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Self-Consciousness, Psychopathology and Realism about Self George Graham Professor of Philosophy & Professor of Psychology Key Words: self, self-consciousness, fictionalism, introspection, multiple personality disorder, psychopathology, realism. Abstract:It seems obvious that self-consciousness is introspective awareness or consciousness of a self. My being self-conscious, for example, is my being aware of myself. But the thesis that self-consciousness is self consciousness has spawned criticism from philosophers who claim that selves are fictional entities. Hume, for example, famously said that a self is not encountered in introspection.
Department of Philosophy
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Birmingham ALABAMA 35294-1260 USA
ggraham@uab.edu
[Personal page]
Some recent work in the philosophy of psychopathology proceeds by likening, or equating, the self to something that is believed to exist, but does not really exist. I call this work New Fictionalism. The main business of this paper is to develop a counter-argument to an otherwise powerful new fictionalist argument which focuses on multiple personality disorder. New Fictionalism about the self is wrong, but not because it takes psychopathology seriously. It is wrong because it overestimates our knowledge of what the self is.
Selves do not, and cannot, exist. I do not exist -- nor do you. So says the philosophical doctrine of anti-realism or fictionalism about the self (see Canfield 1990). One implication of fictionalism is that self-consciousness is not consciousness of self. Since there is no self, there is no consciousness of self.
Selves do exist. You exist -- and so do I. So says the philosophical doctrine of realism about the self (see Chisholm 1969, 1981). One implication of realism is that self-consciousness is consciousness of self. Since there is self, self-consciousness is consciousness of self.
I am a realist about the self. I advocate a three-part realism. I claim that self-consciousness is consciousness or introspective awareness of self; but I also claim that self-consciousness has no metaphysical or ontological content other than its being of self. By this I mean that self-consciousness does not reveal whether the self is a material or immaterial entity. It does not tell us what sort of theory of individuation or entification describes the elements and operations of the self. Self-consciousness does not tell us what the self is, other than its being the sort of entity that permits consciousness of itself.
I call the first part of my view of realism, that self-consciousness is consciousness of self, the introspection thesis. I call the second part, that the nature of selfhood is something of which we are introspectively ignorant, the weak ontic ignorance thesis.
Some philosophers claim that although the nature of selfhood is something of which we are introspectively ignorant, self-consciousness or introspective awareness does not exhaust possible sources of knowledge of the nature of self. In The First Person (1981) and elsewhere, Roderick Chisholm, an advocate of weak ontic ignorance, claims that it is within our epistemic power to learn of selfhood by means other than self-consciousness or introspection. The additional means consists of conceptual analytical reflection on metaphysical topics proper to selfhood. These include topics such as personal identity across time, intentionality, human freedom and the self, and so on. The nature of selfhood evades self-consciousness but not philosophy. Certainly a stronger form of ontic ignorance thesis, therefore, is skeptical about our knowledge of the nature of selfhood period, regardless of source. This stronger form embodies general skepticism about our knowing what the self is. I am sympathetic to this stronger form of ontic ignorance thesis. I call it the strong ontic ignorance thesis. The strong thesis constitutes the third part of my three-part realism.
My principal goal in this paper is not to establish realism about the self, the introspection thesis, or the ontic ignorance theses. My goal is at once more defined and more modest. It is to demonstrate how the third part of my realist view, the strong ontic ignorance thesis, can be used to defend realism against the attacks of a new type of fictionalism about self which I call New Fictionalism. Unlike the classic fictionalisms of, say, Hume and Wittgenstein, new fictionalism possesses a decidedly scientific or empirical orientation. New fictionalists, which include philosophers such as Daniel Dennett (1989, 1991; Dennett and Humphrey 1989) and Kathleen Wilkes (1988, 1991) among others, deploy case-based reasoning from clinical disturbances of self-consciousness and related psychopathologies to defend anti-realism. To new fictionalists clinical disturbances of self-consciousness provide strong empirical support for fictionalism.
In my judgment the trouble with new fictionalist attacks on realism about the self is that they make it appear that, given clinical or psychiatric data, realists have no plausible choice but to abandon realism and embrace fictionalism. Fictionalism, as far as I know, is a consistent position. However embracing fictionalism does violence to the way we appear to ourselves in self-consciousness. So, we should only embrace it if there is no plausible means to defend realism. Given the possibility of a strong ontic ignorance thesis, there is such a means.
