The Mind-Body Problem and the Intertwining

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1994

In an important sense this note is not about self. It does not make any claim that self does exist or it does not exist. This note questions the the very notion of self. The notion, this note argues, is misconceived and fails to make sense beyond the discursive boundary with in which it finds a problematic use. It fails to cross the boundary to talk about that is not a mere construction of the discourse. I have used in this note a few terms that are neologisms and a few others for which I have departed from conventional use. There are certain words I needed to rediscover for the presentation. In a discursive context for example deliberators arrive at a position by rational argumentation. The words agreement an consensus tell a different story. Gratis, the Latin root of 'agree', actually means to please. And 'consensus' derived from sentire meaning in Latin feeling. Originally therefore agreement and consensus are non-rational and very inter subjective in nature. The rational procedure of the discursive level hardly gets out of the vicious circle it's own ideas create. And cannot match with the agreement and consensus of the inter subjective level. Key words: Subjective plane-introspection-extra-spective-intersubjective plane-extra-spective plane-extraspectively intersubjective-introspectively intersubjective-discursive level-phenomenation-transcendental unity of apperception-selfsame ess of continuous consciousness-reflexive consciousness-lived bodies-three orders of being-sense of horizon of existence-auto-ontological-ex-ontological-facing-field-bio-embodied Consciousness-interface-instrumentation of sign system-cogito complex-spontaneous reflexivity-auto-thetic-linguistic fabrication One: spontaneous reflexivity Thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries dared not use the word self as reassuringly as many of their counterparts do today. They stuck to the words 'the I' or 'ego' for referring to something which many of them thought to have an

The solution of the mind-body problem as the problem of interrelation and interconditionality of mental and physiological faces contradictions when one proceeds from the classical subject-object opposition. Accepting the subject-object opposition only as the convenient way for a scientist to speak about the phenomena of this world (the way that shouldn’t be equal to the world itself), it is already senseless to look for the reason of a mental event either in biology nor in sociality. The subject-object opposition itself is possible, because the event of proportionality of human being and world have happened. In this event the human being and the world are defined by a finite way and until it neither the human being, nor the world can’t be defined. The human physiology (as well as a sociality which is sometimes unfairly identified with spirituality) can be considered as a marker of such definiteness, it is minimum of the being of consciousness. However in addition to this minimum there is also another aspect. Indeed, in every act of perception two events are realized simultaneously (not in a sequence): perception of a certain seeming (what is possible if human being and world are already defined, i.e. the act of proportionality of human being and world have happened) and a certain content. The content is always related to a certain idea. Ideas, in its turn, can be subdivided into two classes. To the first we will attribute the ideas which are the result of generalization of preceding experience and which give an opportunity to speak in an ordered way about the phenomena of the surrounding world. But there are also ideas of another sort – those that give an opportunity to the human being to newly recreate himself each time in the complete and ordered state. These ideas organize human life as human one, they are initiated by culture, but they are not a result of generalization. Such are a conscience, good, moral, love and the similar phenomena for which there are no external reasons – here the basis of a phenomenon coincide with the phenomenon itself. So, human physiology (including work of human brain) is the only side which characterizes the minimum of life of consciousness, it is the marker of human being and world are defined now. We are always after this definiteness (or, more precisely, inside it) when we perceive events of the world, and one shouldn’t search the conditions of any event of life of consciousness (the point of interests of ontology) either in biology nor in sociality. Every conscious act is complete and self-sufficient, and the consciousness basis (being actually the basis of human being) can be found only in consciousness.

2007

1995

A number of years ago Sydney Shoemaker remarked; "it is a striking fact about contemporary philosophy of mind that, while scarcely anyone thinks that it is a live possibility that a mind-body dualism anything like Descartes' is true, considerable effort continues to be spent on the construction, consideration, analysis and refutation of arguments in favour of such dualistic positions."l This expenditure of effort has not yet subsided and one can almost hear Shoemaker paraphrasing Kant and claiming that it is a scandal of philosophy that such arguments have not yet been put to rest. Similarly, Richard Zaner has also noted how "the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and brain [ran] through most of the recent symposium of the 'Philosophical Dimensions of the Neuro-Medical Sciences'." Zaner resists the temptation to try and account for this phenomenon and instead suggests that "one cannot but marvel at the insistent way it [the 'Cartesian Problem'] keeps popping up."2 However, whilst it is generally true that it is an unfashionable thesis within philosophy departments, the Cartesian view of human nature is no straw-man to be set up only to be kicked down at the convenience of yet another postgraduate dissertation. This is a sprightly tri-centenarian which occasionally receives spirited professional defences. 3 Apart from this we also have to recognise that, for the most part, it also leads a full and invigorating life outside the narrow confines of faculty. But perhaps more significantly than both of these considerations, it is not as widely recognised as it should be, even within the diScipline, that many positions seemingly antithetical to Cartesian metaphysics owe their parentage to Descartes and continue to work within a framework of

As Descartes noted, a proper account of the nature of the being that one is, begins with a basic self always present in first-person experience, a self that one cannot cogently doubt being. This paper seeks to uncover the nature of this self, first within consciousness and thinking, then within the lived or first-person felt body. After noting the inadequacy of Merleau-Ponty’s commonly referenced reflections, it undertakes a phenomenological investigation of the lived body that finds the basic self to reside in one’s espoused feelings and striving, both of which are bodily in nature. It then examines the relationship of the lived body to the visual body and to the body studied by science, noting their strong topological and dynamic congruence. Finally, it considers two aspects of the lived body not directly available experientially in third-person observation, its apparent agency and free will. It concludes that on the available evidence neither is rightly deemed illusory.

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 Review of Contemporary Scientific and Academic Studies, 2023

Determining the Self by a single notion is difficult. Yet, there are undoubtedly some details that define who I am. Nothing, in my view, is more intimately known to and specific to an individual than Consciousness, which forms the "I". It makes sense that there must be a self for the I Consciousness to exist. We need to treat consciousness seriously if we are to understand the authenticity of the Self. When an organism has conscious experience, it indicates that it has some sense of what it's like to be that creature. Without changing the underlying structure, one could appear or act like a certain creature, but their conscious experience would be entirely distinct from that of that particular creature. In this essay, I strive to find the "Self," but I am unwilling to eliminate or even reduce the body-rather, I want to affirm its significance in defining the self. How self-consciousness could be objectively understood without a specific perspective is unquestionably an open question. Understanding a person's point of view-that is, how he or she feels or sees the world-is the only way to truly comprehend that person. In the specified sphere of an endured world, this uniqueness starts with the body. Our bodies are the aspect that unifies us, contributing to what has been alluded to as a sense of ownership.