Andy Hamilton

The Aesthetics of Imperfection

Ferruccio Busonis Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music appeared in 1910. Schoenberg, in his copy of the little book, wrote critical marginal comments which crystallize two opposed outlooks in musical aesthetics. Busoni writes: Notation, the writing out of compositions, is primarily an ingenious expedient for catching an inspiration, with the purpose of exploiting it later. But notation is to improvisation as the portrait is to the living model… …What the composers inspiration necessarily loses through notation, his interpreter should restore by his own…

The Authority of Avowals and the Concept of Belief

The pervasive dispositional model of belief is misguided. It fails to acknowledge the authority of first-person ascriptions or avowals of belief, and the “decision principle”– that having decided the question whether p, there is, for me, no further question whether I believe that p. The dilemma is how one can have immediate knowledge of a state extended in time; its resolution lies in the expressive character of avowals – which does not imply a non-assertoric thesis – and their non-cognitive status. The common claim that there are higher-order beliefs concerning ones present beliefs is rejected as unintelligible. The decision principle is defended against claims of “unconscious belief”; there is no interesting such category, since all beliefs are liable at some time to be considered, but mostly to be out of mind. Belief is not constituted by a disposition, but is connected with dispositions – it is an “attitude concept”.

'Scottish Commonsense' about Memory

Reid rejects the image theory --the representative or indirect realist position--that memory-judgements are inferred from or otherwise justified by a present image or introspectible state. He also rejects the trace theory, which regards memories as essentially traces in the brain. In contrast he argues for a direct knowledge account in which personal memory yields unmediated knowledge of the past. He asserts the reliability of memory, not in currently fashionable terms as a reliable belief-forming process, but more elusively as a principle of Commonsense. There remains a contemporary consensus against Reids position. I argue that Reids critique is essentially sound, and that the consensus is mistaken; personal memory judgements are spontaneous and non-inferential in the same way as perceptual judgements. But I question Reids account of the connection between personal memory and personal identity. My primary concern is rationally reconstructive rather than scholarly, and downplays recent interpretations of Reids faculty psychology as a precursor of functionalism and other scientific philosophies of mind.

Memory and self-consciousness: immunity to error through misidentification

In The Blue Book, Wittgenstein defined a category of uses of “I” which he termed “I”-as-subject, contrasting them with “I”-as-object uses. The hallmark of this category is immunity to error through misidentification (IEM). This article extends Wittgenstein’s characterisation to the case of memory-judgments, discusses the significance of IEM for self-consciousness—developing the idea that having a first-person thought involves thinking about oneself in a distinctive way in which one cannot think of anyone or anything else—and refutes a common objection to the claim that memory-judgments exhibit IEM.

Intention and the authority of avowals

There is a common assumption that intention is a complex behavioural disposition, or a motivational state underlying such a disposition. Associated with this position is the apparently commonsense view that an avowal of intention is a direct report of an inner motivational state, and indirectly an expression of a belief that it is likely that one will A. A central claim of this article is that the dispositional or motivational model is mistaken since it cannot acknowledge either the future-direction of intention or the authority of avowals of intention. I argue that avowals of intention – first-person, present-tense ascriptions – express direct knowledge of a future action, knowledge that is not based on examination of ones present introspectible states or dispositions. Such avowals concern a future action, not a present state or disposition; just as self-ascriptions of belief concern the outer not the inner, so self-ascriptions of intention concern the future outer, not the present inner. One way of capturing this future-direction is to say that avowals of intention – and perhaps sense intentions themselves – are a kind of prediction, and not a description of ones present state of mind. This position is suggested by Anscombe in her monograph Intention (1963), and treats avowals of intention as judgements about the future, which unlike ordinary predictions are not based on evidence. However, since talk of prediction everywhere suggests an evidence-based stance – that meaningful hypothesis about the likely occurrence of events is being proposed, an hypothesis that can be falsified by evidence – the description future-outer thesis is preferred. I defend this thesis against various objections, arguing that it complements Anscombes characterisation of intentions as based on reasons.

