philosophical claims a phenomenologist is making statements about what the object of his talk (such as transcendental ego, the various structures and mechanisms claimed to be "described" etc.) is, really, an sich — and not merely qua constituted by the particular phenomenologist's ego. For else — why should such subjective constructs be of any relevance to philosophy, or to me?

But perhaps you would not be willing to go thus far in your critique?<<

You raise a good objection. For example, when Husserl makes a claim about outer perception, that it is intentional, presumptive, that it presents its object directly without images or epistemic intermediaries, etc., he means these claims to be eidetic not factual. He aims to make claims that are true even if there are no cases of outer perception. He is concerned with the essence of perception, the essence of memory, of imagination, etc. Now these essences and the propositions about them are ideal objects that cannot depend on factical subjectivity for their Seinsinn.

Posted by: BV | Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 02:49 PM

Dr. Novak by e-mail (27 January 2021):

I take also this opportunity to finally respond to your reactions to my

comment on your post

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2020/10/why-did-i-move-away-from-phenomenology.html

— I apologize I did not manage to do so in time — you know, I am always behind my schedule with my work…

L.N.:

>>Now I wonder: you label it "Aporetic Conclusion". Why? Isn't it

>>rather a reductio of transcendental idealism, leaving a clear way

>>out – viz. a rejection of TI? Why can't we just conclude that

>>"transcendental ego" is an incoherent notion and revert back to

>>noetic realism, where both the subject and the object are just

>>ordinary parts of the world?<<

B.V.:

> Fair question, and the right one to ask. But not easy to answer.

> Since you are a scholastic realist, perhaps I can soften you up by

> citing Aristotle, De Anima 431b20: "in a sense the soul is all

> existing things." Here perhaps is the charter for all subsequent

> transcendental philosophy. Accordingly, the soul is not merely the

> life principle of a particular animal organism. It is the

> transcendental subject to which the body and its states appear as

> well as the animal's mental states such as fear, lust, etc.

>If this is right, then the subject cannot be "just an ordinary part

>of the world."

LN: Obviously, this hinges on the meaning of "ordinary". I certainly don't

propose reducing cognition and appetition to something merely material

or sub-animal. But why cannot genuine, unreduced cognition and

appetition be part of the reality just as pebbles of quartz are?

I agree that soul is a subject of cognitions and appearances and

appetitions. But why "transcendental"? Why must it be pushed out of

the picture, so to speak? When I say "I cognize myself", isn't the "I"

both the real, intramundane subject who does the cognizing, and the

object of this cognizing?

BV: >I need to hear more about your "noetic realism." Presumably you do

>not mean we are just parts of the material world and that all of our

>intellectual and spiritual functions can be accounted for

>naturalistically. Perhaps you will agree with me that not even

>sentience can be explained adequately in terms of physics, chemistry

>and other positive sciences.

LN: Of course I agree with all that. By "noetic realism" I mean that

cognition is (i) non-representationalist (i.e., terminating at reality

itself, not at some representations of reality — against Locke etc.);

and (ii) receptive, i.e., assimilative to, and measured by, the

object, not vice versa (against all sorts of idealism). Note that (i)

does not imply that cognition cannot err, nor does it exclude the

existence of mental representations as of that _by means of which_

(as opposed to _that which_) we cognize. And it also does not exclude

that reality-qua-cognized may in certain respects differ from

reality-qua-out-there — but it is one and the same reality which is

both out there and cognized.

I would say we are indeed parts of the material world (we are bodies),

but not "just parts" of it. We are not mere bodies, but spirited

bodies. But a spirited body is a body, nevertheless. I am not sure if

this dual nature of man can be analyzed in hylomorphic terms, but I

insist with P.F.Strawson that both bodily and mental predicates are

to be ascribed to one and the same subject (and unlike Strawson, I

take this to be a feature of reality, not just of our conceptual

scheme).

