LICHTENBERG AND THE COGITO JOHN CAMPBELL

Draft paper to be read at the 2012 Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society & the Mind Association. The final version will be published in the third issue of the 2012 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.

Abstract Our use of I, or something like it, is implicated in our self-regarding emotions, in the concern to survive, and so seems basic to ordinary human life. But why does that pattern of use require a referring term? Dont Lichtenbergs formulations show how we could have our ordinary pattern of use here without the first person? I argue that what explains our compulsion to regard the first person as a referring term is our ordinary causal thinking, which requires us to find a persisting object as the mechanism that underpins the causal structure we naturally ascribe to the self. I thus argue against Peacockes picture, on which its the cogito that explains ones knowledge of ones own existence. 1. Transmission of Knowledge in the Cogito Christopher Peacocke is concerned to establish the epistemic interest of the cogito. In particular, he wants to show that the cogito can be used to generate knowledge of ones own existence: as youd put it, knowledge that I exist. He wants to show that the transitions in the cogito lead to knowledge, that the cogito is knowledge-yielding. As he explains it, the cogito involves an initial state and two transitions from it: First, Descartes engages in (1) a particular conscious thinking; second, he moves from this conscious event to the judgment (2) I am thinking; third, from (2) he infers (3) I exist. (2012, 110) The idea is that these transitions are not just sound, in that its not metaphysically possible to go wrong in making such a transition, but epistemically significant, in that they explain how knowledge of the conclusion is generated. I dont myself see that this is how knowledge of ones own existence is generated, and Ill try to set out what I take to be the key questions here. Then Ill look at Peacockes reasons for saying that the transitions are not just sound, but epistemically significant. I think its helpful here to consider a parallel with the case of perceptual demonstratives. There are two reasons for this. One is that perceptual demonstratives are easier to understand theoretically than the first person. In some ways they have more complexity, but they are not as flat-out confusing as the first person. Second, and relatedly, we tend to have perceptual demonstratives at the

back of our minds as a model for understanding the first person. So its helpful to be explicit about just where the parallels and contrasts are. How do we know of the existence of the particular concrete objects we see around us? Using the model of the cogito, we might suppose that it goes something like this: First, you have (1a) a visual perception of the object; second, you move from this conscious event to the judgment (2a) that man is smoking; third, from (2a) you infer (3a) that man exists. Does this kind of reasoning explain how knowledge of the existence of a perceived object is established? On first encountering this question, there are two conflicting reactions that I think its natural to have. One is that it gets things round the wrong way to suppose that you know of that mans existing on the basis of your knowledge that hes smoking. Rather, knowing that he exists is a precondition of your knowing that hes smoking. (Similarly, you might argue that knowing of your own existence is a precondition of knowing that youre thinking.) The other, conflicting reaction is that it is only on the basis of some properties he seems to have that you can have singled out a particular man at all. Perhaps smoking is not the best example of a property that allowed you to single him out in the first place, but presumably there are such properties, and isnt your knowledge that he had them what generates your knowledge of his existence? (Similarly, you might argue that its your knowledge of your own thinking that allows you to single yourself out in the first place, so your knowledge of your own existence has to be dependent on your knowledge of your own thinking.) Now in the case of perceptual demonstratives (and also in the case of the first person) the first of these reactions seems to me correct, and the second mistaken. Its true that we have to single out perceived objects on the basis of properties we perceive them to have. But it doesnt follow that we must know the objects to have those properties. There are two different roles that properties can play in visual perception of objects. They can be used as the basis on which one selects an object to which to attend. And they can figure as the aspects of the attended object that we are accessing. (I take the terminology here from Huang and Pashler 2007). Suppose, for example, that you are out hunting, and you spot a tiger on the veldt. Then it may well be that it is on the basis of its color that you have been able to see the thing against its background. It doesnt follow that you have attended to the color itself; all that you are concerned about, after all, is the presence of the tiger, and classifying its color is of no interest to you. You can use a property as the basis on which you identify an object without knowing that the object has that property. This seems obvious if you think about the tigers ability to spot you. The tiger has some rudimentary color vision, and the whole point of its color vision is to allow the animal to differentiate objects from their backgrounds; here color vision may be entirely instrumental for object perception. The animal may have no interest whatever in color for its own sake, so it may be quite incapable of accessing the colors of objects.

