Abstract
The third part presents the main claim of the book. In a nutshell, it argues that self-consciousness must be understood as permeated with affectivity. Self-consciousness is at its core an affective phenomenon, it is self-feeling. Self-feeling is an aspect of our fundamental affectivity. It can be understood as existential feeling. This chapter summarizes the main features of self-feeling building on the first and second part of the book. It is a pre-reflective, pre-propositional, bodily feeling that shapes our space of possibilities. It is the affective disclosure of individual existence. The chapter closes with clarifications to potential questions, such as why it is a feeling, how we can be oblivious of it, if animals can have self-feeling, and if there is one or many self-feelings.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Importantly, this does not imply that we as individuals are not related to our environment. The property of being irrelational means only that self-feeling in its inner structure does not have one feeling (or perceiving) and another felt (or perceived) part. There is no relation within the structure of self-feeling. However, this does not at all deny that our being in this world is utterly relational. Most probably it makes sense to understand human existence as embedded, social, and situated.
- 2.
Note that this “to us” does emphatically not imply that there is something (existence) that is recognized by something else (us). Our grammar makes it extremely hard to put a strictly direct and non-relational phenomenon into words. Importantly, however, this is a deficiency in language not in the concept itself.
- 3.
Note that the label “sui generis” emphasizes that self-feeling is a distinct phenomenon. Yet, it is understood as affective phenomenon and thus shares some features with other affective states.
- 4.
Please note that there is a large and complex debate on concepts and propositionality itself which this book cannot attempt to do justice. See Margolis and Laurence (2014) for a general overview. Here the focus will lie on the claim that neither a strict non-propositional nor a strict propositional understanding can satisfy with regards to the phenomenon of self-consciousness.
- 5.
- 6.
These are called self-knowledge or self-interpretation in this book.
- 7.
One could argue that a “reason” for such beliefs could be an observed pattern of behavior. I always ate chocolate so it is fair to believe that I prefer chocolate. However, this does not explain how the preference (or the behavior) was established in the first place. It would be counterintuitive to leave that to coincidence.
- 8.
This problem will be further discussed in Part IV of this book.
- 9.
Remember from Sect. 2 of chapter “Challenges in Current Philosophy of Self-Consciousness – The Heidelberg School” in this book that Frank suggests two separate phenomena, “self-consciousness” and “self-knowledge”, that cannot be further analyzed (Frank 2012, chapter 6; 2015, pp. 17f.).
- 10.
“Begrifflichkeitsthese” in German
- 11.
“Alles, was überhaupt im Rahmen einer personalen Perspektive in einer Welt auftritt – also sämtliche personalen Verhaltungen – muss demnach als begrifflich verfasst verstanden werden. Und insofern sind auch Gefühle begrifflich verfasst.“
- 12.
Slaby goes so far to concede that even nonverbal gestures or actions can be seen as propositional articulations. This extreme broadening does not seem necessary for his argument.
- 13.
More on the appropriateness of emotions and existential feelings in chapter “Appropriateness of Self-Feeling”.
- 14.
Slaby makes a third distinction, the “narrative unity of the feeling as personal comportment”, which seems to be less relevant in this context.
- 15.
“Die umstrittene These, wonach Erfahrungen und damit auch affektive Zustände aller Art einen begrifflichen Gehalt haben, kann in der Form, in der sie bisher vorgetragen und verteidigt worden ist, vermutlich noch nicht vollends überzeugen.”
- 16.
Note that Ratcliffe himself acknowledged this problem. In one of his papers (Ratcliffe 2012a, pp. 49f.) he explicitly marks the relation between existential feeling and conceptual thought as an important area for further research.
- 17.
This points to the fact that all our affective experience is inextricably permeated with meaningful structure.
- 18.
Heidegger would probably turn in the grave if he knew that his existential notions of “understanding” and “discourse” are related here with the notion of propositionality. This is not a historical enquiry, however. Thus, we should keep calm in this regard.
- 19.
- 20.
You might consider Eugene Gendlin’s concept of “Focusing” (Gendlin 1978) as integrating a similar insight into psychotherapy.
- 21.
See Rödl (2007) for an opposing view.
- 22.
Note that Peacocke, as well as Bermudez and Musholt, use the term “nonconceptual” to refer to the kind of experience we are focusing on here. They argue that an essential feature of these “nonconceptual” experiences is their interrelatedness with and translatability to the conceptual level. Therefore, they can be legitimately presented as compatible with the proposal of pre-propositionality defended in this book.
- 23.