Best regards,

Lukas

BV to LN (28 January 2021): For you, the notion of a transcendental subject is incoherent and should be simply dropped. There is no genuine problem here as I think there is. For you, Husserl took a wrong turn, the transcendental turn, and went down a false path. For you, the ultimate subject of conscious states is an "ordinary part of the world." But you don't mean this materialistically or physicalistically. You admit the "dual nature of man." Man is an animal, but not just an animal: he is also a spirit. You are rightly skeptical of hylomorphic dualism. Are you then a substance dualist? It seems not since you say that "both bodily and mental predicates are to be ascribed to one and the same subject." But what is this subject? Is it the body in nature? The body is a material thing and the body, qua material, cannot think. My brain doesn't think any more than my eye glasses see. The latter are instruments of vision, the former an instrument of thought. The brain cannot be the ultimate subject of experience. The same goes for each of my body parts and for my body as a whole. I don't think with my liver or feel with my heart, which is just a pump made out of meat. The liver is just a filter made of meat.

Could the psyche be the ultimate ego? No, it is an object of introspection not the subject that introspects. Similarly for the psychophysical complex. It is not the ultimate subject of experience. You see where I am going with this. I am regressing to the ultimate condition of anything appearing. This ultimate condition is not to be found among the objects of consciousness. We say it is 'transcendental' though not in the Aristotelian-scholastic sense. Whether or not it is an ego is a further question; but let's assume that it is.

I have just motivated — in a sketchy way – the introduction of the transcendental ego. You don't accept this. You will say that one and the same intramundane subject is both cognizer and cognized. So when I inspect my body, is my body inspecting my body, or some part of my body inspecting some other part of my body? What part of the body has the power to do this? Is my hand sensing the soles of my feet? No, I am sensing in tactile fashion the soles of my feet by the instrumentality of a hand. Is this I a metaphysical self? If it is, how can it be identical to the physical body?

You are trying to think of subjectivity in an objective/objectivistic/objectifying way like a good Aristotelian. But this approach seems as problematic as Husserl's transcendental idealism.

Ruminations on the Dative of Disclosure

Steven Nemes comments on my long Husserl entry:

[Robert] Sokolowski’s reflections in his Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge University Press, 2000) are also helpful. He maintains that the transcendental ego is not substantially different than the empirical ego. In other words, the transcendental ego is not some different substance from the empirical ego, i.e. the [animated] human body. It is simply this empirical ego considered from the point of view of its being a dative of disclosure, a mihi to whom the world is disclosed.

I don't consider this helpful. To be blunt, I consider it confused.

The claim seems to be that the transcendental ego is just the empirical ego when the latter is considered as that to which the world and the objects in it appear, including that very special object which is one's animated body. This gives rise to the question: Who is doing the considering? That is, who is it by whose consideration the empirical ego acquires the property of being the dative of disclosure?

It has to be me. But it cannot be me qua object, since qua object I am not the dative, but the accusative of disclosure. I am one of the objects that appears. So it has to be me qua subject, qua dative but not accusative of disclosure. And let us be clear that there cannot be a dative without a nominative. There cannot be an appearing-to that is not an appearing-to something. There could, however, be an appearing that is wholly non-relational: things just appear, are revealed, manifest themselves, but not to a subject.* But if there is an appearing-to, then there must be that to which the appearance appears. No dative without a nominative. Either non-relational appearing or we go 'whole hog' with Husserl: ego-cogito-cogitata qua cogitata.

From this is follows that the duality self as subject-self as object is (a) inexpungeable, and (b) located within the ego. The duality cannot be collapsed into an abstract unity, nor can the subjectivity of the subject be referred to someone or something external to the ego. I am a subject intrinsically, not relationally, not in virtue of being considered to be a subject. That is to say: the transcendentality of the ego cannot accrue to it ab extra by the the empirical ego's consideration of itself as transcendental. Hysteron proteron! This puts the cart before the horse:** it is because I am a transcendental ego that I can apperceive myself as a human being in nature. As a human being, I simply lack the power to function transcendentally, to execute acts including acts of apperception.

Of course, there cannot be two egos. The empirical ego is an ego only by analogy (equivocation?) The true ego is the transcendental ego. I am being faithful to Husserl here.

