Philosophers Index Abstract
- In this innovative study of the relationship between persons and their bodies, E J Lowe demonstrates the inadequacy of physicalism, even in its mildest, nonreductionist guises, as a basis for a scientifically and philosophically acceptable account of human beings as subjects of experience, thought and action.
- He defends a substantival theory of the self as an enduring and irreducible entity – a theory which is unashamedly committed to a distinctly non-Cartesian dualism of self and body.
- Taking up the physicalist challenge to any robust form of psychophysical interactionism, he shows how an attribution of independent causal powers to the mental states of human subjects is perfectly consistent with a thoroughly naturalistic world view.
- He concludes his study by examining in detail the role which conscious mental states play in the human subject's exercise of its most central capacities for perception, action, thought and self-knowledge.
Preface
- The overall message of this book is the inadequacy of physicalism, even in its mildest non-reductionist guises, as a basis for a scientifically and philosophically acceptable account of human beings, as subjects of experience, thought and action.
- The book is organized in the following way.
- Chapter 1 is mainly a matter of scene-setting.
- Then, in chapter 2, I defend a substantival theory of the self as an enduring and irreducible entity, essentially a self-conscious subject of thought and experience and source of intentional action. This theory is unashamedly committed to a dualism of self and body, though emphatically not one along traditional 'Cartesian' lines, for I do not represent the self as being an essentially immaterial thing existing in some mysterious union with physical substance.
- Chapter 3 takes up the physicalist challenge to any robust form of psychophysical dualism and attempts to show how an attribution of independent causal powers to the mental states of human subjects is not only consistent with a naturalistic and scientific world-view, but also a great deal more plausible than various physicalist alternatives, whether reductionist, non-reductionist or eliminativist.
- Finally, chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 examine in more detail the nature of the central capacities of the self - for perception, action, thought and self-knowledge - and once again the underlying theme is that a naturalistic approach can and must accord an indispensable and independent explanatory role to the conscious states, both experiential and volitional, of human subjects.
- Some of the book's material has appeared in earlier versions elsewhere. In particular,
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Real Selves: Persons as a Substantial Kind" (1991), pp. 87-107;
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Substance and Selfhood" (1991), pp. 81-99;
- "Lowe (E.J.) - The Problem of Psychophysical Causation" (1992), pp. 263-76;
- 'Experience and its Objects', in Tim Crane (ed.). The Contents of Experience: Essays on Perception (CUP, 1992), pp. 79-104
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Self, Reference and Self-reference" (1993), pp. 15-33
- "Lowe (E.J.) - The Causal Autonomy of the Mental" (1993), pp. 629-44
- 'Perception: A Causal Representative Theory' in Edmond Wright (ed.), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 136-52.
… [snip … Acknowledgements …]
Chapters
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience: Introduction",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Substance and Selfhood",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Mental Causation",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Perception",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Action",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Language, Thought and Imagination", and
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Self-Knowledge",
Book Comment
Chapters:- ... photocopied and filed in "Various - Papers on Identity Boxes: Vol 09 (L)".
"Lowe (E.J.) - Real Selves: Persons as a Substantial Kind"
Source: Cockburn - Human Beings
Philosophers Index Abstract
- This paper discusses the ontological status of the self, examining three alternative views. One, following Aristotle, treats persons as biological substances (a kind of animal), while another, following Locke, treats them as psychological modes (suitably unified successions of mental states). These are rejected in favour of a (non-Cartesian) version of the view that persons are psychological substances, a version which permits the self to be a bearer of physical as well as mental states.
- Following a defence of a broadly Aristotelian conception of substance, three different views of the ontological status of persons are explored: persons as biological substances (Aristotle, David Wiggins), persons as psychological modes (Hume, Derek Parfit)1, and persons as psychological substances. Difficulties for the first and second views are presented and a non-Cartesian version of the third view is developed and defended which has some affinities to the position of P. F. Strawson.
Author’s Introduction2 (Full Text)
- Are persons substances or modes? (The terminology may seem archaic, but the issue is a live one.)