Note that these distinctions seem to have inspired Peacocke’s (2014, chapter 8–10) three varieties of self-consciousness: Perspectival self-consciousness, reflective self-consciousness, interpersonal self-consciousness.
- 24.
Compare also Bermudez more recent work on higher levels of conceptual first person thought (Bermudez 2017).
- 25.
- 26.
This is one of the shortcomings of alternative theories of fundamental affectivity, such as Damasio (1994, 1999, 2003, 2010), Russell (2003), and Stern (1985). They focus too much on feelings of and about the body and underestimate the role that fundamental affectivity plays in our experience of the world.
- 27.
Frank did not, however, give a comprehensive explanation of the feeling character of self-feeling. This issue has been pointed out in Sect. 2 of chapter “The Affective Turn” of this book.
- 28.
Compare chapter “Stephan and Slaby’s Complementary Work” in this book.
- 29.
- 30.
Note that Zahavi (2005, p. 146) criticizes Gurwitsch’s (1941) distinction between egological and non-egological theories as overly crude. He attempts to go beyond this distinction. However, he strongly emphasizes the “first-personal givenness” of experience (that is, of mental states) with his notion of “experiential self”. In this regard he seems much in line with contemporary non-egological approaches.
- 31.
See also Zahavi’s and Kriegel’s joint paper (Zahavi and Kriegel 2015) in this matter.
- 32.
This issue will be discussed in Part IV of this book.
- 33.
See the critique on Henrich and Rödl in Sect. 2 of chapter “Challenges in Current Philosophy of Self-Consciousness – The Heidelberg School” to further elaborate this point.
- 34.
Notably, one of the first contemporary proponents of the higher-order theory, David Armstrong, suggested that self-consciousness was based on inner perception (Armstrong 1968).
- 35.
- 36.
- 37.
Granted, you can also use the term “conscious” intransitively as opposed to “comatose” or “asleep”.
- 38.
Current philosophy of emotions supports that. It has become widely accepted that emotions encompass both bodily and cognitive aspects. For instance, it seems hard to explain complex human emotions like shame or jealousy with reference to bodily changes only, as we saw in Sect. 1 of chapter “A Brief Overview of Philosophy of Human Affectivity”.
- 39.
Compare also Nagel’s classic paper (1974) on the difficulties to understand what it is like to be a bat.
- 40.
You might object that the situation is similar problematic for human beings. Just like with animals there are a lot of open questions, both philosophically and empirically, about human consciousness and cognition. However, our research toolkit is more direct and richer for human beings. After all, every conscious person knows what it is like to be conscious as human being because they first-personally experience it. Further, we can draw on a vast amount of first-personal reports of conscious human experience and cognition. Both is not possible for research on animal consciousness and cognition.
- 41.
Compare e.g. Colombetti’s (2014) proposal to understand all life as “affective”.
- 42.
Note that the following passage focuses on how existential feelings vary themselves. This is different from the question how existential feelings shape the way we experience change or variation (e.g. how temporality is experienced in depression). It is also different from the question what kinds of change of experience are possible within a particular existential feeling (e.g. some existential feelings may include a vivid change in emotional experiences while others contribute to a more stable emotional life).
- 43.
In philosophy of emotion, Griffith and Scarantino (2009) proposed a situated approach to emotions and discussed several cultural influences on emotions under the label “diachronic scaffolding”.
- 44.
The term precariat is a sociological concept to describe a new and growing social class suffering from job insecurity and existential unpredictability. They are sometimes seen as successors of the classical proletariat (Standing 2011).
Literature
Allen, C. and M. Trestman. 2015. Animal Consciousness. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/consciousness-animal/. Accessed on: 27 July 2017.
Andrews, K. 2015. The Animal Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Animal Cognition. New York: Routledge.
Anscombe, G.E.M. 1957. Intention. Cambrigde, MA: Harvard University Press.
Armstrong, D.M. 1968. A Materialist Theory of the Mind. New York: Humanities Press.
Bermudez, J.L. 1998. The Paradox of Self-consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2017. Understanding “I”: Language and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Block, N. 2007. Consciousness, Function, and Representation, Collected Papers. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bokhorst, C.L., M.J. Bakermans-Kranenburg, R.M. Pasco Fearon, M.H. van IJzendoorn, P. Fonagy, and C. Schuengel. 2003. The Importance of Shared Environment in Mother–Infant Attachment Security: A Behavioral Genetic Study. Child Development 74 (6): 1769–1782.