So I don't see that Sokolowski, or rather Sokolowski as presented by Nemes, contributes anything to the solution of the problem I posed in my long post.

________________

*This, I take it, is Heidegger's notion of phenomenon which differs markedly from Husserl's.

**Joke: A philosopher took up residence in a bordello, thinking to enlighten the 'sex workers.' He soon left disillusioned after he found that he could not put Descartes before the whores.

Ideals and Non-Attachment

Self-mastery, you say, is the highest mastery. You are attached to this ideal and you live for the most part in accordance with it. But on occasion you stumble and fall. You lose your temper, overeat, or succumb to lust. And then you feel disgust with yourself. The failure hurts your ego. It diminishes your sense of distinction, which is what the ego is. The pain of moral failure reveals attachment to an ideal and a self-image. Is it the ideal you honor or your self-image? The solution is not to abandon the ideal, but to pursue it with detachment from the outcome, the outcome being either your success or your failure in meeting its demand.

Non-attachment is an ideal too. You can identify with it and become attached to it to the detriment of your non-attachment. But if I am not my property, pelf, and productions, nor my body, nor my transient states of mind, how could I be my ideals? They too are external. If I identify with the ideal of non-attachment, then I am attached to it, and to that extent conflate my (true) self with my (worldly) ego. 'My' ideals are not me. I don't own them or control them. It would be truer to say that they own me and control me. They are not ex-pressions of any true self I may have. They are not my innermost identity; I acquire an objective, a worldly identity by identifying with them.

So subtle are the dialectics of the self and the demands of the moral life.

The Riddle of the Self

Jacques comments:

I like your reply to the reader who asked about the existence of the self. All good points! I wonder what you think about the following different response to people like Harris (or Hume)… It seems to me that they just don't adequately support their claim that no self can be known or discovered or experienced. A few thoughts:

(1) It just might be true that the self isn't found "when looked for in a more rigorous way", if meditation (or whatever) is a rigorous way of looking for it. But does that support the conclusion that we don't experience the self in some other way–for example, without "rigorously" looking for it? Phenomenologically, it seems to me that I'm aware of myself most of the time. I can feel "self-conscious", for example, if I'm uncomfortable or worried how other people perceive me. At other times, when I'm lost in the moment, I'm less aware of myself. Why doesn't this kind of phenomenological fact (or seeming fact) count as evidence that there is such a thing?

BV: It is an interesting question whether the experience of self-consciousness you describe is evidence against the claim made by Sartre, Butchvarov, et al. that that there is no self or subject who is conscious. It is not obvious to me that it is. Suppose I feel self-conscious in a social situation. I am perhaps reading a paper before a large group of people I do not know. Maybe it's part of a job interview! My one chance at securing a tenure-track position! A latter-day Humean might offer the following description. There is in the speaker awareness of: the audience, the expressions on their faces, the body and sensations in the body such as dryness in the mouth and sweat forming on the forehead, a bit of queasiness in the stomach, the less-than-confident sound of one's voice, feelings of anxiety, nervousness, self-doubt, and so on. There needn't be a self that is aware of all this physical and mental data. There is just (subject-less) awareness of it.

It is important to bear in mind that when a philosopher asks about the existence of the self, he is not asking about his possessions or his body or any part thereof, or his memories or any introspectible contents. He is not asking about what ordinary people identify as themselves. People identify themselves with the damndest things, their cars, their Zip codes, their bodies. For all of that is 'on the side of the object.' What he is asking is whether there is a subject distinct from all of that, distinct from the body and from the empirical psyche.

A much stronger objection to the Humean invokes the thesis of Brentano that every primary intentional awareness is accompanied by a simultaneous secondary awareness of that very awareness. This is essentially wat Sartre later described as the pre-reflective cogito. Kant famously maintained that the 'I think' must be able to accompany all of my representations. Brentano and Sartre maintain that the 'I think' does accompany all of my representings, or better, awarenesses — it is just that the 'I think' needn't be an act of explicit reflection.

