Good to hear from Tom Weir, a UMass philosophy student in the first half of the 1970s. Tom, as I recall in one of my courses you wrote an impassioned discussion of the problem of the distribution of wealth around the world. It sounds to me as though you put your philosophy education to good use. Thank you for checking in.
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A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
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The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.
NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.
NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."
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62 comments:
Thank you for your post Professor Wolff. I certainly was interested in exploring the inequality in the distribution of wealth and income back then, especially after taking Economics with Professor Bowles. I wish I could report that things have changed for the better since then but the inequalities are now worse than ever, as you well know, with the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer. I believe this has led to the rise of a national and world movement that empowers autocrats and threatens democracies everywhere. As we see in our own country even basic voting rights are now in danger of being abolished by political kingpins under the thrall of would be autocrats.
After graduating from UMASS, I realized I was not one for the academic setting, so I became a full time philosopher bus driver for a year, then headed back to school to study structural engineering. I spent 40 years designing buildings and other structures, mostly out here in the Los Angeles area. I worked my way up the ladder to become a principal of my firm, an author and lecturer, working on the cutting edge of technology, and working on some amazing design projects.
I mention this because in all those years I credited my studies at UMASS as providing me with the tools to excel in my field, especially the ability to think critically. In 1976 I think there were thousands of Psychology majors, but only about 90 Philosophy majors. I often think that I got the best deal out of it.
I wonder how others on this blog grew to live and love a life filled with the ever fascinating study of ideas.
Re income and wealth inequalities:
Domestic (within-country) inequalities have worsened, but between-country inequalities have lessened somewhat. Of course the picture in its details is more complicated, but that is the headline if one wants to summarize the last several decades in this respect.
Tom,
I started out college as a Chemistry major. In my sophomore year I took an introductory course in Philosophy and became immediately enthralled, befuddled, and gobsmacked. First, St. Anselm’s ontological argument hooked me – I knew there was a fallacy in it somewhere, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I decided to write a paper on the argument, based on a series of essays analyzing the argument, including Kant’s criticism that existence is not a predicate. Then we read Spinoza, and I was impressed by the Euclidean structure of his Ethics. I had no idea if his arguments had substantive merit, but I found the detail impressive. And then we read Hume, and it turned my world upside down. Could he possibly be right, we have no good reason to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow? I would go to dinner with my dormitory roommates at the college commons and ask them questions like, “How do you know when you return to your room that your typewriter will still be there?” They just laughed at me. One of the regulars smiled at me and said, “I don’t care what my typewriter does when I am not in the room, as long as it is there when I get back.” He became our class president and later a politician in New Jersey.
After my second year I changed my major from Chemistry to Philosophy and my parents were quite upset – how are you going to make a living with that major, what can you do? I went on to do graduate work in a Philosophy Ph.D. program at a major university, where I was a TA in introductory logic, and then was sidelined a bit by the Vietnam War (my lottery draft number was 45, so I had to enlist in the U.S. Army Reserve – that was quite an experience for a philosophy major; fortunately I did not wind up in Vietnam, where I am convinced I would either have been killed or wound up in a mental institution with a nervous breakdown), and returned to graduate school a year later. After a while, I got discouraged that I could ever be able to make a significant contribution to the world of philosophy, dropped out of school for two years doing manual labor, and then applied to law school. I have no regrets. I believe my study of philosophy sharpened my ability to do legal analysis and write persuasive briefs. In fact, in the near future I expect I will be using the “use/mention” distinction in a lawsuit I will be filing in federal court relating to free speech under the 1st Amendment. I will leave that story for another day – after the lawsuit has been filed.
Re intro philosophy courses, I have a rather different story than Another Anonymous. I took a course in spring semester of freshman year labeled Intro to Analytic Philosophy, or something like that. A lot of logical positivism or in that ballpark (Carnap, Hempel), though I think we also read Russell, _Problems of Philosophy_ and maybe some other stuff, prob one of Quine's essays. The instructor, a young lecturer (whose name I still recall decades later), was v. forgettable, and I found the whole thing sort of boring as I recall, for lack of a better word. So I didn't consider majoring in philosophy. Probably some of it, or a lot of it, was my fault for picking the wrong course. Main moral of the story: when picking courses, who the instructor is matters at least as much as, probably more than, anything else. Wish someone had said that to me on my first day of college.