My discussion of realism and strong ontic ignorance is organized into three parts. I begin by outlining both the form of fictionalism about the self which I am calling the new fictionalism and an argument for anti-realism which may be found in work of Daniel Dennett on multiple personality disorder. My presentation of Dennett's argument is necessarily brief and oversimplified. It is also, given the complexity of Dennett's texts, somewhat speculative. In the second part I sketch ways in which realists about the self can respond to the new fictionalist argument. One of these adopts the strong ontic ignorance thesis. In the final section, I content myself with stating two answers to two important questions about the strong ontic ignorance thesis.
I. NEW FICTIONALISM ABOUT SELF
I feel excited about writing this paper. I am conscious that I feel excited about writing this paper. I write with self-conscious excitement. How should such self-consciousness be understood? What is going on in my self-conscious excitement?
A realist and friend of the type of introspection thesis which I favor, which also is favored, in different ways, by Roderick Chisholm (1976, p. 52) and Sydney Shoemaker (1986, p. 107) among others, should claim the following. My awareness of my being or feeling excited, as distinguished from merely being excited, without being at all self-conscious about the excitement, consists in experiencing excitement as 'adjectival on' or 'modifying' my self (i.e. myself). I introspect my self in the sense that I experience a state or episode as mine. I may then report the episode as my own.
So understood the self does not stand forth in self-consciousness as a discrete entity in some object containing physical or phenomenal space. I don't literally observe myself with a mind's eye. Self-consciousness is not like that. Rather it is constituted by states or episodes which present themselves as mine. When I think of myself being excited, I think of myself being excited. (Something like this is true even in clinical disturbances of self-consciousness, though with important provisos and qualifications, which I have helped to describe elsewhere [see Graham and Stephens, 1994; Stephens and Graham 1994a, 1994b].)
Fictionalists claim that one thing that is not occurring in self-consciousness is that I am in introspective contact with a self, adjectivally or otherwise. To them the self is a figment, an illusion, of my cognitive system's or brain's mode of operation. It is a virtual rather than real entity. Hence I am not aware, strictly or ontically speaking, of myself being excited.
Naturally I do not seem like a figment or illusion. However just because something seems real, seems present, seems both here and now, does not mean that it is real or present. Consider, by analogy, phantom limb pain.
An amputee appears to herself to be pained in her limb, even though she lacks the relevant limb (and perhaps she knows this). Her being in phantom limb pain does not mean that she is pained, hurt or even injured in her limb. Likewise, for the fictionalist, my being excited does not mean that there is an excited me with which I somehow am in reflexive contact. As Kathleen Wilkes writes of selves:
What we need and want to study -- scientifically or philosophically -- is best described in terms that abandon talk of these. (Wilkes 1991, p. 235)
How can it be argued that the self in self-consciousness is an illusion and that nothing is self? New fictionalists argue that clinical data from disorders of self-consciousness such as multiple personality disorder and related illnesses constitute powerful evidence in favor of anti-realism and against self-consciousness providing awareness of self. New fictionalists claim that these illnesses reveal that the self is a fictional entity. There is no self. True, the self is not as overtly unreal as, say, phantom limb, but it is unreal nonetheless.
A representative new fictionalist argumentative tactic, which is deployed with force and subtlety by Dennett, is to argue that nothing counts as a self because the very existence, the alleged reality, of self fails to satisfy a favored criterion for being real. The self's failure to satisfy this criterion is most vivid in clinical cases, but occurs in undisturbed cases as well. Since the self fails to meet this criterion, there is no self. The self, Dennett says, turns out to be a "theorists' fiction created by . . . well, not by me but by my brain, acting in concert over the years with my parents and siblings and friends" (Dennett 1991, p 429).
Dennett's favored criterion is near the surface of much of his writing on the unreality of self. It also appears in his skeptical critiques of both qualia and mental pictures (see Flanagan 1992 and Tye 1991.) He takes the criterion to be presupposed by the observational and experimental procedures of empirical science. To my knowledge Dennett does not give the criterion a name. I term it the definite fact of the matter criterion. It goes like this:
Definite Fact of the Matter Criterion: For something to be real it must be determinate. If something is indeterminate, then it is not real.
What does 'determinate' mean, at least for someone like Dennett? I give a short i.e. textually unreferenced answer. This short answer is consistent with Dennett on being real, although his discussions leave key points implicit.
