The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity: A Brief Summary with Examples

My epistemic goal in this lecture will be the simplest form of phenomenal selfconsciousness: I want to contribute to a deeper understanding of nonconceptual, pre-reflexive layers in conscious selfrepresentation. Conceptually, I will defend the claim that agency is not part of the metaphysically necessary supervenience-basis for bodily self-consciousness. On the level of new empirical data I want to show how out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and full-body illusions (FBIs) provide an interesting new entry point for investigating the nature of the phenomenal self. I will then proceed to sketch a new research program and advertise a new research target: ―Minimal Phenomenal Selfhood‖, ending with an informal argument for the thesis that agency, phenomenologically as well as functionally, is not necessary condition for self-consciousness. ―SMT‖: WHAT IS THE SELF-MODEL THEORY OF SUBJECTIVITY? The goal of this chapter is to give a very brief summary of the ―self-model theory of subjectivity‖ (SMT). For an accessible introduction I recommend my book Il tunnel dell‘io Scienza della mente e mito del soggetto (2010). Here, * Johannes Gutenberg-Universität (Mainz) 1 A short Précis, which deliberately focuses on the conceptual skeleton and ignores bottom-up constraints, is freely available in an electronic version as Metzinger 2005a, at . On the monograph level, the most comprehensive formulation of the theory to date, see Metzinger 2003a. The standard procedure to learn more about the theory is to go to section 8.2 in Metzinger 2003a, find the questions most relevant to one‘s personal interests and work one‘s way back, using the pointers given there and the index at the end. The shortest freely available summary can be found in Scholarpedia 2(10), 4174 at . 26 Humana.Mente – Issue 14 – July 2010 I will use empirical examples from a number of different disciplines to illustrate some core ideas and to demonstrate the explanatory scope as well as the predictive power of SMT. The self-model theory of subjectivity is a philosophical theory about what it means to be a self. It is also a theory about what it means to say that mental states are ―subjective‖ states and that a certain system has a ―phenomenal firstperson perspective‖. One of the ontological claims of this theory is that the self is not a substance in the technical philosophical sense of ―ontological self-subsistence‖ – of something that could maintain its existence on its own, even if the body, the brain, or everything else disappeared. It is not an individual entity or a mysterious thing in the metaphysical sense. No such things as selves exist in the world: Selves and subjects are not part of the irreducible constituents of reality. What does exist is an intermittent process, the experience of being a self, as well as the diverse and constantly changing contents of selfconsciousness. This is what philosophers mean when they talk about the ―phenomenal self‖: The way you appear to yourself, subjectively, consciously. Under SMT, this conscious experience of being a self is conceptually analyzed as the result of complex information-processing mechanisms and representational processes in the central nervous system. Of course, there are also higher-order, conceptually mediated forms of phenomenal selfconsciousness that not only have neuronal, but also social correlates. This theory, however, first focuses on the minimal representational and functional properties that a naturally evolved information-processing system — such as Homo sapiens — has to have in order to satisfy the constraints for realizing these higher-order forms of self-consciousness. Therefore, the first question we will have to answer is this: What, in the case of human beings, are minimally sufficient conditions for the emergence of a conscious self? Later we can ask: Are some of these conditions strictly necessary? SMT assumes that the properties in question are representational and functional properties. In other words, the phenomenal property that allows us to become a person in the first place – namely, ―selfhood‖ – is analyzed with 2 See Metzinger 2010. 3 I analyzed the relation between conceptual and non-conceptual contents of self-consciousness in detail in Metzinger 2003b. A hypothesis on the role of the unconscious self-model in the development of non-conceptually mediated forms of social cognition is formulated in Metzinger and Gallese 2003. Thomas Metzinger – The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity 27 the help of concepts from subpersonal levels of description. In philosophy of mind, this type of approach is sometimes called a ―strategy of naturalization‖: a complex and hard-to-understand phenomenon — such as the emergence of phenomenal consciousness, selfhood and a subjective, inward perspective — is conceptually described in such a way as to make it empirically tractable. By reformulating classical problems from their own discipline, naturalist philosophers try to open them for interdisciplinary investigations and scientific research programs, for instance in the cognitive and neurosciences. These philosophers do not endorse naturalism and reductionism as part of a scientistic ideology; instead, they see them as a rational research strategy: if it should turn out that there is something about human self-consciousness that lies outside the reach of the natural sciences in principle, they would be satisfied with this finding as well. They would have achieved epistemic progress. This type of progress could mean being able to describe, in a much more precise and fine-grained manner and with an historically unprecedented degree of conceptual clarity, why exactly science is unable to provide satisfying answers to certain questions, even in principle. Therefore, the most serious and respectable philosophical anti-naturalists will typically also be the ones who show the profoundest interest in recent empirical findings. Naturalism and reductionism are not ideologies or potential new substitutes for religion, but an open-outcome research heuristics: It is exactly the anti-naturalist and exactly the anti-reductionist who will have the strongest ambition to make their philosophical case convincingly, in an empirically informed way. THE PHENOMENAL SELF-MODEL What we like to call ―the self‖ in folk-psychological contexts is the phenomenal self: that part of our mental self-representation, which is immediately given in subjective experience. The phenomenal self may well be the most interesting form of phenomenal content. It endows our phenomenal space with two particularly fascinating structural features: centeredness and perspectivalness. As long as a phenomenal self exists, our consciousness is centered and typically bound to what philosophers call a ―first-person perspective‖. States inside this center of consciousness are experienced as my own states, because they are endowed with a sense of ownership that is prior to language or conceptual thought. Central, but not phenomenologically necessary features of self28 Humana.Mente – Issue 14 – July 2010