Mind Association

Strawson, Hume, and the Unity of Consciousness Author(s): D. H. M. Brooks Source: Mind, New Series, Vol. 94, No. 376 (Oct., 1985), pp. 583-586 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2254728 Accessed: 06/11/2010 04:10
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Strawson,Hume,and the Unity of Consciousness

D. H. M. BROOKS P. F. Strawson in his well-known essay on persons,1 argues that Hume was confusedwhen he lookedfor the principleof unity of the self. Strawsonsays: of concept the pureconsciousness, primary to It wastheentitycorresponding thisillusory for the ego-substance whichHumewas seeking. . . whenhe lookedinto himselfand and himselfwithouta perception couldnever that complained he couldneverdiscover Moreseriously-andthis time therewas . . . a but anything the perception. discover of for sought theprinciple unity... Humevainly . confusion. .-it wasthisentityof which soughtvainlybecausethere is no principleof unity wherethere is no principleof differentiation.2 I will arguethat Hume in askingfor the principleof unity of the mind was raising a substantivequestion. are, In arguingfor his conclusionthatstatesof consciousness in the firstinstance, to be ascribedto persons,who are both mentaland physical,Strawsonfirstclaims that states of consciousnessmust be ascribedto something and then asserts that egos. The premissthat statesof consciousness they cannotbe ascribedto Cartesian must be ascribedto something is establishedby considerationof what Strawson theory of the self. He tentativelyascribesthis doctrineto calls the 'no-ownership' bodyplays theoristpointsto the specialrolea particular Schlick.The no-ownership in ourexperience.I feel painonly whenmy bodyis injuredandsee thingsonly when body the eyes of my body are open. Now it is a contingentfact that one particular has this special role; I could feel pain when anotherbody is injuredor see when anotherbody's eyes are open. Suppose that I feel pain when anotherbody is hurt, then does it mean that I feel someoneelse's pain as well as my own?Normallywe would say that I do not feel someone else's pain, since it is a necessarytruth that I only feel my pains. The no-ownershiptheorist denies that there is a legitimate sense in which I own my pains apartfrom the contingent fact that my pains are dependenton my body. The contingentfact that all my experiencesare causally dependenton one body is confusedwith the supposedlynecessarytruththatthe ego owns all my experiences,accordingto the no-ownershiptheorist. Things, it is from one owner to another. argued,can only be owned if they can be transferred Since the ego is only posited as the owner, in the non-transferablesense, of experiences,and since experiencesare not owned in this sense, since there is no such sense of 'own', we must reject the idea that there is any ego owning experiences.Experiencesare not owned;they are merely dependentupon bodies. There is no owner of experiences. Strawson points out that this no-ownership theoryis incoherent.The fact,whichthe no-ownershiptheoristbelievesleadsto the illegitimatepositing of the ego, namely that all my experiencesare dependenton bodyB, reliesupon the sense of ownershipwhichthe no-ownershiptheoristrejects.
P London, Methuen, 1959, Chapter3. p. F. Strawson,Individuals,
2

Ibid., p. 103.

