7 Self and Self-Understanding* Lecture I: Some Origins of Self

7 Self and Self-Understanding* Lecture I: Some Origins of Self I will reflect on constitutive features of selves—especially a certain sort of self- understanding. This self-understanding is the main topic of these lectures. I ‘Self ’ is a technical term, refined from ordinary usage. Ordinary usage is, however, very close to what I want. A definition from the Oxford English Dictionary runs, ‘Self: a person’s essential being that distinguishes the person from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action; a person’s particular nature.’ Kant characterized a person as ‘what is conscious of its numerical identity, of its self, in different times’.1 This * This essay is a revision, with some expansion, of the Dewey Lectures, given at Columbia University, December 2007. I am grateful to Christopher Peacocke for valuable criticisms in spring 2011 of the last section of Lecture I and all of Lecture III; and to Denis Bu¨hler for saving me from an error and prompting an argument in Lecture II. 1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A361; see also Metaphysics Mrongovius 29: 911 in Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon (eds.), Lectures on Metaphysics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 276. Kant’s formulation in the Critique is not ideally specific and might qualify as ambiguous. It is clear from context that Kant means the consciousness to include consciousness at a given time of the self as it is at different times. It is also clear that Kant intends the consciousness to be noninferential, and in my terms de re. Kant shows less interest in the diachronic implications of his formulation than one might hope. He relies on these implications in the Third Paralogism to argue that cognition of self over time is necessarily empirical and cannot meet requirements of rationalist theories of self. In my ‘Memory and Persons’, The Philosophical Review 112: 3 (July 2003), 289–337, note 50, I sketch why I reject Kant’s argument that self-cognition of self over time is necessarily empirical. In notes from his lectures, some characterizations of person or personality omit reference to transtemporal self-consciousness altogether, citing only a being conscious of its identity in different states. See Metaphysics L1 28: 276–277; Metaphysics Dohna 28: 680. Both passages are in Ameriks and Naragon (eds.), Lectures on Metaphysics, 87–88, 381. See also Critique of Practical Reason 5: 87, in Mary J. Gregor (ed), Practical Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 210. Kant thought that self-consciousness necessarily involves inner sense. There is ample evidence that he assumed that inner sense necessarily has past and future as well as present applications. So these failures to mention transtemporal capacities do not reflect a different position from the one in Critique of Pure Reason. But they do show that he does little to develop this aspect of the notion. In The Metaphysics of Morals 6: 223—in Gregor (ed.), Practical Philosophy, 378—Kant Lecture I: Some Origins of Self 141 conception of person is very close to the notion of a self that interests me. It is a purely psychological notion that specifies a self-consciousness with diachronic reach. Regardless of the ontology of selves—whether or not they are purely psychological beings—the concept self is a psychological concept. Kant’s concept contrasts with Strawson’s concept person. Strawson’s concept is close to the common-sense notion of person—roughly, the sort of bodily being—paradigmatically human being—that normally matures into a self-conscious critical reasoner with moral capabilities. Strawson’s concept is not purely a psychological concept. It entails that persons have physical as well as psychological characteristics. These two notions—the OED/Kant notion and Strawson’s notion—typify a distinction that I draw between selves and persons. Selves are loci, indeed agents, of psychological activities, and agents that can engage in, and are subject to, certain valuations—the distinctive valuations associated with persons. Selves evaluate themselves and other selves for rationality, critical rationality, morality, social cooperation, character, creativity, grace. Being an agent and topic of such valuations is part of what makes them selves. Since selves constitute the particular psychological natures of persons, selves’ being agents and topics of such valuations is part of what makes persons persons. In engaging in these types of valuation, selves become the subject matter of self- knowledge and self-understanding. So the valuational and cognitive powers of selves are intertwined. Some of the types of evaluation that I listed are constitutive to being a self. Selves and persons are constitutively capable of evaluating, and engaging in, critical reason. Arguably, they are constitutively capable of being moral. A certain reflexive cognition is constitutive to these evaluations. Critical reason and morality constitutively depend on self-understanding. My topic is the psychology and epistemology of the kind of self-understanding that is required for critical reason and morality, and