It cant even be said that when you identify an object using some such property as color, and form the judgment that it is, say, a tiger, that you are making some implicit assumption as to the color of the thing. Even if there is something unusual about the lighting, or something wrong with your color vision, still, so long as, one way or another, it has managed to differentiate the object from its background, it doesnt matter for your claim to know that the thing is a tiger. Pointing out that your color vision was unreliable would not undermine your claim to knowledge that this is a tiger. So in the case of perceptual demonstratives, it seems to be a mistake to suppose that knowledge of the properties of the object must underpin your ability to identify the object in the first place. It does also seem to be true that your perceptual knowledge of the various properties of the objects depends on an antecedent, implicit assumption of the existence of the thing. When you use perception to access various properties of a single thing, the perceptual techniques you are using all operate on the implicit assumption that the thing exists. The whole business of keeping track of an object over time, viewing it from different angles, perhaps through different sense-modalities, depends on an implicit assumption that the thing exists. In the absence of the assumption that the thing exists, the thing could not function to organize the ways in which perception is collecting information about the world. If you thought that there were, for example, only a series of random, transient shadows and reflections in front of you, then you could not organize your perceptions so that they could generate propositional knowledge of a single thing. The visual system is an object-detector. When it has found an object it operates on the assumption that there is a single thing there, in order to determine its characteristics. And you lean on that assumption of existence when you rely in vision in making propositional judgments about the object. Suppose then that we consider again our transitions, from: (1a) a visual perception of the object; to (2a) that man is smoking; to (3a) that man exists. If what I have said so far is right, we should not think of knowledge of (3a) as being generated on the basis of knowledge of (2a). Although perception of the properties of the thing may be required to identify it in the first place, it doesnt follow that knowledge of the properties of the thing is required for one to identify it. So that positive motivation for thinking that knowledge of existence depends on knowledge of properties seems to be mistaken. Moreover, the use of (1a) to generate the propositional knowledge (2a) already depends on the assumption that the object exists. So its difficult to see how (1a) and (2a) could be regarded as generating knowledge of (3a), the existence of the thing. Lets go back now to the cogito. Can it be regarded as explaining how you know of your own existence? The picture I would recommend here is that knowledge of your own existence is already required for the transition from (1) having a particular conscious thought, to (2) knowledge that you are thinking. The argument is that regarding (1) the mere having of a conscious thought, as warranting (2) the judgment that one is thinking, already presupposes that one

exists. The transition from (1) to (2) therefore cannot be thought of as grounding or explaining ones knowledge of ones own existence. I think that resistance to this idea is likely to come from the suspicion that knowledge of some of ones own properties is going to be needed if one is to identify the thing, the self, at all. And if thats so, then knowledge of ones own psychological properties is a natural starting-point. As Ive just said, though, even in the case of a perceptual demonstrative, it doesnt seem to be true that knowledge of the properties of a thing is needed in order for one to identify it. And in any case, the identification of the self seems to work in a quite different way to the identification of a perceived object. In the case of identification of the self, there is no need to differentiate the object from its background. One easy way to see this is to suppose that you do have a perceptual or quasi-perceptual way of delineating the self as figure from ground. Suppose you express it by the term, that one. It will still make sense to ask the question, But is that one me?. First-personal reference to the self is being achieved by the operation of the token-reflexive rule, that any token of I refers to whoever produced it. The operation of this rule is different to any mode of identification that depends on the self being delineated as figure from ground. We do know of our own existence, and there is therefore a question as to how we do know of our own existence. I am saying that the cogito does not answer the question, it does not explain how it is that one knows of ones own existence. Peacocke makes two points which he says are enough to explain why the transitions in the cogito lead to knowledge: (a) Its in the nature of the concept thinking that anyone who has it takes their own conscious thinking as conclusive reason for self-applying the concept. (b) if someone judges a content on grounds that are, as a matter of the nature of one or more concepts in the content, conclusive grounds for judging the content, then the content so judged is knowledge. (2012, 120-121) The trouble with these principles is that they do not allow us to distinguish the case in which the possession of knowledge is explained by a transition that is, the case in which engaging in a transition is what generates the knowledge from the case in which having engaged in the transition is merely sufficient for one to have the knowledge, because the knowledge is a precondition of ones having been able to regard the transition as warranted. Consider the idea that its in the nature of the concept of thinking that one who has it should be able to self-ascribe thoughts. That seems quite plausible, if we assume that the person who has the concept of thinking also has the concept of the self, the concept they would express using I, or something similar. But that possession of the concept of the self may already require that one knows of ones own existence. So if you engage in the transitions of the cogito, we can be confident that you know of your own existence. But that is not the same thing as saying that the cogito explains how that you know of your own existence. Another way to put the same point is this. Suppose you are genuinely openminded about your own existence. And then you are struck by a conscious thought. Its hard to see how you could regard yourself as having the right to move from that to I am thinking. At best, you might say something like, I am

