Galin, D. (1999)  Separating first-personness from the other problems of consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, special issue, Feb-Mar. pp. 341-348. 

SEPARATING FIRST PERSONNESS FROM THE other PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
or
“You Had to Have Been There!”

DAVID GALIN
University of  California, San Francisco
School of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry

SEPARATING FIRST PERSONNESS FROM THE other PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

DAVID GALIN
University of  California, San Francisco
School of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry

First-personness is a central notion in psychology and philosophy of mind. Philosophers as different as Peirce(1891), Nagle (1976, 1986), Searle (1997), and Dennett (1991), and physiologists and psychologists such as William James (1890), Sherrington (1947), Bogen (1969 a, b, 1989), Bisiach (1991), and Kihlstrom (1987, 1991) have written about it at length, sometimes from polar positions (these examples are limited to just the previous 100 years). This essay explores the confounding of first-personness as point of view and as consciousness. If successful it may free consciousness from some unnecessary problems and unjustified wonderment; it is not intended to explain (or explain away) consciousness. This effort at clarification has direct application to difficult issues of “self”, such as when a split-brain patient does a task with the left hand, and then says “It wasn’t me that did that” (Galin 1974).

First-personness in Grammar and Psychology:

The notions of first-personness and third-personness arose in grammar and have made their way into psychology and philosophy of mind. Grammar is concerned with the structure of sentences. Grammatically, the terms first-, second-, and third person designate the speaker (“I”), the one spoken to (“you”), and the one (person or thing) spoken about (“he, she, it”). These terms have nothing directly to do with experience, awareness, subjectivity, consciousness, or agency, which are the concerns of psychology.

In the psychology and philosophy literatures and in common usage, first-personness has developed two discrepant senses. It has become a synonym for the properties of awareness and agency that we associate with a live, human speaker. It is also a synonym for the bias of the speaker, i.e., those properties of her knowledge which are special to her point of view. What we call the “first-person perspective or point of view” is the world as it is currently knowable to the “speaker” (the “I”, the entity that presents sentences), whether or not she is speaking. First-person knowledge is often held to be unique because of its owner’s privileged access, in contrast to third-person knowledge[1] which is held to be “objective” and public.

Point of view as metaphor: The terms “point of view” and “perspective” are metaphors taken from the domain of visual-spatial perception and applied to the more general domain of knowing.[2] These metaphors express the intuition that people operate within a frame of reference or coordinate system (analogous with a spatial coordinate system) made up from their repertoire of concepts. Much of the conceptual repertoire is quite abstract and not visual-spatial or sensory-perceptual at all. For example, we can speak of having a particular political, ethical, or pragmatic point of view. Thus point of view applies to domains such as values as well as to domains of spatial perception and action; an event or object is good or beautiful or moral from my point of view just as an object is above or below, or on the right or the left from my point of view.

Provisional Definitions

Does an entity have to have consciousness to have a first-person point of view? Does it have to be alive? These questions turn on several potentially problematic terms, and some provisional but explicit definitions are needed. In order to define point of view  we must back up and first define the underlying concepts frame of reference, form, entity, and knowledge. Although these terms are common enough the concepts are uncommonly difficult. The definitions are intended to be as consistent with ordinary speech as possible, and as generalizable as possible. I propose them heuristically to promote clarity, not for faux rigor or to trade on the glamour or credentials of mathematics.

Space and frame of reference: It is usual to say that a set of variables (or dimensions) makes up a space. If the variables are abstract like (X,Y,Z) it is an abstract space. If the variables correspond to properties like height-length-width, or red-blue-green, or Buddhist-Christian-Muslim-Hindu-Jewish, it is a property space. The phrase frame of reference means the same thing; the “frame” is actually the dimensions or axes of the space. The term medium also means the same; a set of variables in which a form can be arranged.[3]

Form: In my scheme there are no instances of disembodied (Platonic) forms; a form always exists in a frame of reference. A form is a particular distribution (set of values) in a property space (or in a frame of reference). For example, if we made up a space defined by integers, religion and degree of observance, then a possible distribution (i.e., a form) could be {4 devout Muslims, 2 lapsed Buddhists, 1 “occasional” Druid. The properties of a form correspond to  its values on the axes or dimensions of its property space, or frame of reference. (For  the present purposes, the possible topologies and metrics of the space need not be considered).

