--------_____________ Identities
Ray
Brassier
.k><J.mllo< Politics, GeNIe, Ind CUlM� Vol. II No. 1 ISum","" 1011
The View from Nowhere
"True" is a sign that something is to be done,
ultimate integration. In this regard, philosophy discrim
(Sellars 1991b, 206)
towards dualism should not excuse insensitivity towards
for inferring is a doing.
inates precisely in order to avoid dualism. The animus
distinction. To distinguish between the nonnative and
the factual is not to promulgate dualism once it is un
Philosophy, said Wilfrid Sellars, is the attempt "to un
derstood that this distinction furnishes the precondition
derstand how things in the broadest possible sense of
for understanding the intrication of the conceptual and
the tcnn hang together in the broadest possible sense of
the physical; an intrication that is constitutive of what we
the term." (Sellars 1991a, \) Despite its apparent vague
call "reality." Philosophy is synoptic in that it strives to
ness, this is as good a way of encapsulating the concerns
reconcile a basic disjunction in our conception of real
of philosophy as anyone has ever given, since we can
ity. This disjunction is a consequence of the fundamental
specify what the "broadest possible sense" of the terms
conceptual discrepancy bequeathed to us by philosophi
"things" and "hang together" is here. ForSellars, ''things
cal modemity.lfSellars' work (unlike that of many of his
in the broadest possible sense" covers everything from
analytic contemporaries) retain its contemporaneity for
theorems to fennions. By the same loken, the philosophi
us today, fifty years after the bulk of it was written, this
cal sense of "hanging together" should furnish an insight
is because, over and above its sometimes forbidding dif
into the link between things as disparate as logical nomlS
ficulty, it represents one of the most sustained attempts 10
and elementary particles. The philosophical vision ought
think through the implications of a fundamental diremp
not only to encompass but also to explain the intrica
tion which extends into our very conception of what we
tion of conceptual ideality and physical reality. Is this
are. This is the diremption between our self-understand
to reiterate an antiquated dualism? No. A dualism is a
ing as rational subjects and our scientific understanding
distinction that fails to explain the connection between
of ourselves as physical objects. Throughout his work,
the lenns it distinguishes. Philosophy discriminates, it
Sellars sought to arbitrate the conflict between these two
distinguishes and separates, but always with a view to
increasingly divergent images of man-in-the-the-world:
--------- � ii. rY'i�
.e-"".�
;;o;
"' ...
�
O""' Nowhere
rn ..il ' "
.
the manifest image of man as a self-conscious rational
the priority of the scientific image by famously insist
agent and the sciemific image of man as a "complex
ing that "in the dimension of describing and explaining
physical system." Yet Sellars was careful not to portray
the world, science is the measure of all things, of what
this divergence as a conflict between na'lve pre-theoreti
is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not." (Sellars
cal common-sense and sophisticated theoretical reason.
1991, 173) This apparent inconsistency can be defused
Rather, he insisted it be understood in tenns of the ten
once we recognize that the commitment to parity and the
sion between the disciplined and critical rei
f nement of
commitment to priority operate at two distinct levels: that
common-sense through which a perennial tradition of
of conceptual interpretation (giving and asking for rea·
philosophical reflection has taught us to conceive of our
sons) and that of ontological description and explanation.
selves as rational beings bound by conceptual nonns; and
Parity at the level of conceptual interpretation is compat
the methodical extrapolation from ordinary perception
ible with priority at the level of ontological description
through which modem science has taught us to explain
and explanation. The claim for parity follows from the
manifest phenomena by postulating increasingly com
recognition that the manifest image furnishes us with the
plex systems of imperceptible entities (e.g., molecules,
fundamental framework in tenns of which we understand
electro-magnetic radiation. gravitational fields, etc.). In
ourselves as "concept mongers,"1 creatures continually
this regard, the fundamental contrast at issue is one be
engaged in giving and asking for reasons. But we are
tween man's manifest self-image as a rule-bound rational
able to do things with concepts precisely insofar as con·
agent participating in but not governed by the realm o f
cepts are able to do things to us. It is this capa�ity to be
physical law, and man conceived through the optic o f
gripped by concepts that makes us answerable to con
natural science a s a "complex physical system" whose
ceptual nomlS. And it is this susceptibility to nonns that
capacity for agency can ultimately be accounted for in
makes us subjects. The manifest image is indispensable
tcnns of concatenations of spatio-temporal causation.
insofar as it provides the structure within which we ex
ercise our capacity for rational thought. Hence the parity
bet\o,reen images: both are governed by the nonn of truth,
Yet there is a persistent ambiguity in Sellars' account
understood as maximally warranted assenion, despite the
of the relation between manifest and scientific images.
conceptual incommensurability between manifest and
On one hand, he seems to insist that the philosophical
scientific truth claims. Yet the manifest image remains
task is to recognize the parity of the two images. The
indispensable as the originary medium for the normative.
acknowledgement of parity follows from the realiza
To the extent that this normative framework does not sur
tion that the images are not in fact competing over the
vive, Sellars warned, "man himself would not survive."
same territory. Philosophy can adjudicate between the
(Sellars 1991a, 18) But it is man qua rational agent, not
competing claims of the manifest and scientific images
anthropological object, which Sellars wishes to safe
by distinguishing the normative privileges of the former
guard here. The manifest image remains indispensable
from the ontological rights of the latter. Thus, apparently
because it provides us with the necessary conceptual re·
undermining his commitment to parity, Sellars upholds
sources we require in order to make sense of ourselves as
------______________0 Identities
persons, that is to say, concept-governed creatures con
Joumol for Pofitiu. Gen"", ond C�llu," Vol. 8 f No. 2 f s.,,,,, lOll
cognitive activity, and with it science's investigation of
tinually engaged in giving and asking for reasons. It is
reality, would become pointless. Is this to say that the
not privileged because of what it describes and explains,
manifest image subordinates the ends of enquiry to hu
but because it renders us susceptible to the force of rea
man interests? Does the manifest image predetcnnine our
sons. It is the medium for the normative commitments
understanding of what a person is'? I think the answer to
that underwrite our ability to change our minds about
both questions is no.
