-
Chapter 3: Subjects of Mentality
- University of Notre Dame Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
72 Subjects of Mentality John Foster 1. There are two kinds of entity that feature in the mental realm. On the one hand, there are items of mentality (mental items). These are such things as sense experiences, beliefs, emotions, and decisions, which form the concrete ingredients of the mind. On the other hand, there are subjects of mentality (mental subjects). These are the persisting entities that have mental lives and in whose mental lives mental items occur; they are the things that have experiences, hold beliefs, feel emotions, and make decisions. Mental items can occur only as elements in the lives of mental subjects. This is because our very concept of any type of mental item just is the concept of a subject’s being in a certain mental state, or performing a certain kind of mental act, or engaging in a certain kind of mental activity. It is fundamental to our understanding of the forms of mentality in question that for an experience to occur is for a subject to experience something, for a belief to occur is for a subject to believe something, for a decision to occur is for a subject to decide something, and so on for each type of mental item. To suppose that an item of mentality could occur with3 Subjects of Mentality 73 out a subject of mentality would be as absurd as supposing that there could be an instance of motion without something that moves, or an instance of smiling without something that smiles. Some philosophers of a radically empiricist persuasion have rejected an ontology of mental subjects on the grounds that the attachment of mental items to subjects is not introspectively detectable.1 They have insisted that what we ordinarily think of as the mental life of a persisting subject is really only an organized collection of ontologically autonomous mental items that stand to one another in certain psychological and causal relations, and are typically causally associated with the same biological organism. There is a double confusion here. In the first place, even if these philosophers were right in supposing that the attachment of mental items to subjects is not introspectively detectable, there is no getting around the point that our very concept of any type of mental item is the concept of a certain form of ‘mentalizing’ by a subject. Whatever the introspective situation , it simply makes no sense to envisage the occurrence of an experience without someone who has it, or the occurrence of a belief without someone who holds it, or the occurrence of a decision without someone who makes it. If the recognition of an ontology of subjects fails to pass some empiricist test of respectability, this serves to show only that the test is misconceived. Secondly, those philosophers who have denied that the attachment of mental items to subjects is introspectively detectable have approached the issue of such detection in the wrong way. They have wrongly supposed that the introspective awareness of a mental item is similar in character to the perceptual awareness of a physical item, except that it is directed onto objects that exist in the inner arena of the mind rather than in the outer arena of the physical world. And because they have employed this perceptual model of the introspective awareness of mental items, they have further assumed, again wrongly, that if the attachment of a mental item to a subject is to be introspectively detected, this detection will have to take the form of the presentation of an additional object alongside the mental item in the inner arena, the two objects being presented in a form which displays the one as the subject of the other. It is hardly surprising that, 74 John Foster on this basis, they have concluded that the attachment of mental items to subjects is not introspectively detectable. But it is the model of introspection that is at fault. When someone is introspectively aware of a mental item, he is not aware of it as an object presented to him. He is aware of it, more intimately, from the inside, as an instance of his own mentalizing—as an instance of his being in a certain mental state, or performing a certain kind of mental act, or engaging in a certain kind of mental activity. The subject’s awareness of himself, and of his role as mental subject, is an essential element of his awareness of the item itself.2 There should be no issue, then, over...