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The You-Turn in Philosophy of Mind: on the Significance of Experiences That Aren’T Mine

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The You-Turn in Philosophy of Mind: on the Significance of Experiences That Aren’T Mine THE YOU-TURN IN PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EXPERIENCES THAT AREN’T MINE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PHILOSOPHY AUGUST 2018 By Joshua Stoll Dissertation Committee: Arindam Chakrabarti, Chairperson Vrinda Dalmiya Ronald Bontekoe Joseph Tanke Jesse Knutson Ashley Maynard Acknowledgements I could not have written this dissertation without the help and support of others, including my family, my friends, and my professors at the UH Mānoa Department of Philosophy. My parents Luci and Howie Stoll have always been there to unwaveringly support my endeavors. They have been a great source of love, inspiration, and guidance. I owe them everything I have become. My brother Adam and his wife Lisa and their kids have also been a great source of love, inspiration, and guidance. And I’m thankful that my nieces and nephew really got me moving on this project by playfully asking me every Thanksgiving (perhaps with some prodding from my parents) if I have finished it yet. In addition, I’d like to thank my fellow graduate student colleague-friends in the department, in particular: Matt Izor, Elyse Byrnes, Ben Zenk, Brandon Underwood, Jane Allred, and Joel Label. More particularly, out of this group, I’d like to thank Sydney Morrow for being a close friend and great officemate, as well as Ian Nicolay, for being a close friend and great roommate. Our camaraderie and support of each other, the community we formed, truly made me feel at home here in Hawai‘i. Last but far from least, I would like to thank my professors at UH Mānoa for their guidance and support. This project would not have been possible without the patience, guidance, feedback, and support of my committee members in particular. They have shown me what it truly means to be a scholar. And most of all, I’d like to thank the chair of my committee Arindam Chakrabarti. His patient guidance, brilliance, and sense of humor gave me a scholarly ideal to strive for. I owe him, not just for invaluable philosophical insights – which often, and to my great delight, came in the form of puns and jokes – but for his great support and advocacy of my project. i Abstract This dissertation challenges a dominant way of thinking in philosophy of mind that gives rise to a variety of problems of other minds and, thus, different versions of the threat of solipsism. I contend that these problems arise because of a problematic philosophical starting point. For such ways of thinking start from the removed, contemplative position of a solitary individual, conceptually isolated from the world, trying to bridge the conceptual divide between himself or herself and the world at large. Appealing to a recent trend in cognitive science called enactivism, as well as the medieval Indian philosophy of Kaśmīr Śaivism, I suggest that we can dissolve these problems without entirely neglecting their significance if we take a different starting position for philosophy of mind: the lived position. In the lived position, the possibility of solipsism, for the most part, simply goes unconsidered since we are always already involved in participating with each other to make sense of the world. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………………………………..i Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….ii Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1-8 CHAPTER 1 A Critical Review of Epistemological Problems of Other Minds A critical review of how certain conceptions of subjectivity and knowledge naturally lead to epistemological problems of other minds. Approaches to this so-called “problem” are articulated and critiqued. 1.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………...……….9-11 1.2 Inference and Knowing That You Exist…………………………………………………………….11-13 1.2.1 The Argument from Analogy……………………………………………………………………………13-19 1.2.2 The Argument from Remainder……………………………………………………………………….19-27 1.3 Folk Psychology: Knowing What You Think………………………………………………………27-29 1.3.1 Theory-Theory…………………………………………………………………………………………………29-35 1.3.2 Simulation Theory……………………………………………………………………………………………35-43 1.3.3 Some Problems with Folk Psychology………………………………………………………………43-48 CHAPTER 2 A Critical Review of the Conceptual Problem of Other Minds It is suggested that the epistemological problems discussed are grounded in a faulty conception of the subject and subjectivity. Approaches to these conceptual difficulties are articulated and critiqued. 2.