The answer is as follows: Something is determinate just in case it is decidable whether something is it (or not). To illustrate, suppose that there is a coin in my pocket. Suppose, however, for a given object, it is undecidable whether this object is (identical with) the coin. The object may be the coin or it may not. Moreover, suppose that this undecidability or indeterminateness is not an informational or epistemic matter, for suppose that there is no further information or evidence which would answer the question one way or the other. On this view, this object (whatever it purportedly is) suffers from indeterminacy and thereby according to the criterion is not real.
Of course, it is no trivial intellectual task to say, even in general terms, what is involved in determinacy or in being a definite fact of the matter. It can be assumed that being determinate means such things as being well-individuated or countable, possessing firm or precise boundaries, failing to admit of borderline cases, and so on. Intuitively, however, Dennett's general idea seems to be that whatever the correct ultimate ontology of the world is, it does not include indeterminate entities. It contains definite facts of the matter and nothing vague or fuzzy.
The definite fact of the matter criterion, on Dennett's view, is unsatisfied by the self in disorders of self-consciousness, most dramatically when they occur in full-blown psychopathologies such as multiple personality disorder (MPD). The alleged selves of MPD are notoriously difficult to specify, detail or identify, by introspection or otherwise (see Dennett and Humphrey 1989, Hacking 1995, Spanos 1994, and Wilkes 1988). So, according to Dennett, MPD weighs against the reality of self. In MPD there is no self. If, then, we extrapolate or generalize from MPD to normal cases, as Dennett believes that we can and should, there is no self period.
Although Dennett never states which form of fictionalist generalization from MPD to normalcy he favors, he seems, arguably, to have in mind what philosophers call a sorites argument. (Sorites arguments figure prominently in philosophic discussions of vagueness [see Horgan 1995, Tye 1995] To avoid misunderstanding, let me interject that there are central matters concerning the interpretation of Dennett which I do not address in this paper. My own point here is that we might reasonably interpret a good deal of Dennett's approach to the clinical defense of fictionalism as a sorites argument.) In the case of self and MPD, the relevant sorites argument may be expressed in five steps and goes something like this:
(1) Victims of MPD are made up of more than one self. They are multiples.
(2) However there is no definite fact of the matter about how many selves any particular MPD victim is. (Let n = 1.) Is it n+1, n+2, n+3? It's impossible to decide. For any number, n+2, of selves that any particular victim purportedly is, there is an adjacent number, say n+1 or n+3, which that same victim very well could be.
(3) Moreover there is no precise boundary between normal (undisturbed) persons and multiples in the number of selves which they are. The boundary between normality and multiplicity is indeterminate -- a matter of degree or vagueness.
(4) So there is no definite fact of the matter about how many selves a normal person is. To say that he or she consists of one, ultimately, is arbitrary.
(5) Therefore the selves of normal persons are unreal. The I of me is just as unreal as the I of Christine Beauchamp. (Christine Beauchamp is a famous multiple. See Prince 1905.)
II. RESPONSES TO THE MPD SORITES ARGUMENT
What should a realist say about the sorites/MPD argument?
One response consists of conceding that selves are indeterminate but refusing to concede that this means that they are unreal. It consists of rejecting the definite fact of the matter criterion for the existence of selves. It says that a proper understanding of the nature of selfhood requires admitting that selves come in degrees, that they are vague or fuzzy entities. So, rather than being determinate, selves are indeterminate. On this approach, selves in normals and multiples do not divide the world into all-or-nothing categories. Just as a man who loses hair, for example, becomes more or less bald, so the predicate 'is a self' applies to someone more or less. A person who becomes more or less multiple, becomes more or less self. It is never wholly true that a person is a self. Furthermore, as soon as someone starts to become multiple, as it were, it is less true that he is a self and more true that he is multiple (many selves), although exactly how multiple is impossible to say.
I call this conception of the indeterminate reality of selfhood the Fuzzy Selfhood Conception. The fuzzy selfhood conception is suggested by some remarks of Owen Flanagan (1994) about the so-called 'multiplexity' of personhood. It also fits with much of the thinking Derek Parfit (1971, 1984) on the complex nature of personal identity. On this view someone can always be a little more 'self' or a little less 'self'. Selves are vague with respect to their boundaries, for instance, and with respect to the possibility of being individuated or counted.
The fuzzy selfhood conception, in my opinion, is not unappealing. One obvious consequence of the conception is that we have to relinquish the notion that being real requires being determinate. However criteria of being real like determinacy are often said to be theoretically unwelcome idealizations even for science. As Quine (1985, p. 167) remarks, "Who can aspire to a precise intermolecular demarcation of a desk?" But of course there are desks. I am writing on one.
