Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective, Dan Zahavi
MIT Press, 265 pages, £20, ISBN 0-262-2405-5
While the writings and doctrines of the major figures in the phenomenological tradition
have not been ignored in the rapidly expanding literature of what has come to be known
as “consciousness studies”, they have not thus far played a dominant role either. Why?
Is it because those researching consciousness are familiar with the relevant doctrines but
find them flawed or fruitless? Or are they merely ignorant of them? If so there is an
obvious risk of much time and effort being expended on reinventing the wheel. Zahavi
emphatically subscribes to the latter interpretation: “phenomenology can offer much
more to contemporary consciousness research … By ignoring the tradition and the
resources therein, contemporary consciousness research risks missing out on important
insights that, in the best of circumstances, will end up being rediscovered decades or
centuries later”. (5) To illustrate he focuses in this book on what the classical
phenomenologists had to say about the relationship between experience, self-awareness
and the self, with a view to solving a variety of philosophical puzzles and problems. The
book has a second main goal: the reinvigoration of phenomenology itself. By
demonstrating the relevance of phenomenology to other disciplines Zahavi hopes to
trigger a dialogue which will help counteract what is undeniably phenomenology’s
greatest weakness: “its preoccupation with exegesis”. (6)
Clearly, this is an ambitious book, so it is not surprising to find that a fair amount
of ground is covered. The opening chapter usefully distinguishes several kinds of selfawareness, but concentrates on Sartre’s doctrine that all forms of experience are
characterized by a minimal “pre-reflective self-awareness”. According to this “onelevel” view of consciousness – which Zahavi claims all the major phenomenologists
subscribed to – a state does not need to fall under any higher-order state in order to be a
conscious state; consciousness is an intrinsic property of mental item; conscious states
can be reflected on, but they need not be. In his second chapter Zahavi examines
Husserl’s conception of the structure of experience in the Fifth Logical Investigation,
arguing that (despite occasional indications to the contrary) Husserl was already
advocating a conception of the fundamental structure of experience similar to that which
Sartre would later elaborate. Husserl remain on centre-stage: in the following chapter we
are introduced to his important but often obscure views on inner time-consciousness.
Chapter 4 takes a methodological detour and addresses the question of whether
phenomenology is possible – there is an illuminating discussion of the early Heidegger’s
views here. In Chapter 5, the pivotal chapter of the book, Zahavi’s views on the
relationship between selfhood and self-awareness are expounded in more detail. The
final two chapters take a rather different tack. In chapter 6 the views of several leading
phenomenologists on intersubjectivity are outlined, and in the final chapter the
contemporary “theory-theory” of mind is critically discussed.
The writings of the classical phenomenologists may not achieve the dizzying
heights of impenetrability of some subsequent continental philosophers, but they are by
no means an easy read. Zahavi is a clear writer, and he provides a first-rate guide to
some difficult literature. (It is no mean achievement to render formulations such as
Michel Henry’s “The interiority of the immediate presence to itself constitutes the
essence of ipseity” even partially intelligible, but Zahavi succeeds.) He also succeeds in
demonstrating that what these phenomenologists had to say about the self and selfawareness is relevant to contemporary debates in psychology and cognitive science. That
said, the book as a whole does not cohere quite as well as it might. While the chapters on
methodology, intersubjectivity and theory-theory contain material relevant to the main
theme, at times they also stray from it. It may have been better to spend more time
developing the central line of argument. I found this interesting, and potentially
important, but also problematic.
Zahavi advocates what could be called a one-level but two-aspect conception of
consciousness. He accepts that there is much truth in the ‘transparency’ doctrine of
Moore, Harman and Tye: in ordinary perceptual experience we seem to be directly aware
of objects and properties in the world, we are not aware of our experience coming
between ourselves and what we perceive. But whereas Harman and Tye maintain that
there is nothing more in the tasting of a lemon than the taste of the lemon, and similarly
with other types of experience, Zahavi suggests there is an additional ingredient.
Following Husserl, he argues that we need to distinguish between what the object seems
like to the perceiver and what the perceiving feels like to the perceiver – he calls the latter
“modes of givenness”. He goes on to say that the various modes of givenness all share
some common features, one such is the
quality of mineness, that is, the fact that the experiences are characterized by a
first-personal givenness that immediately reveals them as one’s own. … If I feel
hunger or see a sunrise, I cannot be in doubt or be mistaken about who the subject
of the experience is … If the experience is given in a first-personal mode of
presentation, it is experienced as my experience, otherwise not … The mineness is
not something attended to; it simply figures as a subtle background presence.
Nevertheless, the particular first-person givenness of the experience makes it
mine and distinguishes it for me from whatever experiences others might have.
(124)
Zahavi suggests that this pre-reflective sense of mineness can be identified with a
minimal “sense of self” – an “experiential self”. Since this self (or sense of self) is
present in experience it is a mistake to regard the self as something which stands outside
experience. The self (in this form) is a background presence in all our everyday
interactions with the world. Moreover, if it is an essential part of any form of experience
– even the simplest and most primitive – and Zahavi maintains that it is, there can never
be an “anonymous” experience, an experience from which the self is absent.
These are all intriguing and potentially significant claims, but how persuasive are
they?