that is itself constitutive to being a self, and a person. First, some introductory points. I am interested in constitutive matters—in the nature of selves—those features of selves that make them selves.2 I characterized selves as certain loci of psychological realities. The fact that self is a purely psychological notion does not entail, or even much encourage, the view that selves lack physical natures. The psychological nature of the concept cannot legislate these ontological matters. I will, however, be focusing on the psychological nature of selves. I bracket any further, non-psychological aspects of their nature. distinguishes moral personality—a free being with reason—from psychological personality, explained in terms of consciousness of self in different states. (See also Metaphysics L1 28: 276–277) The two notions are connected, however, inasmuch as a free being with reason must be capable of remembering and anticipating acts if acts are to be imputed to the individual’s moral personality. 2 I discuss natures in my Foundations of Mind: Philosophical Essays, Volume II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1–3 and passim; and in Origins of Objectivity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 57–67 and passim. For working through passims, see the indexes. 142 Self-Knowledge It is natural and right to connect psychological discussion with discussion of the brain. I will have almost nothing to say about the brain. I think that a psychological framework is necessary to finding anything in the brain that is of psychological interest. Ultimately, psychology and neuroscience are collabora- tive enterprises. Each must provide checks and balances on the other. But a psychological framework will provide us with more than enough material to work with here. The issues about understanding and value that I will be discussing must be connected to psychological inquiry. We cannot understand these issues in non- psychological terms. Perhaps this situation will change. But I doubt it. The tradition of discussing selves is complex. There are several closely related concepts that figure in the tradition—soul, spirit, mind, subject, conscious subject, self-conscious subject, rational animal, rational being, critically rational being, ego, person. Several of these will appear in my discussion. First, I will return to contrasting my notion of self with that of person. Strawson’s elaboration of the notion of person has strongly influenced philosophy in the last half-century. I think that this influence is deserved. But it has led to misconceptions about relations between psychological and physical attri- butions. I will not have time for detailed discussion of Strawson’s views. I will just describe them and state some attitudes toward them. Strawson developed his concept of persons to combat dualist conceptions of mind.3 According to his concept, a person essentially has both psychological and corporeal attributes. Strawson’s key claim is that use of the concept person, with its essential application to a corporeal being, is necessary for understanding psychological concepts. In other words, application of psychological concepts would be incoherent and unintelligible if they were not applied to something, a person, that has corporeal as well as psychological attributes. I believe that none of Strawson’s arguments, or any by his followers, justifies this claim.4 All depend on views about knowledge or individuation of content that are neither plausible nor well supported. I do think that Strawson’s notion person is useful. What I reject is a set of arguments for holding that all psychological notions are conceptually dependent on a prior notion of a corporeal being, a person. I will take psychological notions on their own terms. I emphasize that these are conceptual, constitutive points. I will not be defending an ontological position. It is only because mature persons naturally have certain psychological capacities that we evaluate them for critical rationality, take them to have a special 3 P. F. Strawson, Individuals (1959) (London: Routledge, 2002), chapter 3. 4 Strawson argues for his views in Individuals. See also his The Bounds of Sense (1966) (London: Routlege, 2006), 163ff. For followers, see Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 208ff., 237ff.; John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 100ff.; John Campbell, Past, Space, and Self (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1995), 92ff.; Quassim Cassam, Self and World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), passim; and most of the essays in Jose´ L. Bermu´dez, Anthony Marcel, and Naomi Eilan (eds.), The Body and the Self (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1995). Lecture I: Some Origins of Self 143 moral status, and so on. Not all persons have these states and capacities at all times. Six-month-olds are persons. But if a being naturally and constitutively did not have or develop psychological states and capacities beyond those exhibited by six-month-old human beings, they would not be persons.5 Perhaps persons develop into having or being selves.

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