thinking, if there is any such person. Or better, one might use the kind of formulation proposed by Lichtenberg: there is thinking (Lichtenberg 1990, 168). But from such a step, you evidently couldnt get to the conclusion of the cogito, the judgment that you yourself exist. I think that Peacockes response to this is, in effect, that the intermediate position envisaged by Lichtenberg isnt available. Either one doesnt have the concept thinking at all, in which case one obviously cant use formulations like there is thinking. Or else one does have the concept thinking, in which case one must have the capacity to self-ascribe thoughts using the first person. Even if this response is correct, of course, it doesnt rescue the claim of the cogito to explain how one knows of ones own existence. It only shows that the situation is even worse than Lichtenberg envisaged: if one is in the position of trying to ground knowledge of ones own existence, then one cant even recognize thinking when one does it. But the postulated dependence of the concept of thinking on the first person seems worth looking at further. 2. Use vs. Reference for the First Person I want to look at this question in a slightly broader context. There are two aspects to our ordinary understanding of the first person, and the puzzle is to understand the relation between them. One aspect, and much the most striking, is the pattern of use that we make of the first person. By this I mean the inferences, and more generally, the transitions in thought that we make that involve the first person. So patterns of use will include the ways in which you make first-person judgments about your own location on the basis of perception, and the ways in which you act on the basis of first-person judgments and intentions. But it includes a lot more, much of what we regard as most distinctively human about our ways of thinking. It includes your ways of thinking about your own past and future, and the way in which the first person is embedded in many of our most basic concerns and desires, all the self-regarding emotions such as pride or shame, and the concern to survive. The second aspect of our ordinary understanding of the first person is that we take it to be a referring term. As its sometimes put, having a first-person perspective on the world depends on grasping the possibility of there being a thirdperson perspective on one. More prosaically, we might say that an understanding of the first person depends on understanding the possibility of there being informative identities involving the first person. The key question is, what is the relation between these two aspects of your understanding of the first person, your grasp of the pattern of use and your knowledge of the reference of the sign? A Lichtenbergean approach gives us a way of posing the question quite sharply. Couldnt there be a language in which there is has a similar pattern of use to that we have for the first person, but theres no related referring term? So, for example, I could make present-tense psychological judgments like, there is toothache, in the same way that I currently make firstperson judgments like I have toothache. As we ordinarily use it, I seems to be a referring term. The natural question raised by Lichtenbergs challenge is why one couldnt have a way of reporting ones own thoughts that did not require the use of a referring term.

In Philosophical Remarks, Wittgenstein recommended using Lichtenbergean formulations to replace the first person in reports of immediate experience. He said, We could adopt the following way of representing matters: if I, L.W., have toothache, then that is expressed by means of the proposition There is toothache. (Philosophical Remarks, 58) It would be possible to do this and still use proper names to ascribe psychological states to other people, and that seems to be what Wittgenstein had in mind. Although he doesnt put it this way, the simplest way of getting the effect would be to say, N.N. has toothache if in the same psychological state as L.W. when there is toothache. Now when discussing Lichtenberg, Peacocke emphasizes the need for reports of psychological state to be relativized. But what Wittgensteins example shows is that you can have relativization, and indeed relativization to persons, without first-personal reference. You can make the distinction between N.N. has toothache, and there is toothache. You use formulations of the form, there is . only in reporting the states of one particular person, namely yourself. But it doesnt follow that you are referring to that person. An analogy might be helpful. Its possible to talk about the time of day without so much as having the conception of a time zone. You can talk about morning, noon and night, for example, or particular numerically identified times, such as 5 oclock, without ever having realized that there are time zones other than your own. When you specify the time of day at which something happened, you are specifying the time relative always to some particular time-zone, namely, the one you occupy. It doesnt follow that you are referring to that time-zone. You can, of course, learn about time-zones. And when you do that, you can refer to those time-zones and specify times relative to them. But you can still keep in play your original language, in which you talk about times without making reference to any time-zone at all. In fact, thats what most of us do. I said that there are two aspects to our understanding of the first person. One is the distinctive pattern of use. The other is our understanding of the first person as a referring term. Now on the face of it, we could have all of our ordinary pattern of use in the Lichtenbergean language, without having the first person as a referring term. Philosophers have sometimes argued that the use of the first person is essential to our ordinary thinking. Recall Perrys example. Pushing a supermarket trolley around a supermarket, you realize that some shopper is pouring sugar onto the floor. It takes a while to realize that its not someone else who is doing this. You express your realization by saying, I am making a mess. This is intended to exhibit the indispensability of the first person (Perry 1993). But wouldnt it have been possible to report this by using a Lichtenbergean There is making a mess? When one ascribes making a mess to other people, one does so using a proper name or other referring term. Otherwise, one says simply, There is making a mess, and this has all the usual consequences, whatever they are, for ones sense of responsibility for the action, willingness to clear it up and so on. Tyler Burge extended Perrys point to the psychological. To bring out the parallel, suppose you find some philosophical argument scribbled on a piece of

