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SARTRE'S PHENOMENOLOGY
Also available from Continuum:
DAVID REISMAN
continuum
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
B2430.S34R45 2007
171'2-dc22
2006034643
Notes 131
Index 148
Acknowledgements
Introduction
What is a person?
It makes sense to say that a person is a body, a physical object, with con-
sciousness. We usually assume that we know well enough what a physical
object is. Attempts to understand what a person is, by philosophers both of
dualistic and of materialistic leanings, can thus be seen as attempts to figure
out what 'with consciousness' means. For the dualist, having consciousness
has to do with having (or being) some sort of nonphysical thing, a 'mind',
somehow associated with the body. A person is a body with a mind. For the
materialist, consciousness is a quality of certain physical objects, or perhaps
something more like an activity in which these objects are engaged. A per-
son is a physical object having such a quality or engaged in such activity.
In either case, a description of consciousness will tell us what it means to
satisfy one of the most important criteria for being a person and, if we have
the relevant information, which physical objects are persons.
Sartre attempts to provide such a description, but his approach and con-
clusions differ in important ways from those of both dualists and material-
ists. Sartre's view is developed by examining the way in which the world
appears to consciousness. His starting point, like Descartes', is our experi-
ence of the world as it appears to us. Rather than thinking of experience as
providing evidence for the existence of an immaterial substance (something
that has a manner of existing different from that of material objects), how-
ever, he thinks of the Cartesian ego as constituted by the process of reflec-
tion. He ends up identifying the subject of consciousness with the body, but
his view, if it can be considered to be a form of materialism at all, is unlike
other forms.
For Sartre, in order to understand what a person is we have to understand
the process by which we constitute ourselves as persons. On his view, con-
sciousness originally apprehends itself in terms of what it is consciousness
of, i.e., as an activity of apprehending the world. As with Descartes, one is
2 Sartre's Phenomenology
immediately aware of this activity and its objects. However, Sartre stresses
that at this level one is not aware of any substantial self supporting one's
consciousness. One is aware only of the world and the activity of apprehend-
ing it. The question, for Sartre, is how one gets from this minimal form of
self-awareness to apprehending oneself as a person.
The constitution of something like a Cartesian ego, described in The
Transcendence of the Ego,1 is part of the process. But, according to Sartre,
apprehending oneself as a physical object involves an awareness of another
consciousness. In Being and Nothingness2 Sartre examines this awareness and
its role in apprehending ourselves and in perceiving others.
Aiming to lay bare the most general features of our conceptual struc-
ture, [descriptive metaphysics] can take far less for granted than a more
limited and partial conceptual inquiry. Hence, also, a certain difference
in method. Up to a point, the reliance upon a close examination of the
actual use of words is the best, and indeed the only sure, way in philosophy.
But the discriminations we can make, and the connexions we can estab-
lish, in this way, are not general enough and not far-reaching enough to
meet the full metaphysical demand for understanding. (I, xiii-xiv)
there are categories and concepts which, in their most general features,
change not at all. Obviously these are not the specialities of the most
refined thinking. They are the commonalities of the least refined thinking;
and are yet the indispensable core of the conceptual equipment of the
Sartre and Strawson 3
Sartre's early work, with its talk of being-in-itself, the Other, and the con-
stitution of the ego, might be taken to be the furthest possible thing from a
description of'the actual structure of our thought about the world'. But
many of the questions guiding Sartre's inquiry are quite similar to Straw-
son's. For example, the following one, to which Sartre devotes considerable
time, is central for Strawson as well.
I am in a public park. Not far away there is a lawn and at the edge of that
lawn there are benches. A man passes by those benches. I see this man;
I apprehend him as an object and at the same time as a man. What does
this signify? What do I mean when I assert that this object is a man? (341)
Admittedly, it is rare for Sartre to phrase a question in such a form: his chief
interest is in what is involved in apprehending other persons, the world, and
ourselves, not in what we mean by our assertions. Nevertheless, as this pas-
sage implies, to see something as a person, for Sartre, is to mean a person.
While the object of Sartre's study is our field of experience, rather than, as
for Strawson, the conceptual scheme underlying ordinary language, both
philosophers are concerned with the most basic components of what might
be called our scheme of meaning, namely, persons and things. Strawson
believes the first half of his book demonstrates . . .
the central position which material bodies and persons occupy among
particulars in general. It shows that, in our conceptual scheme as it is,
particulars of these two categories are the basic or fundamental particu-
lars, that the concepts of other types of particular must be seen as second-
ary in relation to the concepts of these. (I, xv-xvi)
If I were to think of him as being only a puppet, I should apply to him the
categories which I ordinarily use to group temporal-spatial 'things.' That
is, I should apprehend him as being 'beside' the benches, two yards and
twenty inches from the lawn, as exercising a certain pressure on the
ground, etc. (342)
What does Strawson mean when he says that persons and material objects
play the role of fundamental particulars in our conceptual scheme? For
Strawson, one item is more fundamental than another if the ability to refer
to the latter depends on the ability to identify the former, and not vice-versa.