584 D. H. M. Brooks The 'my' reflectsthat sense of ownershipand cannotbe eliminated.It is false that all experiencesare dependenton body B; to say that all experiencesdependenton body B are dependenton body B makes a contingentstatementinto a tautology. The theoristwantsto saythatthatsubsetof experiences whichareownedby a single of personaredependenton bodyB. The definingcharacteristic this subsetis thatall the experiencesare owned by one person in the non-transferable sense. Strawson goes on to say that particularstates of consciousnesscan only be identifyingly referredto as statesof an identifiable person.They owe theiridentityas particulars to the identity of the person whose states they are. To be identifiedas particular statesat all they must be possessedin the way the no-ownershiptheoristrejects 'in such a way that it is logicallyimpossiblethat a particular state or experiencein fact possessedby someoneshould have been possessedby anyoneelse'.3 Strawson then goes on to argue that we cannot in the first instance ascribe experiencesto Cartesian egos andthatthe notionof a Cartesian is parasitic ego upon the priorprimitivenotionof a person.He puts his argumentbrieflyas follows:'One can ascribestatesof consciousnessto oneselfonly if one can ascribethem to others. One can ascribethem to othersonly if one can identifyothersubjectsof experience. And one cannot identify others if one can identify them only as subjects of This raisesthe problemof how experience,possessorsof statesof consciousness.'4 we ascribestatesof consciousnessat all. Strawson'ssolutionis to say 'thata necessaryconditionof statesof consciousnessbeing ascribedat all is that they shouldbe ascribedto the verysamethingsas certaincorporeal characteristics statesof con... sciousnesscould not be ascribedat all unlessthey were ascribedto persons.'5 I will argue that one can identify anotherpurely as the subject of experiences. I startfrom AnthonyQuinton'sfable6about a personwith a completelycoherent dreamlife. Supposethaton going to sleep the firstthing I dreamis wakingup in the Middle Ages. My dreamcontinues,as coherentlyas my wakinglife, througha day in the life of a personin the Middle Ages. The last thing I dreambeforewakingup to the twentiethcenturyis going to sleep in the Middle Ages. This continuesnight afternight and my medievallife goes on with all the continuitiesthat I experiencein the twentiethcentury.Quintonconcludes,and I agreewith him, that I must grant the medievalworldas muchrealityas the twentieth-century world.I am one person with two bodies. My experiencesand sensationsare causally dependent, in the sense that the no-ownership theorist acknowledges,upon two bodies. Some experiencesaredependenton the twentieth-century body, othersaredependenton the medieval body. If I am truly one person with two bodies I will be able to remember use information and fromone life in the other.I will, forexample,be able to introducetwentieth-century technological advancesinto the Middle Ages andbe able to use my specialmedievalknowledgeto help twentieth-century medievalists. Let us supposethis story slightlyalteredso that the two lives arenot completely While I canuse medievalknowledgein the twentiethcenturyI cannot symmetrical. use twentieth-century knowledgein the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, while I rememberthe twentieth century, I do not make use of it in my deliberations. Twentieth-centurysolutionsto problemsare never adoptedand I live and act like any othermedievalperson.Let us supposealso that I havethe abilityto, as it were, mentallyshut my eyes to medievallife. I find thatif somethingveryunpleasant like
3 6

Ibid., p. 97-

Ibid., p. I00.

Ibid., p.

102.

In 'Spaces Times',Philosophy pp. 130-47. and I962,

Strawson,Hume,and the Unity of Consciousness585 a blow is about to happen to me in the Middle Ages I can mentallyshut my eyes and not feel the blow land or sufferthe pain of it. When I mentallyopen my eyes I rememberthe blow and the pain even though I did not experienceit. It might be thought that this possibility is incoherent.There is the well-knownsceptical speculationthat I might have come into existence a moment ago with all my so memories(or quasi-memories) that thoughI seem to havea pastand am psychofroma personwith a past yet I haveno past. Similarlyit logicallyindistinguishable can be arguedthat my position when I mentallyopen my eyes after the blow has from my state some moments after the fallen is psychologicallyindistinguishable blow when I havenot mentallyclosed my eyes and have felt the blow and suffered the painof it. This thoughneed not be the case, since I may haveexperienceswhile my eyes are mentallyclosed. My experiencewill then be as follows:I see the blow coming and mentallyclose my eyes and have certainexperiences,wondering,say, whereexactlythe blow fell and how hardit was. I then mentallyre-open my eyes andhavememoriesof two differentsequencesof events. I rememberboth receiving the blow and not receiving it.7 Experimentingfurther with this phenomenonof mentallyclosing my eyes I may find that the seriesof experienceswhich follow the mental eye-closing and do not have medieval content often contain twentiethcenturythoughts;while the series of experiencesincluding medievalexperiences which I come to be aware of after mentally opening my eyes never contains thoughts.Experiencesof this sort lead us to the conclusionthat, twentieth-century as well as two bodies each of which has experiencescausallydependentupon it in a specialway, therearetwo centresof consciousness.One centreof consciousnessis twentiethcenturyand can mentallyclose its eyes. The othercentreis medievaland experiencesthose things that the twentieth-centuryconsciousnessavoids feeling. Ratherthan the identityof consciousness,one firstthoughtwe had, we have something like telepathy.I contend that the real possibility,which I have described,is a case whereanotherpersonis identifiedsolely as a subjectof experiences.The best way to accountfor the memoryof a blow which I did not experienceis to suppose that someone else did experiencethe blow and that the memory of the blow is causedin the normalway by the experienceof the blow. Hence, Strawson'sargument that experiencesare not ascribableto Cartesianegos fails. Some difficultyin imaginingthe courseof experiencesI havedescribedmaystem whatis going on. There aretwo possibleinterpretafroma difficultyin interpreting tions of the case I describe.On the one hand two consciousnessesmay be sharing the same experiences,on the other we have a case of telepathy. The twentiethcenturymind is receivingexact duplicatesof the medievalmind's thoughts. The imaginabilityof the series of experiences which I describe is not affected by which account for it and my case rests the improbabilityof the interpretations on the claim that the streamof consciousnessI describeis imaginable. One interpretationof the story I have told casts doubt on Strawson'sclaim (which he is by no means alone in holding) that it is logicallyimpossiblefor two people to share an experience. Two people may have qualitatively identical distinct numerically experiencesbut it is held that these experiencesarenecessarily becausethey belong to differentconsciousnesses.An argumentagainstthis can be developedby consideringa more likelycase of two people sharingone experience.
in 7Rememberingtwo differentstreamsof consciousnesshas been consideredto be imaginable cases Oxford,ClarendonPress, I984, pp. 246-7. and of mentalfusion. See Derek Parfit,Reasons Persons,

