Dream, Death, and the Self
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"Valberg's book is thoughtful, original, and challenging. He contends that the right sort of attention to the skeptical possibility that one might now be dreaming and to the fact that one will die reveals a common subject matter: that within which all one's experience unfolds, what he calls 'the personal horizon' and sometimes 'consciousness.' Valberg argues further that a proper understanding of central problems about self-reference, self-knowledge, embodiment, and personal identity demands attention to this same horizonal sense of self."—Randall Havas, author of Nietzsche's Genealogy"In J. J. Valberg's extraordinary book, one finds a distinctive conception of philosophical problems, a highly original response to dream skepticism, a deep interpretation of the meaning of death, and a groundbreaking discussion of personal identity. Valberg's position is both striking and masterfully developed. The puzzles he discusses are of considerable philosophical importance."—Douglas G. Winblad, Vassar College Barry Stroud - Times Literary Supplement In this long, meditative, worrying book Valberg explores and defends these thoughts about himself and searches for their sources and their implications for all of us. It is an intense, personal book, aspiring to the kind of philosophical reflections that brings to light something we all know about ourselves already, but for various reasons are unwilling or unable to acknowledge.
Preface xvIntroduction: Philosophical Discovery and Philosophical Puzzles 1Discovering What We Already Know 1The Socratic Conception of Philosophical Discovery 2Wittgenstein: Insidership and Philosophical Discovery 3Philosophical Discovery and Resistance 6The Presumptuousness of a Claim to Philosophical Discovery 7Conceptual Analysis and the Communal Horizon 9The Personal Horizon 11Philosophical Anticipations of the Personal Horizon 13Two Types of Philosophical Puzzle 18The Extraphilosophical Puzzles 20DreamThe Meaning of the Dream HypothesisThe Dream Hypothesis and the Argument from Internality 27Our Purpose in Raising the Dream Hypothesis 27That the Dream/Reality Contrast Is Extrinsic to the Subject Matter of the Dream Hypothesis 28The Argument from Internality 31Dream and the Law of Excluded Middle 34The Dream Hypothesis and Space 40The Dream Hypothesis and Time 43The Dream Hypothesis and the World 48The Dream Hypothesis: Identity and the First Person 53A Puzzle about Identity 53Representation and Identity 54A Way out of the Puzzle 57The Dream Hypothesis and the First-Person Singular 61The Subject versus the Dreamer of a Dream; The Positional Conception of the Self 64Emerging from a Dream and the First Person 68The Confusion of Standpoint 71Dreams and the Infinity of Time 71Time and the Confusion of Standpoint 74Descartes and the Dream Hypothesis 76Dream Skepticism versus Memory Skepticism 78Real-Life Uncertainty about the Dream Hypothesis 80The Subject Matter of the Dream Hypothesis 84Is the Argument from Internality Valid? 84The Subject Matter of the Dream Hypothesis and Grammatical Illusion 86Alternative Formulations of the Dream Hypothesis 88Reality 91What Is the Subject Matter of the Dream Hypothesis? 94The Horizonal versus Phenomenal Conception of Mind 97Dream SkepticismThe Dream Hypothesis and the Skeptical Challenge 101The Skeptical Argument 101The Usual Argument for Dream Skepticism; Immanent versus Transcendent Dream Skepticism 105The Uniqueness of Transcendent Dream Skepticism 108Dream Skepticism and the External World 110Nozick on the Tank Hypothesis 113Responding to Dream Skepticism 119Is the Dream Hypothesis a Pseudo Hypothesis? 119Whether It Would Matter if This Were a Dream 122The General Form of My Response to the Dream Hypothesis 126I Am with Others: Metaphysical Equality and the Claim to Preeminence 128The Commitment to (O) 131Raising the Dream Hypothesis in Conversation: Forcing a Withdrawal to the First Person 134Withdrawing to the First Person and the Horizonal Use of the First Person 136Why It Is Rationally Impossible to Believe the Dream Hypothesis 138The Space of Horizons 141Other Minds 144Skepticism and Solipsism 146DeathThe Meaning of DeathI Will Die 153Dream and Death; Discovering the Meaning of Death 153Being Disturbed by the Prospect of Death 154That the Prospect of Death Holds Up Something Not Just Awful but Incomprehensible; Death and Self-Deception 157Reacting to the Prospect of Death: A Text 160Philosophical Reflection and Real-Life Disturbance 165The Subject Matter and "Mineness" of My Death 168The Prospect of Death 168I Will Cease to Be 171Death and the Stream of Mental States 173The World and the Subject Matter of Death 177The "Mineness" of My Death and the Horizonal Use of the First Person 181Death and SolipsismSolipsism 185My Horizon and the Horizon 185The Solipsism of Wittgenstein's Tractatus 188Solipsism and Self-Consciousness 192Kripke on the Solipsism of the Tractatus 195Negativism 198Death and the Truth of Solipsism 201Solipsism and My Life with Others 201Relativized Solipsism 204Solipsism and the Meaning of Death 206Qualifying the Nothingness of Death 209The Awfulness and Incomprehensibility of Death 215The Awfulness of Death 215The Two Forms of the Impossibility of Death 219The Temporal Impossibility of Death 220Consciousness and Causation 222The Solipsistic Impossibility of Death 227The "Aloneness" of the Dying Subject 228The Puzzles of Death and the Causation of Consciousness 232The SelfPossibility and the SelfImagination and the Cartesian Self 237What Is "the Self"? 