- Two currently dominant views may be characterized as giving the following rival answers to this question. According to the first view, persons are just biological substances. According to the second, persons are psychological modes of substances which as far as human beings are concerned, happen to be biological substances, but which could in principle be non-biological.
- There is, however, also a third possible answer, and this is that persons are psychological substances. Such a view is inevitably associated with the name of Descartes, and this helps to explain its current unpopularity, since substantial dualism of his sort is now widely rejected as 'unscientific’.
- But one may, as I hope to show, espouse the view that persons are psychological substances without endorsing Cartesianism. This is because one may reject certain features of Descartes's conception of substance. Consequently, one may also espouse a version of substantial dualism which is distinctly non-Cartesian.
- One may hold that a person, being a psychological substance, is an entity distinct from the biological substance that is (in the human case) his or her body, and yet still be prepared to ascribe corporeal characteristics to this psychological substance.
- By this account, a human person is to be thought of neither as a non-corporeal mental substance (a Cartesian mind), nor as the product of a mysterious 'union' between such a substance and a physical, biological substance (a Cartesian animal body). This is not to deny that the mind-body problem is a serious and difficult one, but it is to imply that there is a version of substantial dualism which does not involve regarding the 'mind' as a distinct substance in its own right.
Paper Comment
Similar to "Lowe (E.J.) - Substance and Selfhood", Chapter 2 of "Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience".
In-Page Footnotes ("Lowe (E.J.) - Real Selves: Persons as a Substantial Kind")
Footnote 2: The Introduction is identical to that to "Lowe (E.J.) - Substance and Selfhood", Chapter 2 of "Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience", but the following text, though containing much of the same material, is not identical.
"Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience: Introduction"
Source: Lowe - Subjects of Experience, 1996, Chapter 1
Introduction (Full Text)
- The central topic of this book is what would traditionally be called the 'mind-body problem'. In my view, however, part of what has historically generated a problem of this name is the very choice of these terms, 'mind' and 'body', to denote entities whose relationship to one another supposedly calls for explanation. I would prefer to speak of the self-body problem, for I do not wish to reify the 'mind' as an entity on a par with the body. Selves or persons 'have' both minds and bodies — but 'having' is not to be understood univocally for both cases. Selves 'have' minds inasmuch as they are essentially subjects of mental states - of thoughts, experiences, intentions and the like. But they 'have' bodies in a quite different and genuinely relational sense; for persons and their bodies are each distinct kinds of entity in their own right. Bodies (in the sense of the term now relevant) are organized material objects, capable of undergoing growth and change in their material parts, subject to the retention of certain basic characteristics of form and function. However, neither they nor their parts are genuine subjects of mental states: it is persons or selves who think, feel and act intentionally, not their bodies or their brains. This, if true, is enough to establish the non-identity of selves with their bodies, though by no means implies that selves are wholly immaterial and separable from their bodies. I myself may still be, strictly and literally, the bearer of certain physical properties and the occupier of a location in physical space, even though I am not identifiable with that organized material object which serves as my physical body, and through which I exercise my capacities of perception and agency.
- The picture that I am recommending, though I think it accords well with common-sense ways of talking, is not without difficulties. If I am not the same as my body, nor yet an essentially immaterial thing, how am I related to my body, and what makes my body peculiarly mine? Could I survive a change of my body for another, perhaps radically different in form or material constitution? Again, if it is I and not my body or brain that have thoughts and feelings, how are those thoughts and feelings related to events and processes going on in my body and brain? How is it that, through a mental decision, I can make my body move in a desired way; and how is it that through the neural processing of optical information in my eye and brain I can experience my physical environment as a three-dimensional arrangement of coloured surfaces? Finally, how could mentally endowed beings like ourselves have evolved naturally, given that we are more than just the biological organisms which constitute our bodies?
- I attempt to answer, or at least to begin to answer, all of these questions and many related ones in the course of this book. But a fundamental assumption of my approach throughout is that satisfactory answers to questions in the philosophy of mind presuppose a satisfactory metaphysical framework of ideas. It is to that framework that I shall now turn, and more particularly to the notion of substance, which is pivotal to much of what I have to say about mind, self and body1.