paper. You read it through and realize that the writer is seriously confused, the position endorsed is actually contradictory. You wonder if you should track down the author and clear up this confusion. You do have a choice about this. But then the alleged indispensability of the first person shows up when you ask how to express the moment of realization, when it strikes you that the writing is your own and does indeed express your own long-held beliefs. Then you think, I am the one who is confused. In the light of this first-personal realization, you have no option but to begin to sort out your thinking, to clear things up. Burges argument is that a full understanding of thought and reason requires not just that you be able to register the occurrence of thinking and evaluate it critically, but that you should be able to recognize those cases in which it is rationally immediate that your evaluation of the thinking enjoins shaping it in accord with the rational evaluation (1998, 257). And it is for this purpose, he thinks, that the first person is essential (257-258). The trouble with that line of thought is this. Suppose we acknowledge that a full understanding of what thought is does demand that one recognize the distinction between cases in which ones evaluation of the thinking has immediate consequences for ones ongoing engagement with that thinking, and cases in which engagement is optional. We as yet have no explanation of why this distinction has to be marked by means of a referring term, such as I. Burge merely remarks that we do in fact mark this distinction with the use of I, and that I does in fact seem to be a referring term (258-259). In the absence of an explanation for why it has to be a referring term that fills this role, the possibility is open that it could be Lichtenbergean formulations themselves that have this special role, connecting the evaluation of thinking with an immediate rational demand to engage with the thinking itself so as to shape it in line with the evaluation. In a Lichtenbergean language you could reflect on your thoughts and conclude, for example, there is confusion, which would have all the usual consequences, whatever they are, for ones sense of responsibility over the confusion, ones attempting to clarify thought, and so on. This point applies quite generally. Consider, for example, the selfregarding emotions, such as pride or shame. If you behaved badly, shouting at that child on the bus, for example, you might think, there was shouting at that child, and as a consequence, feel all the shame you would now experience on thinking, I shouted at that child. If you did particularly well, behaving handsomely to the person who beat you at something, for instance, you might think, there was losing gallantly, and feel the sense of pride you would now feel on thinking, I lost gallantly. Or bitter resentment, or whatever. On this picture, the pattern of use associated with the there is locution is the same as the pattern of use associated with the first person, only there is no reference to an object with there is .. In the case of the first person, we have that pattern of use, and we also have reference to a particular object. But these are independent aspects of our understanding of the first person. The point of raising this position is not to present it as a philosophical result, but to consider the challenge it presents. If you dont believe this position, the problem is to explain why not. I think thats really the problem raised by Lichtenbergs comment. What does the pattern of use of the first person have to do with its role as a referring term?

