Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity

by Thomas Metzinger

Overview

According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262633086
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	08/20/2004
Series:	A Bradford Book
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	714
Sales rank:	562,197
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.17(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Thomas Metzinger is Professor of Philosophy and Fellow at the Gutenberg Research College at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Study in Frankfurt am Main. He is the editor of Neural Correlates of Consciousness and the author of Being No One, both published by the MIT Press.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
1	Questions	1
1.1	Consciousness, the phenomenal self, and the first-person perspective	1
1.2	Questions	6
1.3	Overview: The architecture of the book	9
2	Tools I	13
2.1	Overview: Mental representation and phenomenal states	13
2.2	From mental to phenomenal representation: Information processing, intentional content, and conscious experience	15
2.2.1	Introspectability as attentional availability	32
2.2.2	Availability for cognitive processing	38
2.2.3	Availability for the control of action	39
2.3	From mental to phenomenal simulation: The generation of virtual experiential worlds through dreaming, imagination, and planning	43
2.4	From mental to phenomenal presentation: Qualia	62
2.4.1	What is a quale?	66
2.4.2	Why qualia don't exist	69
2.4.3	An argument for the elimination of the canonical concept of a quale	83
2.4.4	Presentational content	86
2.5	Phenomenal presentation	94
2.5.1	The principle of presentationality	96
2.5.2	The principle of reality generation	98
2.5.3	The principle of nonintrinsicality and context sensitivity	100
2.5.4	The principle of object formation	104
3	The Representational Deep Structure of Phenomenal Experience	107
3.1	What is the conceptual prototype of a phenomenal representatum?	107
3.2	Multilevel constraints: What makes a neural representation a phenomenal representation?	116
3.2.1	Global availability	117
3.2.2	Activation within a window of presence	126
3.2.3	Integration into a coherent global state	131
3.2.4	Convolved holism	143
3.2.5	Dynamicity	151
3.2.6	Perspectivalness	156
3.2.7	Transparency	163
3.2.8	Offline activation	179
3.2.9	Representation of intensities	184
3.2.10	"Ultrasmoothness": The homogeneity of simple content	189
3.2.11	Adaptivity	198
3.3	Phenomenal mental models	208
4	Neurophenomenological Case Studies I	213
4.1	Reality testing: The concept of a phenomenal model of reality	213
4.2	Deviant phenomenal models of reality	215
4.2.1	Agnosia	215
4.2.2	Neglect	222
4.2.3	Blindsight	228
4.2.4	Hallucinations	237
4.2.5	Dreams	251
4.3	The concept of a centered phenomenal model of reality	264
5	Tools II	265
5.1	Overview: Mental self-representation and phenomenal self-consciousness	265
5.2	From mental to phenomenal self-representation: Mereological intentionality	265
5.3	From mental to phenomenal self-simulation: Self-similarity, autobiographical memory, and the design of future selves	279
5.4	From mental to phenomenal self-presentation: Embodiment and immediacy	285
6	The Representational Deep Structure of the Phenomenal First-Person Perspective	299
6.1	What is a phenomenal self-model?	299
6.2	Multilevel constraints for self-consciousness: What turns a neural system-model into a phenomenal self?	305
6.2.1	Global availability of system-related information	305
6.2.2	Situatedness and virtual self-presence	310
6.2.3	Being-in-a-world: Full immersion	313
6.2.4	Convolved holism of the phenomenal self	320
6.2.5	Dynamics of the phenomenal self	324
6.2.6	Transparency: From system-model to phenomenal self	330
6.2.7	Virtual phenomenal selves	340
6.2.8	Adaptivity: The self-model as a tool and as a weapon	344
6.3	Descriptive levels of the human self-model	353
6.3.1	Neural correlates	353
6.3.2	Cognitive correlates	361
6.3.3	Social correlates	362
6.4	Levels of content within the human self-model	379
6.4.1	Spatial and nonspatial content	380
6.4.2	Transparent and opaque content	386
6.4.3	The attentional subject	390
6.4.4	The cognitive subject	395
6.4.5	Agency	405
6.5	Perspectivalness: The phenomenal model of the intentionality relation	411
6.5.1	Global availability of transient subject-object relations	420
6.5.2	Phenomenal presence of a knowing self	421
6.5.3	Phenomenal presence of an agent	422
6.6	The self-model theory of subjectivity	427
7	Neurophenomenological Case Studies II	429
7.1	Impossible egos	429
7.2	Deviant phenomenal models of the self	429
7.2.1	Anosognosia	429
7.2.2	Ich-Storungen: Identity disorders and disintegrating self-models	437
7.2.3	Hallucinated selves: Phantom limbs, out-of-body-experiences, and hallucinated agency	461
7.2.4	Multiple selves: Dissociative identity disorder	522
7.2.5	Lucid dreams	529
7.3	The concept of a phenomenal first-person perspective	545
8	Preliminary Answers	547
8.1	The neurophenomenological caveman, the little red arrow, and the total flight simulator: From full immersion to emptiness	547
8.2	Preliminary answers	558
8.3	Being no one	625
	References	635
	Name Index	663
	Subject Index	671

What People are Saying About This

Antonio Damasio

Being No One is a superb and indispensable book. Thomas
Metzinger's intelligence, open-minded honesty, and knowledge combine to produce the most complete and satisfying discussion of the problem of self currently available.