things, to revise our beliefs in the face of new evidence
and correct our understanding when confronted with a
superior argument. In this regard, science itself grows
Sellars aligns himself with a rationalist lineage that pos
out of the manifest image precisely insofar as it consti
tulates an intimate link between rationality and subjective
tutes a self-correcting enterprise. Indeed, for Sellars, a
agency. It is encapsulated in this Sellarsian dictum:
proto-scientific theory lies at the heart of the nonnative
'''True' is a sign that something is to be done, for infer
structure of the manifest image. We had to learn to pos
ring is a doing." The capacity to draw inferences requires
tulate thoughts as unobservable inner episodes in order
the ability to be bound by a rule. This binding is sponta
to explain publicly observable speech. Only in doing so
neously undertaken by a subject, not passively submitted
did we acquire the ability to understand ourselves as ra
to by an object. The agent is a subject precisely insofar as
tional agents operating in the concept-governed space of
she is able to submit to a rule. Our capacity to do things
reasons. Once ushered into this nonnative dimension, we
with concepts presupposes that concepts can do things to
developed ever more sophisticated resources for describ
us. Our grasp of a concept requires that we be gripped by
ing and explaining what we observe in tenns of what we
the concept. But if rationality is indissociable from sub
do not observe. Thus Sellars is a resolutely modern phi
jectivity, and subjectivity is synonymous with selthood,
losopher in his insistence that nonnativity is not found
does this mean that the capacity for rationality requires
but made. The rational compunction enshrined in the
the existence of selves? Does the institution of rationality
manifest image is the source of our ability to continu
necessitate the canonization of selfhood? Not jf we learn
ally revise our beliefs, and this revisability has proven
to distinguish the nonnative realm of subjective ratio
crucial in facilitating the ongoing expansion of the scien
nality from the phenomenological domain of conscious
tific image. Once this is acknowledged, it seems we are
experience. To acknowledge a constitutive link between
bound to conclude that science cannot lead us to abandon
subjectivity and rationality is not to preclude the possi
our manifest self-conception as rationally responsible
bility of rationally investigating the biological roots of
agents, since to do so would be to abandon the source
subjectivity. Indeed, maintaining the integrity of ratio
of the imperative to revise. It is our manifest self-under
nality arguably obliges us to examine its material basis.
standing as persons that furnishes us, qua community
Philosophers seeking to uphold the privileges of ratio
of rational agents, with the ultimate horizon of rational
nality cannot but acknowledge the cognitive authority of
purposiveness with regard to which we are motivated
the empirical science that is perhaps its most impressive
to try to understand the world. Shorn of this horizon, all
offspring. Among its most promising manifestations is
e'VIew from Nowhere
cognitive neurobiology, which, as its name implies, in
vestigates the neurobiological mechanisms responsible
for generating subjective experience. Does this threaten
the integrity of conceptual rationality? It does not, so
long as we distinguish the phenomenon of selfhood from
the function of the subject. We must learn to dissociate
subjectivity from selfhood and realize that if, as Sellars
put it, inferring is an act - the distillation of the subjectiv
ity of reason - then reason itself enjoins the destitution of
selfhood.
•
It is instructive to contrast Sellars' account of conceptual
parity and explanatory priority between the manifest and
scientific images with JUrgen Habemlas' recent attempt to
adjudicate the relation berween the factual and nonnative
in a controversy over the implications of cognitive neu
robiology. In a 2008 paper entitled "The Language-Game
of Responsible Agency and the Problem of Free-Will,"
Habennas invokes the Sellarsian schema in order to
refute what he sees as the anempt by contemporary neu
roscientists to undermine the nonn of rational agency
which plays such a fundamental role not only in ethical
and political theorizing, but also in legal and psychiat
ric discourse. (Habemlas 2008, 13-50) Habemlas' text
is largely concerned with responding to a manifesto in
which eleven distinguished Gennan neuroscientists claim
that our ordinary concept of "free-will" is on the verge of
being overthrown by recent advances in cognitive neu
robiology. As Habennas himself notes, "neurologists
expect the results of their research to lead to a profound
revision in our self-understanding." (ibid., 14) According
to these neuroscientists themselves: "We stand at the
threshold of seeing our image of ourselves consider
ably shaken in the foreseeable future" (Elger et al 2004,
37). The Sellarsian resonances of both fonnulations are
striking. But Habennas accuses the neuroscientists who
would deploy the methods of natural scientific investiga
tion to explain some of the fundamental features of our
manifest self-conception - specifically, our understand
ing of ourselves as agents of illegitimately extending
the resources of objectification beyond their proper re
mit. For Habennas, the attempt to study first�person
subjective experience from the third-person, objectifying
viewpoint, involves the theorist in a perfonnative contra
diction, since objectification presupposes participation in
an intcrsubjectively instituted system of linguistic prac�
tices whose normative valence conditions the scientist's
cognitive activity. Attempts to interrogate the nonnative
status of agency within the manifest image unwittingly
undenuine the very concept in whose name every ratio
nal investigation is ultimately undertaken, since it is the
collectively instantiated nonn of agency that provides
the rationale for producing "truer/' more accurate de
scriptions of reality in the first place. Thus, according to
Habennas, attempts to explain agency naturalistically fail
because "the social constitution of the human mind which
unfolds within interpersonal relationships can be made
accessible only from the perspective of participants and
cannot be captured from Ihe perspective of an observer
who objectivatcs everything into an event in the world."
(Habennas 2008, 34) Habennas characterizes this inter�
subjective domain of rational validity as the dimension of
"objective mind," which cannot be understood in tenus
of the phenomenological profiles of the community of
conscious selves comprised in it. Accordingly, it is the
intrinsically intersubjective status of the normative realm
�
Identities
that precludes any attempt to account for its operation
lwmal fot �iticJ. �""", and (ultu",,�, 81 No. 11s.umm,,, lQ11
of the mental in socially instantiated linguistic practice.
or genesis in tenns of entities or processes simpler than
While the nonnative order retains a quasi-transcendental
the system itself. Neither the phenomenological nor neu
status, its linguistic embodiment allows us to under
robiological profiling of participants can be cited as a
stand how it is embedded in the empirical order. Thus,
constituting condition for this socially "objective mind"
while Sellars maintains the irreducibly nonnative status
since it is the source of the capacity for intentional objec
of intentionality, the fact that it is always linguistically
tivation presupposed by both:
embodied allows us to investigate when or how this nor
mative dimension might have arisen in the course of our
It is not the subjectivity of our conscious life that distin
guishes humans from other creatures but the intentional
stance and the interlocking of the intersubjective relations
between persons with an objectivating attitude to something
in the world. The linguistic socialization of consciousness
and the intentional relation to the world are mutually con
stitutive in the circular sense that each presupposes the
other conceptually. (ibid., 35)
The objectivity of social mind is grounded in the rela
tion of reciprocal presupposition between an inherently
linguistic (and hence constitutively social) consciousness
and the cognitive relation to the world. For Habermas,
the interdependence between language and intentionality
implies not only that neither can be studied indepen
dently of the other, but more strongly, that neither can be
intelligibly distinguished from the other. Here Habennas
certainly echoes Sellars, whose attack o n "the myth of the
given" challenges the idealist attempt t o ground "origi
nary" intentionality in transcendental consciousness.