So far, Ive been putting the point in modal terms: it would be possible to have the pattern of use that we associate with I associated instead with there is, so that we could have the pattern of use without singular reference. In the end, though, the key question here is not a modal one. The key question is about explanation, about what explains what. Even if you have a strong intuition that its not, in the end, possible to have the pattern of use without first-personal reference, the question is, why is that? What work does the reference of the term do in generating the pattern of use for the term? Is there, for example, some way in which your use of I has to be grounded in your knowledge of the reference of the term? 3. The Self as a Thing Someone once said to a friend of mine, You cant really believe that when you die, thats it, you dont exist any longer. No-one really thinks that. I think it is worth reflecting on what is going on when people make such remarks. There are certainly many people who do think like that, who find the idea that I will survive physical death, absolutely compelling. Similarly, there are people who find absurd the idea that they came into existence only with their physical birth. For these people, its compelling that I existed before I was born. Now when people make these remarks, one analysis of what is going on is that in introspection, they find themselves confronted with what appears to be a sempiternal soul, and that this is what grounds those claims to continuing existence. But I dont think thats a persuasive analysis; Hume was surely right that there is no such encounter in introspection (1739/1978, I.iv.vi.). The situation seems to be rather that for these people, the compulsion to believe in surviving physical death is not grounded in anything else. If they believe in an immortal non-physical soul, it is because they are looking for an object that meets that condition of survival, can find no suitable physical object, and so conclude that the thing must be immaterial. The use that they are making of the first person is not grounded in their knowledge of its reference. Rather, the use comes first, and it guides the attempt to find the thing the term refers to. I mention these cases because it seems reasonably clear what is going on in them. But I want to suggest that this is in fact the general case with our use of the first person. Most of us do, like Descartes, have a compelling yen to think, I exist, but that is not grounded in knowledge of the reference of the term. Our yen to judge I exist is simply one member of a larger family: our core use of the first person including, for example, the complex weave of self-regarding emotions that we have, including pride and shame and the concern to survive. This whole pattern of use is not grounded in our knowledge of reference. It is fundamental to human life, but it is not rationally supported by something else. In Derek Parfits writings on the self we do find a serious attempt to ground the pattern of use for I in the identification of a thing as its referent. Parfit says that most of us are non-reductionists about the self, that we believe that our continued existence is a deep further fact, distinct from physical and psychological continuity (Parfit 1984, 281). Parfit says that belief in a Cartesian Ego is the bestknown version of this view (275). According to Parfit, taking I to refer to a Cartesian Ego is a ground for our ordinary pattern of use for I, our immersion in

self-regarding emotions, the concern to survive, and so on. But things change when you move to a reductionist view, on which continued existence just involves physical and psychological continuity. Then there is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others. (281). Now this contrast seems to me overdrawn. It is true that when you identify the self third-personally, as a mere collection of brain, body, experiences, and causal relations between them, then the question: Why care particularly about that? seems forceful. But exactly the same is true if you identify a Cartesian Ego third-personally, as merely one unit of ghostly stuff among many. The question, Why care particularly about that? is equally forceful in this case. The fact is that for ordinary humans, our ordinary pattern of use for I has a visceral grip on us, and that grip is not grounded in knowledge of what the term stands for. Thats not to say that there cant be variation among people, or change in a single person across time, in exactly how I figures in ones thinking and reasoning. But this kind of variation and change, while it can certainly be a response to reflection, is in a sense intra-mural. It is a matter of weighing and balancing the various conflicting forces that are all there already in our ordinary use of the first person. There is then a question as to why we should think of the first person as a referring term at all. Should we not just take the pattern of use, and let go the idea that there is reference here? I think that we actually do, in our ordinary thinking, have quite a serious commitment to the idea that I refers, even though our knowledge of reference is not what grounds our use of I. Let me first remark that our pattern of use of the first person is heavily invested in the idea that the self is causally significant. We think of the later self as causally depending on the earlier self. We think of memories as causally dependent on earlier perceptions and actions. We think of the later physical condition of the self as causally dependent on its earlier condition and activities. If we summarize the total later characteristics of the self as Y, and the total earlier characteristics of the self as X, then we can say that X causes Y. But this is only the beginning of the ways in which we think of the self as causally significant. Other ways in which we think of the self as causally significant are displayed by the sense of responsibility for ones actions highlighted by Perry, or the capacity for shaping of ones own reasoning discussed by Burge. Or again, a psychological engagement with the social world demands the idea of oneself as causally engaged with other people, acting on them and responding to them. I suggest that our ordinary thinking about I as a referring term involves an application to this special network of causal relations an idea that we ordinarily have about causation quite generally. I want to spend a little time laying out this point about the framework of our ordinary thinking about causation, and then return to the special case of persons. One aspect of our ordinary notion of causation has to do with what makes a difference to what. For X to be a cause of Y is, roughly, for it to be the case that had something happened to make a difference to X, there would have been a difference in Y (cf. Woodward 2003 for a worked-out development of this idea). Randomized controlled trials, to determine whether, for example, chlorine in the water supply prevents tooth decay, illustrate this way of thinking about causation. The trials establish the truth of counterfactuals about what would happen were chlorine to be put into the water supply. There is, however, another strand in our