Consider first the two-aspect conception. How is it, precisely, that there can be a
difference between what an object is like for the subject who apprehends it, and what the
experience of that object is like for the subject? Zahavi suggests that we need to
recognize a category of ‘experiential properties’ that are specific to the experiencings of
objects. As well as explaining how it is possible for there to be more to the tasting of a
lemon than the taste of the lemon, these properties explain why it is that in any
experiencing of an object we are aware of the experience which presents the object. They
play an even more significant role, for Zahavi also claims that we cannot be conscious of
an object unless we are also aware of the experience which presents the object, and it is
experiential properties which supply this awareness. Moreover, they do this without
coming between subjects and the objects they apprehend – experience remains
transparent and perception direct. A worry here is that it is not clear that any form of
experience could play all these roles. Zahavi tells us that experiential properties are
specific to the different modes of access we have to objects. This sounds promising, we
clearly do have different modes of access to objects, and there are phenomenological
differences between these modes: what it’s like to see a lemon differs from what it’s like
to smell or touch one, and actually seeing a lemon differs from imagining or
remembering seeing one. But are these differences due to differences in experiential
properties of the sort Zahavi proposes? Phenomenologically speaking, much of the
difference between what it’s like to see and merely imagine a lemon is surely due solely
to differences in the respective objects – one is a solid bright lemon seemingly out there
in the world, the other a far less vivid mental image. Where do the alleged mode-specific
experiential properties enter the picture? I am not saying the two-aspect view is false, but
I do think it requires more by way of a clarification and defence than Zahavi provides
here.
As for the doctrine of mineness, it does have a good deal of appeal. It is certainly
true that when I have an experience there is never the slightest doubt that it is me who is
having that experience, and to that extent it may be right to say that the experience
presents itself as being mine. But is it right to explain this in terms of a single sort of
phenomenal property? There is an alternative. My experiences don’t occur in splendid
isolation, they are things that happen to me; I do have the sense that my pains are
experienced by a subject. But perhaps this sense of ownership is due to a combination of
factors. My current toothache is accompanied by a feeling of familiarity (I’ve had that
sort of feeling before); it also occurs as a constituent of a broader stream of
consciousness, a combination of a bodily sense-field (within which it has a precise
location), emotional feelings, conscious thoughts, diverse perceptual experiences, and so
forth. It does not seem far-fetched to suppose that the main reason why my toothache
seems to belong to a subject is because it is experienced along with this broader
phenomenal background. Are the various components of this background such that they
can only exist together, in an unvarying form? There is no reason to think so. Moods
and sense-fields are highly mutable. If the components of the phenomenal background
responsible for our sense of self can come apart and shrink in size, might they not vanish
altogether? Perhaps experience in the absence of any form of self-consciousness is
possible after all. Zahavi claims otherwise – “All I will say is that if a certain organism
[e.g., a bird or beetle] is in possession of phenomenal consciousness, then it must also be
in possession of both a primitive form of self-consciousness and a core self.’ (236) – but
it is not clear that he has good grounds for so doing.
This point aside, one of the roles Zahavi ascribes to the “mineness” feature struck
me as being potentially problematic. What unquestionably is present in my experience is
what is sometimes called phenomenal unity: all the diverse contents of my consciousness
are experienced together, they are co-conscious. Once the existence of phenomenal unity
(or the co-consciousness relationship) is made explicit, it is very natural to suppose that it
plays a key role in determining which experiences seem to belong oneself (rather than
someone else) at any given time. If an experience E at t is co-conscious with the
experiences I am enjoying at t then E evidently belongs to me; if it isn’t it must belong to
someone else. If this is right, then we need an answer to this question: what precisely is
the relationship between mineness and phenomenal unity? Although Zahavi suggests
mineness is all we need to explain the unity of consciousness, he does not elaborate.
Rather more by way of elaboration would have been welcome.
Zahavi notes in his introduction that the term “self” is used in a bewildering
variety of ways in different disciplines, and that it would be helpful to have a
“clarification of the relationship between these sometimes conflicting, sometimes
complementary notions”. In the absence of such a taxonomic clarification we will not be
in a position to evaluate the various “no self” doctrines on offer. Unfortunately, this
promissory note is only partially redeemed. Part of the problem is that it is not entirely
clear how Zahavi intends his own position to be understood – his taxonomic clarifications
do not extend beyond contrasting his own position with the narrative conception of
Ricoeur and MacIntyre, and the Kantian “pure identity-pole”. Philosophical approaches
to the self differ in their aims and motivations. It is possible to adopt a phenomenological
stance, which involves attempting to capture and characterize the subjective
characteristics of the different forms or levels of selfhood. It is also possible to adopt an
ontological approach, and address the question of what kind of thing a self is, with a view
to specifying the sorts of changes it is possible for beings such as ourselves to survive.
For much of the time – e.g., when he talks of the self as a “dimension of experience” – it
seems Zahavi is adopting the first approach. But there are also occasions when he seems
to be offering us an ontological account – e.g. commenting on Metzinger’s claim that we
cannot draw any conclusions about the real nature of the self from the character of our
experience he responds “Why should the reality of the self depend on whether it
faithfully mirrors … external (mind-independent) entities? … Why not rather insist that
the self is real if it has experiential reality…?” (128) If Zahavi is offering us an account
of what selves are, it is simple but striking: self-experience is necessary and sufficient for
the existence of a self. The doctrine that we are nothing but experiences (and so do not
exist when non-conscious) is by no means entirely novel – Ayer once defended such a
view, more recently Galen Strawson has done so – but it is certainly radical. In any
event, evaluating what Zahavi has to say about the self would have been easier if it were
clearer just what sort of account he is proposing here.
Barry Dainton
The University of Liverpool