Suppose I see a black cat. The act of visual awareness is typically, even if not always, accompanied by a simultaneous secondary awareness of the primary awareness. I am aware of the cat, but I am also aware of being aware of the cat. How does the Humean account for the awareness of being aware? He can say of the primary straightforward awareness that it is a subjectless awareness of a phenomenal object. But he can't say the same of the secondary awareness. For it is not a phenomenal object over against the awareness of it. It is not something presented but a state of affairs that involves me as subject.

'I am aware of a cat' can perhaps be rewritten subjectlessly as 'There is awareness of a cat.' But 'I am aware of being aware of a cat' cannot be subjectlessly rewritten as 'There is awareness of awareness of a cat.' For the second sentence could be true without the first being true. Suppose there is in Tom visual awareness of a cat, but no awareness of awareness, and in God awareness of Tom's awareness, but no visual awareness of a cat. The point here is that the primary and secondary awarenesses need to form a synchronic unity in one and the same subject.

(2) Why shouldn't we allow that the self might be the kind of thing that "rigorous" examination will tend to obscure. There are lots of things I can perceive, somehow or at some times, but which I can't perceive or can't easily perceive when I "rigorously" consciously attend to them. If I consciously focus my attention on the question of what "truth" means I can easily get confused. I might begin to doubt whether I'm really aware of truth, or the concept of truth. It doesn't follow that I'm not somehow aware of truth at other times, e.g., when wondering whether what X said about Trump is really true.

BV: This is a line of thought worth developing. You mention truth. Time is another example. What is time? Don't ask me, and I know. Ask me, and I don't know. (Augustine). We all have a pre-analytic or pre-theoretical understanding of what time is, but when we attempt an analysis or a theory we get tangled up.

One famous theory of time, McTaggart's, issues in the conclusion that time is unreal. This is the analog of those theories of the self that deny that there is a self. Another famous theory of time, the B-theory of D. H. Mellor and others, denies temporal passage, reducing (real) time to the static ordering of events by the B-relations (earlier than, later than, simultaneous with). This is the analog of theories of the self like that of Hume's that do not outright deny the self, but reduce it to a bundle of impressions or of other items.

You might also develop your thought by exploring the the focus-fringe relation. Focal awareness seems to presuppose fringe awareness. What is on the fringe of my awareness can become my focus, but only if what was before at the focus moves to the fringe. Perhaps the self is like a permanent fringe that cannot be brought into focus, but must be there for anything to be brought into focus. If so, that would explain why one cannot isolate the self as an object among objects. The notion of 'horizon' in Husserl and Heidegger is relevant here.

(3) They don't really justify the assumption that the kind of entity that they claim not to discover in their "rigorous" examination should be identified with the self. Or the characterization is too vague to decide whether we do or don't discover this thing. The vague idea of "an experiencer distinct from the flow of experience", for example. In some sense, I'm pretty sure that I do know this kind of entity from first-hand experience: right now I seem to be aware of the sensations and thoughts I'm having, and also something (i.e., me, my-self) that is the (distinct) subject of these experiences. Presumably they'd say this isn't my experience, or else that they don't mean to deny that I can have that experience but rather some other kind of experience. But then either their position seems false or it's just not clear what they're talking about.

BV: You are putting your finger on an important issue. You can't search for a thing unless you have an idea of what you are searching for. You won't be able to find my lost cygnet unless you know what a cygnet is. One will miss the self — assuming there is one — if one searches for it under a description it cannot satisfy. Case in point:

Here are the words of Buddha according to the Anattalakkhana Sutta, his second discourse, the Sermon on the Mark of Not-Self:

     The body [rupa], monks, is not self. If the body were the self,
     this body would not lend itself to dis-ease. It would be possible
     (to say) with regard to the body, 'Let my body be thus. Let my body
     be not thus.' But precisely because the body is not self, the body
     lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible (to say) with
     regard to the body, 'Let my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.'