Consciousness construed as originary condition of given
ness becomes an unexplained explainer. This brand of
transcendental idealism is inimical to naturalism, since if
consciousness is the originary condition of objectivation,
of which science is one instance, it follows that science
cannot investigate consciousness. Upending this ideal
ist order of explanation, Sellars roots the intentionality
evolutionary and social history.
Habennas, for his part, rightly emphasizes the neces
sity of distinguishing the nonnative from the natural, or
reasons from causes, and accurately diagnoses the contra
dictions and confusions attendant upon any pre-emptive
collapse of the fonner into the latter. But because his ac
count is so largely reactive, unlike Sellars, he is unable to
propose any positive account of the imrication between
concepts and causes. Conflating naturalism with empiri
cism, Habermas upholds Sellars's distinction at the cost
of eliding its scientific realist corollary, viz., that mind,
and hence the nonnative order, possesses a neurobiologi
cal as well as socio-historical conditions of emergence.
As a result, Habennas pre-emptively disqualifies by
conceptual fiat every scientific attempt to describe and
explain the transition from pre-linguistic to linguistic
consciousness, from the sub-personal to the personal,
and from neurobiology to culture. For Habennas, the ex
planatory resources required in order to provide such an
account threaten to cost too much: they would incur a
self-objectification which would irrevocably estrange us
from ourselves. As he puts it: "The limits of naturalistic
self-objectification are trespassed when persons describe
themselves in such a way that they cannot recognize
themselves as persons anymore" (ibid., 25). Such an
."�V�.".�"."I,"'�-·e Vfew'fNJl"II NOWlll!t"l!
objectification of the human, Habennas maintains, would
methodological priority and nomological dependence,
bring about a ''fictionalization'' of selfhood which would
and the fact that pre-scientific practice cnjoys chronologi
conjure "the image of a consciousness that hangs like
a marionette from an inscrutable criss-cross of strings"
cal precedcnce over scientific theorizing in no way entails
that the latter is logically dependent upon or reducible to
(ibid., 24). Yet such depersonalization remains impos
the fonner. In his determination to ward ofT the naturalistic
sible, Habennas contends, because it could only come
dissolution of the nonnative, Habennas resorts to an in
about through the attainment of a hypothetical "view
strumentalization of science - of the sort Sellars repeatedly
from nowhere" which science cannot realize:
warned against - which inadvertently suggests that nothing
we learn about ourselves from the perspective of scientific
The resistance to a naturalistic self-description stemming
from our self-understanding as persons is explained by the
fact that there is no getting round a dualism of epistemic
perspectives that must interlock in order to make it possible
for the mind, situated as it is within the world, to get an
orienting overview of its own situation. Even the gaze of a
purportedly absolute observer cannot sever the ties to one
standpoint in particular, namely that of a counterfacluaJ1y
extended argumentation community. (ibid. 35)
.
theory could force us to revise the content of our subjec
tive or "participatory"
self-understanding. Habennas'
epistemological dualism of objectifying theory and discur
sive practice is in many ways an exacerbation of the more
familiar dualism of first and third-person perspectives in
Anglo-American philosophy of mind. Ultimately, the du
alism of epistemic perspectives seems to JXlint toward the
conceptual impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision
that would finally bridge the gap between the concep
This dualism
of epistemic perspectives
invoked by
Habennas is the dualism of observer and participant.
And in fact, '·Iabennas recodes the Sellarsian distinction
between manifest and scientific images in tenns of a du
alism of theory and practice wherein the fonner indexes
the objectifying stance of scientific naturalism while the
laner expresses subjective participation in intersubjective
discourse (the "argumentation community"). Yet even as
tual and the natural, or the subjective and the objective.
What AnglO-American philosophy characterizes as the
"explanatory gap" between mind and brain, or first and
third person perspectives, Habennas rashly inflates into
a "pragmatic contradiction" between the neuroscientist's
practico-discursive reliance on intersubjectively instituted
semantic norms and her conceptual disavowal of those
conditions in her theoretical propositions.
Habernlas insists on the complementarity of scientific the
ory and discursive practice, he inscribes the fonner within
•
a horizon of conceptual possibility entirely delimited by
the latter. Thus, he insists, "the conceptual constitution
of domains of enquiry, the construction of designs and
Is it JXlssible to describe and explain the correlation
measurements, and the experimental production of data
between first-person experience and neurobiological
are all rooted in pre-scientific practice" (ibid., 38). Yet as
processes without lapsing into the sort of conceptual inco
Habermas knows, there is a crucial difference between
herence denounced by Habermas? In Being No One: The
- -_
_ Identities
Self-Model Theory o/Subjectivity (Metzinger 2004; orig
representation. However, for Metzinger, the representing
inally published in 2003, fOllr years prior to Habermas'
or "vehicule" does not have its boundaries at the skin of
article), Thomas Metzinger describes and explains
ill
the organism but can extend out into the environment from
principle how normatively regulated social interaction
which it extracts a represented "content." Consequently, in
between conscious selves supervenes upon un-conscious,
Metzinger's account, the representing may be defined as
sub-symbolic
"internal" to the representational system even when it is
neurobiological
processes.
