my mind on books

Misunderstanding the grammar of certain uses of “I,” we take it to be a singular referring expression. We are then left with the job of saying what sort of thing the referent of “I” is. The metaphysical issue, “What is the nature of the self?” thus results from a radical mistake about how language functions.

We have no trouble finding the “I” of “I am unshaven” or “I have a broken arm”; “I” here picks out a certain person. Nothing out of the ordinary here; persons live and breathe, move in space and time. But it is not so easy to find a referent for the “I” of “I feel happy” or “I think…” and like expressions.

In casting about for some suitable referent for “I,” for these cases, we may project our common garden concept of a person inward, thereby contriving a pseudo-person who has all the powers of a real person – thinking, perceiving, acting – but lacks the characteristic of occupying or filling up space, that is, lacks a body. To repeat: the need to invent this pseudo-person arises from the conviction, gained without argument or reflection, that “I,” like proper names and singular pronouns, refers.

(John V. Canfield, The Looking-Glass Self, p. 90)

I was intrigued to see that John V. Canfield has a new book coming out: Becoming Human: The Development of Language, Self and Self-Consciousness, since his earlier work The Looking-Glass Self: An Examination of Self-Awareness has been a favorite of mine. So I dug out my notes and found the excerpt quoted above. The Looking-Glass Self explores Wittgenstein’s views on the self with some Zen blended into the mix as well. Canfield is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Toronto; his writing is clear and accessible to non-philosophers. The Looking-Glass Self is out of print and used copies are scarce, so check your library or ask for it through interlibrary loan. [update: Amazon has “Look inside the book” so you can read some online.] I’m looking forward to his new book.

Lifetwo reviews Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar.

Vaughan at Mind Hacks is reading Muses, Madmen and Prophets, (on auditory hallucination) which he calls “poetic, wide-ranging and difficult to put down.”

Mind Hacks also pointed to a New York Times review of The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language by Christine Kenneally.

Issues in the Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science discusses ‘What is the self?’ focusing on Thomas Metzinger’s Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (Bradford Books)

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A few quick links …

1. Self-deception bibliography – part of the “Consciousness in the Natural World Project” from the University of Stirling. The bibliography & website in general don’t seem to have been updated for a few years but the bibliography has separate sections for articles and books, many with abstracts.

2. The introduction to ‘How to Read a Novel’ by John Sutherland is online at the Guardian, in which Sutherland touches on the interesting question “why we need so much narrative in our lives” and suggests that the rise of the novel in the 18th century “revolutionised” human consciousness….

3. For those who feel a need for narrative in the form of a “visionary thriller,” Discipline: A Novel by Paco Ahlgren sounds intriguing and has garnered lots of 5-star customer reviews at Amazon. (interview, website)

Metapsychology, a great site for book reviews, has published a review of Self-Consciousness, the recent book by Sebastian Rödl.

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Immortality Defended by John Leslie is discussed in the article “Eternity for Atheists” in the New York Times 7/29/07:

Each of us, Leslie submits, is immortal because our life patterns are but an aspect of an “existentially unified” cosmos that will persist after our death. Both Tipler and Leslie are, in different ways, heirs to the view of William James. The mind or “soul,” as they see it, consists of information, not matter. And one of the deepest principles of quantum theory, called “unitarity,” forbids the disappearance of information.

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