Person and Object

A Metaphysical Study

Roderick Chisholm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415295932
• eBook ISBN: 9781317852223
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

First published in 2002. This is Volume V of seventeen in the Library of Philosophy series on Metaphysics. Written in 1976, this book includes amongst others, the three Carus Lectures constituting the nucleus of this book were presented before the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in December 1967 and look at the topic of Person and Object. The aim of this study is further the concept that by considering certain obvious facts about ourselves, we can arrive at an understanding of the general principles of metaphysics.

CHAPTER I

THE DIRECT AWARENESS OF THE SELF

I agree that in order to determine the concept of an individual substance it is good to consult the concept which I have of myself.

Leibniz to Arnauld¹

1 A Philosophical Question

Do we know ourselves directly and immediately? With respect to this question, two of the great traditions of contemporary Western philosophy — ‘phenomenology’ and ‘logical analysis’-seem to meet, unfortunately, at the extremes. The question is whether one is ever directly aware of the subject of experience. The question does not have to do with perception of one’s body. If it should happen to be the case that each of us is identical with his body and if, as all but sceptics hold, we do perceive our bodies, then, whether we realise it or not, we also perceive ourselves. Our question has to do with what we find when we consult the data of immediate experience — when, as Hume puts it, we enter most intimately into what we call ourselves. Thus Sartre seems to say that, although we may apprehend things pour soi, things that are manifested or presented to the self, we cannot apprehend the self to which, or to whom, they are manifested or presented — we cannot apprehend the self as it is in itself, as it is en soi.² Russell frequently said that the self or subject is not ‘empirically discoverable’.³ And Carnap expressed what I take to be the same view by saying ‘the given is subjectless’.⁴ I say it is unfortunate that the members of the two great philosophical traditions happen to meet at this particular point, of all places. For at this particular point, if I am not mistaken, both groups have lost their way.

We may put the question in Russell’s early technical terminology by asking, ‘Are we ever directly acquainted with ourselves?’ I would say that the answer to Russell’s question is obviously ‘Yes’.

I will first describe acquaintance in a somewhat inexact and informal way and then I will attempt a more nearly exact statement. Given this statement, it should then be obvious that we are directly and immediately acquainted with ourselves — that we know ourselves directly and immediately. But the full import of this philosophical thesis may not be clear until we have replied to certain philosophical objections.

2 Acquaintance: A Preliminary Statement

The concept of the direct acquaintance of oneself presupposes that of the direct knowledge of a proposition. We could say that a proposition is known directly if, in Meinong’s terms, it is ‘self-presenting’ or it ‘presents itself.⁵ In order to have a preliminary foundation, let us say that a proposition ‘presents itself to a man, if, first of all, it is true, and if, secondly, it is necessarily such that, if it is true, then the man knows it is true. The proposition that I seem to see many people, for example, is one that is now self-presenting to me. This means, first, that I do in fact seem to see many people and, secondly, that it is necessarily true that, if I thus seem to see many people, then it is evident to me that I do. Of course I also know that there are many people here but this is not something that is self-presenting to me; for there could be many people here even if I didn’t know that there were.

Among the propositions which are thus self-presenting for each of us at the present time are propositions about our state of mind at this time — our thinking certain thoughts, entertaining certain ideas and having certain sensory experience (or, as I would prefer to put it, our sensing in certain ways).

If a proposition is thus self-presenting to a man, then it is one that he knows directly. Now I suggest that whenever a person thus knows something directly then he may be said to have direct knowledge of himself; in Russell’s terms, the man may be said to be directly acquainted with himself. For all the self-presenting states we have referred to are states of the knower himself. In knowing them directly, he knows himself directly. He is directly acquainted with certain of his states and also with himself.

To see that these states are states of the knower himself, we have only to ask ourselves: What state which is not a state of the man himself is one which is necessarily such that, if it were to obtain, then the man knows directly that it obtains? That there are many people in the room, as we have said, could obtain without my knowing about it; that there seem to me to be many people in the room couldn’t possibly obtain without my knowing about it. Thus Brentano has held that the only individual thing which can be an object of such direct factual knowledge is the knower himself.⁶

If you are now awake and conscious, then you have certain properties such that you are now known directly by yourself to have those properties. Thus you may now be such that you seem to hear a voice, or you believe yourself to be in North America or in Great Britain, or you hope to receive some enlightenment from this book. If you do have such properties as these, then you have direct knowledge of yourself. And if you do have direct knowledge of yourself, as I am sure you do, then you are directly acquainted with yourself. This fact can also be put by saying that you are immediately aware of yourself.