Colombetti, G. 2014. The Feeling Body. Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cutrona, C., D. Russell, A. Brown, L.A. Clark, R. Hessling, and K. Gardner. 2005. Neighborhood Context, Personality, and Stressful Life Events as Predictors of Depression Among African American Women. Journal of Abnomal Psychology 114 (1): 3–15.
Damasio, A. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam.
———. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace.
———. 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando: Harcourt Brace.
———. 2010. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. New York: Pantheon.
Davidson, D. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evans, G. 1982. The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fichte, J.G. 1971. In Fichte Werke. 11 Bände, ed. I.H. Fichte. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Frank, M. 1991b. Selbstbewusstseinstheorien von Fichte bis Sartre. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.
———. 2002a. Selbstgefühl. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.
———. 2012. Ansichten der Subjektivität. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.
Gallagher, S. 2010. Defining Consciousness: The Importance of Non-reflective Self-awareness. Pragmatics & Cognition 18 (3): 561–569.
Gallagher, S., and D. Zahavi. 2008. The Phenomenological Mind. London: Routledge.
Gallup, G. 1970. Chimpanzees: Self-recognition. Science 167: 86–87.
———. 1979. Self-recognition in Chimpanzees and Man: A Developmental and Comparative Perspective. New York: Plenum Press.
Gendlin, E.T. 1978. Focusing. New York: Bantam.
Goethe, J.W.V 1998 [1833]. Maxims and Reflections. London: Penguin Books.
Griffiths, P., and A. Scarantino. 2009. Emotions in the Wild: The Situated Perspective on Emotion. In The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, ed. P. Robbins and M. Aydede, 437–453. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gurwitsch, A. 1941. A Non-egological Conception of Consciousness. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1: 325–338.
Heidegger, M. 2006 [1927]. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Henrich, D. 1966. Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht. In Subjektivität und Metaphysik. Festschrift für Wolfgang Cramer, ed. D. Henrich and H. Wagner, 188–233. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
———. 1970. Selbstbewusstsein. Kritische Einleitung in eine Theorie. In Hermeneutik und Dialektik. Band I, ed. R. Bubner, K. Cramer, and R. Wiehl, 257–284. Tübingen: Mohr.
———. 1982b. Fluchtlinien. Philosophische Essays. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1982c. Selbstverhältnisse. Gedanken und Auslegungen zu den Grundlagen der klassischen deutschen Philosophie. Stuttgart: Reclam.
———. 1999. Bewußtes Leben. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Subjektivität und Metaphysik. Stuttgart: Reclam.
———. 2007. Denken und Selbstsein. Vorlesungen über Subjektivität. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Hofstede, G. 2001. Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Huebner, B., M. Bruno, and H. Sarkissian. 2010. What Does the Nation of China Think About Phenomenal States? Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2): 225–243.
Hurley, S. 1998. Consciousness in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kant, I. 1974 [1781/1787]. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Korsgaard, C.M. 2009. The Activity of Reason. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 83 (2): 23–43.
Kriegel, U. 2009. Subjective Consciousness. A Self-representational Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kriegel, U., and K. Williford. 2006. Self-representational Approaches to Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
LeDoux, J. 1992. Emotion and the Amygdala. In The Amygdala, ed. J.P. Aggleton, 339–351. New York: Wiley-Liss.
———. 1996. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Low, P. 2012. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. Paper Presented at Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals at the University of Cambridge, edited by J. Panksepp, D. Reiss, D. Edelman, B. Van Swinderen, P. Low and C. Koch. July 7, 2012.
Margolis, E. and S. Laurence. 2014. Concepts. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/concepts/. Accessed on: 27 July 2017.
Markus, H.R., and S. Kitayama. 1991. Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation. Psychological Review 98 (2): 224–253.
———. 2010. Cultures and Selves: A Cycle of Mutual Constitution. Perspectives on Psychological Science 5 (4): 420–430.
McDowell, J. 1994. Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 1998. Mind, Value, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Moran, R. 2001. Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Murray, R.J., T. Brosch, and D. Sander. 2014. The Functional Profile of the Human Amygdala in Affective Processing: Insights from Intracranial Recordings. Cortex 60: 10–33.
Musholt, K. 2015. Thinking about Oneself. From Nonconceptual Content to the Concept of a Self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nagel, T. 1974. What Is it Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review 83 (4): 435–450.
Peacocke, C. 2008. Truly Understood. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2014. The Mirror of the World: Subjects, Consciousness, and Self-consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pothast, U. 1988. Philosophisches Buch. Schrift unter der aus der Entfernung leitenden Frage, was es heißt, auf menschliche Weise lebendig zu sein. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Ratcliffe, M. 2008. Feelings of Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2012a. The Phenomenology of Existential Feeling. In Feelings of Being Alive, ed. S. Marienberg and J. Fingerhut, 23–54. Berlin: de Gruyter.
