Consciousness and Persons Unity and Identity Michael Tye Consciousness and Persons Unity and Identity Michael Tye In Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity Michael Tye takes on the thorny issue of the unity of conscious- ness and answers these important questions: What exactly is the unity of consciousness? Can a single person have a divided consciousness? What is a single person? Tye argues that unity is a fundamental part of human consciousness—something so basic to everyday experi- ence that it is easy to overlook. For example, when we hear the sound of waves crashing on a beach and at the same time see a red warning flag, there is an overall unity to our experience; the sound and the red shape are presented together in our consciousness. Similarly, when we undergo a succession of thoughts as we think some- thing through, there is an experience of succession that unifies the thoughts into a conscious whole. But, Tye shows, consciousness is not always unified. Split-brain subjects, whose corpus callosum has been severed, are usually taken to have a divided or disunified conscious- ness. Their behavior in certain situations implies that they have lost the unity normal human subjects take for grant- ed; it is sometimes even supposed that a split-brain sub- ject is really two persons. Tye begins his account by proposing an account of the unity of perceptual experience at a single time; this account is extended over the succeeding chapters to cover bodily sensations at a single time and perceptual experiences, bodily sensations, conscious thoughts, and felt moods at a single time. Tye follows these chapters with a discussion of the unity of experience through time. Turning to the split-brain phenomenon, he proposes an account of the mental life of split-brain subjects and argues that certain facts about these subjects offer fur- ther support for his theory of unity. Finally, addressing “It would be impossible not to learn from this outstanding book. Michael Tye displays real insight into the problems of unity and identity, and an intimidating mastery of the relevant philosophical and psychological literature. But almost as important, its brevity and clarity make the book a pleasure to read.” —Frank Jackson, The Australian National University “Not just another book on consciousness! This one is about various kinds of unity (and a few disunities) in phenomenal experience. Provocative claims are defended, and the presentation is lucid and engaging throughout. I especially recommend Tye’s chapter on the specious present.” —William G. Lycan, William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina “Tye presents a compelling, original, philosophically sophisticated theory of the unity of phenomenal consciousness without ever getting bogged down in philo- sophical trench warfare.” —Brian P. McLaughlin, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University “This short volume is full of good philosophy. Michael Tye raises new questions about the unity of experience, and his answers cast important light on personal identity. All philosophers working on consciousness or personhood should read this book.” —David Papineau, Department of Philosophy, King’s College London Cover image: Salvador Dalí, Apparition of the Visage of Aphrodite . © 2003 Salvadore Dalí, Gala-Salvadore Dalí, Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York The MIT Press Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 http://mitpress.mit.edu 0-262-20147-X ,!7IA2G2-cabehg!:t;K;k;K;k the topic of the nature of persons and personal identity, Tye finds the two main historical accounts—the ego theory and the bundle theory—lacking, and he makes an alternative proposal. He includes an appendix on the general representational approach to consciousness and its many varieties, because of the relevance of represen- tationalism to the theory of unity being advanced. Michael Tye is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Consciousness and the Mind series A Bradford Book Consciousness and Persons Tye Tye_cover2 12/1/03 1:35 PM Page 1 Consciousness and Persons Representation and Mind Hilary Putnam and Ned Block, editors Representation and Reality Hilary Putnam Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes Fred Dretske The Metaphysics of Meaning Jerrold J. Katz A Theory of Content and Other Essays Jerry A. Fodor The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind Cora Diamond The Unity of the Self Stephen L. White The Imagery Debate Michael Tye A Study of Concepts Christopher Peacocke The Rediscovery of the Mind John R. Searle Past, Space, and Self John Campbell Mental Reality Galen Strawson Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind Michael Tye Representations, Targets, and Attitudes Robert Cummins Starmaking: Realism, Anti-Realism, and Irrealism Peter J. McCormick (ed.) A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy Hao Wang Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds Daniel C. Dennett Realistic Rationalism Jerrold J. Katz The Paradox of Self-Consciousness José Luis Bermúdez In Critical Condition: Polemical Essays on Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Mind Jerry Fodor Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation Jaegwon Kim Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta: An Essay on Metarepresentation François Recanati The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way Jerry Fodor Consciousness, Color, and Content Michael Tye New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge Susana Nuccetelli Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity Michael Tye Consciousness and Persons Unity and Identity Michael Tye A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Sabon by UG/GGS Information Services, Inc. and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tye, Michael. Consciousness and persons: unity and identity / Michael Tye. p. cm.—(Representation and mind) “A Bradford book.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-20147-X (hc.: alk. paper) 1. Consciousness. 