Entity:  This is the key concept, whose meaning is almost always mistakenly assumed to be naturally given and intuitively obvious. An entity (a unit, a wholeness) is a kind of form. An entity is a group of bits or elements distinguished from those in its environment by “belonging to each other” in some sense. It is the relationships between the elements that make it an entity, not an edge, shell, skin, or border that separates them from their neighbors. The pattern of relationships among the elements creates an implicit or virtual border. According to  the analyses of Simon (1969 p. 209 ff.), and of Wimsatt (1974, and 1976 pp. 242, 261), we call a set of parts an entity if there is sufficient inter-relatedness among them[4]. “Sufficient” is decided  by some criterion chosen for our purpose. Functional relations, spatial and temporal relations, social relations, are examples of aspects by which we commonly decide that some distribution is an entity or not. For example, a group of people is an entity we call “family” if the people have sufficiently close relations; whether or not we set the criterion to include second cousins, adoptees, steps, and pets, or only parents and their natural children depends on our purposes. Thus, entiticity is a matter of convention as well as a matter of degree. In general an entity does not have a sharp boundary. It depends on the relative amount of inter-relatedness of its components (nothing in a universe has no relation to anything else).

I stress the rather surprising conditionality of entities because properties like a point of view or consciousness belong to a specific entity, and to understand the property we must be clear about just what we think constitutes the entity which hosts it. Many confusions about “person” and “self” arise here.

Humans seem to have a great passion for entifying. We frequently turn verbs and adjectives into nouns, processes and relations into things. Problems arise when we forget that what we are treating as an entity is only more or less an entity, of limited duration, and only by agreement for the present purposes (e.g., marriage, corporation, Republic of Congo).

Knowledge, To Know: The definition of this conceptual cluster has a very long history in philosophy and is currently used in many senses: to perceive directly[5], to be capable of, to be fixed in memory, to be acquainted or familiar with, to be able to distinguish (Webster’s dictionary). Note that none of these usages specifies consciousness; they all make sense for instances of nonconscious as well as for conscious knowings. The sense that best captures the phenomena that concern us here is one of the most general; to know is to be able to distinguish.

Know implies a knowing entity, and that which is known. For an entity to know something XYZ (to know how to XYZ, or to know that XYZ), is for it to distinguish XYZ from at least some not-XYZ, to act discriminatively toward XYZ. No consciousness is implied. The minimum discrimination is detection; something happened, or didn’t; something is, or isn’t. Knowledge is the capacity to discriminate, a potential to use information[6].

Point of view: Like knowledge, a point of view belongs to an entity. It is the total set of possible discriminations an entity can make in its present state and context. It is critical to note here that we are including only those discriminations made by the entity as such, not by one of its erstwhile parts acting for the time autonomously and without effect at the level of the entity. We are generally interested in dynamic systems (i.e.,  changing over time), and at any one time some of the knowledge that the entity has may not be available for use. For example, in an enzyme molecule the critical receptor region may be temporarily folded inside, unable to interact. Similarly, different capacities for discrimination may be available to you in the context of a street mob than in the context of your private study. Thus the point of view will vary with the properties of the entity, and with the time, place, and other contexts of the entity.

What Sort Of Entity Can Have A First-Person Point Of View?

With these provisional definitions in hand we can return to the main questions about point of view.

Nonconscious points of view: The two senses of first-personness, point of view and consciousness, are not merely discrepant but in mortal conflict. Nonconscious as well as conscious processing takes place from a point of view. It seems to me that the main idea behind first-personness is the point of view, not the consciousness.

