3. THE PRIMITIVE PERSON

Transcription

1 3. THE PRIMITIVE PERSON

2 f 3. THE PRIMITIVE PERSON Contemporary discussions on person were initiated by Sir Peter Frederick Strawson's celebrated essay "Persons", first published in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol. II, Concepts, Theories and the Mind-Body Problem, edited by Herbert Feigl, Michael Scriven and Grover Maxwell, (1958). The same essay was also reprinted in Essays in Philosophical Psychology edited by Donald F. Gustafson (1964). However, the more widely known form is a revised version of the essay published as the interrelated third chapter of the first part of his book Individuals, sub-titled "An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics" (1959). In his itinerary in Descriptive Metaphysics Strawson takes Aristotle as his first philosopher, and with all faithfulness to him, Strawson tries to establish a theory of person which is opposed to the Cartesian concept of person as composed of two separate existents mind and body, and, in essence, as being identified with a spiritual entity the ego. Here we find a rebellious Strawson crusading against the dualism of Descartes., He is also equally rebellious against the modern physicalists whom he labels as the "No-ownership Theorists" keeping especially Wittgenstein and Schlick in his mind. Strawson seems to treat the two views just mentioned as the thesis and the antithesis and tries to synthesize the two in his theory of Persons.

3 53 Identification of Particulars The revised and the recent version of Strawson's essay mentioned above is placed in the first part of Individuals which again is subtitled "Particulars. The task of descriptive metaphysics, as he says, is to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, as against producing a better structure which is the concern of revisionary metaphysics. He devotes the first part of his book to the description of the actual structure of our conceptual scheme and concludes that material bodies and persons (which have material bodies) occupy the central position in this scheme. So his account of a person, which can also be viewed as an attempted solution to the traditional problem of the relation between mind and body is presented as a category of "basic particulars. This conclusion as to the basic-ness of material bodies and persons is reached in the very first chapter of the book ("Bodies"). Persons, he says, are conceptualized as having material bodies. To this conclusion he is led by his description of our thought about the world. The history of the world, according to him, is made up of particular things and episodes "in which we may or may not have a part." We can talk about these to each-other, and our talking to eachother becomes fruitful only when we can Identify them. Hence he speaks of 'identification of particulars. By 'particulars' he means "historical occurrences, material objects, people and their shadows

4 54 and not "qualities and properties, numbers and species."1 A particular is identifyingly referred to by the speaker; and the hearer has to identify it for himself in order to understand what the speaker is speaking about. So there are two senses the speaker's sense and the hearer's sense of identification. The identification of a particular of one kind may be dependent upon the identification of a particular of another kind. In that case the particular of the latter kind, which is not so dependent on the former, is regarded as "more fundamental and more basic" than the other. This concept of basic-ness is important in his discussion on person. And this basicness is explained from the point of view of identification. Hence an examination of the notion of identification is necessary. Strawson considers the case of story-relative identification in which the hearer identifies the story within the story, but fails characters, places etc. of the to make identification "within history." So, "the full requirement for hearer's identification not satisfied here. This requirement is, however, satisfied in is the cases of demonstrative identification where the hearer can pick out the particular being referred to by sight or touch or by any other means here and now. But this demonstrative identification, per definition, has a very narrow range of applicability. So we have to take recourse to non-demonstrative identification for a large part. 1. Individuals (p. 15)

5 55 In non-demonstrative identification we use linguistic means such as using the name and/or giving the description of the particular. But the description, no matter howsoever complete it is, may equally well apply to another particular in another sector of the universe. In that case the hearer and the speaker would have two different particulars in mind. However, a non-demonstrative identification need not necessarily be based on a description in purely general terms. Such a description can be related to another particular which is identifiable demonstratively. A new particular is known only by connecting it identifyingly with the "unified framework of knowledge of particulars which each of us possess. Even when it happens to be a story-relative identification, the connection is established with the framework through the identity of the story-teller. This spatio-temporal framework (of one temporal and three spatial dimensions), within which we ourselves and our immediate surroundings are placed, "has a peculiar comprehensiveness and pervasiveness which qualify it uniquely to serve as the framework within which we can organize our individuating thought about 2 particulars'. In.order to identify a particular, it is necessary that the particular be referred to, directly or indirectly, this spatio- temporal framework. 2. Ibid. (p. 25)

6 56 Strawson here considers a possible objection to this thesis from the Rusellian camp (although he has not mentioned Russell by name) in terms of logically individuating descriptions such as "the first dog to be born at sea, which, allegedly, do not refer to the spatio-temporal framework, but are still identifiable. Strawson s reply to such an objection is that any claim to identify such a particular,accompanied by a "disclaim" to ability to connect it with the spatio-temporal framework,is "frivolous." Because, in such a case the speaker or the hearer has no ground to think that such a description has any application at all except as a probability. Such a description may fail of application when (1) there is no particular corresponding to the description and (2) there are more than one particulars "with equally good and hence mutually destructive claims and no candidate with a better claim." To avoid the "application failure" of the second type we can take recourse to a more detailed and elaborate description; but such a description would be of no avail unless it is somehow connected with "the world and its history. This is tantamount to denying the claim that a particular can be identified (that is, an individuating fact about it can be known) without somehow connecting it with a known fact in the spatio-temporal system. The feigned probability of a description's being fitted with more than one particulars in different net-works is ruled out by Strawson as illusory by considering the fact that the description has got an implicit reference to the speaker or the utterer of the description, and hence, a further implicit reference to the framework in which he, and therefore his particular, are placed. The other

