This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sat, 31 Dec 2016 20:09:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms their material, not actual intentions to produce sounds, but the mere imagining of them.) In that case, the state of intending certain linguistic phenomena (the "meaning intention") is not merely externally linked with the state that these phenomena are supposed to express. It is not merely linked via an intentionality that refers to the intentionality of the state in question. Rather, the linguistic intentionality is itself a part of that original intentionality. Apart from these various aspects of Searle's approach, Searle also offers an extremely persuasive refutation of Frege, Davidson, and just about everyone else, concerning intensional contexts, that is independent of his own approach to intentionality, And his equally convincing critique of "causal chain" approaches to proper names (in which Network, Background, and "intentional causality" play some role) is also largely separable from the details of Searle's own view. It should in any case be unnecessary to state that a thorough study of all aspects of Searle's approach is essential to any serious study of issues in the philosophy of mind. RICHARD E. AQUILA The University of Tennessee Self-Awareness: A Semantical Inquiry. HARALD DELIUS. Munich: C. H. Beck, r98r. Pp. x, 276. I. The thesis of Delius's extremely interesting and pleasantly constructed book is that statements of self-awareness such as "I am aware that I see a cat" possess what he calls 'Cartesian characteristics' of indubitability or absolute selfevidence, and that this is the case in virtue of the fact that such statements are not about anything independent of themselves. The book is described as a 'semantical inquiry', but it is not by any means a contribution to the philosophy of language of the predictable sort. Statements of self-awareness express what Delius calls 'egological experiences', and the subject of the book is most accurately described as consisting in the relations between egological statements and egological experiences, in a sense to be made clear below. Delius sees egological experiences as being enjoyed only in special theoretical or reflective circumstances: normally we see, hear, etc., without being aware that we do so. Our assumption that we are in some sense continuously aware flows, he argues, from the fact that we have a certain kind of knowledge, 'that it is possible to have egological experiences, and that they can be repeated and reiterated (with varying factual contents) ad libitum' (p. 178). But this knowledge is dispositional: it does not reflect a special property or attribute of "self-awareness." The insistence on the Cartesian characteristics of egological statements gives rise immediately to the problem of intentionality. Clearly, a statement like 'I am aware that I see a cat', if it is to be self-evident, must not be interpreted in such a way that it would sanction the inference to, for example, 'there is a cat within my visual field'. Such statements must be understood in what Delius calls their 'non-entailing sense'. But then how is the object-component in the state of affairs described by a true egological statement related to the corresponding empirical object (assuming that there is one)? After considering and rejecting the more obvious alternative answers to this question Delius 170 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sat, 31 Dec 2016 20:09:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms affirms, in effect, that he will provide no answer of his own (pp. 79ff.). He argues that it is more important and more interesting to investigate the nature of the states of affairs which make true egological statements as a whole and he assumes, justifiably or not, that it is possible to answer this question without deciding the issue as to the nature of their object-components. To this end he draws a distinction amongst states of affairs in general between language-independent states of affairs, which exist, as 'part' of the empirical (spatio-temporal) universe, quite regardless of whether this universe may, or may not, also contain beings which possess a language that may be employed for furnishing descriptions of these states of affairs (p. 8 sf.), and language-dependent states of affairs, which depend for their existence upon some corresponding description or statement. The principal thesis of Delius's book can now be reformulated as follows: the states of affairs described by egological statements are language-dependent. This thesis provides a way of saving the Cartesian characteristics of egological statements, since the correspondence between sentence and that which makes it true is here, as it were, guaranteed, 'reaches a degree of flawless perfection which may safely be called "absolute".' (p. 120) And at the same time it enables us to avoid appealing to any notion of a pre-linguistic 'immanent' or 'inner perception'. For after all, Delius argues (p. 90), in order to gain access to an egological state of affairs do we not have to formulate the corresponding egological state of affairs in language in order to have even the first idea of what we are going to perceive by inner perception? II. The interest in the idea of language-dependence is that once it has been formulated it becomes clear that a whole family of interrelated notions can be defined, each one of which generates a different picture of the relation between egological statements and egological states of affairs. Thus Delius is quite clear that each and every egological state of affairs depends upon some one specific actually existing description or statement articulated by the reflecting subject himself at the time of the experience. It is possible, however, to adopt a less mechanical view of the connection between statement and state of affairs by appealing to a notion of what we might call structurally L-dependent states of affairs, defined as states of affairs which would not exist if no corresponding statement or description could exist (in some sense of 'could' to be more precisely determined). Structurally L-dependent states of affairs would then reflect actually existing, learned linguistic structures or practices, but they need not reflect any specific statement, in the way in which Delius's thesis requires. Seeing egological states of affairs as merely structurally L-dependent would allow Delius to accept some egological experiences as being, contingently, not linguistically articulated (perhaps because the wealth of content of the experience overwhelms the subject to the extent that he is only 'inarticulately' aware that he is having it), without giving up his view that egological experiences are yet somehow closely tied to language (since he would in effect be claiming that even this kind of inarticulate awareness would be