Something that can't be explained

There is (literally) no explanation for the 'fact' that I see the world from over here (from my 'perspective') and you see it from over there ...

Why should I have special access to some of the world's events and not to others? Why am I aware of any of them? Why not all of them?

We can sort of imagine (or maybe only think we can imagine) an impersonal physical universe - not LaPlacian, perhaps, but some more up to date equivalent. We might even say things like 'you are a part of this universe - a sub-system - which interacts with the rest in a specific way, and therefore is only "aware" of some events and not of others'. But this doesn't solve the problem of why I am this particular sub-system and not some other. Why am I not you?

Externally, of course, lots of kinds of explanations can be suggested. Psychologists and neurologists looking for a 'seat of consciousness' or for some systemic explanation of consciousness focus on behaviours and cognitive structures characteristic of those of us who think of our selves as conscious and of those others we attribute consciousness to.

This doesn't help very much, though, because these behaviours are only accessible to theory once they have been described, and they are - in some sense - associated with all conscious beings. What I'm interested in is my consciousness, not everyone else's. I want to know why I'm aware of the world I'm aware of. And much of this world is not only unverbalised, its unverbalisable.

So far as my participation in this conversation is concerned, of course, I could be anyone - or at least anyone like me. I wouldn't actually have to be me. If I was replaced by a cunning automaton, who would know except for myself? I might, like a Stepford wife, be ousted by a murderous doppelganger - and it might be ousted in its turn - for all this conversation was concerned.

But it would, surely, concern me. I wouldn't be here any more.

Does this make any sense? Well, not in this conversation - it is a 'hinge' of this conversation that I am the same person who wrote the previous posts in this Blogg.

Is this being a 'hinge' a solution to the problem?

In one sense yes, because it points to the public conception of a continuing person with the ability to converse. We can even understand (in this public world) why some people know some things that other people don't.

But in another sense, it just evades the question. Why am I sitting typing at this keyboard, looking at this screen. Not a public puzzle, but a question about my particular phenomenology.

Why was my world constructed with this subject? There is nothing in our shared world that can explain this to me.

Is this the same as the Zombies problem?

No. Whether or not we treat each other like zombies is a normative issue. I don't think mind theorists take the normative aspects of mind attribution seriously enough, but that's another problem. I can't treat myself as a zombie, so this question is not the same as the zombies problem.

In a sense, posing this question is a poetic move in this conversation - I am suggesting something, alluding to something, that cannot really be said; and I am doing this by appearing to say it.

(I can put the idea that it may not be possible to talk into your head by saying 'It is not possible to talk' even if this is strictly nonsensical).

Whether or not you can engage with this may have something to do with how self-conscious you are of your linguistic abilities - how much you are aware of talking as an activity depending on an inarticulable substrate of skills ...

Propositions and Rules?

Some Wittgensteinian scholars might like to distinguish between propositions and rules - or 'hinges' - but sometimes a statement functions like a propostion, and sometimes like a rule.

It's hard to say this, though because whether or not we are dealing with a proposition or a rule depends on what game we are playing - or, rather, on which part of the 'overall' game we are playing. And the game we're playing determines what we can say and what we can't say ...

When we move from one game to another, we indicate that we have done so by using explicit truth-predicates, which, I think, are always used in a rule-like way. When I say 'My cat is hungry' I mean that my cat is hungry. When I say 'It is true that my cat is hungry' I am telling you how I am going to talk, and inviting you to talk the same way. You might respond by pointing out that this rule won't work for some reason, or you might find you don't know how to play the game I seem to be proposing, but while the first statement can legitimately be described as being about the world (with it's hungry cat), the second cannot.

Thinking that we are talking about the world when we use truth predicates, rather than about how we are going to talk, is one of the most fundamental errors that philosophers have made.