Consciousness and Cognition Consciousness and Cognition 12 (2003) 515–528 www.elsevier.com/locate/concog Emerging selves: Representational foundations of subjectivityq Wolfgang Prinz Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Amalienstrasse 33, D-80799 Munich, Germany Received 27 February 2003 Abstract A hypothetical evolutionary scenario is offered meant to account for the emergence of mental selves. According to the scenario, mental selves are constructed to solve a source-attribution problem. They emerge when internally generated mental contents (e.g., thoughts and goals) are treated like messages arising from external personal sources. As a result, mental contents becomes attributed to the self as an internal personal source. According to this view, subjectivity is construed outward-in, that is, oneÕs own mental self is derived from, and is secondary to, the mental selves perceived in others. The social con- struction of subjectivity and selfhood relies on, and is maintained in, various discourses on subjectivity. Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction This paper offers an account of how mental selves may have emerged. It comes as a piece of speculative psycho-history, that is, as a hypothetical evolutionary scenario. The core message is that mental selves are sociocultural constructs rather than naturally given organs of human minds. My argument will take three steps. First, I shall point out how the emergence of con- scious awareness is linked to the emergence of selves. Then, I shall offer an evolutionary scenario that explains how, at some point far back in Stone Age, mental selves came into being as a solution to a particular representational problem. Finally, I shall discuss mechanisms of social interaction and discourse in the service of maintaining and preserving the institution of mental selves. q I am grateful to Jonathan Harrow for translating the text from German into English; Heide John for completing the manuscript. E-mail address: [email protected] (W. Prinz). 1053-8100/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S1053-8100(03)00053-9 516 W. Prinz / Consciousness and Cognition 12 (2003) 515–528 2. Conscious experience and subjectivity When we talk about stars and stones, when we are dealing with algae and fungi, or even grasses and trees, we generally believe that everything that can be said about them at all can be said through the means of physics, chemistry, and biology. This may also still hold for jellyfish, worms, and sponges, but then things soon start to become critical—if not with insects, then perhaps with vertebrates, and certainly with mammals, particularly the primates, and inevitably, of course, with Homo sapiens—with you and me. When considering these animals, we believe we cannot say everything that can be said about them with these sciences. We also attribute them with an inner life, perhaps to a lesser degree, but, in principle, similar and related to our own conscious ex- perience. Some believe that when we impute subjectivity, we attribute to others what we know from ourselves. Some others believe that we attribute subjectivity as a theoretical construct that applies to others as well as to ourselves. Subjectivity or consciousness—how should one approach this new quality that seems to have emerged somewhere between fish and H. sapiens? How does subjectivity enter the world? What is its function? 2.1. Descriptive accounts What does conscious experience really mean? Let me start by stating what I do not mean when I use this term. First, I do not mean those concepts of consciousness that take the rank of a special substance, ontological form, or ontological level, as found, for example, in the German school of idealism; instead, I use the concept and its verbal derivatives exclusively in the psychological sense, that is, in the sense of concrete forms of mental experience. Second, I do not mean concepts of consciousness that describe certain states of persons, for example, that someone is conscious or has lost consciousness and is then unconscious. This notion of consciousness describes the dis- position to produce conscious mental contents, and, insofar as theories exist on this, they specify only the conditions under which this disposition comes and goes without telling us anything about what is responsible for the conscious nature of their content. This brings me to what I do mean and what I wish to explicate here: the conscious nature of mental contents. Our being conscious is always expressed by our being aware of specific contents. We cannot be conscious in a pure or empty form. It is always specific contents of which we are aware, and it is only through our awareness of this contents that we recognize that we are con- scious. Thus, like persons who can be in conscious or unconscious states, mental contents can be conscious or nonconscious as well. Depending on our theoretical tastes, we then use such labels as unconscious or preconscious mental contents, or those that are inaccessible to conscious experience. How, then, is conscious experience possible, and what exactly is its conscious nature? When an- swering this question, I shall follow a characterization given by Brentano (1924). Brentano uses an extremely simple example to discuss the nature of what he calls mental acts. He raises the question what actually happens when we hear a tone. What is responsible for the conscious nature of this event? According to Brentano, there are two contents interwoven in this mental act: the tone that we hear and the fact that we hear it. However, these two mental contents are not represented in the same way. The tone is the primary object of hearing; we can observe it directly in the mental act. Hearing itself is the secondary object of the mental act. Brentano says that it cannot be observed directly, but W. Prinz / Consciousness and Cognition 12 (2003) 515–528 517 attains consciousness in another, indirect form: ‘‘We can observe the tones that we hear, but we cannot observe the hearing of the tones. This is because it is only in the hearing of the tones that the hearing itself is also assessed’’ (Brentano, 1924, p. 181; italics added). This is as far as Brentano goes. However, if we want an exhaustive characterization of the structure of mental acts, we have to go one step further: If it is true that hearing the tone contains not only the tone itself but also, implicitly, its hearing, then the subject hearing it must also be contained in the act in another encapsulation. This is because, just as a tone is hardly conceivable without a hearing directed toward it, a hearing is hardly conceivable without a mental self or subject who hears. Hence, conscious mental acts are characterized by what is sometimes termed ‘‘me-ness’’ (e.g., Kihlstrom, 1997), that is, the implicit presence of the mental self.1 2.2. Explanatory accounts What sort of explanations do we need in order to finally say that we understand how the conscious nature of mental contents arises? If it is true that the relationship of mental contents to an implicitly present self forms the decisive foundation for the formation of their conscious na- ture, then the problem of explanation shifts from consciousness to the self, that is, to the issue of the constitution of the mental self and its implicit representation. Therefore, we need theories that explain the role of the implicitly present mental self. An un- derstanding of this role would simultaneously mean an understanding of how the conscious na- ture of mental contents arises. Because the quality of conscious awareness does not just arise when the condition of the implicit presence of the self is fulfilled but also consists precisely in this condition being met, it becomes possible to understand not only—in correlational terms—under which conditions conscious mental contents emerge but also—in foundational terms—why they assume precisely this quality and not any other.2 1 In line with this, the conscious representation of a situation ends precisely when the self departs from it. If, e.g., while out walking, we become involved in a conversation that claims our entire attention, our conscious perception is focused on the content of the conversation and the conversational situation itself. These are, to return to Brentano, the primary objects on which the implicitly present self concentrates. It is only these that we perceive consciously. Other features of the situation—namely, the scenery we are passing through—are not acknowledged. Naturally, there can be no doubt that this information is processed, because, otherwise, it would be impossible to explain why we are completely able to adjust our steps in line with the environment, even when we are deep in conversation. However, this processing does not generate any conscious representation, representation related to the implicitly present self. 2 This distinction addresses one of the major problems faced by research into what some have termed the NCC—the neural correlates of consciousness (e.g., Metzinger, 2000): Even if we had an exact and comprehensive account of the neural correlates of consciousness, we would still be far from understanding why these neural processes bring forth precisely this particular quality, and not some other. And, vice versa, we would be just as uncertain why certain neural processes bring forth the quality of conscious awareness whereas others, in contrast, do not. Theories on the relation between brain functions and consciousness offer, at best, correlational relations that help us to know how the brain subserves conscious experience, but not foundational relations that help us to understand those relationships. In this sense the chase for the NCC appears to be pointless. The disparity between the phenomena we wish to relate to each other here seems to be too large to permit us to trace them back to each other directly.