On the other hand, in my first semester I took a freshman seminar on the theme of equality, and that's where I encountered Rawls's work for the first time (and Nozick's too, though I was much more taken w/ Theory of Justice than Nozick). Again, I picked the course for the subject, not the instructor, but the outcome was happier.
LFC,
I took my first class in Analytical Philosophy in my senior year. We read Russell, Ayer, Ryle, Moore, and parts of Quine’s “From A Logical Point Of View,” which I had a lot of difficulty understanding. One day the professor (whose identity I will not disclose because he is a prominent theorist in philosophy of mind) opened the class with the following question: “How do you know you are thinking?” Well, I enthusiastically raised my hand and responded, “Because I can hear myself thinking.” The professor skewered me with a look of contempt and said, “Who do you think you are, Joan of Arc?” I was dumbfounded and humiliated – what had I said wrong? Doesn’t everybody in some sense hear themselves thinking? He never explained what point he was making, and to this day I do not know what point he was making – that what I said constituted some sort of category error, ascribing a physiological description to something which is not physiological?
I was recently reading a contemporary book on the philosophy of mind and came across this passage:
“[T]o change modalities, consider hearing a voiced thought in your head. Suppose you think to yourself in words: ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.’ You could probably say in whose voice the imagined words are spoken (it is most likely your own voice, but it might be for example Audrey Hepburn’s voice as you remember it from My Fair Lady), you could describe the manner of pronunciation (Queen’s English or a cockney accent, and be able to confirm that the words still rhyme. You will have no doubt that the image is an auditory image (the image of something heard). But again, as with the purple cow, the imagined sounds will not have the density of real sounds arriving at the ears.”
I read that and thought (I could hear myself think), by golly I was right! I then turned to the front of the book to read the Acknowledgments, and lo and behold – there prominently listed was the name of the professor who had asked me if I thought I was Joan of Arc. And it thought to myself, quite loudly, you s.o.b.
If anyone reading this can elucidate what the professor may have had in mind (so to speak) when he asked me that question, I would greatly appreciate an explanation.
Great anecdote...... Please do not allow this "Professor" to remain Anonymous.
Sorry, Prof. Zimmerman, you may know him.
Do you have an explanation for what he may have been getting at?
A few quick reactions: first, it was not nice to humiliate a student; but second, the fact that this guy is listed in the acknowledgments doesn't mean he agrees w every statement in the book; and third, I have close to zero patience for the sort of thing exemplified by the quoted passage, which is one of several reasons I could never have been an analytical philosopher of mind.
Some people may not believe that thinking is, among other things, "unvoiced" verbal behavior, so maybe that's what he was getting at. Joan of Arc though had elaborate visions and heard saints talking to her which is not on point. So maybe that prof was just having a bad day.
Pont of clarification:
It was not Prof. Wolff, whose course on Kant's Ethics I was also taking that semester.
LFC,
I agree that including an individual in a list of acknowledgments does not necessarily mean that each listed individual endorsed the views and opinions in the book. Except in this case the author began the Acknowledgments with the following statement: "I have reason to thank many people for their help: in particular ... , followed by ten names, including my Joan of Arc professor.
True, he may have had a bad day - we all do. But I agree with Prof. Zimmerman, that such put downs should be avoided at all costs, particularly since it discourage the free flow of expression which is critical to education. The incident affected my self-esteem, as evidenced that I still remember it some 50 years later. But my self-esteem has recovered,
and some readers of my comments may think I have over-compensated.
Re your very last statement: this had me laughing out loud. (Which I needed right now.)
LFC,
My pleasure.
"...and third, I have close to zero patience for the sort of thing exemplified by the quoted passage." - Agreed. Yikes.