7 57 suggestion that these "utterance- centred words and descriptions refer to something private and personal to the Individual utterer amounts to suggesting that there are as many net-works as there are persons. To maintain this is to deny any "public point of reference." But "we operate with the scheme of a single, unified spatio-temporal system 3 such that it is always significant to inquire about the spatio-temporal relation of a particular "at any moment of its history" to another particular "at any moment of its history, when 4 the moments may be different." One of the conditions of our using such a unified system is that we must be able to identify, or fail to identify, a certain particular not only in the sense in which this has been used hitherto, but also as the same thing with which we had prior acquaintance. This latter sense of identification 1b called reidentification as opposed to referential or speaker-hearer identification of the former sense. We cannot at any moment observe the whole of the spatial framework we use; there is no part of it that can be observed continuously by us, for our observation is limited and we do not occupy a fixed position; we go to sleep, etc. But these discontinuities and limits of observation must not prevent us from reidentifying a particular as the same with which I had occasion(s) to meet in the past. Our account must depend on "qualitative recurrences" i.e., repeated observational encounters with the same patterns or arrangements of objects. 3. Ibid. (p. 31) 4. Ibid. (p. 31)

8 58 The concept of reidentification must not be confined to things alone, but there should be reidentification of places as well. If we are to operate with a scheme of single, unified spatio-temporal framework,we must be capable of answering to questions as regards the spatial relation between any two particulars in question. Hence is the necessity of reidentification of places. But reidentification of places is not something quite different from, and independent of reidentification of things. There is rather a complex and intricate interplay between the two. For on the one hand, places are defined only by the relations of things, and on the other, one requirement for the identity of a material thing is that its existence should be continuous in space and time. So, the identification and distinction of places turn on the identification and distinction of things and vice-versa. Then Strawson raises the question as to the possibility of there being any class or category of particulars which is basic from the point of view of particular identification such that reference to particulars of that type is necessary for the identification of particulars of other kinds, and not vice-versa. It seems, he says, that from the premise that identification rests ultimately on location in a unitary spatio-temporal framework, we can construct an argument to the effect that certain particulars are basic in the sense mentioned above. Because, the framework is not something extraneous to particulars we speak of. These objects

9 59 themselves constitute the framework. But not every category of particulars is competent to constitute the framework, only the "three dimensional objects with some endurance through time qualify; they must also be accessible to observation. Material bodies, and those which possess material bodies satisfy these requirements. So they are said to constitute the framework. It may be thought that it is a necessary condition of something s being a material body that it should tend to exhibit some felt resistance to touch, i.e. it should possess some qualities of the tactual range. But this requirement will not be satisfied by purely visual occupiers of space such as "shafts of light or volumes of coloured gas," not to mention the other dubious case of ghosts. So Strawson suggests a weak sense of "material body" which will Include purely visual three-dimensional objects as well. But Strawson is doubtful about whether there is any pure case of such "identifiabilitydependence." However, he mentions at least one important case which is almost like this. He says, "there are two important general types or categories of particular, the identification of the members of one of which is, in almost this way, dependent on the identification of members of the other. The dependent type is the class of what might be called 'private particulars' comprising the perhaps overlapping groups of sensations, mental events and in one common acceptance of this term, sense data. The type on which it is dependent is the class of persons (Perhaps we should add 'or animals'; for perhaps we sometimes refer identifyingly to the particular experiences of animals. But this is a complication that I shall neglect)". 5. Ibid. (p. 41)

10 60 A private experience can be Individuated essentially by turning it on the identities of persons. That Is, a private experience, a twinge of toothache, cannot be identifyingly referred to unless as a toothache of an identified person. In other words, identifying references to 'private particulars' depends on identifying references to particulars of another type, viz. persons. This is not the case with public objects like "this tree." "This tree" need not be translated to "the tree I see now" for 'this tree' can be referred to by others also. These public objects of perception locatable directly by both hearer and speaker are basic particulars. However, the class of publicly perceptibles and the class of directly locatables are not co-extensive, the latter being a subclass of the former. Among the publicly perceptibles Strawson distinguishes between events and processes, states and conditions on the one hand, and material bodies or things possessing material bodies on the other. A further distinction is drawn between events and processes of, or performed or undergone by, material bodies or things possessing material bodies, and events and processes not of this kind. This distinction can be illustrated by a death, which is necessarily of some creature, and a flash of light which does not require any reference to any other particular. Events like "the flash of light" or "the terrible noise" can thus be directly locatable by using expressions like 'that flash', uttered immediately after the occurrence of the flash, or 'that terrible noise' uttered while the noise continues.