Consider what goes on as you pick up  a pencil. You segment the visual field and see the object against the background. As you reach for the pencil, you spread or close your fingers depending on the pencil’s size, and rotate your wrist depending on whether the pencil is oriented horizontally or vertically. You must make and use judgments about its borders, its distance, the space around it, etc., calculating with respect to a frame of reference, based on information about your self. In this case it is a spatial frame of reference. In well-practiced behaviors one can make these calculations without being aware of doing so, as shown by the ability of patients with “blindsight” to reach appropriately for objects in their blind visual field (Weiskrantz, 1986). One can also operate nonconsciously in non-spatial frames of reference, such as value judgments (Kunst-Wilson and Zajonc, (1980);  Nisbitt and Wilson, (1977)). It seems to me that we will want to call all of these first-person  judgments, whether they are conscious or not.

Therefore, I propose that consciousness and its other properties are a separate issue from having a point of view. This conclusion strikes some people as odd on first hearing, because they associate this point of view uniquely with the other qualities of human consciousness. The oddness dissipates, however, as one recognizes that a person includes nonconscious as well as conscious parts, and that nonconscious discriminations and actions carried out from the person’s point of view are ubiquitous.

Inanimate points of view:  Whether or not an entity is a person is irrelevant to its having a “first person” point of view, i.e., a point of view referenced in some sense to the entity itself. Even non-verbal devices perceive and act;  a simple infra-red motion detector has a literally spatial point of view or perspective, monitoring a region of space “in front” of it. To have a point of view an entity only needs the capacity to interact differentially with its environment. A corporation, a charged particle, and a computer all can interact differentially, and thus qualify as having  points of view. Although complex entities generally have wider repertoires of inputs and responses, complexity per se does not seem to be required.

Please note that to say every entity has a point of view is not the same as  saying that every entity is conscious. This error, arising out of the muddling of the two senses of first-personness, seems to fuel fiery conflict, such as Searle’s attack on Chalmers (1997).

The present argument is completely separate from grammatical or linguistic issues that arise in modern times, now that it is commonplace to have sentences uttered (or written) by inanimate speakers. Sometimes the utterance is not merely a simple recording of an absent human, but is originated in a context-dependent way by a computer[7]. Recall that in grammar “I” is the speaker, the entity who presents the sentence; this would grammatically qualify the computer to say, “I”. But in addition, it would be perfectly sensible psychologically for the computer to claim first-person knowledge and a first-person point of view, once we have separated first-personness from consciousness and biology.

 It remains only to deal with the “person” in first-personness. Many people find it awkward at first to say that a non-human, non-biological entity such as a subatomic particle, or a device, or a social institution has a first-person point of view. It would be best to drop the reference to person in this context. C. S. Peirce’s term “firstness”, developed in 1891, might do nicely (Space does not permit discussion of Peirce’s concepts here).

Applications:  understanding multiple  points of view

Now that we have clarified the concepts  of point of view and entity, many confusions can be untangled. One class of confusions concerns a superordinate entity reconciling conflict when its relatively autonomous subsystems have points of view discrepant from each other or from the whole. Because complex entities tend to be hierarchically organized (Simon, 1964), they are likely to include nested sub-entities with discrepant points of view. The point of view of the superordinate entity is not simply the sum or the union or the intersect of the points of view of its parts. This is a source of confusion in talk about “to whom” a first-person point of view belongs.

Even our human point of view in three-dimensional space is not as simple as people assume. What we take to be directly in front of us is sometimes determined with respect to our body midline, sometimes with respect to our direction of gaze, and sometimes with respect to the frame of reference given by our head position (tonus in the neck muscles), or by our vestibular apparatus (see Vallar et. al., 1993 for extensive references). That is, we have multiple frames of reference for 3D space, which can give conflicting points of view. When we cannot reconcile them, as in motion sickness or the hemi-neglect following a parietal lobe injury, we have trouble (Bisiach 1991, Galin 1992). Similarly, we have trouble when we cannot reconcile our multiple frames of reference for values (e.g., different ethical standards in business and in the family).

