Malmgren, Helge

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The "internal/external" metaphor in the philosophy ofmindHelge MalmgrenPhD, MD, Associate ProfessorDepartment of Philosophy, Göteborg University, Swedene-mail: helge.malmgren@filosofi.gu.sePoster presented at the conference Toward a Science of Consciousness ("Tucson 2000"),Tucson, Arizona, April 10-15, 2000Contents:1. The Cartesian intuition in epistemology2. "In me" and "in my mind"3. Abstract and concrete senses of content terms4. The visuo-spatial metaphor5. Internal sense and reflective introspectionAcknowledgements 1. The Cartesian intuition in epistemologyEven though Cartesianism in epistemology has been challenged bymany, the thesis that the subject’s own consciousness and its contentsare known to the subject in a special, intimate and secure way remains aliving option in philosophy. However, if one searches for rationalarguments for this thesis, there seems to be very few.One possible such argument is that reconstruction of Descartes’ thoughtin which it is claimed that since "I exist" follows logically from "I doubtthat I exist", it is certain that I exist. But few contemporaryphilosophers think that this deduction can carry any substantialepistemological burden. Of course the problem now turns out to be,"How do I know that I doubt?" Neither are Descartes’ arguments fromthe existence of a benevolent God any longer believed by anybody to bevalid.The Internal/External Metaphor http://www.phil.gu.se/posters/internal.html1 av 9 2009-02-23 16:17Another class of arguments (the immanence arguments, for short) forCartesianism in epistemology start with the observation that in cases ofknowledge about one’s own mind and its contents, the objects ofknowledge are in the subject and/or in her consciousness and/or in herknowledge-act, while this is not so in cases of knowledge about theso-called "external world". It is then usually taken as obvious and in noneed of further arguments that "inside-ness" entails a special epistemicstatus. Here is an illustrative quotation from that very influential 20thcentury Cartesian, Edmund Husserl:The being of the cogitatio, or to be more exact, of the knowledge-phenomenonitself, cannot be questioned, and it is free from the riddle of transcendence. /.../ Itis also obvious, that the cogitationes represent a sphere of absolute immanentgivens, in which sense we also interpret immanence. In the seeing [Schauen] of thepure phenomenon, the object is not outside the knowledge, outside consciousness,and at the same time it is given in the sense of the absolute self-givenness of apurely seen object."E. Husserl, Die Idée der Phänomenologie (Nijhoff 1958, original lectures 1907),p. 43. My translation and underlining.My main question is now, "Why does the fact — if it is a fact — thatour mental contents are in us, or in our mind, or even in theknowledge-act, make our knowledge of such contents certain?". Toanswer this question, I first have to dig rather deeply into another one,namely, "In what sense, if any, are my mental contents in me, or in myconsciousness"? My answers to these two questions will be:(1) None of the senses in which my mental contents are "in" me or "in"my consciousness makes it at all probable that my knowledge of thesecontents is more certain than my knowledge of the so-called "external"world;(2) The idea that mental contents are known in a special way justbecause they are "inside" mainly derives from the use of "in" as a visuo-spatial metaphor.(3) The use of this metaphor is partly due to a confusion betweenreflective introspection (the observation of one’s own mental states) andinternal sense (which provides knowledge about one’s internal bodilyThe Internal/External Metaphor http://www.phil.gu.se/posters/internal.html2 av 9 2009-02-23 16:17states).2. "In me" and "in my mind"In what sense, if any, is my mind "in me", and in what sense, if any, aremy mental contents in my mind?To start with the latter question, let us first observe the valuabledistinction drawn by Husserl between intentional and real contents ofconsciousness. In the weak, intentional sense whatever I happen to thinkof (for example Pegasus, or the car which I see) is in my mind. Nobodybelieves that such "intentional immance" entails any prilevegedepistemic status, so this sense of "in" can in principle be left out of thefollowing discussion. But there is also a stronger sense in which mypresent feelings are in my mind, but Pegasus and the car are not.Philosophers who defend Husserl’s distinction usually hold that one’sconscious acts are also in one’s mind in the latter, strong sense — theyare real contents — even if they have intentional contents which are not.However, it may also be the case that an act has another real content ofconsciousness as its intentional content. This, says Husserl, isimportantly true in immanent perception, which according to him is themain source of our privileged knowledge about ourselves.So, the first kind of content relation which is essential to the Cartesianposition in epistemology is that of the mind’s real contents to the minditself. Another one is in play when a philosopher says that the mind is inor within the person, or even inside the body. In a third, derivative sensethe mind’s real contents are sometimes said to be within the person. Inthe following quotation from Locke, all these three relevant uses of thecontent terms are illustrated.Secondly, the other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the understandingwith ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us, as it isemployed about the ideas it has got; which operations, when the soul comes toreflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideaswhich could not be had from things without: and such are perception, thinking,doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings ofour own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do fromthese receive into our understanding as distinct ideas, as we do from bodiesThe Internal/External Metaphor http://www.phil.gu.se/posters/internal.html3 av 9 2009-02-23 16:17affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself: andthough it not be sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is verylike it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the otherSensation, so I call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being such only as themind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself.J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford 1924; the firstedition was published in 1690), pp. 43-4. My underlinings.It is important to note that Locke uses ”internal sense” for what I preferto designate as ”reflective introspection”, and not for what I (with mostcontemporary authors) would call ”internal sense” (see Section 5below). Also note that the inside phrases — "our own minds within us","in ourselves", "into our understanding", "in himself", "internal sense"and "within itself" are here contrasted with the outside phrases "thingswithout" and "external objects". I will in the following refer to bothkinds of terms as content terms.3. Abstract and concrete senses of content termsLet us first note that content terms are used in a large variety ofsituations, which have only certain formal properties in common. Anegg can lie in a basket, but the tones are also in the melody, and therecan be an error in a mathematical argument (while the mathematicians’ssexual preferences are outside the relevant mathematicalconsiderations). More generally, the part-whole relation in the formal,mereological sense holds between any entity and a complex whole ofwhich it is a part. Hence it is a very abstract creature and cannotpossibly, as such, be of any great use for a Cartesian epistemologist.With this I mean to say that if she wants to argue from the fact that asensation is in her, or in her mind, or in her act of immanent perception,to the conclusion that she knows some things for certain about thissensation, she must fill the word "in" with more sense than the formalmereological one. Which specific sense, then, can carry the requiredburden? Perhaps the ordinary, spatial senses of the "inside" and"outside" terms could be rallied to do some job in epistemology?A. But remember that G.E. Moore, when attempting to prove that theexternal world exists, did not hesitate to use his hand as a paradigmThe Internal/External Metaphor http://www.phil.gu.se/posters/internal.html4 av 9 2009-02-23 16:17example of an external object. Hence what is called "the externalworld" in epistemology is not spatially external to us, since it includesour own bodies and their parts. Likewise, introspection is not inspectionof what is spatially internal. If it was, we should be said to introspectwhen we looked into the interior of our stomach with a gastroscope.Our mind and our mental contents are not spatially interior to us or toour bodies. Neither are our mind’s contents spatial contents of our mind.(This, of course, also follows from Descartes’ thesis that the soul is notan extended substance.)Hence even though spatial containment often entails an epistemologicaladvantage to the spatial contents in questions (cf below), this factcannot be of any value for the Cartesian epistemologist. My argumenton this point is strengthened by the following consideration.B. We often think of and imagine our minds as being spatially interior toour bodies, and mental contents as being spatial contents of the mind.One could argue that this fact shows us a phenomenological but stillquasi-spatial sense in which our minds are in us, and in which themind’s contents are in the mind; one could further argue that itsomehow gives a rationale for Cartesianism in epistemology. But itdoes not:B(I). A spatial representation need not represent anything spatial. Weoften represent numbers as being spatially laid out on a line, but wewould not dream of drawing the conclusion that certain numbers reallyare to the left of others. The only thing we can say with someconfidence is that a representation in terms of spatial contents mostprobably represents some relation with the same formal structure as thespatial content relation. But then we are back in the abstractmereological sense.B(II). If our spatial representation of the mind really represents a beliefthat the mind is a spatial entity, this arguably expresses a grand illusion.Since the mind is not spatially in the body (cf A ), any apprehension ofit as being so is essentially false. How, then, could the existence of suchan apprehension be useful as a premiss in epistemology? (I do not sayThe Internal/External Metaphor http://www.phil.gu.se/posters/internal.html5 av 9 2009-02-23 16:17that it cannot. I just ask how.)It seems that other senses of the content terms than the ordinary, spatialones must be involved in any rational reconstruction of Cartesianepistemology from "inside-outside" premisses. But which could thesesenses possibly be? Here are two suggestions:C. The mind and its contents are constituents of the complex union ofbody and mind, or of mental and physical events, which is called "ThePerson". Hence they are interior to us (as persons) in a concrete sense,and this sense confers an epistemological privilege to them.Regrettably, exactly the same argument can be carried out with thebody and its parts in the central role. Hence the essentialepistemological asymmetry (for the Cartesian) between mind and bodycannot be defended by way of this line of reasoning.D. Being a real constituent of a consciousness is a relation sui generiswhich has no counterpart in the physical world. It is this very relationwhich is the basis of our privileged access to our