Buddha then goes on to argue similarly with respect to the rest of the five aggregates or categories of personality-constituents (khandhas, Sanskrit: skandhas), namely, feeling (vedana), perception (sanna), consciousness (vinnana), and mental formations (sankharas). All are claimed to be not-self. Thus we are told that feeling afflicts us and is not amenable to our control, whence it is inferred that feeling is not one's self, not one's own inner substance. The tacit premise of this enthymematic argument is that one's self would have to be something over which one would have complete control. The tacit premise is that the self is something wholly active and spontaneous and self-regulating. It is clear that something wholly active will not suffer: to suffer is precisely to be afflicted by something external over which one has no control. To suffer is to be passive. An agent in excelsis is an impassible agent. (In the West, impassibility became one of the divine attributes.)

So if you set the bar really high, it will turn out that nothing we encounter in experience is a self or has self-nature. If so, we should discard, not the self, but the conception no actual self can instantiate.

David Hume too searches for the self under a description it cannot satisfy. You know the famous passage from the Treatise wherein he speaks of entering most intimately into himself only to stumble upon nothing but perceptions. Hume reports, "I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception." (Treatise of Human Nature, Selby-Bigge, 1978, p. 252.)

Well, if he is looking for a self that is bare of all perceptions (taking 'perception' broadly to subsume all mental states or conscious experiences), then it is no surprise that he finds nothing. It could be like this: the self is a substance (an endurant, not a perdurant) that remains numerically self-same over time but is always in some state or other. It would then be distinct from each of its states, and from all of them taken collectively, but also necessarily such that it cannot exist without being in some state or other.

And if that is so, then, when I am in a self-presenting state such as that of being euphoric, I am directly aware of my self as being in that state. We may grant Hume that we cannot be aware of the self as an item apart from its states, but that is consistent with being aware of the self in and through its states.

(4) I'd admit that the deep and detailed nature of this (seemingly) distinct entity is mysterious. But then it seems that they're wrongly assuming that having experience or knowledge of X requires having experience or knowledge of X sufficient for some kind of exhaustive and perfect understanding of X. I know about other people, and I experience them, without knowing everything about them (or what the ultimate nature of a person is, etc). Harris seems to be saying merely that the precise character of his self is elusive, hard to individuate or define, at least while he's meditating. I don't understand why that phenomenological fact is supposed to warrant the conclusion that he's found nothing of the kind. Maybe I haven't meditated properly but, in my experience, I take myself to be always dimly aware of just that kind of thing. But it's in the corner of the mind's eye, so to speak.

I agree that the self is mysterious and indeed beyond the reach of naturalistic understanding.

Is There a Self? A Reader Requests Reassurance

A reader reports that he has recently gone through "a season of depression and extreme anxiety" and has come to doubt what he hitherto believed to be true, namely that there is a self. He now fears that Sam Harris may be right in the following passage I quote in Sam Harris on Rational Mysticism and Whether the Self is an Illusion:

It is an empirical fact that sustained meditation can result in a variety of insights that intelligent people regularly find intellectually credible and personally transformative. The problem, however, is that these insights are almost always sought and expressed in a religious context. One such insight is that the feeling we call “I”—the sense that there is a thinker giving rise to our thoughts, an experiencer distinct from the mere flow of experience—can disappear when looked for in a rigorous way. Our conventional sense of “self” is, in fact, nothing more than a cognitive illusion, and dispelling this illusion opens the mind to extraordinary experiences of happiness. This is not a proposition to be accepted on faith; it is an empirical observation, analogous to the discovery of one’s optic blind spots.

What the reader wants from me are reasons in support of his belief that there is a self in the teeth of Harris' claim that the self is a cognitive illusion. Whether or not I can strictly refute the 'No Self' view, I can show that it is not rationally compelling and that one can very reasonably deny it. Here we go.

An Operator-Shift Fallacy

1) The nonexistence of what one fails to find does not logically follow from one's failing to find it. So the failure to find in experience an object called 'self' does not entail the nonexistence of the self. An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Harris looks to be guilty of an operator-shift fallacy. The following is a non sequitur:

a) It is not the case that I find X

ergo

b) I find that it is not the case that there is X.

2) So failure to find the self as an object of experience is at least logically consistent with the existence of a self.

A Transcendental Argument

3) What's more, the positing of a self seems rationally required even if the self cannot be experienced as a separate object alongside the usual objects of introspection/reflection. For someone or something is doing the searching and coming up 'empty-handed.'

