Abstract
I can be aware of myself, and thereby come to know things about myself, in a variety of different ways. But is there some special way in which I—and only I—can learn about myself? Can I become aware of myself by introspecting? Do I somehow show up in my own conscious experiences? David Hume and most contemporary philosophers say no. They deny that the self shows up in experience. However, in this paper I appeal to research on schizophrenia—on thought insertion, in particular—to argue that Hume and his follows are wrong: The self does, in fact, show up in experience.
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Notes
To be fair, while it’s true that few contemporary philosophers argue directly against Hume’s position, more than a few philosophers at least register their disagreement with it, including Strawson (2000, 2009), Bayne (2008), Kriegel (2004), Madell (2015), Graham (2002), Musholt (2013), Guillot (2013), and Billon (2014).
I assume that there are selves at least in sense that there are things like you and me who think thoughts. Some—in certain Buddhist traditions, for example—deny that there are such things as selves. But I will not address such views here. I assume that we exist, and that we think.
See, e.g., Howell (2010). Howell grants that we experience ourselves in the minimal sense described above, but then he claims that, “… a subject’s mental properties do not present themselves as properties of the subject. While he is aware of them in some sense, they are not in fact salient to the subject as his properties: they are phenomenologically exhausted in their presentation of the world” (p. 476).
Here I especially have in mind those who subscribe to higher-order thought (or perception) theories of consciousness (e.g., Rosenthal 2005; Carruthers 2005), or to self-representational theories of consciousness (where ‘self’ refers to mental states, not the self. See Kriegel and Williford 2006, for a collection of essays on this view). Some philosophers who accept one of these theories also accept self-experience (e.g., Kriegel 2009; Rosenthal 2004, 2012). But most higher-order or self-representational theories of consciousness do not entail this result.
I recognize that this passage may seem tendentious in the present context. First, one might think that whether experiences have a “my-ness” is precisely what’s at issue in this paper. So I won’t just assume that thoughts have a “my-ness”. Second, some philosophers (e.g., Carruthers and Veillet 2011; Prinz 2011) deny that thinking is a conscious activity. These philosophers are likely to interpret thought insertion as a disorder having to do with inner speech rather than thought. I think this interpretation is wrong, but I won’t insist on it. For my arguments don’t hang on this issue.
See, for example, Gibbs (2000, p. 196), Marcel (2003, p. 80), Sass (2000, p. 154), Radden (1999, p. 351), Stephens and Graham (2000), Campbell (2002), Carruthers (2007, p. 537), and Coliva (2002). Eilan (2000, p. 106–107), Parnas (2000, p. 139), and Sass (2000, p. 157) especially emphasize that thought insertion is a disorder of experience. In what follows, I will assume that thought insertion is a real phenomenon, and that the reports of those who suffer from thought insertion reflect genuine disturbances in their experiences.
This is not to say that the feeling of ownership is the same across normal cases and cases of thought insertion. It is only to say that those suffering from inserted thoughts are clearly not inclined, on the basis of their experiences, to describe their thoughts as unowned. There is something about their experiences that leads them to attribute their thoughts to another. So thought insertion cannot be explained just by saying that there is a breakdown in some brute non-individual-specific feeling of ownership. I’ll take up this issue again in §2.3.
Sass (2000) describes the symptoms associated with thought insertion as “self withdrawal” (p. 169), and he says that these symptoms, “necessarily imply the … absence of something that is normally present—the sense of ownership of intentional control” (p. 154). Blakemore (2000) and Gallagher (2000) say thought insertion involves a “breakdown” or “lack” in experience. Frith (1992) suggests that inserted thoughts are a “disruption” and a “deprivation” that implies that in normal circumstances “we have some way of recognizing our own thoughts” (p. 80). See also Stephens and Graham (2000, ch. 7), Gibbs (2000, p. 196), and Zubin (1985, p. 462). Here I do not deny that inserted thoughts come with additions to experience. My only point is that the breakdown of the sense of ownership in thought insertion includes an experiential absence or deficit.
