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Do Mystics Perceive Themselves?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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Mystics have always claimed that a very significant kind of self-perception is possible, at the end of certain spiritual disciplines. The self that is then supposed to be known is a unity, identical from one experience to the next, and not to be identified with any particular experiences, such as impressions or ideas, which the self has. In short, mystical testimony supports something like a theory of the essential self as simple and unchanging.
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References
page 327 note 1 Stace, W. T., Mysticism and Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1961), p. 87.Google Scholar
page 327 note 2 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), p. 252.Google Scholar
page 327 note 3 Hume, , A Treatise of Human Nature, pp. 259–63.Google Scholar
page 328 note 1 Ibid. p. 251.
page 328 note 2 Noxon, James, ‘Senses of Identity in Hume's Treatise’, Dialogue, VIII (December, 1969), 367–84, argues convincingly that He refers to the self meaningfully, in certain places in the Treatise, when he has in mind either the ‘bundle’ theory or reference to a complex experience of self-consciousness involving pride or humility and the thought of our qualities or circumstances. Neither of these ‘selves’ is the one which he reports he cannot perceive and the mystics claim they can.Google Scholar
page 328 note 3 The phrases quoted are Noxon's, in the article cited above, used to refer to the idea of the self rejected by Hume.
page 329 note 1 Shoemaker, Sydney, Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1963), p. 86.Google Scholar
page 329 note 2 Shoemaker, , Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity, pp. 93–4.Google Scholar
page 330 note 1 Shoemaker, , Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity, pp. 93–4.Google Scholar
page 330 note 2 My colleague, William R. Abbott, has suggested an elegant formalization of this argument, as follows:
‘Shoemaker argues that a crucial difference between self-perception and perceiving others is a difference of logical structure, which leads him to regard these as two quite distinct concepts. The difference is due to the following:
(I)“S sees that f sees Q” is a schema permitting the following true conjunction: “S sees f& S sees Q & S sees that f does not see Q”.
(2)“S sees that S sees Q” is a schema that does not permit the corresponding conjunction to be true, viz., “S sees S & S sees Q & S sees that f does not see Q”.
The principle involved in concluding from (1) and (2) that self-perception is radically different from perceiving others is not clear, but seems to be something like this:
If relation R can form true conjunctions of type X, and R′cannot do so, then R and R′are logically distinct relations.
The trouble with Shoemaker's use of this apparently plausible principle is that it would deny that the same relation can obtain in a reflexive and a non-reflexive context. Thus
(3)“S scratches Q” is a schema that permits the true conjunction “S scratches O & Q does not scratch 0”.
(4)“S scratches S” is a schema that does not permit the corresponding conjunction to be true, viz., “S scratches 0 & S does not scratch 0”.
And by arguing this way we can “show” that nobody scratches himself in the same sense as that in which people scratch other things. Thus the principle involved, and the argument itself, are at best extremely dubious.’
page 332 note 1 Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, pp. 85–6.Google Scholar
page 332 note 2 Ibid. p. 87.
page 332 note 3 Ibid. p. 86.
page 333 note 1 Ibid.
page 333 note 2 I have found a metaphor similar to this idea of the ‘masking’ of consciousness in two other places.
(1) Chisholm, Roderick, in ‘On the Observability of the Self’, in Language and Human Nature, ed. Kurtz, Paul (St Louis: Warren H. Green, 1971), p. 146Google Scholar, refers to the ego as ‘transparent’. Chisholm's view, in that article, is that we are acquainted with ourselves in each and all of our experiences, and only in our experiences. This paper suggests the possibility of a more radical form of self-perception, in the absence of particular experiences.
(2) Moore, G. E., in Philosophical Studies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1922), p. 25Google Scholar, distinguishes between consciousness and its contents for the sake of refuting idealism, and writes of ‘… the fact that though philosophers have recognized that something distinct is meant by consciousness, they have never yet had a clear conception of what that something is’. Explaining further, he says, ‘…the moment we try to fix our attention upon consciousness, and to see what, distinctly, it is, it seems to vanish: it seems as if we had before us a mere emptiness. When we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as it were diaphanous. Yet it can be distinguished if we look attentively enough, and if we know that there is something to look for.’ Shoemaker, , in Self-Knowledge and Self-Perception, p. 74, and Shaffer, Jerome A., in Philosophy of Mind (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1868), p. 9Google Scholar, both quote this passage to support the view that we cannot perceive our consciousness. They are able to do so because their quotations stop with the word ‘diaphanous’!
page 333 note 3 Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, p. 147.Google Scholar