I assume you're talking about the writing style. It's one thing to say that Hegel (or whoever) is clunky and pretentious to the point of unreadability, and so we should try to "sound like normal people" when we write; but there is such a thing as reaching too far in the opposite (zany, clever, playful) direction. It can come off as an awfully lame attempt to "make philosophy fun/cool," IMO.
As to what the "Joan of Arc" exchange may be about: I don't know, but I want to hazard a guess that it has to do with Ryle's Concept of Mind, or something in the vicinity. Does this section of the Wiki article seem relevant? If so, then maybe, if the professor had been more patient, the response to Another Anonymous would've been: "Okay, but how do you know you are hearing yourself thinking?"
To hear yourself thinking, in Cartesian terms, would be to "hear" (imagine?) your mind undergoing a non-physical process "beneath" the workings of your brain, as the Wiki link explains. Ryle would want to argue, against Cartesianism, that all that's really going on when "you're thinking" - or, when "you're hearing yourself thinking" - is some kind of intelligent behavior, rather than some hidden non-physical process. The Cartesian expressions are apt to mislead by suggesting that there is a non-physical thing (your mind) undertaking an action (thinking), which only that very thing (your mind) has the privilege of directly observing. But this would be somewhat akin to understanding "the average Kentuckian" to refer to an actual living individual - some man or woman with a birthdate, home address, etc.
Michael,
Thank you for your proposed explanation about what my professor was getting at when he asked me if I thought I was Joan of Arc. I have Ryle’s “Concept of Mind” in my philosophy library, but do not remember much of it. If I can find the time, I may re-read it. I do recall that his main theme is an attack on Descartes’ dualism. But even if one rejects dualism, does not the cogito still survive? My main evidence that I know I exist are my thoughts and sense impressions, which only I can experience as I am experiencing them, in the way I am experiencing them. If the professor was criticizing my remark because it suggested that there is an entity outside the thinking experience who is experiencing the thinking, and therefore suggested the dualism which Ryle rejected, then how does one explain what is happening when one actually hears a symphony orchestra playing? Is not the “hearing” occurring to the hearer? These kind of questions can start to drive a person nutty – maybe like Joan of Arc.
No problem. I'm foggy, too, and am mainly thinking of some summaries I've looked at, so (needless to say) someone should correct me if I'm badly off, but...
Ryle is a behaviorist (the textbook I had calls him a "logical behaviorist"), which I take to be a kind of eliminativist about the mind - and the upshot of Ryle's argumentation is that "mind-talk" in general is one big category mistake encouraged by "systematically misleading expressions" (the title of one of his essays). This sort of argumentation is probably what earns him the label of logical behaviorist. And what earns him the label of behaviorist is his proposal that the real referent of mind-talk is intelligent behavior, where "behavior" has strictly to do with observable physical (bodily) events, and "intelligent" means whatever the relevant science says it means.*
Now, don't "observable physical events" still require an observer - hence the cogito, the "I," the self? I think Ryle, or eliminativism in general, wants to have it that our talk of "the mind's observation of X" is just a confused way of gesturing toward X itself. Ryle might add that our persistent habit of talking of "the observing self (mind, cogito, etc.) to whom X is present" is, at best, a linguistic convenience; at worst, it creates a temptation to reify the self, which would be comparable to "green with envy" creating the temptation to count something called "envy" among the world's green-colored things.
Hume's take on the self also comes to mind here, in mentioning "X itself" versus the "observation of X." For X, you might substitute some red-colored portion of space, or any "perception" (Hume's blanket term for his "impressions" and "ideas"): The red splotch is certainly there, but that's it. The Humean way of recasting "I observe X" or "X appears to my observing self" would simply be "X appears" (or maybe just "X").
Ryle's behaviorism would look to do for intelligent behavior and the (supposed) mind that observes it, what Hume does here for perceptions and the (supposed) "that-which-perceives."
