Burge, Tyler - Self & Understanding Lecture I: Some Origins of Self

11/02/2012

The Journal of Philosophy, June/July 2011

This lecture is devoted to understanding the self and its psychological functions. Author begins with some clarifying remarks: the discussion is about the psychology of the self, not its ontology (Strawson is brought up as someone who provides a useful concept but does not manage to prove that the concept "person" can only be physical). Also, author takes care to distinguish between concepts of person-hood, and self-hood, which is more about critical self-reflection. (pg290) Interestingly, author claims that a person has a self if it has it while in its mature state, even before it realizes that state. (pg290) Further, author claims that unconscious elements of psychology only are "constitutively relevant to selves" when they are conscious. (pg291-2) This comes when introducing a technical term: a "point of view": representational states and occurrences that are imputable to the individual (pg292). A self/individual realizes a multi-tiered structure of itself (self-reference) by taking objects within it's point of view as further objects to be represented. (pg292)

In section II author discusses the difference between perception and sensory systems: not all sensory systems are perceptual. Perception involves representation of objects in the world, while other sensory systems might be more or less successful at getting what the living thing needs/wants, but there is no test of veridicality. (pg292-3) For author, the "mark" of the perceptual is "perceptual constancy": that objects perceived retain their features even through shifting contexts. (pg293) Prior to self-representation is another, more primitive form of representation outlined by the term "egocentric index": a spatio-temporal representation that 'indexes' an origin as an individual's point of view; it is "immune to failure" (pg294). There are two functions (constitutive) of an egocentric index: (1) an origin/index for representations and (2) a provider of ego-relevance when it comes to the individuals own goals, needs, and perspective. (pg294-5)

Author moves into talking about developmental ontogeny for self-representation, specifically four capacities:
1. Coupling of visual representations of a body and kinesthetic movements (the mirror test), and attribution of the body as one's own. (pg296-300) Author does not believe this is self-consciousness or self-awareness since no psychological states are involved in the proprioception. Author instead states this is a version of 'double indexing', where the object seen in the mirror is indexed again as the individual's own body (pg298).
2. Copying and imitation capacities.(pg301-30) This is considered more advanced than the mirror test since it requires adjustment to activity the individual cannot control. (pg303) Further, author argues that imitation and joint attention are not psychological understandings of others but instead teleological understandings of them. This is still not yet self-representation or even theory of mind (pg304),
3. Joint Attention (pg303)
4. Memory. Author takes a long tour through a taxonomy of memory. Author is interested first in Long-Term Experiential Episodic memory, a subspecies of Long-Term Experiential memory. Episodic memory must be conscious, and is time-specific to picking out objects as they were at the time (pg306), and revisiting them is like re-living them (pg307). This is different from non-episodic experiential memory, where one has access to the content of a belief based on the past but does not have access to how the particulars were experienced. These kinds of memories locate the remember in the situation (pg308). Episodic and generic long-term memory is considered 'de re' by author (pg305-6), because it must be conscious and noninferential (pg213).  Author develops Autobiographical Experiential Memory as a kind of memory "from the inside", which preserves the perspective of the individual within the memory (pg309). The importance of this kind of memory is that it is extended over time in ways that imitation, joint attention, and the mirror test have do not. (pg310)

Author ends this discussion with looking at the Kantian and Lockean conception of selfhood through the lenses of memory author just sketched.