11 61 A large class of particular states and conditions, events and processes are conceived of as necessarily states and conditions of, or as performed or suffered by,particulars of other types, notably things which are, or have, material bodies. To be independently identifiable, Strawson says, a particular (or the members of a type of particulars) should be "neither private nor unobservable." In suitable circumstances such a particular can be directly located and thus identified without reference to any other particular at all. "the fundamental limitations of states, processes, events and conditions, as independently identifiable particulars, is their failure to supply framework of this kind which are at all adequate to our referring needs. Still less can thev supply, of themselves, a single, comprehensive and continuously usable framework of this kind. So we enormously extend the range of our possible identifying references to states, processes & c. by allowing them to be mediated by reference to places, persons and material things. So material bodies appear to be better candidates for the status of basic particulars than anything else. They have a sufficiency of relatively enduring objects. In our ordinary conversation when we speak of something we do not make explicit the referential frameworks we employ. To speak o f things that belong to our immediate present we use demonstratives. When we go beyond it we employ proper names to stand for people and places. 6. Ibid. (p. 53)

12 62 "It is a conceptual truth, as we have seen, that places are defined by the relations of material bodies; and it is also a conceptual truth... that persons have material bodies."'7 Strawson has pointed out that identification can be of two forms distinguishing and reidentifying. Of these, the distinguishing aspect is more fundamental. This act of identifying of course need not be based on actual speech-acts for we can, and do, distinguish a thing with an identifying thought. In one's own identifying thought or talk one distinguishes between the particular occurrences, states and processes that are experiences or states of consciousness of one's own, and the particulars which are not experiences of one's own or of any one else's either though they may be objects of such experiences. The particulars of the latter kind are called by Strawson 'objective particulars.' Taking into consideration the fact that we can identify a particular independently of any speaker-hearer sequence, Strawson raises the questions : (1) What are the most general statable conditions of knowledge of objective particulars? (2) Do these conditions involve the requirement that material bodies should be the basic particulars? Material bodies are basic particulars in our actual scheme, the one of a unified spatio-temporal system, of one temporal and three spatial dimensions. But we can, says Strawson, break imaginatively the 7. Ibid. (p. 58)

13 63 Kantian barrier of space. He suggests that we inquire whether there could be a scheme which provided for objective particulars while dispensing with outer sense and all its representations. We explore the "No-Space World, a world without bodies. Such a world would be a purely auditory world, for sounds have no intrinsic spatial characteristics. They have only temporal characteristics. Hence, where experience is purely auditory, that may be called a "No-Space World". Now Strawson raises the question : "Could a being whose experience was purely auditory have a Q conceptual scheme which provided for objective particulars?" An "objective particular" is a "public particular" which involves the ideas of other enjoyers of experience of that particular, and of shared surroundings. This shows that the idea of a purely auditory experience is empty unless it can be made meaningful in purely auditory terms to speak of public auditory objects which are also topics of discourse between beings who hear them. But there must be some criterion for reidentifying sounds in order that we may speak of objective particulars in a purely auditory world. This must be a criterion of numerical identity. Strawson supplies this criterion from within sounds, i.e. without using space. He divides sounds into the master-sound and others. The different pitches of the master-sound, which vary continuously through time, play the role of spatial positions in reidentifying sound particulars 8. Ibid. (p. 66)

14 64 in a non-spatial world. In this world of purely auditory experience the being who has this experience, if any such being were possible at all, may be able to recognize sound-universals and to reidentify sound-particulars. He can have a general idea of his purely auditory world save the idea of himself as the subject of this experience. He would not be able to distinguish between himself and what is not himself, for the most he can know about himself in such a world would be only either as a sound or as a sequence of sounds. But how can a sound, which the subject is, have experiences of sounds? And, "Yet to have the idea of himself, must he not have the idea of 9 the subject of the experiences, of that which has them? So it seems to be impossible that he should have the idea of himself. To have the idea at all, it seems that it must be an idea of some particular thing of which he has experience but which are not himself. "But if it is just an item within his experience of which he has this idea, how can it be the idea of that which has all of his experiences?"910 This is a general problem. This has application to the ordinary as well as to the auditory world. He then goes to discuss the problem of persons with a view to solving this problem in the ordinary world. 9. Ibid. (p. 88) 10. Ibid. Cp. 89)

15 65 Persons Although In the essay on persons in the third chapter of the Individuals Strawson tries to establish the link of persons with the phenomenon of identifying particulars and thereby to show persons to occupy a primal position and so to call them 'basic particulars', still one can see the self-sufficiency and completeness of the essay. Indeed, the earlier version of the, essay is an independent and self-cohtained piece. But we need not concern ourselves with the differences in approach between these two, for i n.essence they are 83D16 In Individuals Strawson says that he was led to the discussion on persons in the third chapter by his consideration of the topics discussed in the first two chapters "Bodies and "Sounds." I Strawson's approach to the problem of persons can roughly be outlined as follows : We distinguish ourselves from what is not ourselves on the basis of the fact that we ascribe to ourselves actions and Intentions; sensations; thoughts and feelings; perceptions and memories besides other physical characteristics like 'height, colouring, shape and weight'. Properties of the latter type we also ascribe to material bodies "to which we should not dream of ascribing others of- the things that we ascribe to ourselves. 11. Ibid. (p. 89)