open only to someone who had interiorised appropriate linguistic forms). The notion of CRITICAL NOTICES 171 This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sat, 31 Dec 2016 20:09:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms structural L-dependence might be employed also to make sense of some of Wittgenstein's remarks as to why animals cannot feel hope or pride or manifest certain sorts of behaviour. Such phenomena would seem to be precisely structurally dependent on associated linguistic forms. Three further notions of L-dependence I shall mention only in passing: (i) technical L-dependence (a notion distinguished by Delius himself): a technically L-dependent state of affairs is such that -though it exists independently of being expressed by any linguistic formulation-we do not have an extra-linguistic access to it, i.e. we cannot become acquainted with this state of affairs other than by producing and/or understanding a linguistic formulation (sentence) expressing it (p. 135); (ii) what we might call contour L-dependence, which would take account of Delius's occasional suggestions that whilst the domain of inner sense (or of what Sartre would have called 'pre-reflexive consciousness') might indeed exist, independently of language, as a (relatively) amorphous mass, it is dependent upon our linguistic formulations for its contours or for the articulation of its internal boundaries; (iii) trivial L-dependence, which would be possessed by objects belonging to the subject-matters of linguistics a.nd of related disciplines. Such objects vowels, for example, or lisps cannot, trivially, exist unless language and use(r)s of language exist. And as Delius himself points out in an interesting excursus into the sphere of poetics: No argument will be required for showing that the state of affairs that we (viz., human beings) enter into the retarded core of our finite fruit is none that could be invested with any kind of L-independence (p. 137). III. In order to evaluate the tenability of Delius's claim that egological states of affairs and the associated experiences are dependent on specific uses of language, it is first of all necessary to draw yet a further distinction between two complementary senses of 'X is dependent on Y'. This can mean either A. X cannot continue to exist unless Y exists or B. X cannot begin to exist unless Y exists. This distinction is not too carefully drawn by Delius himself, though it will turn out to be crucial to his argument. A passage like: In making an egological statement in a specific situation a person brings about the state of affairs described by this statement. Thus, if such a statement is true, it is true in virtue of something (constituting the ground for its truth) which would not exist if the statement had not been made (p. 95), seems at first to suggest that it is simply B that he has in mind when he speaks of the L-dependence of egological states of affairs. That this is not the case, however, can be seen by considering an example of a variety of states of affairs which are L-dependent in just this sense, namely those legal or quasilegal states of affairs which are brought into being when I say, for example, "I bequeath ... ," or "I promise ... ," or "I baptise thee ... ," in I 72 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sat, 31 Dec 2016 20:09:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms appropriate circumstances. Once such a state of affairs has been brought into being 'it continues to exist after the linguistic formulation has ceased to be made or uttered . . . and for this continued existence it does not depend in any way on this utterance ever being made again' (p. r66). Clearly the way things stand in the egological case is quite different from this. A closer examination of Delius's text reveals, in fact, that he wants to affirm that egological states of affairs are both Aand B-dependent on associated statements. And this implies that, as in the case of greetings or congratulatings (cf. pp. r69ff.), the linguistic and experiential moments involved are in the end just two aspects of one and the same thing. But can we really accept this deflationary account of egological experiences? Doubts are raised already when we consider the nature of our awareness of what is external (of a piece of wax, for example). An awareness of this sort has temporal parts, can indeed be arbitrarily extended in time; it can be interrupted, can die away, and is subject to various sorts of transformations over time (for example those transformations which consist in its being linguistically articulated). An act of judgment, in contrast, for example an act in which the existence of such awareness is registered, has no temporal parts, is not temporally extendable, and cannot be interrupted. The contrast, one would have thought, could not be greater, and thus we have to conclude that the peculiar L-dependent variety of 'awareness' which is involved in egological experiences as Delius conceives them has nothing whatsoever to do with awareness in the normal sense of the term: that 'inner' awareness is something wholly different from the awareness of what is external. But then it becomes difficult to see what, exactly, Delius is talking about with his 'egological experiences', and how his discussions could possibly throw light, e.g., on the strengths and weaknesses of Cartesianism. Matters are more complicated, of course, in virtue of the fact that the temporally punctual acts of judgment in which egological (and other) experiences come to expression are articulated in language; for such articulations do of course take time, are capable of being interrupted, etc. But then the temporal structures of assertions (statements, used sentences) are of a quite different sort from the temporal structures of our arbitrarily extendable experiences of awareness. They are above all functionally dependent upon or sensitive to certain aspects of the grammatical structures of the sentences involved; and they are, as a matter of necessity, subject to modifications reflecting phenomena of emphasis and intonation, etc. All of these peculiarities are absent from phenomena of awareness as normally understood. And indeed, even the simple-minded phenomenology of egological experiences tells us that, whilst they may indeed be closely bound up with a linguistic articulation, they can as a matter of necessity continue to exist for some time after the relevant sentence has been pronounced, as is proved by the fact that they are capable of a cumulative articulation, where a sequence of sentences, sometimes identical, sometimes complementary, are at work in articulating a single such experience. It is the possibility of cumulative articulation, we may suppose, which is exploited both by descriptive phenomenology and by psychoanalysis. BARRY SMITH University of Manchester CRITICAL NOTICES I 7