Stephens and Graham’s (2000) application of the subject/agent distinction to thought insertion is commonly accepted among philosophers and psychologists who study schizophrenia (see, e.g., Coliva 2002; Radden 1999, p. 355; Gallagher 2000, 2015; Bayne 2004; Kriegel 2004, p. 189). So I will proceed with this aspect of Stephens and Graham’s account. But keep in mind that my arguments do not depend on these particular details. If it turns out that the experience of ownership should be understood as the experience of oneself in some role other than that of agent/author of one’s thoughts, then my argument can be amended to account for that.
Or as Frank Ocean puts it, “You can’t miss what you ain’t had” (“There Will Be Tears”). I recognize that Ocean’s claim conflicts with Carly Rae Jepsen’s confession: “Before you came into my life I missed you so bad” (“Call Me Maybe”). But I’m with Ocean on this one.
Hume (1739/1975) specifically cites the relations of resemblance and causation (I.iv.6). But later, in the Appendix to A Treatise of Human Nature, he expresses doubts as to whether this account succeeds.
Specifically, there is no evidence (that I know of, or indeed, that Prinz (2012) cites) in patient reports or other clinical assessments for inserted thoughts involving anything relevantly like an alarm signal. One could relax one’s use of ‘alarm signal’ so that it ends up just meaning something like ‘an abnormal experience’ or even ‘whatever it is in patients’ experiences that causes them to report that their thoughts are inserted’. But then positing an “alarm signal” in one of these senses would be explanatorily inert—it wouldn’t contribute to an informative explanation of the nature of thought insertion or the reasons for patient reports.
Of course, what it’s like to detect inconsistencies in others’ actions may be different in various ways from what it’s like to detect inconsistencies in one’s own actions. But the point here is just that merely detecting an inconsistency in action, by itself, is not enough to bring about alarm signals or cause inserted thoughts. For I can detect inconsistencies in action (e.g., your action) without bringing about alarm signals or inserted thoughts. So there has to be more to the story here.
Though that’s even doubtful. For it’s implausible that inserted thoughts never bear a feeling of commitment (consider: “The grass looks cool”), or that all non-inserted thoughts do bear a feeling of commitment (consider: obsessive compulsive thought disorder).
See, for example, Rosenthal (2005, 2012) and Carruthers (2005). The same point also applies to self-representational theories of consciousness (see Kriegel and Williford 2006). Alexandre Billon and Uriah Kriegel (2015) defend an interesting proposal according to which thought insertion is partially explained as the result of patients being aware of their thoughts, but not phenomenally conscious of them. I have some of the same worries about this proposal as above—patients do not report or otherwise suggest that they are unaware of inserted thoughts in any relevant way. In fact, quite the opposite (e.g., “It is just like my mind working, but it isn’t. They come from this chap, Chris.”). But, at any rate, Billon and Kriegel admit that theirs is only a partial explanation of thought insertion. In fact, they both accept self-experience.
For a discussion of unintended thoughts and actions see Blakemore (2000, p. 188), Gallagher and Marcel (1999, p. 292), Marcel (2003), and Stephens and Graham (2000, p. 141–142); for unwanted thoughts see Bleuler (1950, p. 96) and Stephens and Graham (2000, p. 168); for aversive or sinister thoughts see Snyder (1974, p. 119), Modell (1960), Linn (1977), Gunn (2016), and Stephens and Graham (2000, p. 169). Stephens and Graham (2000) also discuss and reject the idea that inserted thoughts are unique in that they are experienced as uncontrolled (p. 159; see also Fish 1985, p. 43; Hoffman 1986, p. 536).