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………49-51 2.2 Conceptual Problems………………………………………………………………………………………..51-55 2.3 The Problem of Generality…………………………………………………………………………………55-56 2.3.1 The Criteria-Based Approach……………………………………………………………………………..56-59 2.3.2 Imaginative Extension………………………………………………………………………………………..59-65 2.4 The Problem of Unity………………………………………………………………………………………….66 2.4.1 The Problem of Generality Misses the Point……………………………………………………….66-71 2.4.2 Action as Behavior Proper…………………………………………………………………………………..71-79 2.4.3 Emotions and Behavior……………………………………………………………………………………….79-84 2.4.4 Joel Smith’s Conceptual Problem of Other Bodies……………………………………………….84-86 iii CHAPTER 3 The Axiological Problem of Other Minds and a Critique of Cognitivism An axiologically relevant example of the conceptual difficulties discussed in the previous chapter is critically reviewed. The conceptual difficulties we’ve been discussing are diagnosed and two other possible ways of thinking about subjectivity in its intersubjective element are addressed. 3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….87-89 3.2 Caspar Hare and Other Less Important Subjects……………………………………………………...89 3.2.1 Egocentric Presentism, the Peacemaker, and Harmony…………………………………………...89-91 3.2.2 Egocentric Presentism and S-World Semantics…………………………………………………………91-94 3.2.3 The Grounding Problem……………………………………………………………………………………………94-96 3.2.4 The Generalization Problem……………………………………………………………………………………..97-100 3.2.5 The Problem of Irreducibly Egocentric Preferences…………………………………………………..100-102 3.2.6 A Critique of Egocentric Presentism………………………………………………………………………….102-110 3.3 A Critique of Cognitivism…………………………………………………………………………………………..110-111 3.3.1 Logocentric Intellectualism……………………………………………………………………………………….111-112 3.3.2 Epistemic Purity and Scientism About Other Minds…………………………………………………..112-114 3.3.3 Implausibly Thin Subjects…………………………………………………………………………………………..114-116 3.4 Going Beyond Cognitivism………………………………………………………………………………………….117-118 3.4.1 Indian Aesthetics and Affective Intersubjectivity………………………………………………………..118-122 3.4.2 Sartre and Ontological Intersubjectivity………………………………………………………………………122-127 CHAPTER 4 How to Do Things with Others It is argued that subjectivity in its intersubjective element is primarily conceived through sustained interactive practices of sense making. To this extent, others are recognized in their subjective element as fellow participants in understanding the world. This is constrained by the manners in which we address each other and what we address each other about. 4.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..128-130 4.2 Recognition and Enactive Intersubjectivity………………………………………………………………….130-131 4.2.1 Embodied Concepts…………………………………………………………………………………………………….131-135 4.2.2 Autonomous Sense-Making…………………………………………………………………………………………136-140 4.2.3 Enactive Social Perception and Participatory Sense-Making…………………………………………140-150 4.2.4 Perception and Accessibility: Another Conceptual Problem………………………………………….150-158 4.2.5 Recognition and Availability………………………………………………………………………………………….158-164 4.3 Address and Situatedness: Enacting the Recognition of Other Minds……………………………164-165 4.3.1 Address: Situated Recognition………………………………………………………………………………………165-171 4.3.2 Between Us: Situating Minds and Norms………………………………………………………………………171-181 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….182-187 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….188-195 iv Introduction “My resistance to solipsism – which is as lively as any I should offer to doubt the cogito – proves that I have always known that the Other existed… Since the Other is not a representation nor a system of representations nor a necessary unity of our representations, he cannot be probable: he cannot at first be an object.” _Jean-Paul Sartre_1 Well before we can conceive of ourselves in the first-person, we are addressed second- persons. We are talked to prior to talking to others; we are looked at, gestured towards, and readily responsive to these looks and gestures of others before we are consciously focusing to look at or gesture towards anyone. From this starting point of being a second-person first, I seamlessly graduate to recognizing myself as already recognized by others as being “one of us,” and as being addressed as such. My sense of myself as myself arises out of my having been a “you” for someone else. Self-consciousness is thus read through a socialized or intersubjective lens. In the words of Emmanuel Levinas, there is no escaping the appeal of the neighbor.2 Yet, on the other hand, as we become aware of being a center of consciousness, as the first-person point of view takes hold of our psychophysical lives – perhaps with a little nudge from Cartesian meditations – we can find ourselves stuck in a conundrum regarding others. For the first-person sense of experience implies an exclusiveness of experience: Dasein, as Heidegger said, is in each case mine.
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