Abstract
Is a subject who undergoes an experience necessarily aware of undergoing the experience? According to the view here developed, a positive answer to this question should be accepted if ‘awareness’ is understood in a specific way, - in the sense of what will be called ‘primitive awareness’. Primitive awareness of being experientially presented with something involves, furthermore, being pre-reflectively aware of oneself as an experiencing subject. An argument is developed for the claims that (a) pre-reflective self-awareness is the basis of our understanding of what it is to be an experiencing subject and that (b) that understanding reveals what being an experiencing subject consists in and what it is for experiences to belong to one single experiencer. Claim (b) is used in an argument in favor of the so-called simple view with respect to synchronic and diachronic unity of consciousness.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A detailed argument for the view that the terminology here chosen (the framework of experiential properties) is preferable to the one commonly used (to the experience property framework) is developed in Nida-Rümelin (2016).
Philosophers who accept some version of the Humean claim according to which the experiencing subject is nothing but a “bundle of perceptions” are arguably committed to the conceptual and to the ontological claim here criticized. A revealing discussion of the issue can be found in the classical paper Roderick Chisholm (1969). The ontological claim under consideration is famously defended in Derek Parfit (1984), chapters 10–13.
I would like to thank Katalin Balog and Uriah Kriegel for extended discussions about this topic which helped me a lot to develop the ideas presented in this paper and in particular in the present section.
The trivialization just formulated concerns the ontological claim if the premises of the argument are read as ontological theses; it concerns the conceptual claim if the premises are read as claims true in virtue of our understanding of the concepts they involve.
In hallucination, for instance, the presented ‘object’ does not exist, or so I would claim. An argument can be developed for the more radical thesis that phenomenal presence and more generally ‘presentation’ in the relevant sense never involves an existing object (compare Nida-Rümelin [2011] and Nida-Rümelin, "Conscious Individuals. Sketch of a Theory" (unpublished).
In the case of pain the confusion is wide-spread. The term “pain” is often used in a systematically ambiguous manner, ambiguous between the event of a subject being presented with a certain event (“pain” referring to an experience) which appears to be located somewhere in the subject’s body and the apparently so located event itself (“pain” referring to the object given to the subject in that experience).
Famously, Brentano holds such a view in his distinction between the primary object of e.g., an auditory experience which is the heard tone and the secondary object of that same experience which is the hearing of the tone (see Brentano 1874, Vol.1, book 2). This basic idea is taken up in Kriegel’s self-representational theory of consciousness (see Kriegel 2009). A similar idea (about phenomenally conscious experience) is central as well in the motivation for so-called higher order theories of consciousness (see for different versions Lycan 2004; Rosenthal 2002). The claim is sometimes combined with the view that the particular awareness of having the experience is included in the experience itself and yet does not involve the experience being an object of the experience or an object for the experiencing subject. Such one-level and ‘non-objectual’ views are defended in Zahavi (1999), chapter 2, Zahavi (2006) and in Gertler (2012).
For such non-objectual views see end of the preceding footnote. Dan Zahavi uses the problem about recognition here briefly mentioned as one main motivation for his non-objectual account of self-consciousness (see Zahavi (1999), chapter 2, 17–19).
I am leaving it open here if every case in which an object is given to a subject in an experience which exhibits basic intentionality is a case of phenomenal presence. Perhaps one should take phenomenal presence as a sub-kind of a relevant more general kind of being presented to someone. - Not all experiential properties are p-experiential properties. There is at least one exception: being aware of oneself in the way here at issue is an experiential property since being in that way aware of oneself is part of what it is like to experience. But that kind of awareness does not exhibit basic intentionality.
It is one thing to say that the experience itself is not an object for the subject in having the experience and quite another to say that the subject is not an object of the experience (or is not given to the subject undergoing the experience). Non-objectual views of self-consciousness usually can be understood as claiming both (see for references end of footnote 9). These two issues are clearly distinguished and discussed separately in Siewert (2013).
The first objection is the way I now understand the worry formulated by Franz Knappick in October 2015 after my talk at the institute Jean Nicod in Paris. The second objection is how I interpret Charles Siewert when he critized my view on the same occasion and a few weeks later in London at a small conference organized by Mark Textor at King’s college. I would like to thank both philosophers for having helped me to see how the view here proposed must be further clarified.
To call this account the ‘semantic sense’ suggests itself since it is in line with a natural and common understanding of what it is for an expression occurring in a sentence to refer to a given object.
For a revealing description of philosophical views which apparently include the mistake here described (or what I take to be a mistake) see Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi (2005/2014).
I would like to thank Davor Bodrozic for his helpful criticism of an earlier version of the argument in the present paragraph.
A sophisticated version of this view which would need a more detailed response than can be developed in the present section can be found in Siewert (2013), 255–257.
The terminology here criticized is part of what I call “the experience property framework” in my paper (2016) in which a detailed criticism of that framework is developed including a description of mistakes the framework invites about the relation between consciousness and self-awareness.
The following citation taken from Kriegel (2012), p. 443 may serve as an example: “On my view, however, there is more to be said about phenomenal character – there is more structure to it than is typically recognized. In particular, I distinguish two components of the ‘bluish way it is like for me’ to have the experience: the bluish component, which I call qualitative character, and the for-me component, which I call subjective character. To make a conceptual separation between qualitative and subjective character is not to imply that they can occur apart from one another.