As to Joan of Arc's place in all this, she also "heard voices," but not in the same way. That was just your professor being a smart-ass. :)
*I'm only one chapter in to William James's Principles of Psychology, but his way of suggesting something of the observable character of intelligence is to point to trial-and-error experimentation in the direction of a sought-after end: If these iron fillings displayed intelligence in their "pursuit" of the magnet, then, as we obstructed their path to the magnet by interposing a playing card, the fillings would maneuver themselves around the card, rather than continually pressing against it. (Of course they don't do this, so we call them unintelligent.)
Michael,
Thank you, again, for your detailed answer. I will have to chew a bit on what you have written.
But I do have one question, unrelated to the mind/body issue. I notice that you were able to preserve your italics in your discussion. Whenever I italicize a word, or bolden it, using Word, when I upload it to Prof. Wolff’s blog the italics and the bold disappear. How were you able to preserve them? Do you convert the file into a .pdf file before uploading?
Let me see if this works: two birds with one stone -
"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call [i]myself[/i], I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch [i]myself[/i] at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of [i]myself[/i] and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection, thinks he has a different notion of [i]himself[/i]; I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls [i]himself[/i]; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me."
(Source: Hume, Treatise)
Now, type this whole paragraph in, but substitute angle brackets, <>, for square brackets, [], and here you go:
"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself; I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me."
I bolded the italicized words just so they'd be easier to spot. Bolding works the same way, just with b's in place of i's.
Michael,
OK, I will give that a try. But first I am going to trying converting to .pdf and see if that works. It would be much faster.
I was stationed in the far east in the Army for a year and a half before studying at UMASS. While there I started to learn Eastern philosophy. Comparing Eastern and Western philosophy became a life long study and journey. I started doing yoga and going to zen monasteries in those days, where the absence of thinking was considered an ultimate achievement. Dusting off my memory a little I think Ryle believed that the mind is not a distinctive entity. Thinking is an exercise of the mind, not distinct in any way from the physical world. He doubted the causal link between the thoughts we produce and the physical events that we see occurring. He believed it was a categorical mistake to create Cartesian dualism, and attacks The Cartesian notion of the privacy of the mind, of an inner being hidden within us.
So I have always resisted the Cartesian trap of a dual mind and soul.
For Ryle we need not postulate the mind as a "place", non-physical and secret, where knowledge exists. Theoretical understanding is observed in a persons performance. Ryle does not posit a replacement for the Cartesian ghost in the machine. Mental qualities are dispositions which we come to know through particular events, through our performances.
Tom,
Thank you for your exposition on Ryle. But does Ryle's rejection of Cartesian dualism entail that one is mistaken to believe that one, in some sense, can hear oneself think when one is thinking?
The self is a mental construct. Hearing is an external sense. I think you mean there is an awareness in the mind of an activity called thinking. Thinking is a natural feedback mechanism, and yes the soul monitors that mechanism. For instance deaf people do not hear themselves, but see themselves signing.
Tom,
Wow, I never thought of that – that deaf people would not hear themselves thinking. I cannot imagine what it would be like to “see” myself thinking.
Reminds me of Tomas Nagel’s inquiry, What is it like to think like a bat?
For those interested, here is an article on what deaf people experience when they are thinking.
https://qrius.com/deaf-people-think/
Maybe the problem is with the "I". If there is no self, there is no self to hear "your" thoughts. Thoughts are heard (sometimes because most thinking is unconscious), but there is no "one" there to hear them. We are trapped by our language into understanding the above in terms of a self.
"Thinking" is a feed-back mechanism only if expressed in a reflectively graspable medium, whether by way of inner speech or inner signing, and even then the "use-fullness" of that graspability is determined by the degree of fidelity of the output of thought to its unconscious input. All sorts of variables condition the transition. Check out William Lyons's book, "The Disappearance of Introspection". MIT Press. 1986
Is there a difference between:
(a) "hearing yourself thinking," and
(b) imagining the utterances of a disembodied voice that may or may not sound like yours, has access to your entire body of knowledge, and is detectable by nobody else*?