I will now attempt to formulate this philosophical thesis somewhat more precisely.

3 Self-Presenting States

Can we now characterise ‘self-presentation’ more adequately? I suggest this definition:

D.I.1

h is such that it is self-presenting to S at t =Df h occurs at t and is necessarily such that, whenever it occurs, then it is certain for S.^7

Let us take my feeling depressed as a paradigm case of self-presenting state. I had said, in my preliminary formulation above, that the property of feeling depressed is one which is necessarily such that, if a person has it, then he knows directly that he has it. Let us now replace ‘knows directly’ by ‘is certain’. Our assumption is, then, that people are necessarily such that, if they are depressed, then they are certain that they are depressed.

What it is for a state of affairs to be necessarily such that, if it occurs or obtains, then it is certain for a person that it occurs or obtains? Our question may be divided into two further questions. The first is: ‘What is it to say of a thing that it is necessarily such that so-and-so?’ And the second question is: ‘What is it to say, with respect to a state of affairs, that it is certain for a man that it obtains?’

The first question — ‘What is it to say of a thing that it necessarily such that so-and-so?’- cannot be answered except by using expressions that are themselves as difficult to understand as is the locution ‘x is necessarily such that it is F’. We might say: ‘x is such that, if it were not f, it wouldn’t exist’; or ‘God couldn’t have created x without making it such that it is F’; or ‘x is such that in every possible world in which it exists it is F’. But if a person doesn’t understand ‘x is necessarily such that it is F’, it is not likely that he will understand the expressions in terms of which we have attempted to clarify it. One should, however, be able to acquire the concept by considering examples. The ‘F’ in ‘x is necessarily such that it is F’ could be replaced by any of the following expressions, no matter what ‘x’ may designate: ‘self-identical’; ‘red or not red’; ‘a musician if a violinist’; and ‘such that two and two is four’. And for some but not all values of ‘x’ the following expressions would be true: ‘x is necessarily an even number’; ‘x is necessarily an abstract thing’; ‘x is necessarily an individual thing’; and ‘x is necessarily possibly red’.⁸

We are suggesting, then, that the property expressed by the phrase, ‘being such that, if it feels depressed, then it is certain for it that it feels depressed’, is a property that everything has necessarily. People have it necessarily and so do stones and abstract objects and everything else. Thus if a stone were to feel depressed, then it would be certain for it that it felt depressed. For such certainty is guaranteed by the very nature of the feeling. (This means that the property of feeling depressed has itself necessarily the property of being such that, if anything exemplifies it, then it is certain for that thing that it feels depressed. This property is had necessarily by the property of feeling depressed, and by any property that includes the property of feeling depressed.⁹

Let us now turn to the second question to which our definition of self-presentation gave rise: ‘What is it to say, with respect to a thing, that it is certain for a man that the thing has a given property?’

We should distinguish between saying that a man feels certain about a given thing and saying that that thing is something which is certain for him. When we say that he feels certain (‘He feels certain he will succeed’), we are saying something about the strength of his conviction or about the felt strength of his conviction. But when we say that something is certain for him (‘That he feels depressed or seems — to himself — to have a headache is something that is certain for him’), we may, but of course we need not, be saying something normative and more objective. In such a case, we will be saying something, not about the strength of his convictions or about the way he feels and acts, but about what he has a right to believe, or what it is reasonable for him to believe. Let us here restrict the expression ‘is certain for him’ to this normative and objective sense.

We might define this sense approximately as follows: to say of something that it is certain for a man is to say that, for him, believing that something is at least as reasonable as believing anything else. A more exact definition is this:

D.I.2

h is certain for S at t =Df (i) Accepting h is more reasonable for S at t than withholding h (i.e. not accepting h and not accepting not-h) and (ii) there is no i such that accepting i is more reasonable for S at t than accepting h.

The definition presupposes the normative epistemic concept here expressed by ‘more reasonable than’.¹⁰ This concept is discussed in detail in Appendix D of this book.

The first clause of the definiens (‘Accepting h is more reasonable for S at t than withholding h’) could be re-expressed by saying ‘h is beyond reasonable doubt for S at t’; for we may say that a proposition is beyond reasonable ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter I. The Direct Awareness of the Self
• Chapter II. Agency
• Chapter III. Identity through Time
• Chapter IV. States of Affairs
• A. The Doctrine of Temporal Parts
• B. Mereological Essentialism
• C. The Objects of Belief and Endeavour
• D. Knowledge, Evidence and Reasonable Belief
• E. Summary of Definitions
• Notes
• Index