The superordinate entity (e.g., a person) may be able to usefully combine the multiple points of view of its parts (sub-entities, e.g., the eyes). If the eyes are on the sides of the head as in a rabbit, the two points of view can be added to give a wider field of view. If as in humans, the eyes both face front and the two points of view overlap, then the discrepancy between them can be used for information about depth. But when there is too much conflict all but one may be suppressed (e.g., amblyopia, the loss of vision in one eye in a severely “cross-eyed” person). Another strategy for conflict resolution is to alternate among points of view (e.g., in multiple personality disorder, or in contextual ethics).

Ordinarily we are good at keeping track of  which of our multiple points of view are in control at the moment. It must be very important to our species since infants can do it by age 18 months; they can take another point of view in imaginative play without losing track that the new one (the “pretend”) is nested inside of the usual one (the “real”).[8] However, even adults can lose track of a nested hierarchy of points of view, as when one gets “carried away” at the theater or movies and reacts as if it were real, or in hypnosis, where the subject accepts the hypnotist’s point of view as overriding the self-monitors.

Hidden confusions about the normal state  are often highlighted in cases of pathology. Thus, the study of “split-brain” patients (whose cerebral hemispheres have been disconnected by surgery or by disease) has produced dramatic observations, and fed the appetite for apparent paradox. Many have marveled when a split-brain patient does a task with the left hand, and then says “It wasn’t me that did that”, or when one hand corrects or undoes what the other is doing (Galin 1974, p. 573-576). Joseph E. Bogen, neurosurgeon and scholar, has addressed these matters for three decades, with respect to the single, the separated, and the normally connected cerebral hemispheres (Bogen 1969a, b, 1985, 1989; see also Smith 1974, Wigan 1844). Although it is generally recognized that each of the disconnected hemispheres is independently conscious, each with a point of view that all would call a first-person point of view, yet there is no general agreement as to whether we are now dealing with one or two persons  (Sperry 1968, Pucetti 1973, Nagle 1979). In our culture, personal unity seems to be an assumption.

The confusion clears if we remember that entiticity is a matter of degree, and that we choose a criterion for particular cases based on convention and our purposes (see family example, above). Mind is a sub-entity in the larger entity person. Bogen (1972) cites and confirms Wigan’s neurological observations and conclusions of 150 years ago (1844) that since one hemisphere is enough to sustain a mind, possession of two hemispheres makes possible or even inevitable two minds in one person.[9] The logical and verbal analyses I have presented above complement the neurology: to the degree that each mind and the superordinate person are entities, they each have a first person point of view, and they need not agree.

Coda: so what?

This essay has not been just a quibble about words. I have argued for three broad conceptual points:

1.  Entiticity is not absolute; it is a matter of degree and of convention. Finding or creating entities is one of  our most basic cognitive processes: we segment each sensory and conceptual field into figure and ground; then we try to manipulate the “figure”. If in fact there is no intrinsic structure in the field, or if the intrinsic structure is much more complex than the way we have parsed it, then serious errors may occur.  We are not usually aware of the conditionality of the entities we create.

2.  Point of view is associated with a specific entity; it is defined in terms of the set of discriminations that are possible for that entity under the present circumstance. The simplicity or complexity of the entity’s repertoire of discriminations is irrelevant.  Any entity, conscious or not, biological or not, has a point of view.

 3.  First-personness of an entity’s point of view is that property that derives from it being that entity and not another. That is all there is to the mysterious “privileged access”.

What this essay does not  try to do is clarify what consciousness is, or how it works (Galin 1992, 1994, 1996). The argument’s  only  implication for consciousness is to free it from some unnecessary problems and unjustified wonderment, which may or may not make the real problems more tractable.

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