However the fuzzy selfhood conception does have one seriously unwelcome aspect at least from my (hopefully) undisturbed introspective point of view. In self-consciousness I seem to myself to be one definite self viz. me. From my first personal point of view, there is no room for saying that I am more or less myself. So, what does it possibly mean, on the fuzzy approach, that I am this self? If selves are always more or less, never determinate, does this mean I must be wrong in believing that I am me and that there is no room for being more or less me? There seems a large gap here, something that calls for further explanation, between how I appear to myself (not fuzzy) and how I am supposed to be (fuzzy). This gap is not nearly as big as the chasm between fictionalism and realism, but it is a gap nonetheless.
To clarify why the fuzzy selfhood conception is not compatible with how I appear to myself, consider a consequence of assuming that I am an indeterminate entity. If I am fuzzy or indeterminate, then it makes sense to say that I can become more and more self. However I don't seem like I can become more and more myself. I have only to reflect just a little to see that if I'm a real self and not just a fictional entity, I'm something definite already. That something is me. I do not seem to be more or less me.
I am not claiming that I cannot become more or less something (provided that this something is not myself). If the something, for example, is my being bald or intelligent, clearly I can become more bald and less intelligent. I also am not claiming that the metaphysical information that I am determinate is provided in self-consciousness. Such a claim is incompatible with the weak ontic ignorance thesis. I am claiming that such information appears provided in self-consciousness and therefore it is proper to worry about whether the fuzzy selfhood conception is consistent with how self-consciousness appears. I appear determinate. I do, of course, also have beliefs about myself in introspection. No doubt it is possible for some of these beliefs to be mistaken. Perhaps my seeming to myself to be determinate is one of those mistaken beliefs. However what worries me about the fuzzy conception is that it requires that there is no such thing as both seeming determinate and being determinate. Perhaps I am as I appear. If so the fuzzy conception is mistaken.
The determinacy of selfhood is, of course, a conception of selves to which some philosophers are drawn independent of how they appear to themselves. Chisholm (1970) is attracted to a determinate conception of selfhood. His conception may be stated thus:
Chisholm's Thesis: In every conceivable case in which a person exists, there is a definite fact of the matter as to the number, n, of selves which this person is. He or she is one.
Elsewhere Chisholm (1989) surprises this reader by arguing that the determinate self is, i.e. is identical with, a minute particle of matter located, presumably, in the brain. Part -- though only part -- of the surprise of Chisholm's particle thesis is that I surely do not introspectively appear to be a particle. Chisholm therefore has an imagined critic ask, "Do you mean to suggest seriously, then, that instead of weighing 175 pounds, you may weigh less than a milligram?" He replies:
The answer has to be yes. We must be ready, therefore, to be ridiculed, for, in this case, even those who know better may be unable to resist the temptation. (1989, p. 127)
However Chisholm is a friend of weak ontic ignorance. So, there is conceptual room for Chisholm to claim that the information that I am a particle is not available in introspection but that I am a particle.
In any case (it will be recalled) I favor the strong ontic ignorance thesis. I favor the view that we do not know what selfhood is. This means, among other things, that we do not know whether selves are determinate. Our knowledge of selves does not yield a decision as to whether we are definite or fuzzy sorts of entities.
The strong ontic ignorance thesis exhibits respect for how persons, at least undisturbed persons such as myself, appear on introspection, by treating this appearance as genuine evidence of how the self is. Since I appear determinate, perhaps I am determinate. However the thesis also exhibits respect for difficulties, such as sorites arguments based on cases of MPD, by treating these as genuine difficulties. Indeterminacy or fuzziness perhaps is the nature of normals as well as multiples.
I will return to the strong ontic ignorance thesis in a moment. First, I wish to return to Dennett.
On Dennett's view, studies of mental disorders and related clinical evidence reveal that the putative self in self-consciousness is devilishly snarled and tangled together and has a highly indeterminate character. It is a (what Dennett [1991] calls) "pandemonium phenomenon" with gaps, holes, puzzles, and muddles. So there is, in effect, no determinate self and thus no self. Nothing is both self and real.