16 66 This ascription of the two different properties to one and the same thing, viz. ourselves, is a peculiar phenomenon which requires explanation. So we have the questions - "why are one's states of consciousness ascribed to anything at all?" and "why are they ascribed to the very same thing as certain corporeal characteristics, a certain 12 physical situation, & c.?' > But Strawson considers two possible reactions to this formulation of the concept of person one represented by Descartes and his followers and the other by Wittgenstein and Schlick. Both camps maintain that it is a linguistic illusion that we ascribe both kinds of predicates to one and the same thing, that there is a common owner or subject of both types of predicates. The Cartesians speak of two different substances the ego and the body as owners of the two different properties. The other camp, whom he labels as the No-ownership theorists', on the other hand, holds that there is no proper subject for the so-called psychological properties, they being explicable in pure physical terms. Then we find Strawson reacting against these two views. He refutes the no-ownership thesis that experiences are not owned by anything with reference to his concept of 'identiflability dependence' of particular experiences. Particular experiences cannot be identifyingly referred to except as the experiences of some identified person. 12. Ibid. (p. 90)

17 67 If, again, the thing to which states of consciousness are ascribed were thought to be a set of Cartesian ego's, to which only private experiences are ascribable, then the question of ascribing states of consciousness to others remains unresolved. Because, in order to ascribe these to others one has to identify the others, and one cannot identify the others if one has no other criteria than subjects of experiences or possessors of consciousness. Strawson feels, therefore, that Cartesianism and the no-ownership theory both beget problems; and in order to free ourselves from these difficulties, we have to acknowledge the primitiveness of the concept of a person. Here Strawson says : "What I mean by the concept of a person is the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics, a physical situation & c. are equally applicable to a.13 single individual of that single type. By calling the concept of a person the primitive concept Strawson means that this concept acts as a logically primitive concept in making identificatory reference to states of consciousness, i.e. the latter cannot be referred to unless as ones of the former. Further, the concept of a person cannot be thought to be a compound concept of, and hence cannot be analysed as that of, "an animated body or of an embodied anima. 14 The ego has thus been demotioned from the premier position it used to enjoy in the traditional philosophy. But, 13. Ibid. (pp ) 14. Ibid. (p. 103)

18 68 he thinks, this does not rule out the logical possibility of the existence of the disembodied ego as a secondary entity. "A person is not an embodied ego, but an ego might be a disembodied person, retaining the logical benefit of indivi- 15 duality from having been a person." He then makes a distinction between "M-predicates" and "P-predicates", the former kind is characterized by its applicability to material bodies whereas the latter kind "we would not dream of applying" to material bodies. One ascribes P-predicates to others on the strength of observation of their behaviour. The behaviour-criteria are not just 'signs' of the presence of what is meant by the P-predicate, but are criteria of a logically adequate kind for the ascription of P-predicates. When it is the case of one's own, one does not, in most cases, ascribe P-predicates on the strength of observation of those behaviour criteria. But in some cases, e.g. in cases of "assessment of character or capacity" one makes use of the behaviour criteria even when it is one's own case. Anyway, these P-predicates have two uses self-ascriptive and other ascriptive. Of these two, some hold the one and some the other use as primary. But, "To learn their use is to learn both aspects of their use."16 And 15. Ibid. Cp. 103) 16. Ibid. (p. 108)

19 69 "It is not that these predicates have two kinds of meaning. Rather, it is essential to the single kind of meaning that they do have, that both ways of ascribing them should be 17 perfectly in order. Some P-predicates like 'going for a walk, 'furling a rope, 'playing ball', 'writing a letter' have the characteristic that one does not ascribe them to oneself on the strength of observation whereas in case of other-ascriptions one has to rely on observational factors. One also admits that what is ascribed in these two ways Is the same, for in these cases the bodily movements are the dominating factors, and no distinctive experiences are found to be there (Morephysical than mental, or more M-than P-predicates!) We ascribe P-predicates to ourselves without the help of obsevation. Likewise we see others ascribing P-predicates to themselves without relying on observational criteria. And we ascribe t<> each-other on the basis of observational criteria. That is, we think of each-other and ourselves as persons. This is explained by the fact that we act, and act on each-other and act in accordance with a common human nature. But whether there can be a common human nature, this question is not easily solved. Can there be a 'group-mind'? We ascribe P-like-predicates to the group. But Strawson observes : "it is a condition for the existence of the concept of an individual person, that this should happen only sometimes Ibid. (p. 110) 18. Ibid. (p. 114)

