Lucrezia Compiani

lcompiani@unime.it

The Chimeric Self. A neo naturalist Perspective

Abstract (eng)

In contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind debate, the Self is still a key term in several research’s perspectives, although the attempts to reduce or to deny its existence. Thus, different theories are still attempting to provide a definition of this concept, where further empirical researches might be grounded. To this extent, the identity of the Self is suggested to be pinpointed by virtue of its specific set of mechanical features or brain functions, often trespassing into reductionism, or it is considered the work of cognitive and conceptual capacities to build representations and narratives about ourselves.
In my PhD thesis, I support the idea that, if we want to understand why we use the idea of identity to talk about our experience to be ourselves, we should change our approach to Self’s investigation. In fact, if we choose a dogmatic materialist approach to self-consciousness we have to give an answer for the question: how is physically/biologically/logically possible to have this kind of experience (i.e. to be ourselves) and what can we suppose is identical to this mechanical explanation of experience? Endorsing this kind of perspective leads our entire research to a downward spiral into reductive materialism, because we tend to explain experience in terms of identity with cerebral/biological/logical functions. Moreover, almost all Self’s theories assume what they should clarify: the existence of the Self, the only way to have any experience. On the contrary, if we endorse a Neo Naturalist approach to Self’s experience we need simply to ask ourselves: what experience is, beyond our prejudices about experience, subject and object? Where is it? What is identical to our experience in physical world, even the experience to be ourselves? The answer is as much simply: our experience is identical to what experience is, namely the object which has all the properties that our experience has. Therefore, I suggest that it is possible to draw another way to explain the Self problem. Starting from the idea that the Self isn't just an aprioristic or empirical form, I claim, endorsing a Neo Naturalist approach, that our experience is identical to the external objects which, thanks to a physical relation, constitute the same experiences. Therefore, it is possible to describe the Self as an immanent shape, namely a shape which is structured by the relations with all relative objects which constitute the Self’s experience stream. Thanks to an externalist explanation of experience is possible to avoid reductionism, causal foundationalism, naive materialism and question begging about what we should explain. Clarifying the concept of identity, as a bundle of relative objects, which are the experience itself, allows us to draw an experiential ontology for Self’s experiences, based on the neutral (and natural) idea of experiential relativity rather than any posited concept of subjectivity.

Keywords: Self; Experience; Philosophy of Perception; Consciousness, Naturalism