Three problems with I

The concept of “I” seems to be on a permanent run.
To a naive mind „I” (self) is a very simple concept. I am one and indivisible.
But philosophers noted that it can never be fully observed. At least three problems have been noted.
1) If want to reflect upon my mind, I can probably do so. But in this case the observer is also an “I”. If I want to observe this second I, I become the third I (no pun intended), then the fourth and the fifth I, etc. Philosophers call this an infinite regress. Anyway, I will never see the entire I, because I will need some I to be the observer.
Quotation:
According to the legend, whenever an agent does anything intelligently, his act is preceded and steered by another internal act of considering a regulative proposition appropriate to his practical problem. [...] Must we then say that for the hero's reflections how to act to be intelligent he must first reflect how best to reflect how to act? The endlessness of this implied regress shows that the application of the criterion of appropriateness does not entail the occurrence of a process of considering this criterion.(The Concept of Mind (1949), p. 31.)

2) What does it mean to reflect upon my mind, to introspect? Does it mean to observe one’s mind as it looks now? Or does it mean to observe one’s mind as it was some moments ago? Some people think that introspection is retrospection. When I am angry and also think about my anger, I probably remember my anger some moments ago. And what about the person some moment ago? Is it still I? Or perhaps it is a he?
Quotation:
There is one last objection to be made against the claim for introspection, that made by Hume. There are some states of mind which cannot be coolly scrutinised, since the fact that we are in those states involves that we are not cool, or the fact that we are cool involves that we are not in those states. No one could introspectively scrutinise the state of panic or fury, since the dispassionateness exercised in the scientific observation is, by the definition of panic and fury, not the state of mind of the victim of those turbulences. Similarly, since a convulsion of merriment is not the state of mind of a sober experimentalist, the enjoyment of a joke is also not an introspectible happening. States of mind such as these more or less violent agitations can be examined only in retrospect. Yet nothing disastrous follows from this restriction. We are not shorter of information about panic or amusement than about other states of mind. If retrospection can give us data we need for our knowledge of some states of mind, there is no reason why it should not do so for all. And this is just what seems to be suggested by the popular phrase to catch oneself doing so and so.
Gilbert Ryle The Concept of Mind p. 166, Google Books



3) Some philosophers say that you can observe only your particular experience: pain, pleasure, hatred, but never something like I
Quotation:
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.
Hume http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/TreatiseI.iv.vi.htm

Two Types of Scepticism

(manuscript of Leibniz's Monadology)

Scepticism may come in all shapes and sizes, but two of its forms are most important for me, the second more than the first:

1) Scepticism as to the external world. The question if the computer I am typing on right now really exists or is a mere illusion. Is it a serious question? On the one hand it would be difficult to say how a real computer can differ from its illusion, which looks exactly the same, feels the same to the touch, etc. If a duck looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. On the other hand films like Matrix or Inception make a powerful case for the validity of the question about the real existence of the external world.
2) Scepticism about the existence of other minds. This is not the same question. The world may be a mere illusion and all my perceptions may be false. But if other minds exist, they may have the same illusions. And they do not need to exist in the outer physical world. They can be monads like in Leibniz’ monadology which perceive their own perceptions synchronised with my own and everyone else’s perceptions in a special harmony. But as long as they are feeling and suffering beings I fell compassion for them, whether they are spatial or not.


That’s why the second question is more important for me. If I do not recognise the existence of other minds (even if I question the existence of the external world) I cannot feel compassion for them and build a Hume-style ethics based on empathy with my fellow beings.

Mind, God and immortality

On my Polish blog I wrote about the difference between the old philosophising about the soul and modern mind/body problem. The concept of the soul appears in inquiries about human immortality, while the concept of more or less non-material mind is to explain an equally puzzling miracle of private access to our minds, introspection, etc. Our minds need not be immortal, while the concept of soul more often than not implies immortality. While we have direct access to our minds, Cicero thinks that we do not have direct access to our souls. We can learn about them indirectly, the same as we learn about God.

That our inquiries about the human mind bear few consequences for the issue of our immortality is shown by the following quotation from Hume. Hume starts with the panpsychism of the stoics (which nowadays seems to be restored by David Chalmers, who thinks that consciousness is more dispersed in the world than usually expected).

“…admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed throughout the universe, like ethereal fire or the Stoics and to be the only inherent subject of the thought, we have reason to conclude from analogy that nature uses it after the manner she does the other substance, matter. She employs it as a kind or paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after a time each modification and from its substance erects a new form. As the same material substance may successively compose the bodies of all animals, the same spiritual substance may compose their minds. Their consciousness or the system of thought, which they form during life, may be continually dissolved by death. And nothing interests them in the new modification. The most positive asserters of mortality of the soul never denied the immortality of its substance. And that an immaterial substance, as well as material may lose its memory or consciousness appears, in part, from experience, if the soul be immaterial”.

David Hume Of the Immortality of the Soul (page one or two)


Let me put very simply: you do not need to believe in God or immortality to be a dualist.