Self-Reflexivity and Self-Identity

The notion of reflexivity (i.e., to self-referentiality) or, the more closely related notion, self-reflexivity.

We can start off by saying that a reflexive relation is something that certain things can have to themselves. Or, alternatively, literally everything has the reflexive relation of self-identity .(If this is a genuine relation, or, indeed, a genuine property.) Stones are seen, by some, to be self-identical; though they are seen by no one as being self-reflexive. The self-identity reflexive relation (though not the self-reflexive relation) is something everything has to itself.

The self-identity reflexive relation or property, for example, is sometimes called a “strongly reflexive” relation. A “weakly reflective” relation is, on the other hand, sometimes stated as “everything has it to itself that has it to anything”.

We can have beliefs about our beliefs, thoughts about our thoughts, and so on.

A thought about a thought is not self-referential or self-reflexive. It's not the thought itself that refers to or thinks about itself (or even the content of the thought that does so): it's the person who has the thought who thinks about his own thought. The thinker himself is self-reflexive, not the thought itself. The thought is not self-referentially related to itself either. It’s just that the thought itself is thought about. Again, it's the owner of the thought (so to speak) who is self-reflexive (about his thought). The thought (or thoughts) about the thought can therefore be called second-order thoughts. Again, the base thought (as it were) is neither self-referential nor self-reflexive. A thought could, of course, be self-referential; or at least its content could be. However, I don’t think that the thought (or a thought itself) can ever be self-reflexive. The possible self-referentiality of a thought’s content would not also be an example of self-reflexivity.

There is an example of self-reflexivity which is more closely related to examples of self-referentiality.

Once example is what takes place when the self/person analyses the (same) self/person. That is, when the subject and object of self-analysis can be said to be one and the same thing – i.e., the self that analyses is the (same) self that is analysed. Thus, in the light of what we've said about self-referential statements, we can now ask:

Can the self/person both have thoughts (about himself) and also be the object/subject of these thoughts?

This wouldn’t be like the putative property self-identity which was referred to in the last paragraph. (In which it was said that all objects are said, by some, to have the property of being identical to themselves.) There is no such strict identity when it comes to the self/person and the self’s thoughts about itself. On a traditional reading, thoughts about the self come and go; whereas the self’s substance stays put. Thus, on this reading at least, thoughts about the self are not identical to the self itself. And even if we don’t believe in selves as bare particulars, the thoughts about the self would still not be identical to the self the thoughts are about. This would even be the case if part of the self (at a particular point in time) included those thoughts about the self (that has such thoughts). In this instance, particular thoughts about the self can’t be identical to the self taken as a totality at any given time. There may, however, be a partial identity (at least if we accept the bundle theory of the self); though not complete identity (which is the case if we accept the property - or relation – self-identity).

To give a taster of self-reflexivity or possible self-referentiality, here are a few points that put obstacles in the way of such states.

We can ask:

How can a human subject take himself to be the subject of study; as Descartes famously claimed he did when sitting next to his fire?

Perhaps we can never actually get to the essence (or totality or complete truth) of ourselves because it's precisely the same self that's trying to get to the essence, etc. of itself. It is, therefore, attempting to be both subject and object. (In a Cartesian manner, if we can’t discover our own “true essence of mind”, how can we even begin to discover the true nature of external reality?) According to many philosophers, it's a Cartesian myth that we can objectively “perceive” our own minds or states of consciousness. It's not a fact, then, that the mind (or the items within it) are “transparent” to the self-analysing mind itself. Perhaps we can never get to every item or working within our own minds. Perhaps we can't, specifically, recognise that it has been “conditioned” to, say, believe certain things or see particular things in certain ways. To put it bluntly, if it's the self that is analysing the (same) self (or the self that's analysing itself), then the “unseen” conditionings, workings, non-transparent items, etc., of the self (as object) would also be the conditionings, workings, non-transparent items, etc. of the self that's doing the (self) analysis. It could therefore only be a self which is split into two (quite literally) which could be both subject and object at one and the same time. Though then we can simply say that after such a split we will no longer be talking about two selves, encamped within the same mind-brain: not one self that's split in two. And if that were the case, then there would be no authentic self-reflexivity and certainly no self-referentiality.

