Premise 1: self-consciousness is immune to error through misidentification.
Premise 2: self-perception is a form of self-consciousness.
Premise 3: self-perception is not immune to error through misidentification.
Should we conclude that self-perception is not a form of self-consciousness
or that self-consciousness is not immune to error through misidentification?
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
is self-perception a form of self-consciousness?
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4 comments:
Hi JMC, can you please explain premise 3 little more? Some example you had on mind maybe?
good question, Tanas. here's what i had in mind. first, there is no possibility of misidentification where there is no grounds for identification. also, one way to discuss self-perception is proprioception defined as perception of what is proper to oneself, or one's body. so, the examples that often drives the claim that one can misidentify one's body in which one's proprioception is hooked up to another individual's body. in this case, one is engaging in self-perception, except that the possibility of error has been provided for. it seems this is both logically possible and nomologically possible, so self-perception is not immune to error through misidentification...
Thanks for the explanation. Hope you won't mind another question, as it seems to me that the argument points to very interesting issues.
You say "there is no possibility of misidentification where there is no grounds for identification".
Would that mean, that self-consciousness isn't a kind of conceptual awareness?
Here is what I'm thinking of:
1.If we are aware of something *as something* (or conceptually), wouldn't that mean that there is some kind of identification (of a concrete thing falling under a concept(X being Y)).
2.From 1, every kind of conceptual awareness has possibility for misidentification
3.From 2 and from your argument, self-consciousness isn't (or doesn't involve) conceptual awareness.
thank you for your response again. i find your below argument interesting. but, i think the question about whether a content is conceptual or non-conceptual is very difficult. in my work on perception, via McDowell and Evans, i tend towards conceptualism, definitely in the context of knowledge, cognition, or otherwise judgments about such and such. however, i think there are contexts in which the debates about some content's being conceptual or nonconceptual are sorta beside the point. here's what i have in mind: we might describe the content of say the ability of an organism to distinguish between itself and the world without attributing anything but behavioral dispositions to an organism. well, if that ability is a type of self-consciousness, which i think it is, and if behavioral dispositions are non-conceptual, which they probably are, then yes, that type of self-consciousness is non-conceptual. but, if that means thoughts about oneself are not involved in that type of self-world differentiation, then that's just to say thoughts are not involved, not that it is non-conceptual or conceptual... to put my cards on the table, i think there are at least three types of non-conceptual self-consciousness in the literature (my terms are in parens). people speak about self-world distinction (self-discrimination), perception of one's body (self-presentation) and perspectival self-consciousness (self-synthesis), all of which does not require thought about oneself. that however, does not mean that these levels do not require conceptual forms or structures...
to your argument, though.
the inference from 2 to 3 requires accepting the first premise of the original argument, correct? and, although my original post raises a question, i am more inclined to reject 1 than reject 2 or 3. and, maybe i can reject one with the following argument:
i definitely agree with premise 1, rephrased as "if one is aware of x as x, then awareness of x requires Ix" where x is an individual ("concrete thing") and I is an identifying representation (e.g., in this argument, a self-image). the ordinary language way to say this is: if one is to be aware of something as that very thing, then one must know(pssst!) which thing it is. (where 'pssst!' functions to make you think knowledge is very weak, i.e., not JTB.) (identification constraint).
original premise 2: self-perception is a form of self-consciousness.
new premise: self-perception requires meeting the above identification constraint, since the content of proprioception is awareness of oneself as one's body.
Premise 3: self-perception is not immune to error through misidentification, via the armstrong case, e.g., that my proprioception can be hooked up to another body.
Conclusion: Self-consciousness is not IETM.
There are definitely issues with this argument. Is proprioception conceptual or non-conceptual? Is awareness of one's body awareness of oneself? What type of modality is involved in "the possibility of error has been provided for" in LW's Blue Book account of IETM?
Thanks, Tanas.
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