thinking about causation. If youre told that chlorine in the water supply does make a difference to dental health, a natural question is, Whats the mechanism?. It is not easy, and perhaps not possible, to give a fully general analysis of the notion of a mechanism. But there are some prototypical cases of mechanisms. The very simplest case of a mechanism is the continued existence of a single physical object. We think of concrete objects as the prototypical mechanisms by which causal influence is transmitted over time, and we think of the movement of concrete objects as the prototypical mechanism by which causal influence is transmitted from place to place. Suppose that you have two oil heaters, one at place A and the other at place B. You switch on the one at place A, and theres no change in the temperature of the air at A. There is, however, a rise in the temperature in the air at B. Suppose we establish through repeated trials that this is not just a correlation, switching the thing on at place A always makes a difference to the temperature at B. This is a puzzling phenomenon, and needs some further explanation. As Ive described it so far, we have here some kind of action at a distance that calls out for further explanation. In contrast, consider the case in which you have a heater at place A. You switch it on, and move it to place B. There is now a rise in temperature at place B. There is nothing puzzling about this. The movement of the heater itself is the mechanism by which causal influence was transmitted from A to B. This is a simple example, but it illustrates the pervasive idea that when X makes a difference to Y, there must be some mechanism by which it does it, and that in the simplest cases, that mechanism is a single concrete object. Concrete objects are the prototypical mechanisms for the transmission of causal influence. Consider now the various causal patterns in which the self is implicated: in social causation, interaction with ones environment, and the transmission of causal influence over time. We could think of the self as a difference-making causal structure, entirely defined by patterns of counterfactual dependence. But I think thats not usually how we think of the reference of I. We think of the person as one of the prototypical mechanisms that sustain these counterfactual structures. I said that the usual pattern of use of the first person, with its articulation as a social, environmentally engaged, temporally extended differencemaking structure has a visceral grip on us. But so too does the idea that there must be a single concrete thing that is the mechanism sustaining that structure. Thats the source of the idea that there must be a non-physical soul. Its not that we are somehow subject to the illusion that we are, in some perceptual or quasiperceptual way, encountering such a thing. Ordinary introspection does not provide any illusion of an encounter with a non-physical soul. The source of the idea is elsewhere. Im suggesting that it is provided by (a) the ordinary pattern of use of the first person, which includes, amongst many other self-regarding emotions, the compelling impulse to suppose not only that we currently exist but that we can survive physical death, and (b) the demand that the person be regarded as a single concrete object sustaining this difference-making structure. There seems to be no physical object that could sustain that role, so we are driven to suppose that it must be a non-physical thing, the soul. Of course, many people now find this hypothesis of a non-physical soul incredible, but that really presents a problem. We now have to resist the natural idea that one can survive physical death, and we do have to find a physical object that can be regarded as the concrete object constituting the mechanism that sustains the difference-making structure. There is

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no guarantee that we will be able to find such a thing, though the human animal is not a bad candidate. On the picture I am recommending, there is an insight in the cogito, namely that there is a distinctive tie between the self-ascription of psychological states and ones knowledge of the self. The connection is that what differentiates the self from other concrete objects is that we think of the self as the enduring mechanism that sustains a number of difference-making patterns that involve psychological, and not only physical states. But that is all. We cannot regard knowledge of ones own psychological states as somehow grounding ones knowledge of ones own existence, because it is only ones knowledge of ones own existence that allows one to regard ones own psychological states as providing a warrant for their ascription to oneself. Rather, the yen to ascribe existence to oneself is simply one among many aspects of the pattern of use of the first person that humans find compelling. We do regard ourselves as taking on a commitment with this pattern of use, namely, to find a single concrete object that can sustain that causal structure. This is, I have suggested, an aspect of our more general causal reasoning. And there is no a priori guarantee that there is such a thing.

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REFERENCES Burge, Tyler. 1998. Reason and the First Person. In Wright, Crispin, Barry C. Smith and Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Knowing Our Own Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huang, Liqiang and Harold Pashler. 2007. A Boolean Map Theory of Visual Attention. Psychological Review 114, 599-631. Hume, David. 1739/1978. University Press. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford

Lichtenberg, George Christoph. 1990. Aphorisms, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, London and New York: Penguin Classics. Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peacocke, Christopher. 2012. Descartes Defended. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementay Volume LXXXVI, 109-125. Perry, John. 1993. The Problem of the Essential Indexical. In The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1975. Philosophical Remarks. Edited by Rush Rhees; translated by Raymond Hargreaves and Roger White. Oxford: Blackwell. Woodward, James. 2003. Making Things Happen: Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A Theory of Causal

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