Moreover,
Metzinger does so by explaining how the phenom
constituted by spatially external events. Moreover, where
enon of selthood. and hence the first-person subjective
much philosophy of mind tends to hypostatize the vehi
perspective, can be understood as arising out of sub
cule/content distinction, with the result that vehicule and
personal representational mechanisms. First however, it
content are construed as distinct entities which can then all
is necessary to stave off a potential misunderstanding.
too easily be interpreted as instances of mental or physi
Although unequivocally naturalistic in its methodology
cal events respectively, Metzinger insists that representing
and uncompromisingly "materialist" in tenor, Metzinger
and represented be conceived as conjoined aspects of a
does not adopt the kind of straightforwardly "reduction
single infonnational process whose deep-structure needs
ist" strategy espoused by traditional mind-brain identity
to be mapped according to five distinct levels of analysis:
theories, whether in their strong versions, where identity
phenomenological, representational �·ellsu striclo, infor
is construed as obtaining between mental and physical
mation-computational, functional, and neurobiological.
lypeS, or in their weaker fonnulations, where the iden
Although each level of representational structure re
tity in question is merely between mental and physical
mains conceptually distinct, its autonomy is constrained
fokens.2 Rather than postulating direct token or type
by the minimal requirement that any "slice" of the repre
identities between psychological and neurological states,
sentational process remains correlated with events at the
Metzinger proceeds by elaborating a naturalized theory
neurobiological level. Thus, rather than trying to directly
of representation wherein the latter is construed as a
identify the mental with the physical, Metzinger main
dynamic process involving three distinct types of state -
tains the relative irreducibility of these distinct levels of
internal representations, which are always unconscious;
description, carefully distinguishing the slrUctural proper
mental representations, which are only sometimes con
ties and features specific to each, while insisting that every
scious; and phenomenal representations, which
representational state invariably supervenes upon the neu
are
always conscious. FurthemlOre, every representational
robiological level - the guiding hypothesis being that there
state comprises a relation between a representing - i.e.,
must always be minimally sufficient neural correlates for
the concrete internal state of the system - and a represent
every representational state, even in those cases where we
ed - the particular feature of the world or of the system
are not yet in a position to identify them.
itself about which the representational state carries infor
mation. In many ways, Metzinger'S distinction beh'Veen
representing and represented corresponds to the familiar
On the basis of this characterization of conscious stales
distinction between the "vehicule" and the "content" of
as a variety of representational states, Metzinger is able
Ray BnlssI..
to propose a novel account of the nature of conscious ex
perience as a special case of phenomenal representation
in which an individual infonnation processing system
generates a realiry-model. At its simplest level then,
consciousness can be defined as obtaining whenever a
representational system generates a phenomenal world
model: "Conscious experience then consists in the acti
vation of a coherent and transparent world model within
a window of presence." (ibid.,213) Metzinger goes on to
specify three minimal constraints for the experience of
phenomenal consciousness:
I. Pre!ielltationaliry, or the generation of a window of
temporal presence through which the system repre
sents the world.
2. Globaliry, or the availability of information for
guided attention, cognitive reference, and control of
action.
3. Trallsparency, defined as "inversely proportional to
the introspective degree of auentionai availability of
earlier processing stages." (2004, 165)
Transparency. the third constraint, is arguably the most
significant for Metzinger's entire account. Here again. it
is important to distinguish it from more familiar philo
sophical definitions of "transparency" in tenns of the
inaccessibility of vehicule as opposed to content proper
ties (or of the properties of the representing as opposed
to those of the represented). Metzinger refuses this or
thodox construal of transparency because, once again,
it encourages the temptation to reify the distinction
between content and vehicule in tenns of traditional dis
tinctions between the mental and the physica\. Thus, the
mental would be defined as transparent in contradistinc
tion to the opacity of the physical. But on Metzinger's
account,it is simply not the case that the representational
vehicule is a physical entity while its represented con
tent is mental: both vehicule and content, representing
and represented,are indissociable aspects of an infonna
tional continuum wherein each can switch role and serve
as content or vehicule for another, higher order repre
sentation. Consequently, transparency is fundamentally
a phenomenological rather than epistemological notion:
phenomenal content is not epistemic content: "The trans
parency of phenomenal representations is cognilively
impenetrable; phenomenal knowledge is not identical
to conceptual or proJXlsitionai knowledge." (ibid.,174)
Accordingly, the fact that something is phenomenologi
cally transparent does not entail that it is cognitively
accessible to the system itself; as we shall see, the reverse
is far more often liable to be the case. In fact, phenomenal
transparency implies the unavailability of the representa
tional character of the contents of conscious experience:
Truly transparent phenomenal representations force a con
scious system to functionally become a naiVe realist with
regard to their contents: whatever is transparently repre
sented is experienced as real and as undoubtedly existing
by this system. (ibid., 167)
Thus, in a move strikingly redolent of Kant,. Mctzinger
characterizes what U.T. Place originally identified as
''the phenomenological fallacy'" - ''the mistaken idea
that descriptions of the appearances of things arc de
scriptions of actual state of affairs in a mysterious inner
environment" (Place 1970,42) - in tenns of the abstrac
tion of the represented from the process of representation.
Transparency understood as the occlusion of the process
Identities
Joutn.. b PuIitits. Gender and CuI'Ufe VOI_ 8/ No.. 2/ StImme. :1011
of representation to the benefit of its phenomenal contents
events perceived in the world can now for the first time
encourages the system to remain a "naiVe realist" about
be treated as systematically correlated self-generated
what it experiences. It generates the subjective impression
events." (ibid., 309)
of phenomenological immediacy. As a result, phenomenal
transparency, which is among the defining features of the
Through the PSM, a system becomes able to treat it
subjective experience of conscious immediacy, is in fact "a
self as a second·order intentional system - one capable
special fomt of darkness." (Metzinger 2004, 169)
of entertaining beliefs about its own beliefs]
•
and is
thereby transfomted from something merely exhibiting
behaviour into an entity capable of exerting the sort of
Once consciousness is minimally defined as the activa
self-regulation characteristic of what we call "agency."
tion of an integrated world-model within a window of
Accordingly, given any system for which the constraints
presence, then self-consciousness can be defined as the
of presentationality, globality, and transparency obtain,
activation of a phenomenal self-model (PSM) nested
the acquirement of a PSM will necessarily entail the
within this world-model: "A self-model is a model of the
emergence of a phenomenal self Yet the latter is not an
very representational system that is currently activating
autonomous or independent entity but merely the rep
it within itself." (ibid., 302) Metzinger identifies three re
resented of a phenomenal representation. Moreover, it
gards in which the system may benefit from the ability to
is precisely the system's lack of access to the process
consciously represent its own states to itself:
through which it generates its own self-model that engen·
ders the condition of "autoepistemic closure" whereby
I. The possession of phenomenal states clearly increas
the represented of the system's self-representation oc·
es the flexibility of the system's behavioural profile by
eludes the representing that gave rise to it:
amplifying its sensitivity to context and its capacity for
discrimination.