I think (a) is another, more natural and concise expression for (b). The "Joan of Arc" joke works, of course, because (a), on an unlikely interpretation, comes close to describing something paranormal or hallucinatory.
And I think (b) is something most people do on a regular basis, maybe approaching constantly. At least, I do it, and despite the weirdness of the description, it never occurred to me that it wasn't perfectly familiar to most people. (Though deaf people are mentioned above as an interesting exception.)
Anyway, I doubt that many philosophers who defend a "no self" or "no mind" view are likely to maintain that (a) and (b) are unreal or even uncommon experiences, any more than simply imagining or reflecting would be. But they will read the works of certain other philosophers and want to protest that they make the mind out to be something mystical or homunculine.
*excepting deities where applicable, but that's neither here nor there.
First a caveat: know little about most of this, have thought relatively little about it.
That said, arguments that seek to eliminate "the self" don't impress me. The existence of selves seems to me intuitively obvious. The very word "unconscious" (used above) presupposes the existence of someone who can be conscious or "unconscious" of something. I'm aware that there has been philosophical work on the continuity of personal identity over time (e.g. Parfit -- haven't read him, pretty much just a summary or two), but to question whether "the self" at point A is continuous or not with "the self" at point B, or in what ways it is or isn't, still presupposes that selves exist. (Maybe I've got this wrong, if so someone will correct me.)
If there are no selves, then it seems to me you have to throw out a huge amount of social science (including social-choice theory), plus, for instance, nearly everything Freud ever wrote. Then on top of that you have to throw out the entire field of personality psychology. Now, some of that might not be a big loss, but some of it might.
I hadn't read Michael's comment @ 4:58 p.m. when I posted the above.
Btw Skinner in About Behaviorism treats thinking as "covert behavior," behavior on "a scale so small" that others can't detect it. (p. 114) I don't find this v. persuasive. It seems mostly to be a way for him to avoid using "mentalistic" language while acknowledging that something called thinking exists.
There is thinking and there is thinking. Way too much of inner speech is just associational whim. The exercise of intelligence is of two kinds: belief-fixation and decision-making. The more focused, purposive and reflective the better---at least in a cognitively tidy sort of way Reflective respect of norms of reliable reasoning seem to have carried the day in some valuable quarters of human practice. But in others not so much.
I am pretty sure that I have a “self” because of the continuity of my recollection of past events. That is why individuals who suffer from dementia and cannot remember their past and do not recognize loved ones are said to have lost their “self.” More importantly, however, I know I am the same “self” from day to day because my cat insists that I feed him every morning at 6:00 A.M.; that I stop working and play with him during the day; that I feed him dry food throughout the day, and wet food again at 6 P.M. If I were not the same “self,” my cat would hiss at me – this I know from watching horror movies. The cat always knows when an alien has invaded its space. So, if you want to be assured that you are the same person each day, get yourself a cat. And listen carefully when it sings “Memories.”
People who claim that the self is not real are not claiming that there are no memories, only that there is no stable entity called the "self" behind our thoughts and agent of actions, that the witness of our thoughts of not a stable entity, but a flux of changing perspectives and postures, that the so-called subject is not fixed point or witness or agent.
s. walerstein,
Who are these people who claim there is no stable entity called the ‘self’ behind our thoughts and agent of actions”? This was not Ryle’s position, nor Hillary Putnam’s. What philosopher of mind can you name who believes that we – or he or she – is no more than a concatenation of thoughts and sense-impressions? From what do they arise? Do you believe there is no “stable entity” behind the individual who contributes comments to this blog?
I've never read or studied analytical philosophy, so I have no idea what Ryle or Putnam thinks.
That's more or less the position of the Argentinian philosopher Dario Sztajnszrajber.
No, there is no stable entity behind me or you. The mind is an incredibly chaotic, changing, complexity, most of its unconscious.
s. wallerstein,
I don't believe that you really believe that about yourself. If you did, you would not submit comments to this blog which you believe should be given serious consideration, since a "chaotic" mind could hardly contribute anything worth giving credence to.