My view is that there are many determinate phenomenal characters – bluish-for-me-ness, greenish-for-me-ness, bitterish-for-me-ness, trumpet-for-me-ness, etc. – and the determinable of all of them is for-me-ness as such. We grasp what subjective character is by fixing on what is common to all phenomenally conscious states, and grasp what qualitative character is by fixing on what varies among them.“
Talking of mine-ness and subjective character understood as properties of experiences is part of what one may call the ‚experience property framework‘which is criticized in detail Nida-Rümelin (2016). A detailed analysis and criticism of so-called subjective character or mineness is developed in Nida-Rümelin (unpublished).
Wittgenstein (1958) introduces the distinction in The Blue Book, p. 66–67. Shoemaker (1968) proposes an influential more precise account by distinguishing between first person judgements which are immune to error through misidentification and first person judgments which do not have that special status. The phenomenon is further examined in Evans (1982), §§6.6, 7.2., 7.3. and 7.5. A careful analysis of the phenomenon and related important distinctions can be found in Prior (1999). For recent studies of the phenomenon compare Simon Prosser and François Récanati (eds.) (2014).
Evans (1982), section 7.3.
Expressed in the terminology introduced in Goff (2011) this would mean that we only have an ‘opaque concept’ of synchronic unity of consciousness, a concept which provides no understanding (not even any partial understanding) of what it is for two simultaneous experiences to involve the same subject. The argument here sketched is closely related to the arguments against property dualism developed in Nida-Rümelin (2007) and in Filip Goff (2011). All these arguments work with assumptions about our access to the nature of a specific phenomenon where we have that access on the basis of the way we are aware of our own experience. An analysis of the commonalities and differences must be left to a different occasion.
The dispute between reductionists and non-reductionists with respect to transtemporal personal identity (and thereby with respect to diachronic unity) is well-documented in the collection edited by Gasser and Stefan (2012). The issue is usually treated as a problem about identity of people or human beings. The material here sketched suggests that it should rather be treated as a problem about transtemporal identity of experiencing individuals in general.
The simple view about transtemporal identity of conscious beings has an analogue with respect to identity across possible worlds which states that there is no non-circular way to describe what it takes for a conscious being to exist under counterfactual circumstances. This view is developed in Nida-Rümelin (2012). To complete the motivation and defense of this further claim an argument similar to the one sketched here for transtemporal identity would have to be developed which will be done in chapter 10 auf my book [forthcoming]).
References
Brentano, F. (1874), “Psychologie von empirische Standpunkt”. Duncker & Humblot.
Chisholm, R.M. (1969), The observability of the self. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30: 7–12.
Evans, G. (1982), In The varieties of reference, ed. J. Mc. Dowell: Oxford University Press.
Gallagher, S. & Zahavi, D. (2005/2014), Phenomenological Approaches to Self-Consciousness. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Gasser, G. & Stefan, M. (eds.) (2012), Personal Identity. Complex or Simple?, Cambridge University Press.
Gertler, B. (2012), Conscious states as objects of awareness: on Uriah Kriegel, Subjective consciousness: a self-representational theory. Philosophical Studies 159: 447–455.
Goff, F. (2011), A posteriori physicalists get our phenomenal concepts wrong. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89(2): 191–209.
Kriegel, U. (2009), Subjective Consciousness: a Self-Representational Theory, Oxford University Press.
Kriegel, U. (2012), Précis of Subjective consciousness: a self-representational theory. Philosophical Studies 159(3): 443–445.
Levine, J. (2006), “Conscious Awareness and Representation”, in Kenneth Williford & Uriah Kriegel, eds., Self-representational Approaches to Consciousness, MIT Press: 173–198.
Lycan, W. (2004), "The superiority of HOT to HOP”. In Higher Order Theories of Consciousness: an Anthology, ed. R. Gennaro, 93–114. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Nida-Rümelin, M. (2007), “Grasping phenomenal properties” In Torin Alter & Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford University Press, 307–388.
Nida-Rümelin, M. (2011), “Phenomenal presence and perceptual awareness: a subjectivist account of perceptual openness to the world.” Philosophical Issues 21(1): 352–383.
Nida-Rümelin, M. (2012), “The non-descriptive Nature of Conscious Individuals”, in Georg Gasser & Matthias Stefan (eds.), Personal Identity. Complex or Simple?, Cambridge University Press, 157–176.
Nida-Rümelin, M. (2016), “The experience property framework – a misleading paradigm”, in Trends in philosophy of language and mind, special issue of Synthese edited by Hanoch Ben-Yami, Robyen Carston and Markus Werning.
Parfit, D. (1984), Reasons and Persons, Oxford University Press.
Prior, J. (1999), “Immunity to error through misidentification”. Philosophical Topics 26(1): 271–304.
Prosser, S. & Récanati, F., eds. (2014), Immunity to error through misidentification, Cambridge University Press.
Rosenthal, D. (2002), “Explaining consciousness”, in D. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind. Classical and contemporary readings.”, Oxford University Press, 109–131.
Shoemaker, S. (1968), “Self-reference and self-awareness”. Journal of Philosophy 65(19): 555–567.
Siewert, Ch. (2013), “Phenomenality and self-awareness” in U. Kriegel (ed.), Phenomenal Intentionality, Oxford University Press, 235–259.
Wittgenstein, L. (1958), The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: New York.
Zahavi, D. (1999), Self-awareness and alterity: A phenomenological investigation, Northwestern University Press.
Zahavi, D. (2006), “Thinking about self-consciousness: phenomenological perspectives.” In Self-representational Approaches to Consciousness, ed. U. Kriegel and A. Williford, 273–295. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
I would like to thank the editors of this special issue, Jonathan Farrell and Tom McClelland, for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nida-Rümelin, M. Self-Awareness. Rev.Phil.Psych. 8, 55–82 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0328-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0328-x