Abstract
Self-consciousness can be defined as the ability to think ‘I’-thoughts. Recently, it has been suggested that self-consciousness in this sense can (and should) be accounted for in terms of nonconceptual forms of self-representation. Here, I will argue that while theories of nonconceptual self-consciousness do provide us with important insights regarding the essential genetic and epistemic features of self-conscious thought, they can only deliver part of the full story that is required to understand the phenomenon of self-consciousness. I will provide two arguments to this effect, drawing on insights from the philosophy of language and on structural differences between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of representation. Both arguments rest on the intuition that while self-consciousness requires explicit self-representation, nonconceptual content can at best provide implicit self-related information. I will conclude that in order to explain the emergence of self-conscious thought out of more basic forms of representation one has to explain the transition between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation.
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Notes
It is important to note that what makes a judgment immune to error through misidentification is the evidence on which it is based, not the subject matter or the fact that is employs the first-person pronoun (Evans 1982, Ch. 7).
Or, in indirect speech, by means of the indirect reflexive pronoun, commonly marked as ‘he*’ (as in ‘he himself’) (Castaneda 1966).
For phenomenologically oriented attempts to give an account of self-consciousness in terms of basic, nonconceptual forms of self-representation also see, for example, Frank (2007); Legrand (2007); Poellner (2003); Zahavi (2005). These authors argue that full-fledged, reflective self-consciousness must ultimately be based on a pre-reflective, immediate familiarity with oneself, a sense of mineness, which accompanies all conscious experience. However, it is far from obvious how explanatory the notion of a pre-reflective self-consciousness really is, how it is to be spelled out in positive terms, and whether it truly reflects an irreducible aspect of our conscious experience (Schear 2009). In the interest of not further complicating my argumentation, I will not discuss this notion here.
That is, behaviour that shows no law-like relation between sensory input and behavioural output.
The basic idea is that conceptual mastery of the thought ‘a is F’ implies the ability to think ‘a is G’ for any property G of which the subject of the thought has a conception, and similarly to think ‘b is F’ for any object b of which she has a conception (Evans 1982, p. Sec. 4.3).
We will return to this notion in the next section.
But notice that my arguments will go through even if you reject the notion of nonconceptual content that I have sketched here.
Insofar as other forms of nonconceptual self-consciousness that are discussed by Bermúdez and others are genuinely nonconceptual, my arguments will apply to these as well. Note, however, that I assume the difference between nonconceptual and conceptual forms of representation to be a gradual one, such that there will be cases where there is not a clear-cut decision as to whether a particular representation is to be considered nonconceptual or conceptual. And there are indeed some cases to be found in Bermúdez’ discussion (in particular in his discussion of psychological self-awareness) where it seems unclear whether we are still dealing with a nonconceptual representation. For the sake of clarity of my argumentation, I will restrict my discussion here to cases that are clearly instances of nonconceptual representation.
Note that one should distinguish between proprioceptive information processing at the subpersonal level and proprioceptive awareness. Only the latter is of interest here. (Likewise, our concern throughout the article is not with subpersonal perceptual processes, but rather with perceptual representations at the conscious level.)
Following Dienes and Perner (1999), I take it that a “fact is explicitly represented if there is an expression (mental or otherwise) whose meaning is just that fact; in other words, there is an internal state whose function is to indicate that fact” (Dienes and Perner 1999, p. 736). That is to say that a fact or state of affairs is represented explicitly when the mental state in question contains a component that directly refers to this fact or states of affairs. In contrast, a fact or state of affairs is implicit in a mental representation when the mental state in question does not contain a component that directly refers to this fact, but when this fact or state of affairs is conveyed as part of the contextual function of the mental state.
This example is inspired by Baker (1998).
The applicability of Perry’s distinction between thoughts that concern an object and those that are about an object to the discussion about nonconceptual self-consciousness is also discussed in Meeks (2006)—though he is rather critical of this application.
The notion of the self as an ‘unarticulated constituent’ of perception was first brought to my attention through a conference presentation by Arnon Cahen (2006). Also see Meeks (2006) for a related discussion, which also mentions Z-land and considers the analogy to perception. Note, however, that both authors come to rather different conclusions from the one defended here.