The notion of identification he is primarily concerned with is 'identifying
reference', which involves a speaker referring to an item in a way that
enables a listener to pick it out. According to Strawson our ability to make
identifying reference to persons and material objects ultimately enables us
to make identifying reference to things of other types, such as theoretical
constructs, historical events, and mental states. For example, the ability to
Sartre and Strawson 5
identify strikes and lockouts depends on the ability to identify such things as
people, tools, and factories, and identifying subatomic particles requires
being able to identify bigger things (I, 34).
Instances of anger, hope, pain, and fear, are identification-dependent
particulars. In this respect they are like historical occurrences. Unlike
shapes and colours we are able to refer to them as particulars; but doing
so requires reference to particulars of other sorts, such as persons. That we
can refer to mental states as particulars means that I can refer not only to
anger in general, and, more specifically, to the anger Gertrude sometimes
feels toward Edgar for his inconsiderateness, but also to a particular instance
of anger, e.g., the anger Gertrude felt after Edgar took the last shrimp.
That mental states are identification-dependent means that referring to
them depends on the ability to refer to things that are not mental states,
like Gertrude.
Note that some things that might be regarded as mental properties, such
as honesty, irascibility, and intelligence, are not treated as particulars. Pains
can be qualitatively identical but numerically distinct. When I say, 'This is
the same pain I was feeling last week - I hope nothing's wrong with my
stomach', I mean only that it is the same type of pain; but T still have a
headache', means it is the very same one. But we do not ask whether the
honesty somebody exhibited on two separate occasions is the same, in
the way we might ask whether she still has the same headache. In general,
character traits and capabilities are treated more like shapes and colours
than objects or events.
Anyway, because Gertrude's mind, the subject of all her mental states but
none of her corporeal properties, is not itself a mental state, an instance of
Gertrude's anger would be identification-dependent if it required reference
to her mind. This is not Strawson's view, however. Identifying reference
to Gertrude's anger relies on identifying reference to Gertrude herself, a
subject of both physical and mental properties. Also, reference to minds, as
well as to mental states, relies on reference to persons (in the way that refer-
ence to both subatomic particles and physical events rely on reference to
inanimate objects). The mind has the same status as a particular mental
state: identifying a mental state does not require identifying the mind to
which it belongs, and identifying the mind does not require identifying any
of its mental states.
The special status, among particulars, of persons and material objects is
not metaphysical. Strawson is not saying that only these things are 'real' in
some special sense, or that statements about other things are somehow redu-
cible to statements about persons and material objects (I, 50). He is not
saying that the existence of subatomic particles depends on that of bigger
6 Sartre's Phenomenology
things, or that minds rely for their existence on creatures having physical
properties as well. Nor is the dependence merely logical: there is nothing
self-contradictory in the notion of a disembodied mind or a free-floating
electron. Finally, imagining or conceiving of minds or electrons does not
require imagining or conceiving them to be parts of something else. Straw-
son is concerned with identification-dependence. The ability to identify
persons and material objects enables us to identify things of other sorts;
and to identify, here, means to tell another person which item you are talk-
ing about.
What goes for talk, however, also goes for thought, at least in most cases.
For example, 'identifying thought about particulars other than material
bodies rests in general on identifying thought about material bodies, but not
vice versa' (I, 51). I can be said to identify something in this sense if I can re-
identify it, i.e., when encountering it a second time I recognize it as the very
same item. Re-identification is similar to referential identification: in refer-
ential identification the listener picks out the same thing as the speaker; in
re-identification a person picks out the same thing she encountered earlier
(I, 20). Workers' strikes and subatomic particles are thus re-identification-
dependent as well as being referential-identification-dependent. Similarly,
the re-identifiability of Gertrude's prolonged period of anger and the re-
identifiability of her mind rely on Gertrude's re-identifiability.
It is easy to accept that my knowing what you mean when you speak of your
mind relies on my identification of you, the person, or at least your body,
and that my re-identification of your mind, relies on my re-identification of
you or your body. Just as re-identifying a subatomic particle or theoretical
construct requires re-identifying physical objects, re-identifying a mind
requires re-identifying a person or a body. But can I not re-identify my
own mind without re-identifying myself as a subject of both mental and phy-
sical properties?
On what Strawson calls the ego-subject (or Cartesian) view mental and
physical states are attributed, on the most basic level, to different subjects.
Re-identifying a mind, in most cases, requires re-identifying a body. But if
the mind is mine, I can bypass any reference to my body, because I already
know which mind I am thinking of. Referential identification of a mind or
mental state, however, requires at least one person to identify the subject
indirectly, via the body. As the story goes, we are able to do this because
our bodies are uniquely related to the experiences we have. I recognize
Sartre and Siraw son 1
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