No, I just enjoy conversing about this kind of thing. Nothing so pretentious about contributing anything to anyone.
By the way, if we are not chaotic entities, why do you change your name so frequently?
What an interesting thread. This discussion highlights a main difference between Eastern and Western philosophy.
The theory of Anatta is explained, in Wikipedia":
"Buddhism, from its earliest days, has denied the existence of the "self, soul" in its core philosophical and ontological texts. In its soteriological themes, Buddhism has defined nirvana as that blissful state when a person, amongst other things, realizes that he or she has "no self, no soul"
I agree with J. Wallerstein's take on this. It is very understandable that those who come from a Western Philosophical persuasion may have not experienced the transient nature of the self.
Western philosophers who deny the existence of the self are Hume and Schopenhauer, who of course was influenced by Eastern philosophy.
Hold on. One does not have to believe in a human soul in order to believe that sentient beings have a “self” which experiences thoughts, emotions and sensations. When I came out of my mother’s womb screaming and kicking – which I cannot remember occurring, but given my character, I am sure I that was what I was doing – was I no more than a series of sensations and urges to feed and breathe? And what keeps the sensations of A, who is standing in a room next to B, looking at the same painting, from being mixed up with one another? What keeps them separate and apart from one another? Having a “self,” moreover, does not require self-consciousness. I believe my cat, which is not self-conscious but does experience sensations and does remember things from day to day, given that he knows where the food is kept, also has a “self” even if he is not aware of having a “self.” Was this not the point of Thomas Nagel’s paper, “What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”
Another,
You say that there's a "self" which experiences thoughts, emotions and sensations.
There certainly are experiences of thoughts, emotions and sensations, but I'm questioning whether there is a "self" which experiences them.
Nietzsche says somewhere (I'm too lazy to look it up) that while we've freed ourselves from religion, we haven't yet freed ourselves from grammar (not an exact quote) and it's our language that leads us to believe that for every experience there is an experiencer, a subject. It's interesting that we use the same word "subject" to refer to the "self" and to the agent in a grammatical sentence.
Sartre, in an early essay, pre-Being and Nothingness, called On the Transcendence of the Ego, says that conscious precedes the "I", the self, the ego, that there is no self behind consciousness.
Responding to Another Anonymous:
"And what keeps the sensations of A, who is standing in a room next to B, looking at the same painting, from being mixed up with one another? What keeps them separate and apart from one another?"
This is an interesting question. Someone please correct me if I'm way off (I'm pretty far from having a handle on the Transcendental Deduction etc.) - but here you seem to be making an almost Kantian move. To quote the SEP:
"[S]elf-consciousness, for Kant, consists in awareness of the mind's law-governed activity of synthesizing or combining sensible data to construct a unified experience." (emphasis mine)
Take all this with a massive grain of salt, as I'm still in the process of learning:
A's "self," - or one "transcendental condition" of A's self - would seem to be the thing* that holds together all the various components of A's encounter with the painting, so A's present impressions aren't "mixed up" or continuous with B's or C's impressions, but are continuous with A's preceding impressions (hence A's recognition of the painting as the same thing A was seeing a moment ago); and this is required for the encounter to have its place within one coherent self-enclosed sphere of experience.
The transcendental ego is something* that makes experience in general possible - it is not an object of experience, but rather a condition of experience - whereas the empirical ego seems to resemble what Hume is grasping at when he looks for his self among the world of "impressions."
The empirical ego, which consists of some particular patterned assortment of cognitions and volitions, is not its own condition of unity and coherence; that would be the transcendental ego. And by the same token, the transcendental ego would not be defined by all the things that we throughout our lives take to be the idiosyncrasies and identifying characteristics of ourselves as the individual persons we are: this particular body, these particular memories, these particular affections and thoughts and habits, etc.
*For lack of a better term. The transcendental ego wouldn't literally be a thing, as the Paralogisms explain.
Michael,
I will leave it to Prof. Wolff to critique, if he wishes, what you have written.