Proprioception and Self-Consciousness (1): Proprioception as Direct, Immediate Knowledge of the Body

We now turn from memory to proprioception. This chapter and the following one apply the same treatment to proprioception and bodily identity, involving conceptual holism, as that applied to memory and personal identity. The faculty or capacity of proprioception is both familiar — because it underlies the possibility of action — yet mysterious. It yields ordinary knowledge of bodily position and movement — what is loosely termed “bodily awareness”. Yet in Philosophy it has until quite recently been neglected; indeed, in my experience the issues it raises remain unfamiliar to general philosophical audiences. Hence a rather fuller account of the nature of proprioception is required than in the case of memory. This chapter aims to demystify proprioception by considering both Phenomenological and Gibsonian accounts. There is important common ground between Gibson’s position and that of Phenomenology, both influenced by Gestalt psychology, and a philosophical treatment of the body and self-consciousness should draw on each.

Self-Identification and Self-Reference

We now return to the question of self-reference and self-identification, and examine issues which required a full delineation of IEM: the relation between IEM and guaranteed reference of “I”; the opposition between direct and indirect reference theories of “I”; and whether there is genuine self-identification in IEM cases. Proponents of direct reference, who hold that the self-reference rule fully captures the meaning of “I”, hold that the apparent redundancy of identifying knowledge shows that the reference of “I” is unmediated by a sense. Fregean proponents of indirect reference, in contrast, deny that grasp of the self-reference rule is sufficient to characterise self-consciousness, and require in addition apprehension of a sense for “I”, which they must reconcile with apparent absence of identifying knowledge. This chapter attempts to undermine the debate between direct and indirect reference by drawing on Wittgenstein’s “no-reference” view of “I”, and arguing that IEM-judgements do not involve genuine self-identification.

Proprioception and Self-Consciousness (2): Self-Conscious Knowledge and the Rejection of Self-Presentation

This chapter has two principal aims. The first — in Sections 1 and 2, following the non-sensory treatment of proprioception in Chapter 4 — is to develop and defend a self-conscious knowledge account of bodily identity, in opposition to the almost universal position of materialism about bodily identity, which regards the body as fundamentally a material entity. In the previous chapter, a self-conscious knowledge account was outlined in connection with the alien-hand scenario. This account says that “my body” is the body of which — when conscious — I have self-conscious (proprioceptive) knowledge, and which I can move in a basic sense, that is, not by doing something else. The account is a development of the Lockean view that to experience a limb as mine — to feel it when it is touched, to be conscious of it as hot or cold and as having other “affections”, to have sympathy and concern for it — is necessary and sufficient for it to be mine.

Memory and Self-Consciousness (2): The Conceptual Holism of Memory and Personal Identity, and the Unity of Consciousness

This chapter continues the response to the dilemma previously discussed. If we define what it is for a subject to remember in a way that allows that they could be distinct from the subject whose experiences or deeds are being remembered, it seems that memory cannot constitute a sufficient condition for personal identity. But if we define what it is for a subject to remember in a way that rules out that possibility, it then seems that our definition must rest on a prior understanding of personal identity, and so the proposed account becomes circular.

Humanism and Animal Self-Consciousness

The previous chapter, in developing the concept of self-identification, considered some issues of animal self-consciousness in terms of self-location. This chapter considers animal self-consciousness directly. It returns to the Analytic Principle discussed in Chapter 1 — that self-consciousness is a phenomenon that must be expressed by use of a self-referring device with the properties of the first person — and asks whether it is consistent with primitive self-consciousness in animals. If chimps and other non-language-users exhibit self-consciousness, then the latter capacity may appear detachable from “I”-use — hence the challenge to the Analytic Principle, which rests on the assumption that self-consciousness necessarily involves linguistic expression.