Proper Names and Individuation (3)

“… the role of the general term is to identify the referents – not to identify the ‘kind of identity’ asserted.” (John Perry, 1970)

The first kind of identification referred to above is simply a matter of ostension: of pointing (which may include a Kripkean ‘naming-baptism’); whereas the other kind of identification is dependent on the “kind of identity”. Michael Dummett expresses the first kind of identification thus:

“A bare knowledge of the reference of the name a will consist…in knowing, of some object, that a refers to it, where this is a complete characterisation of this particular piece of knowledge.” [Dummett, 1991]

Dummett argues against this distinction. He says:

“…there cannot be a proper name whose whole sense consists in its having a certain object as referent, without the sense determining that object as referent in some particular way.” [Dummett, 1973]

Dummett must think that the name, say, ‘Tony Blair’ is a de facto rigid designator: a designator that denotes via the mediation of some concept or description. A de jure designation, on the other hand, is an ‘unmediated’ reference. That is, a rigid de jure designator denotes what it denotes without the mediation by some concept or description.

Can we have basic naming (or the “identification of referents”) without the latter kind of identification? What is at the ostended point? Doesn’t individuation (therefore sometimes the identification of kinds) come before the basic kind of Kripkean naming and identification? Wouldn't this be an epistemological question, rather than an ontological one? It would be a question about our knowledge of an object, rather than (the reality) of the object. It may still be the case (in conformity with Kripke) that we can only know an object to be the object it is through its ontological essence. Here again we see a philosopher making the same distinction:

“Kripke did make a feasible distinction between a description giving the content of a name and merely fixing its referent.” [Jason Stanley, 1997]

According to Marcus,

“the causal theory of names elaborated by Kripke and others. Proper names, unlike definite descriptions, can be used by speakers to refer to objects without mediation of ‘concepts’ or descriptive clusters. They can be used to capture and institutionalise an act of ostension.” [Marcus, 1978]

My argument is that without individuation we can't have ostension. We need to bring along with us the concepts that will help us individuate a given spatial region or physical mass. The concepts don't come from that spatial region or physical mass itself, otherwise we would have concepts that wouldn't necessarily belong to the object within that spatial region or physical mass. Therefore an act of ostension does require conceptual mediation. How would we know when one object ends and another object begins? How would we distinguish an object as an object at all?

The traditional problem was that if referents depended on concepts (or ‘descriptive clusters’), then each person would bring along his own concepts (or descriptive clusters). It was supposed to follow from this that a reference couldn't rely on a single concept or a single descriptive cluster. The referent would therefore be lost amongst rival - or simply different - conceptual contents of names.

Why was it thought that if the reference couldn't rely on specific concepts that it could escape all concepts? Everyone would still be having causal contact with the same referent [see Donald Davidson, 1989]; though that causal contact alone wouldn't tell us which concepts or descriptions were the correct ones (if there are correct ones). If everyone were still having the same causal contact with the same object (or the same spatial region or physical mass), then that wouldn't matter. Different or even contradictory concepts would still be related to the same object or spatial region/physical mass.

Thus, in an indirect sense admittedly, acts of ostension could still be ‘institutionalised’ [Marcus, 1978]; thought we couldn't guarantee uniformity of conceptual choices. The object wouldn't be lost; though the guaranteed uniformity of concept choices would be. And, of course, if different people brought the same conceptual baggage with them, then that in itself would/could generate a certain degree of conceptual uniformity. However, that wouldn't be guaranteed. And it could be possible to generate agreement between different or contradictory concepts if the concepts of the object or spatial region referred back to the object as it is “standardly recognised” [Paul Moser, 1993]. Of course what is standardly recognised would still be a contingent matter. Even the standard conceptual description of the object would still not be the way the object describes itself. Therefore there's no reason to suppose that what is standard today will be standard next week.