I have a sense that you, s. wallerstein and I are talking past each other. Perhaps not – but I am unable to explicate why we are not, if we are not. My reference to the concept of a “self” is from an ontological-physiological point of view. I have the sense that Nietzsche and Sartre are talking about something else, sort of like Martin Buber’s I/Thou distinction. I agree that this humanistic view of the issue is important, but it is, it seems to me, addressing a different issue. For those interested in the in the aspect of the “self” that I am referring, I recoomen the essay by Thomas Nagel “What Is It Like To Be A Bat,” which you can find here:
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf
By the way, in note 1, Prof. Nagel includes among the seven philosophy of mind philosophers whom he is addressing my Joan of Arc professor.
Another,
I'll not pursue the topic, but I note that for the first time we had a conversation, with give and take, with mutual recognition and respect. Let's strive to continue to converse in that manner in the future.
Yes, that was good. I didn't mean to "talk past" anyone - pretty much all I was saying throughout was: (1) "Your smart-ass prof. may have had Ryle in mind; here's what I take Ryle to be about..." and (2) "Your point about the unity of self reminds me of Kant (insofar as I think I understand Kant); here's my attempt to express what I mean by this..."
Sorry if the Kant stuff in particular was silly/impenetrable. :)
On a completely unrelated and much more lighthearted note - and because I don't know where else to post this - I'm curious about people's favorites in the category of more "casual" or "pop" philosophy. I just stumbled across a Chuck Klosterman essay while puzzling over the question, "Why do I prefer watching live sporting events to their recordings?" I found it an enjoyable and insightful read that ended too quickly, and may have to look into his book.
s. wallerstein,
Thank you for your words of encouragement. I will do my best.
Michael, by saying we may be talking "past" each other, I do not mean to suggest that one of us is being inconsiderate to another, just that we may be talking about different subjects, without realizing it. On the other hand, we also may be talking about the same subject, but from different perspectives. I could not determine which was the case.
Regarding pop philosophy books, the following may not quite be in the pop genre, but it discusses serious philosophical issues in an easily readable and digestible format: "The Atheist's Guide To The Universe," by Prof. Alex Rosenberg. I found his discussion of ethical principles, their origins and validity, especially fascinating and thought-provoking.
Michael,
I printed the Chuck Klosterman essay you recommended and will read it while I am eating my lunch.
I also checked out the Wikipedia article about him, and found this amusing precept, called the Klosterman razor: “The best hypothesis is the one that reflexively accepts its potential wrongness to being with.” Sort of reminded me of the null hypothesis test in statistics.
He has also published a book titled, ”But What If We’re Wrong?” The title of the book and the name of the author are printed upside down on the cover. The guy does have a sense of humor.
I feel the need to second S. Wallerstein's opinion about Alex Rosenberg---he's no where near being a merely "pop" philosopher. Rosenberg is a first-class philosopher in his own right. His devastating reply to Fodor's philosophically driven anti-Darwin book carries the point. Fodor was no easy target.
Jeffrey,
That wasn't me. It was our friend Another Anonymous.
I haven't read Rosenberg's book, but I have read interviews with him and he is worth paying attention to.
I enjoyed the references to Kant. I think it added a nice perspective on the nature of the self question. The back and forth was very refreshing
after being on Facebook too long.
In fact I started watching Professor Wolff's YouTube videos on Kant.
Thanks, fellas. Just one more "pop" item to wrap up, then I need to get my Internet-binging under control. :)
YouTube: Alain de Botton on Pessimism
This showed up on my YT recommendations today. It's a sort of "secular sermon," but surprisingly uplifting and sane, if a little hokey at times (could've done without the music, but it's only a minute or so). Interesting fact (~21 mins. in): Suicide rates decline during economic recessions.
There’s the ticket. You can insure being happy by expecting failure and misery at every turn. Also known as the Schopenhauer Cure.
"Hold on. One does not have to believe in a human soul in order to believe that sentient beings have a 'self' which experiences thoughts, emotions and sensations. When I came out of my mother’s womb screaming and kicking – which I cannot remember occurring, but given my character, I am sure I that was what I was doing – was I no more than a series of sensations and urges to feed and breathe?"