Dennett's fictionalism may impress readers who have had significant clinical dealings with victims of disorders as at once both severe and wise. It is severe when applied to normal people, but wise when applied to psychopathological cases. Isn't it obvious that some people are so disordered and confused in self-awareness and introspective report that they are not real persons or selves? Isn't it equally obvious that some individuals are so ordered and transparent in self-consciousness that they constitute real selves? An obvious alternative to Dennett is to hold that some selves are real, whereas others are fictional. It may be claimed, for example, that failing or succeeding at being determinate helps to distinguish fictional from real selves. MPD's and schizophrenics, and so on, are not selves. You and I are selves.
The theoretical temptation to use determinacy to distinguish real from unreal selves should be resisted. Suppose it turns out that the passage from single to multiple selfhood is indeterminate and that, as a matter of ontic fact, normal persons (like you and me) are fuzzy entities. We should also resist saying that victims of MPD and schizophrenics fail to be selves.
Another and more promising response to Dennett is to propose that victims of disordered forms of self-consciousness are selves, but that their nature or number falls within regions of strong ontic ignorance. We don't know just which or how many selves such people -- any people -- are. Such is the lot of our strong ontic ignorance.
III. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
At least two important questions must be asked of the strong ontic ignorance thesis. Question #1: If we live in strong ontic ignorance of selfhood, why claim that the self is real? Question #2: If the self is real, and we know this, why are we ignorant of its nature? Let me answer these two questions starkly and thus insufficiently in this context.
Reply to Question #1. Speaking for myself and self-consciously, I am too obviously real to require proof, and friends and family confirm this (unlike cases of phantom limb), although something needs to be said from my self-conscious point of view about other selves (see Graham 1998, pp. 42-64). In any case, I said I would not try to establish realism here. My assumption is that ignorance about selfhood is strong but not total. It does not include ignorance about the existence of selves.
I exist. On the fuzzy selfhood conception, there can be borderline cases of me. However the strong ontic ignorance thesis is perfectly amenable to this viewpoint. Similarly, if I am a well-individuated (determinate) entity, there will be sharp distinctions between me and other entities.
Reply to Question #2. Describing the ontology of self requires knowing a complete set of metaphysical truths about the self. These include truths about self/brain (body) relations, the nature of consciousness and intentionality, freedom of will, personal identity across time, and a variety of complex and puzzling matters. I doubt that we know and perhaps even can know such truths. We know quite a bit about the self's psychological functions and its psychological role in acquiring knowledge and producing action, and, admittedly, there may be kinds of philosophical arguments out there that accurately characterize the self metaphysically. My conjecture, however, is that we are in strong ontic ignorance about the self.
My skepticism about our knowledge of selfhood is akin to Colin McGinn's (1993, pp. 46-61) skepticism about the very same subject. As McGinn phrases his brand of skepticism, the essence of the self is cognitively closed to us. He writes:
We lack the conceptual equipment needed to represent the objective essence of the self. Beings of other cognitive endowments might by contrast be able to grasp this essence, thus making science out of what for us languishes as perennial philosophy. (McGinn 1993, p. 58)
Being akin to McGinn is an unpopular family resemblance to bear. The strong ontic ignorance thesis is a "large-scale high-altitude" conjecture. (The quoted phrase is McGinn's. See McGinn 1993, p. 151.) Philosophers' reactions to McGinn's conjectures at such high altitudes tend to be reflectively dismissive (e.g. Tye 1996, p. 49). However there is, I would argue, sufficient reason to believe that knowledgeable solutions to ontological puzzles about the self are, at least from our current epistemic perspective, beyond our reach. These solutions may be objects of metaphysical faith, ontic bet or hunch, but of knowledge? Not likely.
My skeptical view is that the essence (to use McGinn's term) of the self is epistemically elusive. Philosophers marshal arguments that try to support one or another ontology of self. On the other hand, there are no assurances, given contrary arguments, that these ontologies are justified.
The more we reflect on the nature and historical persistence of philosophical disagreements about selfhood, the more we seem drawn to conclude that there are different sorts of ontologies of self and that we can never squeeze out of our arguments beliefs that deserve to be called knowledge of the essence of self. Put crudely, the problem is that the philosophically convincing is not the knowledge guaranteeing. It is possible to mount appealing arguments that the self is something determinate or material and yet still get its ontology dramatically wrong. So I, for one, believe that the strong ontic ignorance thesis opens up a lot of needed conceptual room for a proper metaphilosophy of ontological disagreement about selfhood. Although there surely is a great deal of work to be done in developing the thesis, it permits saying that realism is a live option with respect to clinical disorders of self-consciousness. Fictionalism can be avoided.
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