Phenomenal selfhood results from autoepistemic closure
2. The PSM "not only allows a system to make choices
in a self-representing system; it is a lack of infonnation
... The p hen omenal property of selfhood is constituted by
about itself but adds an internal context to the overall
transparent, non-epistemic self-representation - and it is on
conscious model of reality under which the system op
this level of representationalist analysis that the refutation
erates." (ibid., 308)
3. Lastly, the PSM exerts an important causal influ
ence, not only by differentiating but also by integrating
the system's
behavioural profile. Thus, "as one's
bodily movements for the first time became globally
available as one's
of the corresponding phenomenological fallacy becomes
truly radical, because it has a straightforward ontological
own movements, the foundations
for agency and autonomy are laid. A specific subset of
interpretation: no such things as selves exist in the world ...
What exists are infonnation processing systems en gaged in
the transparent process of phenom enal self-modelling. All
that can be explained by the phenomenological notion of a
"self' can also be explained using the repr esenta tionalist
notion ofa transparent self-model. (ibid., 337)
Itay tlranl.,
""h'."""'Fnm�m"'�w"'hf!Tf!
Ultimately. the PSM is simply the shadow cast by the
in the cave; indeed there is no-one there at all. The con
occlusion of global, anentionaUy available infonnation
scious self is not an entity but a shadow; not an individual
about the workings of the system. But why should this
object, but rather the ongoing process of shading through
transparency have come about? Metzinger's answer is
which
that autoepistemic closure is imposed by the need to min
resentation is projected as a much lower dimensional
a
multidimensional
neurocomputational
rep
imize the amount of computational resources required in
phenomenal model onto the surface provide by the sys
order to make system-related infonnation consciously
tem's world-model. Thus the PSM is not the shadow of a
available. Transparent self-modelling provides systemic
captive individual, nor the avatar of a supposedly authen
infonnation without generating a potentially debilitating
tic or even "transcendental" subject beneath or behind
regress of recursive self-modelling, for if the system had
the conscious individual. but rather a shadow cast by the
to include every representing involved in generating its
cave as a whole: "It is the physical organism as a whole,
self-represented within the latter. then it would also have
including all of its brain, its cognitive activity, and its
to incorporate within it the representing required in order
social relationships, that is projecting inward from all di
to generate this new, second-order self-represented, and
rections at the same lime ... The cave shadow is there,
so on ad infinitum. Phenomenal transparency is a cheap
the cave itself is empty." (ibid., 550)
way of minimizing the neurocomputationally exorbitant
cost of representational opacity.
In Metzinger's second metaphor, phenomenal experi
ence constitutes a dynamic, multidimensional map of
by summarizing his principal
the world. And like the maps in subway stations, the
claim in tenns of three heuristic metaphors: the neu
phenomenal world model features a little red arrow in
Metzinger
concludes
rophenomenological cave; the phenomenal map; and
it that allows the user to locate herself within the map.
total simulational immersion. The first is a reworking of
The PSM is analogous to this little red arrow saying "You
Plato's allegory of the cave. Recall that according to the
are here:" "Mental self-models arc the little red arrows
latter, the human mind's relationship to reality is akin to
that help a phenomenal geographer to navigate her own
that of a prisoner held captive in a cave - the prisoner
complex mental map of reality by once again depicting
has never seen anything but the shadows cast onto the
a subset of her own properties Jor herself." (ibid., 552)
wall facing her by puppet-simulacra of objects which are
But whereas the red arrow in the subway map is opaque
paraded in front of the fire that is burning behind her. In
to the map user, and hence explicitly apprehended by her
Metzinger's version of this Platonic allegory, the cave is
as a representation, the PSM is transparent: its status as a
the physical organism or infonnation processing system
representation is occluded for the system because of the
as a whole; the fire its neurocomputational dynamics; the
introspective unavailability of all those earlier processing
puppet-simulacra of objects its mental representings; and
stages through which it has been produced. Yet this is not to
the shadows cast on the cave wall its phenomenal repre
say that we are mistakenly identifying ourselves with our
senteds. But according to Metzinger, there is no prisoner
own PSM - there can be no question of misidentification
Identities
here since the PSM is all we are. There is no transcenden
tal or noumenal self who could mistakenly identify itself
with the phenomenal self since, as Metzinger insists,
the cave is empty. But its multidimensional neural self
image generates a condition of "full immersion." Thus,
in the third and last of Metzinger's heuristic metaphors,
the PSM operates like a total simulation: ;'A total flight
simulator is a self-modelling aeroplane that has always
flown without a pilot and has generated a complex inter
nal image of itself within its own internal flight simulator."
(ibid., 557) The PSM is this internal image which func
tions as an invisible interrace for the interaction between
system and world. And just as the total flight simulator
generates its own virtual pilot, the human brain activates
its PSM when it requires a representational instrument to
integrate, monitor, predict, and remember the activities
of the system as a whole:
As long as the pilot is needed to navigate the world, the
puppet-shadow dances on the wall of the neurophenom
enological caveman's phenomenal state-space. As soon as
the system does not need a globally available self-model,
it simply turns it off. Together with the model, the con
scious experience of selfhood disappears. Sleep is the little
brother of death. (ibid., 558)
Ultimately then, Metzinger explains the phenom
enological experience of selfhood as a specific type of
representational content: the self is the represented of a
phenomenally transparent self-model. But it is not neces
sary to postulate the existence of entities called "selves"
over and above the dynamic web of relations between the
complex physical system known as the human organism,
its internal representational economy, and its physical en
vironment. All the salient cognitive and phenomenal data
Journal fO< PoIiIl< �n.w" and C"�u'e YoL 8 I No. 21 SUm....' 1011
••
can be accounted for in terms of the PSM. Is this then to
say that the notion of "the self' as an autonomous real
ity can be dispensed with and relegated to the dustbin of
intellectual history? Before we address this question and
some of the objections voiced against Metzinger's thesis,
let us consider some further implications o f t h e latter.
