Minimal Subjectivity and Reflexive Awareness

Ratio, 2018

This article examines contemporary Buddhist defences of the idea that consciousness is reflexively aware or self-aware. Call this the Self-Awareness Thesis. A version of this thesis was historically defended by Dignāga but rejected by Prāsaṅgika Mādhyamika Buddhists. Prāsaṅgikas historically advanced four main arguments against this thesis. In this paper I consider whether some contemporary defence of the Self-Awareness Thesis can withstand these Prāsaṅgika objections. A problem is that contemporary defenders of the Self-Awareness Thesis have subtly different accounts with different assessment criteria. I start by providing a fourfold taxonomy of these different views and then progressively show how each can withstand Prāsaṅgika objections. And I conclude by giving reasons to think that even some Prāsaṅgikas can accept some version of the Self-Awareness Thesis.

In this paper, I show that a robust, reflexivist account of self-awareness (such as was defended by Digna¯ga and Dharmakı¯rti, most phenomenologists, and others) is compatible with reductionist view of persons, and hence with a rejection of the existence of a substantial, separate self. My main focus is on the tension between Buddhist reflexivism and the central Buddhist doctrine of no-self. In the first section of the paper, I give a brief sketch of reflexivist accounts of self-awareness, using the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakı¯rti as my example. In the next section, I examine reductionism as it relates to accounts of the self. I then, in the third section, argue that a reductionist account of persons can account for the unique features of first-person contents and our deep and multi-layered sense of self.

2019

The rejection of a permanent self as the 'thinker of thoughts ' and the 'senser of sensations' poses a significant challenge for Buddhist philosophy of mind: if there is no permanent agent (kartii), and if actions (karman) are merely transient events within a continuum of causally interconnected states, how is the phenomenal character of conscious experience and the sense of ownership implicit in first-person agency to be explained? At the same time, the rejection of a permanent locus for experience offers an opportunity to explore the problem of personal identity on phenomenological rather than metaphysical grounds: answering the question of why self-awareness comes bound up with a sense of self (whether owned or merely occurrent) can thus be pursued independently of metaphysical concerns about what a self is and what are its fundamental attributes. It also allows for an analysis of the structure of awareness without assuming that such a structure reflects an external relation of ownership between consciousness and the self. Let us note from the outset that there are substantive disagreements among Buddhist philosophers about how the problem of personal identity should be framed, the kind of evidence that is deemed reliable, and the lines of justification that are worth pursuing: it can be (and has been) framed in both epistemological and ontological terms, drawing on both experiential accounts and metaphysical considerations about what there is, and taking the form of both conceptual analysis

The aim of this article is to take up three closely connected questions. First, does consciousness essentially involve subjectivity? Second, what is the connection, if any, between pre-reflective self-consciousness and subjectivity? And, third, does consciousness necessarily involve an ego or self? I will draw on the Yogācāra–Madhyamaka synthesis of Śāntaraks:ita (eighth century common era) to develop an account of the relation between consciousness, subjectivity, and the self. I will argue, first, that phenomenal consciousness is reflexive or self-illuminating (svaprakāśya). Second, I will argue that consciousness necessarily involves minimal subjectivity. Third, I will argue that neither the reflexivity nor the subjectivity of consciousness implies that there is any entity such as the self or ego over and above reflexive consciousness. Fourth, I will argue that what we normally think of as ‘the self’ is best understood as a complex, multi-layered process (ahaṁkāra, ‘I-making’) that emerges within the pre-egoic flow of subjective consciousness.

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2008

Many spiritual traditions employ certain mental techniques (meditation) which consist in inhibiting mental activity whilst nonetheless remaining fully conscious, which is supposed to lead to a realisation of one’s own true nature prior to habitual self-substantialisation. In this paper I propose that this practice can be understood as a special means of becoming aware of consciousness itself as such. To explain this claim I conduct some phenomenologically oriented considerations about the nature of consciousness qua presence and the problem of self-presence of this presence.