20 70 He takes the concept of an individual person as the starting point. Then he enters the world of fantasy and says that we can conceive of our individual survival of bodily death. That disembodied state can be imagined as exactly the same as the present one save (1) the perception of a body related to one s experiences, and (2) the capacity to initiate any change in the physical condition of the world. The disembodied individual is strictly solitary; he is a former person; having no personal life he has to live in the memories of the personal life he used to lead. Or he may "achieve some kind of attenuated vicarious personal existence by taking a certain kind of interest in the human affairs of which he is a mute and invisible J.,19 witness. I I Strawson's person as depicted in the I n d iv id u a ls, is a type of entity which admits of both the qualities physical and mental. In a sense Strawson is here not as concerned with defining a person (i.e. with the question "what it is to be a person?') as he is with solving the mind-body problem. He is against the dualistic account and hence tries to erect a neutral structure meant for doing justice to both the elements'in the dualistic account. Of course Strawson has not used the word neutral', instead he speaks of the person as a 'primitive concept' which is 'ontologically prior' to the concept of mind and body. A question arises at this point, that is, what he means by the 19. Ibid. (p. 116)

21 71 concept of a person is a type of entity to which both predicates, physical and mental, are ascribable. Again he says that the concept is not analysable into those of an animated body or an embodied anima. Here it is difficult to see how Strawson' can be thought to escape the charge of contradiction. For Strawson (or anyone else) can think of a person only as an entity which admits of both the predicates physical and mental. Does it not amount to analysing the concept conceptually into one which is the subject of physical properties and another which is the subject of mental properties? Or else how does Strawson understand the meaning of material' or 'psychological' if he had no prior idea of matter and mind? B.A.O. Williams in his commentary on Individuals 20 points out that the basic-ness of basic particulars, for Strawson, concerns only their basicness in identification. So also persons are basic or primitive only from the point of view of identification of experiences. A particular sensation or experience requires to be identified only with reference to a person. This is why it is basic. In order that there should be experiences, it is necessary that there should be persons beforehand. This is why it is 'ontologically prior.' But it is also equally true that a person is understood only as an entity to which predicates of both the kinds mentioned earlier are applicable. It suggests that being basic and being ontologically prior does not prevent a person from being conceptualized as a synthetic unity of both the mental and the physical aspects. 20. Philosophy Vol. 36, 1961 (pp ); Reprinted in his Problems of the Self

22 72 71 J.A. Shaffer in his Philosophy of Mind connects the Strawso- nian concept of person with the Spinozistic account of mind and body. Strawson s historical situation also bears similarity with that of Spinoza. The latter s was a reaction against the English materialist Hobbes on the one hand, and the French dualist Descartes on the other. Similarly Strawson's rebellion is against the Cartesian theory of pure ego on the one hand and Wittgenstein-Schlick type of no-ownership account on the other. For Spinoza, the mental and the physical were two aspects of something which was not itself either purely mental or purely physical, which in some modern phraseology might be called a "neutral stuff." Of course Spinoza was not much concerned with man, but with God and what followed from his nature. God or Substance was conceived under the attributes of thought and extension which again had their limited expressions in mind and body. This showed that mind and body were not two independent entities (substances) but they were two aspects of one and the same thing ; "we aren t 'bodies plus minds' but unified beings with both mental and bodily aspects, that is persons, agents, human..22 beings. Body and mind are one thing (res), one entity, not two. There is only one thinking thing (res cogitans) and there is only one 21. (p. 52) 22. Fl0istad, G. referring approvingly to Bestor, T.S.'s article "Dualism and Bodily Movement" (Inquiry, 1976) while discussing Spinoza's concept of man in Ethics in his "Mind and Body in Spinoza's Ethics,"Synthese, 37, 1978 (p. 1)

23 73 extended thing (res extensa), and it is the same thing in both cases, 23 viz. God. "The first thing that constitutes the actual being of the human mind is nothing other than an idea of some single thing actually existing." (Ethics. II, XI) "Whatever happens in the object of the idea constituting the human mind must be perceived by the human mind, or there is necessarily an idea in the mind of that thing : that is, if the object of the idea constituting the human mind were a body, nothing could happen in that body which would not be perceived by the mind." (Ethics, n, XII) "The object of the idea constituting the human mind is a body or a certain mode of Extension actually existing and nothing else." (Ethics, I I, XIII).,24 G.H.R. Parkinson in his "Spinoza's Philosophy of Mind" points out that the quoted propositions from Ethics are taken to imply that the body which is identical with the human mind (in the sense that both are expressions of one and the same state of substance) is the human body the human body taken as a whole, and not just a part of it, such as, the brain. Spinoza's account is of course not to be confused with the modern identity theory of mind. Because for Spinoza the mental and the physical are but two aspects of one and the same thing, the latter 23. Cf. Harris, E.E. : "Body-Mind Relation in Spinoza's Philosophy" in Wilbur, J.B. (ed.) Spinoza's Metaphysics : Essays in Critical Appreciation 24. In Fl^istad, G. (ed.) Contemporary Philosophy, (p p )