According to Metzinger, even ifit is the case that we cannot
help experiencing ourselves as "selves" and find it impos
sible to phenomenologically imagine selfless experience,
the latter remains an epistemic possibility. Clearly, organ
isms can satisfy the minimal constraints for phenomenal
consciousness (presentationality, globality. transparency)
without being in possession of a PSM. Undoubtedly,
many forms of animal life provide instances of selfless
consciousness in this sense. But they remain incapable
of generating sophisticated conceptual representations of
themselves and their world. Thus, for Metzinger, the phil
osophically interesting question is whether it is possible
to envisage systems capable of generating sophisticated
conceptual representations of themselves and their world
without the benefit of a PSM. Metzinger suggests that such
systems are indeed envisageable, but would have to b e
characterized as systems whose representational models
have been rendered fully opaque. Recall that phenom
enal transparency is a function of epistemic darkness: for
any representation, its degree of transparency is inversely
proportional to the degree of available epistemic informa
tion about the representational processes that preceded its
instantiation. But it is possible to imagine systems en
dowed with the same cognitive capacities as humans,
but for whom the transparency constraint, specifically
as pertaining to the PSM, would not obtain. Thus, "ear
lier processing stages would be attentionally available
av
for all partitions of its conscious self-representation; it
nlssh,r
the transcendental perspective of pure phenomenologi
would continuously recognize it as a representational
cal consciousness as effected by what Husserl called
construct, as an internally generated internal structure."
the "transcendental reduction." The goal of the latter i s
(ibid., 565) Such a system would possess a system-model
to "bracket off" o r suspend the assumption of the au
without instantiating selfhood. It would retain the func
tonomous reality of Objects in order to isolate the ideal
tional advantages of possessing a coherent self-model
objectitying acts through which intentional conscious
(integration, monitoring, prediction, memory) but with
ness generates its objective correlates. Obviously, in
out experiencing itself as a self. It would be burdened
Husserl's idealist schema, this reduction is carried out
with an additional computational load, which it would
by and for a transcendental subject, the better to sepa
have to find some way of discharging without getting
rate the world-less realm of intentional consciousness as
trapped into infinite loops of self-representation, but if it
originary source and locus for the possibility of scien�
could find some means of solving this problem without
tific objectification. By way of contrast, the hypothesis
resorting to the transparency solution, then this would
of the nemocentric perspective suggested by Metzinger
indeed constitute an example of a cognitive system op
is one in which the representational process's reincorpo
erating with a non-phenomenologically centred model of
ration into the represented object serves to foreground
reality. Such a system would be nemocentric: it would
the sub-personal dimension of neurocomputational pro
satisfy a sufficiently rich set of constraints for conscious
cessing that underlies objectifying representation, and
experience without exemplifying phenomenal selfhood.
hence the objective processes through which objectivity
It would quite likely remain functionally egocentric, in
is partly produced. Over and above its status as a phe
order to satisty the requirements of biological adapta
nomenological anomaly, the hypothesis of nemocentric
tion, but it would remain phenomenologically selfless.
consciousness provides a possible model for the new
Moreover, such a system's reality-model would be richer
type of experience that could be engendered were scien
in informational content than our own, because at every
tists to succeed in objectitying their own neurobiological
stage of processing, more information about earlier pro
processes of objectification. The nemocentric subject of
cessing stages would be globally available for the system
a hypothetically completed neuroscience in which all the
as a whole. Thus such a system would instantiate what
possible neural correlates of representational states have
Metzinger calls a ''first-object'' perspective because it
been identified would provide an empirically situated and
would experience its own phenomenal self-model not
biologically embodied locus for the exhaustively objec
only as a represented but also and simultaneously as a
tive "view from nowhere," which Habernlas and others
representing. It would be aware of the representational
have denounced as a conceptual impossibility. Yet here,
vehicule as well as of the represented content.
as Metzinger'S work suggests, empirical possibility out
strips a priori stipulations of conceivability. In railing
against the possibility of the mind's complete theoretical
There is an interesting comparison to be made be
self-objectification, Habennas inadvertently reiterates
tween this hypothetical nemocentric perspective and
the conflation of personhood as conceptual norm with
____ Identities
selfhood as phenomenological reality - the very confu
sion he initially sought to denounce. Here we have an
example of what could be called "the philosopher's fal
lacy:" a failure of imagination paraded as an insight into
necessity.4 Habennas refuses to envisage the possibil
ity of a convergence between self-objectification and
self-knowledge because he continues to assume that self
knowledge must be knowledge ofthe self:
[N]euroscientific enlightenmcm about the illusion of free
will crosses the conceptual border into self-objectification
. . . For this shift in the naturalization of the mind dissolves
the perspective from which alone an increase in knowledge
could be experienced as emancipation from constraints.
loumol lor PoOtk•• G�ndor 000 ("hure llel. B/ tOo. 11 SUmmer 2011
order in the fonn of a dualism ofthe nornlative and the nat
ural. Lacking any understanding of the interplay between
subjective practice and objective explanation, Habennas'
account of rationality becomes internally contradictory: it
seeks to defend rationality by excluding a key part of it,
viz., the naturalistic explanation of empirical subjectivity,
which can only increase, not compromise, our understand
ing of the conceptual, both in its distinction and emergence
from the empirical. Disregarding the imperative to under
stand the latter, Habennas posits a distinction that he reities
into a substantive dualism of reasons and causes.
•
(Habennas 2008, 24)
But what Habennas fails to see is how the genitive in the
proposition "self-knowledge is not knowledge of the self'
is at once subjective and objective: if the subject is not a
self, then the s ubject who knows herself to be selfless is
neither the proprietor ofthis knowledge (since it is not hers)
nor its object (since there is no-one to know). Ultimately,
Habennas' inability to articulate the distinction between
theoretical objectification and discursive practice ends up
promulgating a dualism of theory and practice, objective
and subjective, which results from the refusal to acknowl
edge their interpenetration. For as Sellars so clearly saw, it is
precisely the nonn-governed domain of subjective practice
that demands the conceptual integration of the SUbjective
and the objective, reasons and causes, in the obligation to
attain a maximally integrated understanding of the world
and our position within it as creatures who are at once con
ceptually motivated and cause-governed. Unlike Sellars,
Habermas pushes the irreducibility of the nonnative to the
point where it generates a schism within the conceptual
Critics have objected that the notion of "self' which
Metzingerclaimsto haveeliminated is a straw man: Hume,
Kant and Nietzsche had already demolished this (suppos
edly) Cartesian conception of the self as an autonomous
metaphysical substance. Others have responded to his
work by insisting that phenomenology in the Husserlian
tradition abjures precisely this metaphysical reification
of the self: phenomenology construes the subjectiv
ity of conscious experience in tenns of a pre-reflective
dimension of ipseity according to which phenomenal
experience is necessarily "owned." One of Metzinger's
phenomenological critics, Dan Zahavi, insists that it is
in tenns of the unobjectitiable "mineness" of conscious
experience - which Heidegger called Jemeinigkeil that
sellhood ought to be understood once liberated from its
metaphysical reitication as res cogitans:
•
Whether a certain experience is experienced as mine or not
does not depend on something apart from the experience,
Wav Bnule
but on the givenness of the experience. !fthe experience is
given to me in a first-personal mode of presentation, it is
experienced as my experience, otherwise not. To be con
scious ofoneself, is consequently not to capture a pure self
that exists in separation from the stream of consciousness,
rather it just entails being conscious of an experience in
e-vlew'frO'fn Nowh�r
or "mineness:" the owning of experience. Consequently,
Zahavi contests Metzinger's use of the PSM theol)' of
subjectivity to explain the fracturing of selfhood and the
anomalous phenomenologies involved in pathologies
such as anosognosia, schizophrenia, and Cotard's syn·
its first-personal mode of givenness. In short. the self re
ferred to is not something standing beyond or opposed to
the stream of experiences, rather it is a feature or function
of their givenness. It is the invariant dimension offirst-per
sonal givenness in the multitude of changing experiences.