Note that in his essay ‘Thought without representation’ Perry states that “Z-land comes in not as an unarticulated constituent each Z-landish weather statement is about, but a global factor that all Z-land discourse about the weather concerns”. (2000, p. 179) This is to distinguish the Z-land case from cases where we talk about weather without articulating a location because it is obvious from the conversational context what the location is—in our case, the location does come in as an unarticulated constituent of each weather statement. In contrast to Z-landers we are aware of other places and thus have to “track” which location the conversation is about (whether or not that location is articulated). But since Z-landers are not aware of other places, no such “tracking” has to take place for them—their beliefs and assertions carry a “lesser burden” compared to ours, so to speak. Accordingly, “the Z-landers assertions and beliefs concern Z-land, but are not about Z-land” (Perry 2000, p. 179: emphasis original). What I am claiming here is that the case of perception and proprioception is analogous to the case of weather-reports in Z-land.
You may have noticed that this argument it somewhat independent of the question as to whether the content of perception and proprioception is indeed best characterized as being nonconceptual. Although there are good reasons to think that this is the case, even on a conceptualist theory of perception and proprioception the same point still applies. For whether or not the content of perception and proprioception is conceptual or nonconceptual, the fact remains that no explicit self-representation is required in order to account for the action-guiding function of this content.
See Schear (2009) for a relevant discussion of Sartre’s phenomenological analysis of the experience of being immersed in reading a book. And see Goldberg et al. (2006) for a neuroscientific study that found a segregation between the patterns of activity associated with a demanding perceptual task and those associated with self-reflection. Moreover, the study showed that regions that showed enhanced activity during self-reflection were inhibited during the demanding perceptual task.
It is an interesting question—that I will not address here—whether this is true also for other types of perceptual experience, such as smell.
The objection seems to commit the error of confusing the vehicle with the content of representation (Millikan 1993). According to Millikan, one mistake often committed is to transfer properties of the vehicle of representation to the content, and vice versa. One example “involves importing and exporting the limit of a representation. If there is a limit to what is represented, there is a corresponding limit to the vehicle of representation, and a limit to the vehicle of representation is then exported to be a representation of the limits of the represented. But the limit of a represented content is not a representation of a limit.” This mistake seems to be in play when it is concluded that because the visual field is bounded, the bounds of the visual field are represented in the visual field.
This objection was proposed to me by Gottfried Vosgerau during a conference presentation.
These explanations usually involve the comparator model, which is a subpersonal, unconscious mechanism that ensures motor control by comparing a copy of the efference signal of a motor command with the afference (including reafference) signal (von Holst and Mittelstaedt 1950).
Which is not to say that the subject could not, on the basis of her bodily experience, form the explicit belief that her legs are crossed (by applying the first-person concept). But, as I argued above, the fact that the content of her experience provides her with sufficient warrant to form this belief (due to the fact that her experience is necessarily self-related) does not imply (or require) that the experiential content itself contains an explicitly self-referring component. Rather, the subject becomes self-aware only via the explicit self-ascription of the experience by means of applying the first person concept.
I am indebted to Arnon Cahen for helpful discussions of this point.
Notice that the argument presented here is different from the one in Meeks (2006), although it was inspired by the latter. Meeks argues that due to the noncompositionality of nonconceptual content, it cannot accurately represent the subject of a self-ascription while misrepresenting the property—it can only misrepresent tout court (or else fail to count as genuine representational content). Hence, according to Meeks, nonconceptual content cannot be immune to error through misidentification. In contrast, what I am arguing is that the notion of immunity to error through misidentification cannot apply to nonconceptual content in the first place, so nonconceptual can neither be said to be immune, nor can it be said not to be immune.
For further discussion see Musholt (forthcoming).
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Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Cognitive Science Symposium at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, the Philosophy of Mind Colloquium at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the ESPP2009 conference in Budapest, and the LSE. I am grateful to members of the audiences at these meetings for helpful comments and discussions. I would also like to thank Alex Byrne, Arnon Cahen, Tomis Kapitan, Michael Pauen, Francois Recanati, David Rosenthal, Patrick Wilken and an anonymous referee for this journal for instructive discussions and/or helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper.
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Musholt, K. Self-consciousness and nonconceptual content. Philos Stud 163, 649–672 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9837-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9837-8