Wolf Singer

Thomas Metzinger is one of those courageous explorers who dare to travel beyond the borders of their familiar territory. This book is a successful and brilliant attempt to bring together what had been separated artificially, the philosophy and the neuroscience of mind. It is a must for those who believe that consciousness is a mystery and for those who think it is not.

Antonio and Hanna Damasio

Being No One is a superb and indispensable book. Thomas Metzinger's intelligence, open-minded honesty, and knowledge combine to produce the most complete and satisfying discussion of the problem of self currently available.

Endorsement

The strength of Metzinger's book lies in his mastery of supposedly disparate fields. Being No One successfully bridges the gap between elaborate philosophical models of the self and the neural models that were elaborated in our laboratories. It is a book that has much to offer to a wide array of scholars and readers.

—Marc Jeannerod, Institut des Sciences Cognitives

From the Publisher

Being No One is Kantian in its scope, intelligence and depth. Steeped in contemporary neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, the book gives the unsolved Kantian problems of inner self and outer world a new look, a new life, and a new route to solution. Metzinger's story is understandable, compelling, and, quite simply, very, very smart.

—Patricia and Paul Churchland, University of California, San Diego

Thomas Metzinger is one of those courageous explorers who dare to travel beyond the borders of their familiar territory. This book is a successful and brilliant attempt to bring together what had been separated artificially, the philosophy and the neuroscience of mind. It is a must for those who believe that consciousness is a mystery and for those who think it is not.

—Wolf Singer, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research

While some philosophers have resisted scientists' incursions into the philosophy of mind, Thomas Metzinger has welcomed them. In this book he employs his impressively detailed knowledge of the latest developments in cognitive neuroscience to develop an exciting new philosophical approach to consciousness for which the experience of the self is fundamental. His is a truly interdisciplinary project which has important implications for future work in both philosophy and neuroscience.

—Chris Frith, Institute of Neurology, University College London

Being No One is a superb and indispensable book. Thomas Metzinger's intelligence, open-minded honesty, and knowledge combine to produce the most complete and satisfying discussion of the problem of self currently available.

—Antonio and Hanna Damasio, Professors of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine

Patricia and Paul Churchland

Being No One is Kantian in its scope, intelligence and depth. Steeped in contemporary neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, the book gives the unsolved Kantian problems of inner self and outer world a new look, a new life, and a new route to solution. Metzinger's story is understandable, compelling, and, quite simply, very, very smart.

Marc Jeannerod

The strength of Metzinger's book lies in his mastery of supposedly disparate fields. Being No One successfully bridges the gap between elaborate philosophical models of the self and the neural models that were elaborated in our laboratories. It is a book that has much to offer to a wide array of scholars and readers.

Vittorio Gallese

Being No One is essential reading for all scholars interested in the study of the self and of its distortions. In this thought-provoking book Metzinger presents an exciting new theory of phenomenal awareness, a theory that has the merit of being firmly grounded on a vast neuroscientific and psychopathological literature, which is here synthesized and made available to a wider audience for the first time.

Chris Frith

While some philosophers have resisted scientists' incursions into the philosophy of mind, Thomas Metzinger has welcomed them. In this book he employs his impressively detailed knowledge of the latest developments in cognitive neuroscience to develop an exciting new philosophical approach to consciousness for which the experience of the self is fundamental. His is a truly interdisciplinary project which has important implications for future work in both philosophy and neuroscience.

Editorial Reviews

A convincing philosophical exposition and a well-structured compendium... without a doubt, a milestone of modern Philosophy of Mind.—Reiner Hedrich, Philosophy of Science—

Metzinger's interdisciplinary approach opens a new path toward a scientific theory of consciousness and self-consciousness.

—Franz Mechsner and Albert Newen , Science—

This book is a 'must' for anyone who is interested in empirical studies related to first-person issues or subjectivity.

—Kai Vogeley, TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences—

From the Publisher

This book is a 'must' for anyone who is interested in empirical studies related to first-person issues or subjectivity.

—Kai Vogeley, TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences

Reviews

This book is a 'must' for anyone who is interested in empirical studies related to first-person issues or subjectivity.

TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences - Kai Vogeley

Metzinger's interdisciplinary approach opens a new path toward a scientific theory of consciousness and self-consciousness.

Science - Franz Mechsner and Albert Newen

A convincing philosophical exposition and a well-structured compendium... without a doubt, a milestone of modern Philosophy of Mind.

Philosophy of Science - Reiner Hedrich