24 74 being neither purely mental, nor purely physical in itself; whreas for the identity theorists the mental is the physical the mental having no reality, and the physical being the only reality. Here one can surely observe the affinity of Strawson's conception of person with Spinoza s account. Strawson's person, like Spinoza's substance, has the two aspects mental and the physical, but itself not reducible to either. However, in order to establish the primitiveness of the concept of person Strawson has to refute two opposite theses the Cartesian thesis that the ego or soul is the indubitable reality, and the physicalistic thesis that there is no owner of our experiences. Strawson's treatment of these two theses are interesting and deserves reconsideration. Strawson s Treatment of the Cartesian Theory Strawson is found to be hostile to the Cartesian thesis in more than one places. Besides Individuals, he deals with the issue in the essays "Self, Mind and Body C in his Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays'), and "The Mental and the Physical" (in his Skepticism and Naturalism : Some Varieties ). Much of the things discussed in Individuals reappear in these works. It is, Strawson maintains, our usual way of thinking or talking about ourselves that we distinguish ourselves from others on the ground that we ascribe to ourselves predicates of a special kind

25 75 viz. those ascribing states of consciousness, apart from the ones ascribing material properties. That is, it is a peculiar fact that we ascribe to ourselves both kinds of predicates material and psychological, whereas we ascribe only material predicates to those which are not ourselves. This thesis is objected to, or Strawson supposes that would be objected to, by both a Cartesian and a physicalist. The Cartesian's reply is that when we ascribe the two kinds of predicates mentioned above we have two different substances in our mind the ego and the body. Both these subjects have their distinctive properties, e.g. the body has extension, the ego has consciousness; and body does not have consciousness nor does mind have extension. The physicalist on the other hand says that there is no proper subject of these apparent ascriptions of states of consciousness that these belong to, or are states of, nothing. The main line of Strawson's attack on the Cartesian theory of pure ego is concerning the notions of identity and individuation and identification of particulars. Strawson admits that these arguments are not novelties, but a "return to old insights in new and, improved forms." This 'old insight' refers to Kant his exposure of the illusions of rational psychology. 26 In The Bounds of Sense Strawson gives an analysis of this 'old insight'. According to Strawson's 'reconstruction' of the Kantian 25. Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (p, 177) 26. fpp. 162 ff.)

26 76 exposure things are like that follow : A fundamental condition of the possibility of empirical selfconsciousness is that experiences should have a certain character of connectedness and unity. But this connectedness of inner experiences alone does not provide with any concept of a subject of experience a person. It is clearly implied in Kant's writings that the concept of a numerically identical subject of experiences persisting through time requires empirically applicable criteria of identity. Strawson thinks that Kant alludes to, although not in so many words, a concept of a persisting subject of experience a man. "This concept supplies an absolutely firm basis for a genuinely object-referring use of personal names and of personal pronouns... A man is something perceptibly (if not relatively) permanent, a persistent and identifiable object of intuition... Instead of talking, dubiously, of an experiential route through the world, of one series of experiences constituting such a route, we may talk, confidently, of an undeniably persistent object, a man, who perceptibly traces a physical, spatio-temporal route through the world and tc whom a series of experiences may be ascribed with no fear that there is nothing persistent to which they are being - j ascnoed. A man can ascribe a current or remembered state of consciousness to himself without relying on any criteria of personal identity. But still the word 'I' cannot fail to refer to a subject, perhaps because of the fact that it is used in a public-context bv a 27. Ibid. (p. 164)

27 77 man who is identifiable by empirical criteria. Even in soliloquy, 'I' is used by a person who would acknowledge the applicability of those criteria of empirical identification. But it is an illusion to have at the same time the two uses of *1 a purely inner nature and, another a subject-referring use. "We are tricking ourselves by simultaneously withdrawing the pronoun from the ordinary game and yet preserving the illusion that we are still using it to play the ordinary..28 game. If we try to shake off the connection with ordinary criteria of personal identity and to arrive at a kind of subject reference based only on inner experience, we thereby deprive our use of I of any referential force. It would be, in Kant's words, "consciousness in general." If we still Insist on its referential force, then the object of this reference must be a pure, individual immaterial substance. However, Strawson is critical of Kant for not pressing the attack as far as it could have been. He thinks it is the latter's "neglect of the empirical concept of a subject of experience" that is responsible for his failure. From the empirical point of view, we have criteria of singularity and identity for subjects of experience, i.e. men. But we do not have any criteria for identifying and singularising individual souls or consciousness. In the absence of such criteria the rational psychologist cannot claim that there is only one soul one particular soul associated with his body. To suggest that a man normally has only one soul throughout the span of his life is 28. "Self, Mind and Body" in Freedom and Resentment... (p. 176)

