Abstract
Here I continue Persons, Egos, and I’s: Their Sameness Relations (Castañeda 1988a), presented at the 1988 Freiburg conference on Psychopathology and Philosophy (cf. Spitzer et al. 1988). That paper tackles basic ontological and semantic questions: What does one strictly refer to, that is, thinks, by means of the first-person pronoun? What sort of entity that thinking referent is? How does what a person calls “I” relate to that person? To gain a better understanding of these questions we subsumed the problem of first-person reference under the general case of indexical reference. We found that the I’s—like the now’s, the here’s, the this’s and that’s—are irreducible fleeting subjective individuals, existing only as contents of experiences. They constitute the framework of the experience they belong to. Their ontology is exhaustively epistemological. They exist merely to make present to the experiencing person objective referents with which they are the same in an appropriate representational sense. That this sameness is not literal self-identity is of the utmost importance: the ontology of the fleeting I’s can ground neither an empirical theory of a particular embodiment of consciousness nor a metaphysical doctrine about an immortal soul.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Buber M: I and Thou, transl. Kaufmann W, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1970.
Burge T: Individualism and the Mental. In: French P, Uehling T, Wettstein H (eds): Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Metaphysics 11: 73–121, 1979.
Castañeda HN: Semantic Holism Without Semantic Socialism. In: Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Philosophy of Language II, 14: 101–126, 1990.
Castañeda HN: Consciousness and Behavior, in HN Castañeda (ed): Intentionality, Minds, and Perception, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, pp. 121–158, 1967.
Castañeda HN: Identity and Sameness, Philosophia 5: 121–150, 1975.
Castañeda HN: Negations, Imperatives, Colors, Indexical Properties, Non-existence, and Russell’s Paradox, in: DF Austin (ed): Philosophical Analysis A Defense by Examples, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1988.
Castañeda HN: Persons, Egos, and I’s: Their Sameness Relations. In: Spitzer M, Uehlein FA, Oepen G (eds): Psychopathology and Philosophy, pp. 210–234, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, 1988.
Castañeda HN: Objects, Existence, and Reference: A Prolegomenon to Guise Theory, Grazer Philosophische Studien 25/26: 31–66, 1985/1986. (reprinted in Jacobi and Pape 1989 ).
Castañeda HN: Perception, Belief, and the Structure of Physical Objects and Consciousness, Synthese 35: 285–351, 1977.
Castañeda HN: Sprache und Erfahrung, transl. H Pape, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Mein, 1982.
Castañeda HN: Thinking and the Structure of the World, Philosophia 4: 4–40, 1974.
Castañeda HN: Thinking, Language, and Experience, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1989.
Castañeda HN: Self-Consciousness, Demonstrative Reference, and the Self-Ascription View of Believing. In: Tomberlin JE (ed): Philosophical Perspectives: I. Metaphysics. Ridgeview Publishing Co, Atascadero, California, pp. 405–450, 1987.
Chisholm RM: The First Person. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1981.
Churchland, PS: A Perspective on Mind-Brain Research, Journal of Philosophy 77: 185–207, 1980.
Fichte JG: Science of Knowledge (1798/1800/1801), transl. Heath P and Lachs J, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1970.
Jacobi K, Pape H (eds): Das Denken und die Struktur der Welt, De Gruyter, Berlin, 1989.
Jacobi K: Die Modalbegriffe in den logischen Schriften des Wilhelm von Shyreswood E. J. Brill, Leiden-Köln, 1980.
Lewis D: An Argument for the Identity Theory, Journal of Philosophy 63: 17–25, 1966 (reprinted in: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983 ).
Place UT: Is Consciousness a Brain Process? British Journal of Psychology 47: 44–50, 1956.
Pollock, J: My Brother, the Machine, Nous 22: 173–211, 1988.
Putnam H: Meaning Holism and Epistemic Holism: In: Cramer K, Fulda HF, Horstmann R-P, Pothast U (eds): Theorie der Subjektivität. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1987.
Putnam H: The Meaning of “Meaning”. In: Gunderson K (ed): Language, Mind, and Knowledge. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1975.
Shoemaker S: Self-reference and Self-awareness, Journal of Philosophy 65: 555–578, 1968.
Smart JJC: Sensations and Brain Processes, Philosophical Review 68 (1959): 141–156, 1959.
Spitzer M, Uehlein FA, Oepen G (eds): Psychopathology and Philosophy, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, 1988.
Weiskrantz L, Warrington EK, Sanders MD, Marshall J: Visual capacity in the hemianopic field followed by restricted occipital ablation, Brain 97: 709–728, 1974.
Weiskrantz L: Trying to Bridge Some Neurophysiological Gaps Between Monkey and Man, British Journal of Psychology 68: 431–455, 1977.
Weiskrantz L: Varieties of Residual Experience, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 32: 365–386, 1980.
Wittgenstein L: Philosophical Investigations, transl. Anscombe EM, Oxford, Blackwell, 1952.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1990 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Castañeda, HN. (1990). Self-Consciousness, I-Structures, and Physiology. In: Spitzer, M., Maher, B.A. (eds) Philosophy and Psychopathology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9028-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9028-2_9
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-97303-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-9028-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive