Response to commentaries on keynote article.

Response to commentaries on keynote article.

In this paper, I provide a framework for accounting for the self, based on a reconstruction of Galen Strawson’s “theory of SESMETs,” or the Pearl view, with Barry Dainton’s continuous consciousness thesis. I argue that the framework I provide adequately accounts for the self and is preferable to solely adopting either Strawson’s or Dainton’s theory. I call my reconstruction the “Necklace” view of the self.

This paper is an examination of Galen Strawson’s theory of the human person as a succession of momentary selves (or SESMETs: Subjects of Experience that are Single MEntal Things). Insofar as there is a clear distinction between enduring objects and events or processes, SESMETs would seem to partake of the features of both, for they are at once short‐lived subjects of consciousness and brief episodes of consciousness. Strawson in fact rejects the object/ process distinction, and contends that there (...) is no sense in which a SESMET is a process and a rock is not a process. Strawson’s rejection of the object/process distinction is essential to his attempt to meet the charge that the concept of a SESMET is an incoherent conflation of the concept ‘object’ and the concept ‘process.’ But many philosophers will find the rejection of the object/process distinction objectionable on general metaphysical grounds. I suggest that these philosophers (I am one of them) and Strawson will not be able usefully to discuss issues in the philosophy of mind (such as his theory of SESMETs) till they have reached agreement about what the most fundamental ontological categories are. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a framework for accounting for the self, based on a reconstruction of Galen Strawson’s “theory of SESMETs,” or the Pearl view, with Barry Dainton’s continuous consciousness thesis. I argue that the framework I provide adequately accounts for the self and is preferable to solely adopting either Strawson’s or Dainton’s theory. I call my reconstruction the “Necklace” view of the self.

The crux of this paper is to provide a concentrated critical evaluation of Galen Strawson's innovative approach to the self. To that end, I will first attempt to concisely introduce his general thesis, which seems appropriate to be broken up into two major pieces: the phenomenology (experience) of the self, what the self would have to be; and the metaphysics of the self (i.e., a query refers to its metaphysics [its existence and nature]: whether there is any). Explaining and discussing (...) Strawson's twofold account of the self is my first target in this paper. And it is with these two parts that I take issues. Accordingly, I shall determinedly try to develop a counterargument according to which Strawson's establishment of his entire enterprise of the self is based merely on unjustified intuitive generalisation. Next, I will put more effort into making some more argumentative points, mainly to show how his metaphysics does not give much thought to some vital matters of the self in comparison with the systems of metaphysics of his forebears of Western philosophers. What all this means is that Strawsonian metaphysical analysis of the self so conceived and so described appears philosophically to drive itself to justly be placed in an ahistorical context. (shrink)