Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Sensory Deprivation

Elizabeth Anscombe and Anthony Kenny disagree on whether or not it is possible to doubt the existence of one's own body. Anscombe believes that such doubt makes sense while Kenny argues that it could make sense only if one supposed that he had become a bodyless Cartesian ego. To resolve the issue I explore the knowledge one acquires of himself, and thus the manner in which such knowledge might be weakened into doubt. Siding with Anscombe, I argue that under the conditions of sensory deprivation some very basic questions asked of oneself such as, "Which body?" cannot be answered. Without such answers, one can be uncertain about his own body. Such uncertainty, however, is to be explained by the autonomy of the relevant 'J-thoughts' and not because one had become a Cartesian ego. I intend to show that under the conditions of sensory deprivation it makes sense for one to doubt that, at that moment, he has a body. I will argue further that the acceptability of such a doubt does not depend on assuming that one has become a bodyless Cartesian ego. The particulars of the argument will derive from defending this belief, as initially conceived by Elizabeth Anscombe, against an attack made by Anthony Kenny.' Before I get to them, however, I would like to state what I take to be the main concepts and issues involved. The issue turns on one's understanding of the nature of first person expressions of self-consciousness--the so called, 'I-thoughts'. What is most important about them is that they are, in themselves, logically autonomous and complete. To speak of a thought as autonomous in this special sense is to deny two things that are commonly part of the logic of thoughts. Typically the occurrence of a thought points to a person who is thinking it--i.e., the thought's subject. These thoughts of self-consciousness are, however, understandable and intelligible without any reference, implicit or otherwise, to anything as their subject. Since I have elaborated on the "subjectlessness" of these concepts in another paper, I will not dwell on it here.' This paper is about the second part of the autonomy thesis, namely, what I choose to call the "objectlessness" of these thoughts. The object of a thought--i.e., what that thought is about, is commonly something other than the thought itself. As it may be a thought of the sky or a thought of a car, and as the sky and a car are distinct from the thoughts about them, such thoughts may be said t.o have ulterior objects. Thought.s of self-consciousness 490 EDWARD T. BARTLETT are, in this sense, objectless, because they are, by hypothesis, reflexive, and are of themselves. "Objectless" is, perhaps, not the happiest of terms since the ideas are clearly about something, namely, the ideas themselves and their content. The point is that there is nothing outside of this content such as an experience for these ideas to be about. I will explain the mechanism by which such reflexive ideas have content in the absence of an "ulterior object". Basic to an understanding of this mechanism is the recognition that there are two ways in which one may be said to think about himself. First, one may think about himself in just the manner in which he thinks about any other object .. For example, I might think of all of the things that are currently touching my desk. The list would include, all in the same logical category, some paper, a pencil, myself and a computer. One would thus be thinking about himself as an object, i.e., objectively. Such a perspective generates experiences in which one is aware of the objects around him and of himself in relation to them. This is to think of oneself as he might appear to others, from the "outside", so to speak, as an observer. Because thoughts of this sort are not reflexive their objects are always ulterior to the thought itself. Consequently the thought and its object. are conceptually distinct. Also because they are of one's experiences of things distinct from his thinking, e.g., seeing a chair, touching a desk, etc., they are logically incomplete if they do not have at least an implicit reference to oneself as subject. Here think of Descartes' argument using the wax example at the end of the Second Meditation. For if J judge that the wax exists from the fact that I see this wax, it is much clearer that I myself exist because of this same fact that I see it. There is, however, a second way in which one may think about himself. He may think about, for example, his actions in a manner said to be self-conscious A part of what we normally mean when we say that someone is having an experience is that he is directly aware of it. This direct awareness is "thinking of oneself" from the "inside", not as an observer but as a participant. From this subjective standpoint I could, for example, speak of the cold, smooth feeling that I have in both of my forearms as I lean upon my desk. These experiences have a logic that distinguishes them from the preceding objective ones. Specifically, Descartes' argument does not work. These thoughts cannot contain even an implicit reference to oneself as subject while retaining their character as something about which one is immediately aware. 