One might say that the brute sense of ownership is implicit or non-conscious (cf. Musholt 2013). But, remember, at this point we are assuming that what needs to be explained in thought insertion cases is an experiential deficit (see §2.1, 2.2). So appealing to a non-conscious sense of ownership will not help explain how a breakdown in experience causes patients to report that their thoughts are inserted.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
Some (e.g., certain Buddhists) might say that self-experience is an illusion simply because there is no self. I think the nature of self-experience gives us an excellent reason to believe that there is a self. But, again, I do not have the space to adequately address no-self views here (see fn. 2). So I will simply assume that there are selves at least in the minimal sense that there are thinkers of thoughts (which even Humeans can accept). The present objection is that, although there is a self in this sense, what shows up in experience isn’t really the self.
This point naturally brings to mind “Too Many Thinkers” arguments of the sort discussed by Olson (2007) and Merricks (2001). Whether or not these arguments are sound, I do believe that we should, if at all possible, avoid the conclusion that there is more than one thinker thinking my thoughts right now.
After all, as I’ve said, the breakdown in experience found in thought insertion does not appear to have anything to do with the “givenness” of experience or the way in which they are “manifest”. Thought insertion patients experience their thoughts first-personally and thus acknowledge that they are their subjects. But they nonetheless deny that those thoughts are theirs. Though see Zahavi (2005, p. 142–144) and Sass et al. (2011) for Zahavi’s approach to thought insertion (and related phenomena).
One might think that if it’s true that we are only ever peripherally aware of ourselves in experience, this offers some vindication to Hume, since he just said that he could not “catch himself” in experience. But I think the most natural way to interpret Hume, and certainly the way to interpret others who followed in his footsteps, is as saying not just that it’s hard to attend to oneself in experience, but that we simply don’t find ourselves anywhere in experience—even in the periphery. So the periphery-only view of self-experience does not vindicate Hume et al., at least not as I interpret them. However, as I will suggest below, this view may go some way toward explaining away their introspective intuitions about the elusiveness of the self.
What if one claims that merely attempting to become focally aware of oneself annihilates peripheral self-experience? Might that cause trouble for self-experience? I don’t think so. For we don’t often try to become focally aware of ourselves. So this is unlikely to cast doubt on the claim that the self normally shows up in experience. But I also think that anyone who believes that we can only be peripherally aware of ourselves should deny that merely attempting to become focally self-aware annihilates peripheral self-experience. The reason focal awareness of x is supposed to annihilate peripheral awareness of x is because the former supplants or replaces the latter (see Kriegel 2009, p. 184). But if there is no focal self-experience, then it cannot supplant peripheral self-experience, and so there is no reason to think that peripheral self-experience would thus be annihilated.
One response that I will not consider here is to say that thought insertion proves the falsity of Shoemaker’s claim that we are immune to self-misidentification. This line is suggested by Campbell (2002) and Lane and Liang (2011), but criticized (rightly, I think) by Coliva (2002) and Stephens and Graham (2000). Although those who suffer from thought insertion misidentify themselves as the agents of their thoughts, they do not misidentify themselves as the subjects of their thoughts, which is what Shoemaker’s claim is about.
Shoemaker (1994) anticipates this response with another argument. He says that in order to introspectively match my mental states to myself I would have to first know which mental states are mine. But if I already know which mental states are mine, then there is no reason to think that my self-attributions rely on a further step of matching those mental states to an individual that I have identified as myself. One response to this argument is to grant that introspective self-identification does not require matching oneself to one’s mental states. One might say that it is part of the concept of ‘I’ that it refers to this person who shows up in this experience and who experiences things from this perspective. So the single fact that I identify when I introspect is something like this-person-experiencing-P (or this-person-experienced-P). This suggestion requires much more development, however.
Indeed, even those who suffer from inserted thoughts experience themselves (just not as agents of their thoughts).
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ross Cameron, Brie Gertler, Trip Glazer, George Graham, Harold Langsam, John Mahlan, Trenton Merricks, Andrew Morgan, Paul Nedelisky, Nick Rimell, Rush Stewart, Adam Tiller, audiences at the University of Virginia, the Rhode Island Philosophical Society, and the Virginia Philosophical Association, as well as three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper.
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Duncan, M. The Self Shows Up in Experience. Rev.Phil.Psych. 10, 299–318 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0355-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0355-2