(Zahavi 2005, 9)
drome. He objects that even in cases of thought insertion,
It is this focus on the allegedly transcendental dimension
remains an ineluctable phenomenol ogical feature of the
of "givenness" (which is "ontological," as opposed to the
merely "ontic" gi ven) that distinguishes phenomenol
ogy from psychology, and phenomenological experience
slriclo sensu from any merely empirical cataloguing of
introspectively accessible psychic states or processes.
Indeed, Zahavi cites Husser! approvingly to the effect
that the phenomenological domain is "'neither psychic
nor physical:"
where the subject experiences thoughts that she ascribes
to another, she continues to own the experience. since her
very estrangement from the thought reveals how, even in
disavowing that the thought is hers, she continues to own
the experience in which this estrangement i s re giste red
and this disavowal occurs. Thus, Zahavi insists. selfhood
form of the given, rather than of its content. The schizo
phrenic continues to experience alien thought episodes
as occurring to her, rather than to someone else: "Rather
than involving a lack of a sense of ownership, passiv
ity phenomena like thought insertions involve a lack of
a sense of authorship (or self-agency) and a misattribu
tion of agency to someone or something else." (ibid., 6)
Zahavi demotes subjective agency to the level of empiri
cal content, the better to elevate selfhood into a fonnal
Rather, phenomenology is interested in the very dimen
sion of givenness or appearance and seeks to explore its
essential structures and conditions of possibility. Such an
investigation is beyond any divide between psy chical inte
riority and physical exteriority, since it is an investigation
of the dimension in which any object - be it external or
internal - manifests itself. (ibid., 14)"
condition
of ex peri ence . Accordingly, he concludes,
even schizophrenic depersonalization presupposes this
irreducible proprietary relation to experience, which phe
nomenology identifies as this dimension of "ownness."
But who owns experience? What remains of the self once
it has been de-substantialized and transposed to the level
Thus Zahavi insists that for phenomenology, the self is
of form? If phenomenological selfhood pertains to the
not something given - it is precisely never something
form rather than the content of experience, then what
gi ven at the level of content of ex pe rience - but rather
formal property ( or set of properties) can we invoke to
the form of giv enness or of experience as such. This
identify an experience as our own, or discriminate one
fonn is pre c isely what Heidegger called eigentlichkeit
self from another? What characteristics di stin guish my
____ Identities
experience from yours at the level of phenomenological
j""mol l.,.. IVlitic•• Go:nMrond Cullur� 1/01. 8 f No. 2 f Summer 2011
"given" in the same way as a pub conversation or a re
form? The problem is that everything that distinguishes
ligious experience? The fact that saccades and lesions
my self from yours subsists at the level of experienced
can be turned into intentional correlates of consciousness
content, not the fann of experiencing. Phenomenology
does not make them "phenomena" in the same sense in
inflates selfhood into a structurally necessary property of
which conversations and sensations are said to be. Just
experience, the invariant fonn for the givenness of the
as unconscious phenomena can be viewed as intentional
given, when precisely what distinguishes my self from
correlates, conscious phenomena can be turned into ob
yours is something given, rather than its givenness. To
jects and investigated from the third person perspective.
insist that it is given /0 me, rather than 10 you, is sim
The fonner is no more a vindication of phenomenology
ply to beg the question as to the identity of the dative,
than the latter is of naturalism. Playing on the inherent
by reiterating a distinction experienced at the level of
ambiguity of the word "phenomena," Zahavi elides the
given content and projecting it back onto the form of
distinction between intentional and conscious phenom
its givenness. So what is the explanatory worth of the
ena and reduces the fonner to the level of the latter. But
phenomenological postulate according to which self
he adduces no argument for the claim that phenomeno
hood is a fonnally necessary property of experience? In
logical "givenness" remains irreducible to psychological
descriptive terms, all that distinguishes the phenomeno
and/or cognitive experience; he simply stipulates it.
logical postulate of "mineness" as originary fonn from
the self-model theory of subjectivity is the fact that the
fornler stipulates as a necessary condition of experience
a phenomenon that the latter derives as a conditioned
experience. Instead of providing some property or set
of properties, whether conceptual, qualitative, or ex
periential, that would mark the difference between the
phenomenological structures governing the possibility
of appearance and those of its phenomenal counterparts,
which can be accounted for in tenns of the sub-personal
mechanisms mapped by Metzinger, Zahavi invokes a di
mension of givenness which, although defined using all
those features of phenomenal consciousness accounted
for by the PSM, is nevertheless "neither physical nor
psychical."5 Moreover, the claim that this givenness
provides the dimension wherein any object "whether
internal or external" must manifest itself remains unper
suasive: in what sense does a saccadic eye movement or a
lesion ofthe occipital lobe appear as phenomenologically
Ultimately, the claim that givenness itself must be ac
cepted as an undeniable datum is merely the most radical
version ofthe myth attacked by Sellars.6 On the one hand,
subjectivity understood as "mineness" is precisely an as
pect of experience that Metzinger is at pains to describe
and explain via his PSM theory. Having relinquished the
metaphysical postulate of a noumenal self subsisting be
hind or beyond appearances, the phenomenologist cannot
then maintain that the reality proper to the experiencing
self is more than just an experience. To understand the
subject as a structurally necessary condition of experi
ence in the Kanlian sense is precisely not to construe it as
a self exercising a proprietary grip over its experiences,
since the Kantian subject is an impersonal function, not a
titled individual proprietor endowed with deeds of own
ership. The relation between subjective condition and
conditioned object does not map onto the relation between
'byarassler
t! V't!w rbtr'l Nowht!r
proprietary self and owned experience. Questions as to
7) Self-knowledge certainly comprises a dimension of
the reality of experience are undoubtedly metaphysical.