So you possess a self that experiences your thoughts, sensations, and emotions? What, then, do you experience?
"Who are these people who claim there is no stable entity called the ‘self’ behind our thoughts and agent of actions? This was not Ryle’s position, nor Hillary Putnam’s. What philosopher of mind can you name who believes that we – or he or she – is no more than a concatenation of thoughts and sense-impressions?"
Too numerous to mention, but you may wish to start with Wittgenstein (or, if you prefer, P.M.S. Hacker). Wittgenstein didn't deny that we have a 'sense' of self, i.e., a sense that we're abiding flesh and blood creatures, but he denied, rightly, that we have a 'self', where this implies that we're in possession of some kind of inner psychological object.
"So you possess a self that experiences your thoughts, sensations, and emotions? What, then, do you experience?"
This statement is redundant. I am not "possess" a self who experiences thoughts, sensations, and emotions. I am the self who experiences thoughts, sensations, and emotions.
GJ
I wish to elaborate briefly on what I have written above.
One can accept the validity of Descartes’ cogito without accepting the dualism he extrapolates from it. I believe Descartes is correct that “Cogito ergo sum” proves that something exists - the thinking which is occurring. It does not necessarily follow that there is an object that is “having” the thinking, but that thinking is occurring is self-evident and irrefutable.
By the same token, I don’t understand how one can have a concept of “self” without that concept being self-authenticating. If I have a concept of “self” – something which Wittgenstein does not deny – then how can that concept be erroneous? The having a concept of “self” is itself evidence that the “self” exists.
And the self is not simply the concatenation of thoughts, emotions, sensory impressions which occur sequentially. Just as the house which is built from the structureless pile of lumber it once was is more than the pile of lumber, the sense of self which emerges from the sequence of thoughts, emotions, sensory impressions is more than just a concatenation of structureless thoughts, emotions, and sensory impressions. The sense of “self” which emerges is proof of the existence of the “self.”
Moreover, regarding Wittgenstein’s views on the existence of a “self,” it appears that Hans Sluga, Professor of Philosophy at Berkeley, does not quite agree with you. See his essay “Wittgenstein on the Self,” at
http://www.truthandpower.com/whose-house-is-that-wittgenstein-on-the-self/
"This statement is redundant. I am [sic] not 'possess' a self who experiences thoughts, sensations, and emotions. I am the self who experiences thoughts, sensations, and emotions."
But you said that sentient beings *have* a self, not that they're identical with their selves. So is it your view that selves are just people, human beings?
"By the same token, I don’t understand how one can have a concept of 'self' without that concept being self-authenticating. If I have a concept of “self” – something which Wittgenstein does not deny – then how can that concept be erroneous? The having a concept of 'self' is itself evidence that the 'self' exists."
I have a sense that I'm an abiding flesh and blood creature. I don't see how that's evidence that I have a self (whatever that's supposed to be).
Re Sluga, there are probably several philosophers who disagree with my (well, P.M.S. Hacker's, actually) take on Wittgenstein on the self.
GJ,
If you only have a sense that you are an “abiding flesh and blood creature,” but have no sense of “self,” then how do you differentiate your “abiding flesh and blood creature” from what appears to be another “abiding flesh and blood creature” sitting next to you on the tram?
I'm not sure I understand the question (perhaps because the answer to it, on its face, seems trivial), but I don't think answering it requires positing the existence of a self, again whatever that might be.
GJ,
The answer is not at all trivial, and the fact that you think it is trivial underscores the fallacy of your analysis. You have offered no explanation, unless you actually believe there is a "self" by virtue of which you can distinguish your "abiding flesh and blood" from another, how you can make such a distinction.
I haven't offered an analysis. You've made the odd claim, which you appear to believe is self-evident (it isn't), that you can't distinguish yourself from another person unless you have a self (whatever that is). It's not my job to explain what you mean or why you might be wrong.
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