2012

To keep in mind one case of the kind of problems raised by the status of de se beliefs, here is Castañeda's 1966 Editor of Soul case: "Smith has never seen his image (…) in photographs, mirrors, ponds, etc. Suppose that at time t Smith does not know that he has been appointed the editor of Soul and that at t he comes to know that the man whose photograph lies on a certain table is the new Editor of Soul, without Smith realizing that he himself is the man in the photograph." (Castañeda 1966: 130). essential for a (virtual) unification of the mind, as is the role of higher-order mental states for the global kind of access at the personal level we call 'consciousness'. Being a self thus has to do with appearing to oneself, or representing oneself, in a certain way. The way Dennett sees it, a self is made up of sub-personal parts, by exploring accesses among them ("I propose to construct a full-fledged 'I' from sub-personal parts, by exploiting the notion of access"-he says in Brainstorms, Dennett 1978). He agrees with Rosenthal in thinking of state-consciousness as consisting in reportings on one's own mental states by expressing higher-order mental states. Also, he proposes that only this is consciousness proper, in contrast with for instance behavior-guiding awareness; thus, consciousness proper is characteristic of linguistic creatures only. In such creatures if a self is in place and higherorder mental states are expressed, we may say that the illusion of the Cartesian Theater is perfectly real-in this sense there is a cartesian theater, i.e. there is self-presentation or self-appearing, even if there is no 'center' (in the brain). The fact that other animals are not like that is what makes them, in Dennett's words, unlike us: as he puts it, 'they are not beset by the illusion of the Cartesian Theater' (Miguens 2002). 10 B. Baars' conception of consciousness as global workspace is the idea that what is globally accessible in a cognitive system is 'publicly available', i.e. available for the system, in contrast to information processing in the subsystems, which although available for controlling behavior, is not 'centrally' available (Baars 1988). 11 A. R. Damasio himself wants to put forward a conception of self or consciousness according to which self or consciousness is 'having the body-body proper-in mind'. The mark of the fact that we are embodied conscious beings, and not cartesian souls, is the fact that our consciousness is such that we always have the self in mind-this is what 'subjectifies' consciouness, makes it mine. Understanding how this embodiment makes for mine-ness is, in Damasio's view, clearly important for thinking about self and emotion. Cf. Damásio 1992, Damásio 1999, Damásio 2010. 12 Chalmers 1996. The 'hard problem' is the problem of phenomenal consciousness (one could ask: 'why doesn't it all go on in the dark?'); 'easy problems' concern cognitive functions; control of behavior, discriminatory abilities, reporting mental states, etc. III. The Inner and the Outer-Excursus on Perception We suggested that perception proper, as having to do with acquaintance or givenness, was missing in the picture of thought-world relations of David

The ultimate purpose of Buddhist teaching is to achieve the release from samsara. By accomplishing it, clinging to ‘self ’must be removed. The substrata for clinging are the five aggregates in which consciousness forms the most familiar and most mysterious aspect. The aim of the article is to unveil the various approaches about the delineation of the process of consciousness within lifetime and between lifetime so as to facilitate the purification of consciousness.

2011

I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception." These famous words of David Hume, on his inability to perceive the self, set the stage for JeeLoo Liu and John Perry's collection of essays on self-awareness and self-knowledge. This volume connects recent scientific studies on consciousness with the traditional issues about the self explored by Descartes, Locke, and Hume. Experts in the field offer contrasting perspectives on matters such as the relation between consciousness and self-awareness, the notion of personhood, and the epistemic access to one's own thoughts, desires, or attitudes. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and others working on the central topics of consciousness and the self.

“Consciousness” in the sense of qualia and “self-consciousness” are not a two-tier and parallel relationship like that of Cartesian Theatre or “Cogito, ergo sum”, but a single-tier and serial relationship. “The sense of self” just emerges out of the process of alternating of “awareness” and “awareness of awareness”. This view on consciousness comes from an original interpretation of “non-self” in Buddhism which is based on the empirical materials of Theravada Buddhist Meditation. Intrinsically, this model strongly supports “Higher-order theories” and opposes “Reflexive theories”. Furthermore, this model reveals the mechanism of how self-consciousness arises and solves the infinite regression problem of "Higher-order theories".