Paper Comment
In-Page Footnotes ("Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience: Introduction")
Footnote 1: A much fuller account of my metaphysical position can be found in my book "Lowe (E.J.) - Kinds of Being: Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms". What follows is only an outline sketch.
"Lowe (E.J.) - Substance and Selfhood"
Source: Lowe - Subjects of Experience, 1996, Chapter 2
Introduction (Full Text)
- Are persons substances or modes? The terminology in which this question is framed may seem archaic, but the problem itself is a live and important one.
- Two currently dominant views may be characterized as offering the following rival answers to this problem. According to the first view, persons are just biological substances. According to the second, persons are psychological modes of substances which, as far as human beings are concerned, happen to be biological substances, but which could in principle be non-biological.
- There is, however, also a third possible answer, and this is that persons are psychological substances. Such a view is inevitably associated with the name of Descartes, and this helps to explain its current unpopularity, since substantial dualism of his sort is now widely rejected as 'unscientific'.
- But one may, as I hope to show, espouse the view that persons are psychological substances without endorsing Cartesianism. This is because one may reject certain features of Descartes's conception of substance. Consequently, one may also espouse a version of substantial dualism which is distinctly non-Cartesian.
- One may hold that a person, being a psychological substance, is an entity distinct from the biological substance that is (in the human case) his or her body, and yet still be prepared to ascribe corporeal characteristics to this psychological substance1.
- By this account, a human person is to be thought of neither as a non-corporeal mental substance (a Cartesian mind), nor as the product of a mysterious 'union' between such a substance and a physical, biological substance (a Cartesian animal body). This is not to deny that the mind-body problem is a serious and difficult one, though it is to imply that there is a version of substantial dualism which does not involve regarding the 'mind' as a distinct substance in its own right.
Paper Comment
In-Page Footnotes ("Lowe (E.J.) - Substance and Selfhood")
Footnote 1: Such a view has dose affinities with that advanced by P. F. Strawson in "Strawson (Peter) - Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics" (London: Methuen, 1959), ch. 3.
"Lowe (E.J.) - Mental Causation"
Source: Lowe - Subjects of Experience, 1996, Chapter 3
Paper Comment
Pdf downloaded from Cambridge Core, but not 'processed' yet.
"Lowe (E.J.) - Perception"
Source: Lowe - Subjects of Experience, 1996, Chapter 4
Paper Comment
Pdf downloaded from Cambridge Core, but not 'processed' yet.
"Lowe (E.J.) - Action"
Source: Lowe - Subjects of Experience, 1996, Chapter 5
Paper Comment
Pdf downloaded from Cambridge Core, but not 'processed' yet.
"Lowe (E.J.) - Language, Thought and Imagination"
Source: Lowe - Subjects of Experience, 1996, Chapter 6
Paper Comment
Pdf downloaded from Cambridge Core, but not 'processed' yet.
"Lowe (E.J.) - Self-Knowledge"
Source: Lowe - Subjects of Experience, 1996, Chapter 7
Introduction
- As I indicated in section 2 of chapter 1 ("Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience: Introduction"), I favour an analysis of the concept of selfhood which ties it to the possession of certain kinds of first-person knowledge, in particular de re knowledge of the identity of one's own conscious thoughts and experiences.
- Here I want to defend this analysis more fully. My defence of it will then lead me to explore the nature of demonstrative reference to one's own conscious thoughts and experiences. Such reference, I shall argue, is typically 'direct', in contrast to demonstrative reference to all physical objects, apart from those that are parts of one's own body in which one can localize sensations or which are directly subject to one's will.
- My conclusion will be that the semantic distinction between 'direct' and 'indirect' demonstrative reference helps to delineate the metaphysical boundary between oneself and the rest of the world. But, consistently with what I have argued for elsewhere in this book, I do not contend that one is to be identified with one's own body: indeed, I shall offer additional reasons for thinking that one can know a priori that no such identity can obtain.
Paper Comment
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)