own mental states.My only objection to this suggestion is that although it may well bevalid, it would be utterly dogmatic to believe in it without furtherarguments. Some such arguments can be found in the writings ofcontemporary Cartesians such as Husserl. However, I cannot discussmost of Husserl’s detailed claims here (as you may guess, they do notconvince me at all). Let me just add that it is not at all self-evident thatall parts of all knowledge-acts are known by the knower. HenceHusserl’s thesis that the object of knowledge is sometimes not only(really) in consciousness, but also in the knowledge-act itself, does notrelieve him from explaining why this immanence should entail anepistemic privilege.4. The visuo-spatial metaphorThere are certainly several other possible senses in which it could berationally argued that the immanentness (being-inside) of a mentalcontent makes it epistemologically privileged. However, because ofThe Internal/External Metaphor http://www.phil.gu.se/posters/internal.html6 av 9 2009-02-23 16:17space limitations I will instead — in this and next section — go intowhat I think are the main irrational sources of Cartesianism inepistemology.If you are indoors, looking around yourself, your field of view is totallyor almost totally limited by a set of irregular surfaces at varyingdistances from you. The possible exceptions are some holes and/ortransparent surfaces through which you can look at Infinity in the formof the clear sky; let us disregard these exceptions for the moment. Thisvisually connected (but physically usually disjoint) set of limitingsurfaces I here call the visual room. Let us call an object an interiorvisual object if one of its surfaces belongs to the visual room. Now thefollowing propositions are true about your visual room and the interiorvisual objects:1. The interior surfaces of the visual room are the only surfaces whichyou can see directly;2. You see the interior visual objects more directly than you see anyother objects;3. You are yourself an interior visual object.The reader is urged to contemplate the structural similarity betweenpropositions 1-3 and the basic tenets of Cartesian epistemology. Thissimilarity is my first argument for the thesis that Cartesianism is oftennourished by a visuo-spatial analogy.The second main kind of evidence which I would like to bring forwardis the abundant use of visual terms among certain Cartesianphilosophers, such as Husserl. Anybody who has read Husserl extantlyknows that his use of "seeing" (Schauen) in the quotation above is notan isolated occurrence!  5. Internal sense and reflective introspectionOf course, I cannot even try to prove my main thesis here. But I want toThe Internal/External Metaphor http://www.phil.gu.se/posters/internal.html7 av 9 2009-02-23 16:17add a few more considerations, blocking a certain kind ofcounterargument. Why, says my imagined opponent, should we at all betempted to use a misleading spatial metaphor when thinking about ourknowledge of the mental? Of course it is fact that we tend to use spatialthinking in a lot of contexts — but as you yourself said above, we areusually not mislead. Why is thinking about self-knowledge different?Here is my answer:Each one of has relatively privileged access to the interior of his/herown body. We receive signals from receptors in our own joints, but notfrom those of our fellow-people; likewise we can feel that we arehungry or satiated in a way in which we cannot feel that our fellow-people are. Although much of the knowledge which derives from the"internal senses" does so in an unconscious and implicit way, many ofthe signals from these senses do become conscious. That is, they deliverconscious internal sensations, informing us about the status of our bodilyparts and processes.Now the epistemological privilege which goes with internal sense inthis sense is a contingent and relative one. It is just a coincidence ofnature that there are no nerves leading from your joints to my brain.Furthermore, an "outside" observer in the form of a surgeon with agastroscope is sometimes much better suited to judge the status of yourgastric surface than you are (without the gastroscope).But yet the privilege is a privilege, since in many situations you are theonly one who can tell anything at all about the interior state of you body.My simple suggestion is that the existence of this privilege may makeyou believe that the way you know your own mental states is essentiallysimilar to internal sense. And if you believe that, you may also bemislead to think that your mind is a spatial entity with an interior, just asyour body is. This is the confusion between internal sense and reflectiveintrospection which I have already hinted at.It is of course not difficult to see that the two are different. Taking ourdeparture from Husserl’s version of reflective introspection, thetranscendental reduction (bracketing the world), we can take the studyThe Internal/External Metaphor http://www.phil.gu.se/posters/internal.html8 av 9 2009-02-23 16:17of one’s perception of a tomato as our paradigm example of reflectiveintrospection. Such a study is not at all inwards-directed in the wayattending to one’s heartbeat is. But although the distinction is obviouswhen brought into the open, I am convinced that many philosopherssuffer from the confusion on a subconscious level.    AcknowledgmentsThis work was supported by a grant from The Swedish Council for Research in theHumanities and Social Sciences (HSFR). For helpful comments, I am grateful toAnna-Sara Malmgren, Erik Olsson, Filip Radovic and Susanna Radovic.Top of pageBack to Papers and PostersThe Internal/External Metaphor http://www.phil.gu.se/posters/internal.html9 av 9 2009-02-23 16:17

The "internal/external" metaphor in the philosophy of mind

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