28 equivalent to admit that the notions of singularity and identity of souls depend on, are derived from, the singularity and identity of men or people. "The rule for deriving the criteria we need from the criteria we have is very simple. It is : one person,one consciousness;.29 same person, same consciousness. This line of attack, Strawson thinks, is the coup de grace to Cartesianism". And this is what Strawson takes great pains to do in all those places mentioned above. One of the particularly important sources of the Cartesian delusion, according to Strawson, is : "a certain experience of intense looking within, or introspective concentration, of which most of us are capable and which certainly seems to have been characteristic of Descartes' own meditations. One is tempted to say in such moments that one has direct experience of oneself as a conscious being. And this may be a harmless thing to say. But.30 it may put us on the path of delusion. Strawson s treatment of the Cartesianism reminds one of another powerful attack on the doctrine by Gilbert Ryle. Ryle in his The Concept of Mind tries to erect a concept of mind which does not admit of any dualism. The very first chapter of the book is entitled "Descartes' Myth" where he is crusading against what he calls "the official doctrine." 29. The Bounds of Sense (pp ) 30. "Self, Mind and Body in Freedom and Resentment... (p. 175 >

29 7 <! According to Ryle, the Cartesian attempt to describe mind and body as two radically different entities, and yet the attempt to relate them somehow very closely is fallacious. He calls it "with deliberate abusiveness*' as "the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine. This theory is "false in principle" and involves a "category-mistake." In illustrating what he calls a category mistake Ryle says that it is committed when a thing belonging to one logical type or category is taken to be belonging to another. According to him, two things can be conjoined or disjoined in a statement when both belong to the same category. But mind and body, Ryle maintains, do not belong to the same category; hence any conjunction or disjunction involving the two terms results in nonsensibility. It is something like conjoining or disjoining between 'a left-hand glove' and 'a right-hand glove' on the one hand and 'a pair of gloves' on the other. "It is perfectly proper to say, in one logical tone of voice, that there exist minds and to say in another logical tone of voice, that there exist bodies. But these expressions do not indicate two different species of existence... they indicate two different senses of 'exist', somewhat as 'rising' has different senses in 'the tide is rising', 'hopes are rising and 'the average age of death is rising.' A man would be thought to be making a poor joke who said that three things are now rising, namely the tide, hopes and the average age of death. It would be just as good or bad a joke to say that there exist prime numbers and Wednesdays and public opinions 31 and navies; or that there exist both minds and bodies." 31. Ryle, G. : op.cit. (p. 23)

30 80 In the subsequent chapters Ryle has constructed a concept of mind which is, he thinks, free from the defects of a dualistic account of mind. A.J. Ayer while analysing Ryle's concept of mind says that Ryle seems to have dispensed with a Cartesian inner mind; instead he gives a logical behavioiuristie explanation of mind in terms of "the person's abilities, liabilities and inclinations to do and undergo.,33 certain sorts of things." He has ruled out any possibility of private experience. Sense-perceptions are not mental states or processes. He calls the verbs like 'see' and 'hear' 'achievement words' like the words 'win' or 'cure' or 'discover'. They do not describe any activity, but are used to state that something has been brought off, some task accomplished, some process carried to fulfilment. There is nothing private in the sense that of a certain occurrence, or object or state or process, it should not be possible for another person, save the one whose experience these are, to observe. Still "He does not take the desperate course, which has been followed by some contemporary materialists, of trying to identify seeing and hearing with the acquisition of true beliefs, themselves reduced to behavioural dispositions, in consequence of the stimulation of the relevant sense- organs".' Ryle still allows mental events like silent soliloquies, dreams and day-dreams, the process of fancying etc. Ayer is here of opinion that probably Ryle believes that his ghost, the one whom he 32. Ayer, A.J. : "An Honest Ghost" in his Freedom and Morality and Other Essays. 33. Ryle, G. : op.cit. (p. 199) 34. Ayer, A.J. : op.cit. (p. 145)

31 81 retains, is "an honest ghost," which "differ in some vital respect from the ghost which represents 'the official doctrine ; and the way in which he may think that it differs is that it does not command the,35 stage of a private theatre. Ayer observes that Ryle is not holding the thesis that every mentalistic discourse is translatable in terms of behaviour!stic discourse. "In a great many instances in which a person is said to satisfy a 'mental' predicate, what is being said of him is not only, and perhaps not at all, that he is undergoing some inner process, but rather that he is exhibiting or disposed 36 to exhibit a certain pattern of behaviour. This thesis is weaker and does not discard the mental or the inner world altogether. Ayer again maintains : "What Ryle has succeeded in doing is to reduce the empire of the mind over a considerable area. This is an important achievement... but it does not fulfil Ryle's professed intention of entirely exorcising the ghost in the machine. The movements of the ghost have been curtailed but it still 37 walks; and some of us are still haunted by it. Ryle in his attempt to do away with Cartesianism proposes a kind of philosophy where the role of the mind has been curtailed to a great extent. His philosophy may be called a semi-behaviouristic 35. Ibid. (p. 146) 36. Ibid. (p. 152) 37. Ibid. (p. 158)