non-inferential immediacy that endows us with a privi
Zahavi denounces Metzinger's denial of the existence
leged epistemic access to our own internal states, but
of selves as a dubious piece of scientistic metaphysics.
only within certain limits, since the immediacy of self
But Zahavi cannot then proclaim the indubitable reality
knowledge is itself the result of conceptual mediation
of selthood simply because it is given as an experienced
and cannot be evoked to ratify the appeal to an alleg
content. For as both Metzinger and Sellars point out,
edly intuitive, pre�conceptual self-acquaintance. The
phenomenal transparency is not epistemic transparency.
prejudice that immediacy is not the result of a mediating
To insist on the epistemic authority of conscious experi·
self-relation seduces us into absolutizing phenomenal ex�
ences is to reiterate the dogmatic pre-Kantian postulate
perience. Phenomenology's absolutization of givenness
according to which experiences are cognitively self·au·
as such is the most extreme variant of the myth disman
thenticating. It is one thing to insist, as Descartes did,
tled by Sellars.
that where phenomenal seeming is concerned, doubt is
inappropriate, since there can be no appearance-reality
distinction of the sort subject to epistemological adjudi
cation. But where doubt is inappropriate, so is certainty.
The corollary of the admission that we cannot doubt how
things seem is the recognition that we cannot be certain
of it either, since certainty is doubt's epistemic obverse.
I t is as inadmissible to proclaim the indubitable epistemic
authority of phenomenal experience as to denounce it as
Consequently, Zahavi is no more entitled to infer the re
ality of selfhood from its experience than Metzinger is to
deny it. Here it is important to bear in mind the distinc
tion between different levels of analysis: concepts are not
phenomena. The concept of the subject, understood as a
rational agent responsible for its utterances and actions,
is a constraint acquired via enculturation. The moral to be
illusory.
drawn from Metzinger's work here is that subjectivity is
Thus, just as Metzinger exposes phenomenal transpar·
self (we might say that self-models are "real" in some
not a natural phenomenon in the way in which selfhood
is. But Metzinger need not even deny the reality of the
ency as a kind of epistemic blindness, Sellars (like Kant
suitably qualified sense · though justifying this would re
before him) insists that self-knowledge is mediated by
quire working oul a full blown metaphysics), only the
knowledge of objects. The phenomenon that Metzinger
phenomenological postulate of its absolute explanatory
describes and explains subtends the epistemic assump·
priority. He draws a metaphysical conclusion where a
tion that Sellars diagnoses and analyses in his critique
methodological one would be more apt: the self-model
of the given. Zahavi reiterates this assumption when he
theory ofsubjectivity describes and explains the phenom
insists that "At its most primitive, self-consciousness is
enon of selfhood in a way that allows it to be reintegrated
simply a question of having first-personal access to one's
into the domain investigated by the natural sciences. II
own consciousness; it is a question of the first·personal
forces us to revise our concept of what a self is. But this
givenness or manifestation of experiential life." (ibid.,
does not warrant the elimination ohhe category of agent,
_"",I lot Politics, �..., ..... Cu\tu", Vol. 8/�. 21 Summer 1011
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________ Identities
since an agent is not a self. An agent is a physical en
tity gripped by concepts: a bridge between two reasons,
a function implemented by causal processes but distinct
from them. And the proper metaphysical framework for
explaining the neurobiological bases of subjective expe
rience is that of a scientific realism rooted in an account
of conceptual nonnativity that supervenes on, but cannot
be identified with, socially instantiated and historically
mediated linguistic practices.
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Horst, c.Y., ed. 1970. The mind/brain identity theory. London:
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Notes:
I.
The phrase is Roben Brandom '5.
2.
For canonical statements ofthe position, sec the first four papers
by Berbcrt Feigl, UT Place, lJ.C. Smart and David Armstrong
in Borst 1970. 33-79. See also Armstrong 1 968. Feigl 1967, and
Smart 1963. Donald Davidson's "Mental Events" is the classic
statement ofthe case for token identity (Davidson 2011).
3. "Lei us define a second-order intentional syslem as one to which
we ascribe nol only simple beliefs, desires, and other intentions,
bUI beliefs, desires. and other intentions aboUi beliefs, desires.
and other intentions" (Dennett 1978, 273).
4.
Daniel Dennett was of course tnc first to identify this fallacy.
I-Iabennas, JOrgen. 2008. The language game of responsible agency
and the problem offree .....ill: How can epistemicdualism be rec
onciled with ontological monism? Philosophical £rp/oratiQflS
10. I : 1 3-50.
Mclzinger. Thomas. 2004. Being no one: The self-model theory of
subjeclivity. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Place. U.T. 1970. Is consciousness a brain process? In The mind!
brain identity theory. ed. C. V. Borst, London: MacMillan.
Sellars, Wilfrid. 1991. Empiricism and the philosophy of mind,
In Science, perception. and reality. 127-1 96. Atascadero:
Ridgeview Publishing Co.
_
1991a. Philosophy and the scientific image of man. In
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1991b. Truth and "correspondence," In Science. Perception.
and Reality, 197-224. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Co.
5. The claim that for phenomenology consciousness is neither psy
chical nor physical i s of course made by Husserl in the second
volume of his Logical lnvestigatioflS. Zahavi (2005) cites il ap
provingly on p. 13.
Smart. J.J.C, 1963. Philosophy (lnd scientific realism. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
6. " Many things have been said to be 'given'; sense conlents, material
objects. universals, propositions, real connections, first principles.
even givtmlless ilselj (Sellars 1991. 127; my emphasis).
Zahavi, Dan. 2005. Being someone. In Psyche: An Interdisciplinary
Journal ofResearch on Consciousness, 1 1 .5: 1-20. http://the
assc.orglfileslassd2 6 1 I .pdf(accesscd October I . 201 1 ).