237The Cartesian Argument 237Imagination and Proof 240Exhibiting Possibilities in Imagination 242Imagination and Experiential Possibility 245Experiential Possibilities and Possibilities of Essence 247The Paralogism of Imagination 249The Cartesian Reply 251Metaphysical Possibility and the Self 255Metaphysical Possibility 255Metaphysical Possibility and the Self 257The Logic of the Self 259Naturalizing the Self 261The Positional Conception of the SelfPreliminary Reflections on the Positional Conception of the Self 264Nagel's Puzzle about "Being Me" 264Individual Essence: Frege on Our "Particular and Primitive" Mode of Self-Presentation 265My Body and Me (the Human Being That I Am) 269The Multiplicity of the Phenomenology of the Subject Position 271The Standing/Operative Ambiguity 273Causal Centrality 275Causation and the Phenomenology of the Subject Position 279Orientational Centrality 281The Sense in Which the Positional and Horizonal Conceptions of the Self Are "Always in Play" 282The Phenomenology of the Subject Position 286Perceptual Centrality: The Visual and Tactual Appearing of My Body 286Perceptual Centrality: The Visual Appearing of Myself 290Perceptual Centrality: Views of Myself 293Centrality of Feeling: Figuring as the Space of Feeling 297The Centrality of Feeling: The Sense in Which the Space of Feeling (My Body-Space) Is a "Space" 299Centrality of Feeling: The Ontological Dependence of My Body-Space on My Body 304Volitional Centrality: Acting/Will and the Phenomenology of the Subject Position 307Volitional Centrality: The Phenomenology of Will 309Volitional Centrality: The "Mineness" of My Actions 315Volitional Centrality: Phenomenology and Causality 319The First PersonThe Uses of the First Person 321Introduction 321The Referential Use of the First Person 322Reference and the Use of "I" as Subject/Object 324"I Am Thinking.../I See..." 329The Positional Use of the First Person 334The Horizonal Use of the First Person 337What Makes First-Person Reference First Personal? 342The Meaning of the Question We Are Asking 342Following the Rule for the Use of "I" 343Inner First-Person Reference 346Attitudes de Se 351First-Person Reference and the Positional Conception of the Self 354The First Person and Emptiness at the Center 355Time and the SelfTemporalizing the Self 359Introduction 359Tense and the Phenomenology of the Subject Position 360The Tense Asymmetry in the Phenomenology of the Subject Position 364Tense and the Horizonal Self 366The Problem of Personal Identity 370The Special Philosophical Problem of Personal Identity: The Problem of First-Person Identity 370Imagining Myself Persisting through a Change of Human Beings (Bodies) 373Locke's View of Personal Identity 376Persistence and the Horizon 380Remembering; The Past-Self Ambiguity 382Possibility, Personal Identity, and Naturalizing the Self 387Time and the Horizon 394The Oneness of the Horizon 394Skepticism about the Oneness over Time of My Horizon 397Kant's Third Paralogism: The Self "in Time" and the Self That "Time Is In" 400My Past 408The Availability in Memory of Past Events 408The Argument from Pastness 410Being Open to the Availability of the Past 413Memory Images 417Letting the Past Be Past 420Moving from Inside to Outside the Sphere of Phenomenological Reflection 422The Puzzle of Memory and the Puzzle of Experience 426The Puzzle of Memory and the Problems of First-Person Identity 429My Future 432My Future versus the Future 432My Future and My Brain: Jumping over Death 434Parfit on My Future Self 439Nozick's "Closest Continuer" Theory 444My Future: The Puzzle of Division 450Personal Identity and Possibility (Review) 450The Possibility of Division 451Parfit on Division 454Other Responses to the Puzzle of Division: Nozick and Lewis 458The Puzzle of Division and the Identity-Framework 463Horizonal Doubling versus Splits within the Horizon 465The Impossibility of Horizonal Doubling 468The Unity of Consciousness 470The Puzzle of Division 472Conclusion: The Extraphilosophical Puzzles 474The Extra-versus Purely Philosophical Puzzles 474The Puzzle of Division as an Extraphilosophical Puzzle 476The Puzzle of Division and the Puzzle of the Causation of Consciousness 478Our Causal Entrapment in the World 480The Extraphilosophical Puzzles and the Horizonal Subject Matter 482Bibliography 487Index 491