———. 2015a. Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2016b. The Integrity of Intentionality: Sketch for a Phenomenological Study. In Phenomenology for the 21st Century, ed. J.A. Simmons and J.E. Hackett. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2017a. Real Hallucinations. Psychiatric Illness, Intentionality, and the Interpersonal World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2017b. Selfhood, Schizophrenia, and the Interpersonal Regulation of Experience. In Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture, ed. T. Fuchs, C. Durt, and C. Tewes, 149–172. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rentfrow, P.J. 2010. Statewide Differences in Personality: Toward a Psychological Geography of the United States. American Psychologist 65 (6): 548–558.
Rödl, S. 2007. Self-consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rolls, E.T. 2014. Emotion and Decision-Making Explained. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Russell, J. 2003. Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion. Psychological Review 110: 145–172.
Sander, D., J. Grafman, and T. Zalla. 2003. The Human Amygdala: An Evolved System for Relevance Detection. Reviews in the Neurosciences 14: 303–316.
Schmid, H.B. 2005. Wir-Identität: reflexiv und vorreflexiv. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 53 (3): 365–376.
———. 2012. Wir-Intentionalität. Kritik des ontologischen Individualismus und Rekonstruktion der Gemeinschaft. Freiburg: Karl Alber.
———. 2014a. Expressing Group Attitudes. On First Person Plural Authority. Erkenntnis 79 (9): 1685–1701.
———. 2016a. Being Well Together – Aristotle on Joint Activity and Common Sense. In Analytic and Continental Philosophy. Methods and Perspectives, Proceedings of the 37th International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. S. Rinofner-Kreidl and H.A. Wiltsche, 289–308. Berlin: de Gruyter.
———. 2018. Collective Emotions. In The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intentionality, ed. K. Ludwig and M. Jankovic, 152–161. London: Routledge.
Shakespeare, W. 1967 [1623]. As You Like It, ed. A. Latham, London: Methuen.
Slaby, J. 2008b. Gefühl und Weltbezug: Die menschliche Affektivität im Kontext einer neo-existentialistischen Konzeption von Personalität. Paderborn: mentis.
———. 2012a. Affective Self-construal and the Sense of Ability. Emotion Review 4 (2): 151–156.
———. 2012c. Matthew Ratcliffes phänomenologische Theorie existenzieller Gefühle. In Emotionen, Sozialstruktur, und Moderne, ed. ed.A. Schnabel and R. Schützeichel, 75–91. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Slaby, J., and A. Stephan. 2008. Affective Intentionality and Self-consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2): 506–513.
———. 2011. Affektive Intentionalität, existenzielle Gefühle und Selbstbewusstsein. In Affektive Intentionalität. Beiträge zur welterschließenden Funktion der menschlichen Gefühle, ed. J. Slaby, A. Stephan, H. Walter, and S. Walter, 206–229. Paderborn: Mentis.
Slaby, J., and P. Wüschner. 2014. Emotion and Agency. In Emotion and Value, ed. S. Roeser and C. Todd, 212–228. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Slaby, J., A. Paskaleva, and A. Stephan. 2013. Enactive Emotion and Impaired Agency in Depression. Journal of Consciousness Studies 20 (7–8): 33–55.
Standing, G. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Stephan, A. 2012. Emotions, Existential Feelings, and Their Regulation. Emotion Review 4 (2): 157–162.
Stephan, A., K. Jacobs, A. Paskaleva, and W. Wilitzky. 2014. Existential and Atmospheric Feelings in Depressive Comportment. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 21 (2): 89–110.
Stern, D.N. 1985. The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology. New York: Basic Books.
The Schizophrenia Commission. 2012. The Abandoned Illness: A Report from the Schizophrenia Commission. London: Rethink Mental Illness.
Tye, M. 1995. Ten Problems of Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Zahavi, D. 1999. Self-awareness and Alterity. A Phenomenological Investigation. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
———. 2005. Subjectivity and Selfhood. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2014. Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zahavi, D., and U. Kriegel. 2015. For-me-ness: What It Is and What It Is Not. In Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology: Conceptual and Empirical Approaches, ed. D.O. Dahlstrom, A. Elpidorou, and W. Hopp, 36–53. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kreuch, G. (2019). The Features of Self-Feeling. In: Self-Feeling. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 107. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30789-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30789-9_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-30788-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-30789-9
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)