32 82 philosophy. On the other hand, Strawson tries to find a way through Cartesianlsm by pulling down the ego, its central thesis, from the primal position it used to occupy in traditional philosophy. His ego' is a logically secondary type of existent; Ryle's 'mind' also belongs to a logically secondary type of category (although Ryle has not used this phrase), y Also, neither Strawson nor Ryle gives a purely physicalistic account of the human person. Instead both of them agree that the concept of person is to be regarded as logically primitive in order to come out of the Cartesian web. It may be pointed out that Ryle has not spoken so many words on person, but still one cannot fail to see the importance of the role of the word 'person' in his writings. He does not recognize the supremacy of mind, nor does he reject it altogether, nor else he uses purely physicalistic language. Considered from this angle Ryle and Strawson may be said to be advocating exactly the same philosophy. Of course Strawson can claim the extra credit of extracting the notion of person as a synthetic concept of the Cartesian thesis and the Wittgensteinian anti-thesis. Ownership or No-ownership? The other thesis (or the anti-thesis) which, Strawson thinks, presents a wrong view is the no-ownership or no-subject doctrine. This theory maintains that there is no such thing as subject of experience. It is only due to an illusion that we ascribe experiences and states of consciousness to something and suppose that something to be an ego. However, Strawson is not fully convinced whether anybody has held this view explicitly. He has, of course Wittgenstein and Schlick

33 83 in his mind, whom he refers to in the foot-note, when he speaks of this theory. He feels that this theory, even if was not advocated by anyone, even if he is wrong in supposing Wittgenstein and Schlick to represent it, should be reconstructed or even constructed for the first time, and should be refuted once and for all. Hence, Strawson's refutation of the no-ownership theory is the refutation of a theory of his own creation. Before we enter into the Strawsonian (re)formulation of the theory, it would be advisable for us to see what these two thinkers have actually said. Strawson's point of attack is Wittgenstein's view that there is no owner of experiences and Schlick's position that there cannot be any owner except the body itself. ^Wittgenstein spoke of two uses of the word '!' (or 'my'). This 38 is fountl in more than one places. These are "the use as object and "the use as subject." These two kinds of uses are exemplified by "I have a bad tooth" and "I have a tooth-ache respectively. Having a tooth-ache is what he called "primary experience" or "direct experience which is characterized by the non-possessive character of 'I'. In order to explain what Wittgenstein had in mind while speaking of the non-possessive 'I', he compared the sentence "I have a tooth-ache with "I see a red-patch". The second of these sentences is about "visual sensation" and here there is a reference to what he called "the visual field". He maintained, "the idea of a person doesn't 38. In the Blue Book as well as in the article by G.E. Moore "Wittgenstein's Lectures in "

34 84 enter into the description of it, just as a (physical) eye doesn t enter into the description of what is seen". Similarly, "the idea of a person doesn't enter into the description of "having tooth-ache". Here Moore observes : "How was he here using the word "person"? He certainly meant to deny that the idea of a physical body enters necessarily into the description; and in one passage he seemed to imply that he used "person" to mean the same as "physical body", since he said, "A description of a sensation does not contain a description of sense-organ, nor, therefore, of a person.,.3 9 But Moore says that Wittgenstein did not always mean a body by a person. He also said, "Just as no (physical) eye is involved in seeing, so no Ego is involved in thinking or in having toothache". He also quoted with apparent approval Lichtenberg's saying, "Instead of 'I think* we ought to say 'it thinks'." Wittgenstein contrasted this non-possessive use of 'I' with the possessive use of it "I have a tooth-ache" with "I have a bad tooth. Despite the apparent similarity in their structure,the two sentences are not of the same grammatical status. The second sentence is equivalent with "I have a match-box" in which case it is "on a level" with "Skinner has a match-box." These two are the values of the same propositional function "X has a match-box". In these cases 'I' denotes a possessor in the sense of "logical transferability of ownership" to use Strawson's phraseology. 'I' in this sense is 39. Moore, G.E. : "Wittgenstein's Lectures in " reprinted In Ammerman, R.R. (ed) Classics of Analytic Philosophy (p. 274)

35 85 replaceable by this body'. On the other hand, in the non-possessive use of 'I', "I have a tooth-ache" and "Skinner has a tooth-ache" are not of the same grammatical level for the latter has a reference to Skinner's body whereas the former has no such reference. According to Strawson's (re)formulation of the no-ownership theory (NOT) the theorists explain the phenomenon of ascribing an experience or a state of consciousness to someone by appealing to the unique causal role of the body of the individual in acquiring the experience. For the theorists it makes no sense to speak of owning an experience except in the sense of being causally dependent upon the states of the individual's body. And taken in that sense a particular experience, a state of consciousness need not be any particular individual's experience, since the experience in question might have been causally dependent on the state of some other body. Hence "my experiences are owned by (in the sense of being causally dependent upon) my body" is not a necessary truth but a contingent fact. But, the theorist maintains, one gets confused, and instead of recognizing the body as the causal factor, and hence the owner in a dubious sense, of experiences, feigns an Ego in order to provide an owner to the experiences. The NOT, however, gives an account of 'owning' in terms of logical transferability of ownership. The question of anything's owning an experience in this sense is just an impossibility. Hence the ego which has no other role to play save owning experiences in a logically non-transferable sense of 'own', the theorist would say, - should be eliminated from the picture altogether.