Abstract
How to model non-egoic experiences – mental events with phenomenal aspects that lack a felt self – has become an interesting research question. The main source of evidence for the existence of such non-egoic experiences are self-ascriptions of non-egoic experiences. In these, a person says about herself that she underwent an episode where she was conscious but lacked a feeling of self. Some interpret these as accurate reports, but this is questionable. Thomas Metzinger (2004, p. 566, 2018), Rocco Gennaro (2008), and Charles Foster (2016, p. 6) have hinted at the self-defeating nature of such statements if we take them to be genuine reports: Apparently, the reporter (a) explicitly denies her existence during the selfless experience, but (b) implicitly affirms her existence as a witness to that selfless experience in order to give a first-person report about it. So the content of such a report conflicts with the pragmatics of reporting. If all self-ascriptions of non-egoic experiences are self-defeating in this way, then they cannot count as evidence for the existence of non-egoic experiences. Here, I map out why such strong conclusions do not directly follow: What look like self-ascriptions of non-egoic experiences may occur for a number of reasons. Only some explanations for such utterances rely on a change in consciousness. Of those that do rely on a change in consciousness, only one (total ego-dissolution) is incoherent. But its alternatives do not lead to contradictions. I argue that the most likely change in phenomenality that leads to self-ascriptions of non-egoic experiences is not one where a felt self disappears, but where it expands.
Highlights
This article is part of a special issue on “Radical disruptions of self-consciousness”, edited by Thomas Metzinger and Raphaël Millière
The selfascriptions of non-egoic experiences (Sane) paradox involves some important presuppositions: (UNIQUE) For each individual,15 there is one and only one self that is the referent of self-reference and fulfils the functions of self-reference, or only one mechanism facilitating all kinds of self-reference
If we can reasonably rule out the intention of triggering drastic pragmatic implicatures and deviations of what is meant from what is said, we need another diagnosis for what underlies the expression of a Sane for cases that do not lend themselves to pragmatic explanations
Summary
Self-ascriptions of episodes of non-egoic experiences and phenomenal egodissolution. Some people say that they have had episodes in their mental life where they felt like no one at all, where their selves went missing, where there was no feeling of self. My dad didn’t notice what had happened, since it was all happening inside me Saks calls this experience disorganised, marked primarily by a loss of mereological, spatial, or temporal unity (“reality breaks up”, “no core holds things together”, “random moments of time follow another”), a loss of determinacy (“my awareness [...] grows fuzzy [...] wobbly”), or a loss of coherence. This is tied in with a reduced form of specificity of the self-boundary: “The ‘me’ becomes a haze.”. Something special appears to be going on during these episodes
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