586 D. H. M. Brooks Suppose we have Siamese twins joined by their brains.Both twins have qualitatively identical experiencesof some object. Neurologicalscience is such that we can establishthat these experiencesare realizedby a single brainstate which is in relationto the brainsof both twins. Supposewe also exactlythe same neurological accept a mind-brainidentity thesis. Both experiencesare identical with a single brain state, thereforeby the transitivityof identity they are identical with each other. Accordinglywe have two people sharingone experience.This argument, though, is not conclusive. Suppose that each twin has an ego or centre of consciousness which can be identifiedwith a portion of their brains. Each centre of consciousness,say b andc, is relatedin the samewayR to the samebrainstatea. We statesaRbandaRc.The two qualitatively identical now havetwo differentrelational distinctbrainstatesaRb experiences now be identifiedwith the two numerically can and aRc. Strawson'sclaim that two people cannotsharean experiencecan be preservedbut I claimthat doubthas been cast on whetherit is a logicaltruth.The best accountof the workingsof our brainsmight call for its abandonment. neurological The cases I have describedshow, I argue,that the questionof which personan experience belongs to can be a substantivequestion. The notion of a centre of consciousnessor an ego has come naturallyto mind. It can be a realquestionwhich ego an experiencebelongsto or whethera seriesof experiencescalls for the positing of one or more egos. The model of the mind as a central ego conscious of the experiencesof a singlemind cameto the fore. This modelprovidesan answerto the real question of what it is that unifies a set of experiencesso that they are all experiencesof one mind. They areunifiedby the fact that they bearsome relation, most likelyconsciousness to a singleunifyingego. Hume deniedthat therewasany of, principleof unity. such ego and this puts the onus on him of findingan alternative Hume's positive accountof the mind is that it is a causalnexus. He says 'the true idea of the human mind, is to consider it as a system of differentperceptionsor differentexistences,which are linked togetherby the relationof cause and effect, and mutuallyproduce, destroy, influence,and modify each 6ther.'8Determining the what it is that unifiessuch a causalnexus and ascertaining principlethat determineswhetheror not somethingcausallyrelatedto the nexusformsa partof it seem to me to be substantivetasks, tasks that might only be completedwhen we have or a fullerknowledgeof how the mind works.A flowchart somethinglike a machine drawingmight detail how the variouspartsof the mind fit together,function,and causallyinteract.Producingsuch a diagramwouldbe the workof science,and once in existencethe diagram shouldanswerthese questionsaboutthe unity of the mind. I conclude that in urging that we should find the principleof unity of the mind Hume was in no way confusedand set us a legitimatetask.9 Philosophy Department University CapeTown of Private Bag Rondebosch 7700 R.S.A.
8

D. H. M. BROOKS

David Hume, A Treatise HumanNature,edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge,OxfordUniversityPress, of

1958, Bk. I, pt. IV, sect. VI, p. 26I. 9 I am gratefulto the HumanSciences ResearchCouncilfor financialsupport.