3 They are, by hypothesis, reflexive and typically a part of ordinary experiences; i.e., a part of having such an experience is one's awareness of it as his own.4 If, for example, one has the ideas of coolness and smoothness, it is, of course, correct to point out that they came from the contact one's body had with the desk. but there is no ongoing need for the experience to continue in order for one to continue to reflect on it. Such reflection is reflexive and is, therefore, inconsistent with the type of reflection that is of something other than itself, e.g., a current experience of something. Because the ideas of selfconsciousness are, in their natural state, autonomous, they are not rendered defective by the absence of any experiences for them to be about. CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSORY DEPRIVATION 491 Kenny's disagreement with Anscombe focuses on the possibility of doubting the existence of one's own body. He believes that any use of the first person reflexive pronoun 'I' to refer to one's own body is empty. "I am this body" is without significance because, he thinks, there cannot even be an imaginary set of circumstances for which such an utterance would be false. 5 Any circumstances which we could imagine which would suggest a divorce between the two (a first-person idea and the body that is the subject-matter of that idea!) would to the same extent call in question the sense of the 'I' in the '1'_ thoughts. Anscombe, however, believes that propositions like "I am this body" say something. According to Kenny she believes, " •.• that content can be given to 'I'-thoughts [even] where there is no person identifiable as an actual or possible utter of the thoughts".6 However, to suppose that there could be significant 'I'-thoughts thus detached from a body, is to suggest that they must be attached to something bodyless. Thus Kenny concludes that ". . . the thinker of these thoughts who is possible not this person with this body seem uncomfortably close to a Cartesian ego".7 He is then, in effect, giving the following argument. Anything that could disconnect one's bodily experiences from one's 'I-thoughts' enough to generate uncertainty about the existence of his body, would, ipso facto, cast doubt on the sense of that uncertainty and the meaningfulness of the ideas that constitute it. Kenny believes that " ... the sense of 'I' in the I'-thought .. will be undermined because the only suitable subject for such thoughts of bodylessness would be a Cartesian ego, and this would be absurd. I will not argue with Kenny on whether or not a Cartesian ego is absurd. What I will dispute is the need to talk about it. This argument begins with an understanding of the case of sensory deprivation which Anscombe presents as follows.s And now imagine that I got into a state of 'sensory deprivation'. Sight is cut off, and I am locally anesthetized everywhere, perhaps floated in a tank of tepid water: I am unable to speak, or to touch any part of my body with any other. Now I tell myself "I won't let this happen again". I the object meant by "I" is this body, this human being, then in these circumstances it won't be present to my senses; and how else can it be 'present to' me? But have I lost what I mean by "I"? Is that not present to me? The answers to the three questions ending the quotation are, I believe: (1) There is no other way in which this body may be present to me. (2) I have not lost what I mean by "I". (3) It is still present to me. The fact that these are the correct answers will emerge by the end of the paper. 492 EDWARD T. BARTLETT In remarking on this case Kenny claims that9 In the normal case it is not by sensory experience that I know I have a body; the lack of sensory experience therefore does not prevent me knowing that I have a body, and does not prevent my 'I '-thoughts from being about that body. If I did render it uncertain whether I had a body it would, for the reasons givan, render unclear the sense of 'I' in the 'I'-thoughts. He believes that the case of deprivation is, from an epistemological standpoint, not all that out of the ordinary. Because we do not normally use sensory experience in the formation of the thoughts that we have of our own bodies, there is no reason to expect a change in those ideas, were we to be deprived of it. If, however, deprivation were somehow enough to make one doubt the truth of, "I am this body", it would also raise a question about the sense of any co-existent 'I'-thoughts. On the assumption that these thoughts must be attached to something, they could be detached from a body only if they were attached to something bodyless like a Cartesian ego. I think that, in a certain sense, Kenny is right when he says that we do not normally use sensations to say things abou