This is a sort of transcendental argument for the self. We start with a plain fact, namely, that a search is going on, a search for the referent of 'I' given that I am not identical to my property, my body, or any introspectible contents. We then ask: what makes it possible for this search to proceed? We conclude that there must be something that is searching, and what might that be? Well, me! I am searching. The I, ego, self is not exhausted by its objectifiable features.

A Dogmatic Assumption

It is simply false to say what Harris says, namely, that one empirically observes that there is no self. That is not an observation but an inference from the failure to encounter the self as an object of experience. It is an inference that is valid only in the presence of an auxiliary premise:

Only that which can be experienced as an object exists.
The self cannot be experienced as an object.
Therefore
The self does not exist.

This argument is valid, but is it sound? The second premise is empirical: nothing we encounter in experience (inner or outer) counts as the subject of experience. True for the standard Humean and Buddhist reasons. But we cannot validly move from the second premise to the conclusion. We need the help of the auxiliary premise, which is not empirical. How then do we know that it is true? Must we take it on faith? Whose faith? Harris's? My point is that Harris is operating with a dogmatic, non-empirical assumption, the just-mentioned auxiliary premise.

The Diachronic Unity of Consciousness

4) There are also important considerations re: diachronic personal identity. Suppose I decide to investigate the question of the self. A moment later I begin the investigation by carefully examining the objects of inner and outer experience to see if any one of them is the self. After some searching I come to the conclusion that the self is not to be located among the objects of experience. I then entertain the thought that perhaps there is no self. But then it occurs to me that failure to find X is not proof of X's nonexistence. I then consider whether it is perhaps the very nature of the subject of experience to be unobjectifiable. And so I conclude that the self exists but is not objectifiable, or at least not isolable as a separate object of experience among others.

This reasoning may or may not be sound. The point, however, is that the reasoning, which plays out over a period of time, would not be possible at all if there were no one self — no one unity of consciousness and self-consciousness — that maintained its strict numerical identity over the period of time in question. For what we have in the reasoning process is not merely a succession of conscious states, but also a consciousness of their succession in one and the same conscious subject. Without the consciousness of succession, without the retention of the earlier states in the present state, no conclusion could be arrived at.

All reasoning presupposes the diachronic unity of consciousness. Or do you think that the task of thinking through a syllogism could be divided up? Suppose Manny says, All men are mortal! Moe then pipes up, Socrates is a man! Could Jack conclude that Socrates is mortal? No. He could say it but not conclude it. (This assumes that Jack does not hear what the other two Pep Boys say. Imagine each in a separate room.)

The hearing of a melody supplies a second example.

To hear the melody Do-Re-Mi, it does not suffice that there be a hearing of Do, followed by a hearing of Re, followed by a hearing of Mi. For those three acts of hearing could occur in that sequence in three distinct subjects, in which case they would not add up to the hearing of a melody. (Tom, Dick, and Harry can divide up the task of loading a truck, but not the ‘task’ of hearing a melody, or that of understanding a sentence, or that of inferring a conclusion from premises.) But now suppose the acts of hearing occur in the same subject, but that this subject is not a unitary and self-same individual but just the bundle of these three acts, call them A1, A2, and A3. When A1 ceases, A2 begins, and when A2 ceases, A3 begins: they do not overlap. In which act is the hearing of the melody? A3 is the only likely candidate, but surely it cannot be a hearing of the melody. For the awareness of a melody involves the awareness of the (musical not temporal) intervals between the notes, and to apprehend these intervals there must be a retention (to use Husserl’s term) in the present act A3 of the past acts A2 and A1. Without this phenomenological presence of the past acts in the present act, there would be no awareness in the present of the melody. But this implies that the self cannot be a mere bundle of perceptions externally related to each other, but must be a peculiarly intimate unity of perceptions in which the present perception A3 includes the immediately past ones A2 and A1 as temporally past but also as phenomenologically present in the mode of retention. The fact that we hear melodies thus shows that there must be a self-same and unitary self through the period of time between the onset of the melody and its completion. This unitary self is neither identical to the sum or collection of A1, A2, and A3, nor is it identical to something wholly distinct from them. Nor of course is it identical to any one of them or any two of them. This unitary self is given whenever one hears a melody.

The unitary self is phenomenologically given, but not as a separate object. Herein, perhaps, resides the error of Hume and some Buddhists: they think that if there is a self, it must exist as a separate object of experience.

The above blend of phenomenological and dialectical considerations suffices to ensure at least a standoff with Harris and other latter-day Buddhists/Humeans.

Four Types of Ontological Egalitarianism

There are egalitarians in ontology as there are in political theory.

Herewith, four types of ontological egalitarianism: egological, spatial, temporal, and modal.

Egological egalitarianism is the view there is a plurality of equally real selves. I take it we are all egological egalitarians in sane moments. I'll assume that no one reading this thinks, solipsistically, that he alone is real and that others, if they exist at all, exist only as merely intentional objects for him. The problem of Other Minds may concern us, but that is an epistemological problem, one that presupposes that there are other minds/selves. On ontological egalitarianism, then, no self enjoys ontological privilege.

Spatial egalitarianism is the that there is a plurality of equally real places. Places other than here are just as real as the place picked out by a speaker's use of 'here.' I take it we are all spatial egalitarians. No one, not even a Manhattanite, thinks that the place where he is is the only real place. Here is real but so is yonder. No place enjoys ontological privilege. All places are equal.

Temporal egalitarianism is the view that there is a plurality of equally real times. Times other than the present time are just as real as the present time. No time enjoys ontological privilege, which implies that there is nothing ontologically special about the present time. All times are equal. No time is present, period. This is called the B-theory of time. Here is a fuller explanation.

Modal egalitarianism is the view that there is a plurality of equally real possibilities. Possibilities other than those that are actual are just as real as those that are actual. It is plausible to think of possibilities as coming in maximal or 'world-sized' packages. Call them possible worlds. On modal egalitarianism, then, all possible worlds are equally real. No world enjoys ontological privilege. Our world, the world we take to be actual, is not absolutely actual; it is merely actual for us, or rather, actual at itself. But that is true of every world: each is actual at itself. No world is actual, period. In respect of actuality, all possible worlds are equal.

What is curious about these four types of ontological egalitarianism is that, while the first two are about as close to common sense as one is likely to get, the second two are not. Indeed, the fourth will strike most people as crazy. Was David Lewis crazy? I don't know, but I hear he was a bad driver.

Related: Philosophers as Bad Drivers?

Lecturer on Personal Identity Denied Honorarium

The members of the philosophy department were so convinced by the lecturer's case against diachronic personal identity that they refused to pay him his honorarium on the ground that the potential recipient could not be the same person as the lecturer. This from a piece by Stanley Hauerwas:

It is by no means clear to me that I am the same person who wrote Hannah's Child. Although philosophically I have a stronger sense of personal identity than Daniel Dennett, who after having given a lecture to a department of philosophy on personal identity, was not given his honorarium. The department refused to give him his honorarium because, given Dennett's arguments about personal identity, or lack thereof, the department was not confident that the person who had delivered the lecture would be the same person who would receive the honorarium.

That has to be a joke, right? It sounds like the sort of tall tale that Dennett would tell.

My understanding of character, which at least promises more continuity in our lives than Dennett thinks he can claim, does not let me assume that I am the same person who wrote Hannah's Child. I cannot be confident I am the same person because the person who wrote Hannah's Child no doubt was changed by having done so. While I'm unable to state what I learned by writing the book, I can at least acknowledge that I must have been changed by having done so.

Hauerwas is confusing numerical and qualitative identity. Yes, you have been changed by writing your book. No doubt about it. Does it follow that you are a numerically different person than the one who wrote the book? Of course not. What follows is merely that you are qualitatively different, different in respect of some properties or qualities.

Perhaps there is no strict diachronic personal identity. This cannot be demonstrated, however, from the trivial observation that people change property-wise over time. For that is consistent with strict diachronic identity.