2. Whole and parts (Philosophy). I. Title. II. Series. B808.9.T935 2003 126—dc21 2002040999 10987654321 For Lauretta, Cecily, and Claudia Contents Preface xi Introduction: Kinds of Unity and Kinds of Consciousness 1 I.1 Preliminary Remarks 1 I.2 Cases of Consciousness (or Its Absence) 2 I.3 Kinds of Consciousness 5 I.4 Kinds of Unity 11 1 The Unity of Perceptual Experience at a Time 17 1.1 Multiple Experiences and the Problem of Unity 17 1.2 Undermining the Problem as Standardly Conceived 21 1.3 The One Experience View 25 1.4 An Account of Synchronic Phenomenal Unity 36 2 The Body Image and the Unity of Bodily Experience 43 2.1 The Body Image 43 2.2 A Theory of Bodily Sensations 49 2.3 The Problem of Bodily Unity 62 3 The Unity of Perceptual and Bodily Experiences, Occurrent Thoughts, and Moods 67 3.1 Opening Remarks 67 3.2 Perceptual Consciousness and Experience of the Body 68 3.3 Unity and Conscious Thoughts 78 3.4 Unity and Felt Moods 81 4 The Unity of Experience through Time 85 4.1 Examples of Unity through Time 85 4.2 The Specious Present and the Problem of Diachronic Unity 86 4.3 An Account of Unity through Time 95 4.4 Some Mistakes, Historical and Contemporary 102 4.5 Carnap and the Stream of Consciousness 106 5 Split Brains 109 5.1 Results of Splitting the Brain 109 5.2 Multiple Personality Disorder, Split Brains, and Unconscious Automata 113 5.3 Indeterminacy in the Number of Persons 117 5.4 Disunified Access Consciousness 121 5.5 Disunified Phenomenal Consciousness: Two Alternatives 126 5.6 The Nontransitivity of Phenomenal Unity 129 6 Persons and Personal Identity 133 6.1 The Ego Theory and the Bundle Theory Quickly Summarized 133 6.2 Objections to the Ego Theory 134 6.3 Objections to the Bundle Theory 138 6.4 A New Proposal 140 6.5 Problem Cases 143 6.6 Vagueness in Personal Identity 154 viii Contents Appendix: Representationalism 165 Notes 177 References 187 Index 195 Contents ix [...]... between the issue of identity and that of unity; the discussion also provides further theoretical underpinning for some of the claims about persons in chapter 5 The two great historical theories of the nature of persons the ego theory and the bundle theory—are found lacking for various reasons, and a new proposal is made The last part of the chapter takes up the difficult question of whether there can... with split brains and with the theoretical, philosophical issue of personal identity The book begins with an introduction to the topics of unity and consciousness Different kinds of unity and consciousness are distinguished, largely to help avoid misunderstanding as to the scope of the theory that follows Chapter 1 is concerned to undercut one standard way of thinking about unity for the case of perceptual... settings, they are usually taken to have a divided or disunified consciousness Sometimes, it is suggested that they are really two persons An account is proposed and defended of the consciousness of split-brain patients, and it is argued that certain facts about these patients supply further support for the theory of unity on offer Finally, in chapter 6, the nature of persons and personal identity is... D-conscious of the insect P -consciousness is integral to experiences and feelings generally, as is noted in case 7 Wherever there is a feeling or experience, there must be P -consciousness, some phenomenology that the relevant state has P -consciousness is often illustrated further by reference to the famous inverted and absent qualia hypotheses.7 The former of these hypotheses, for the case of color, is the claim... different from object unity, neurophysiological unity, spatial unity, subject unity, higher-order subject unity, introspective 14 Introduction Figure I.1 Figure I.2 Kinds of Unity and Kinds of Consciousness 15 unity, and Gestalt unity Phenomenal unity is the kind of unity with which this book is concerned In chapter 1, a number of examples of phenomenal unity are adduced, with the aim of clarifying... phenomenal unity The Kantian suggestion that experiences are unified by the capacity of their subjects to think of them as their own fails to come to grips with the intuitive fact that phenomenal unity is there in the experiences, whatever their subjects can or cannot think It is certainly true that without the relevant concepts, a person cannot recognize that there is phenomenal unity and thus, in these... Higher-order subject unity is thus much more demanding than subject unity Another related thesis is that two states of consciousness are unified if and only if the subject can introspect both states in a single act of introspective awareness This is introspective unity Gestalt unity is the sort of unity that obtains if and only if the experience of a whole is such that had one salient part of the whole been... adjudicate between these accounts Let us call the above kind of consciousness “introspective consciousness or “I -consciousness for short, however it is 6 Introduction further analyzed A distracted walker, then, has no I -consciousness of his visual perceptions The cases of the bird-watcher and the wine taster (cases 2 and 3) illustrate what I shall call “discriminatory (or D-) consciousness. ” The bird-watcher... unified if and only if they are undergone by the same mental subject These states could be higher-order ones, involved in I -consciousness, or they could be first-order states Whatever the states, the thesis that, for any given subject, all his or her states of consciousness are subject unified is trivially true Kant held that the unity of consciousness involves having experiences that the subject of the experiences... have a pain And, intuitively, to have a pain is to undergo a certain sort of feeling In case 5, then, there is a feeling without I -consciousness, and likewise in case 6 (the pain in the night) at least prior to waking up But if there is a feeling, then there must be consciousness, in some sense of the term For how could a feeling be a feeling and yet not be conscious at all? Call this sort of consciousness . Consciousness and Persons Unity and Identity Michael Tye Consciousness and Persons Unity and Identity Michael Tye In Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity Michael Tye takes on the. 02142 http://mitpress .mit. edu 0-262-20147-X ,!7IA2G2-cabehg!:t;K;k;K;k the topic of the nature of persons and personal identity, Tye finds the two main historical accounts the ego theory and the bundle theory—lacking,. and Content Michael Tye New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge Susana Nuccetelli Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity Michael Tye Consciousness and Persons Unity and Identity Michael