Dream, Death, and the Self

by J. J. Valberg

Overview

"Might this be a dream?" In this book, distinguished philosopher J. J. Valberg approaches the familiar question about dream and reality by seeking to identify its subject matter: what is it that would be the dream if "this" were a dream? It turns out to be a subject matter that contains the whole of the world, space, and time but which, like consciousness for Sartre, is nothing "in itself." This subject matter, the "personal horizon," lies at the heart of the main topics—the first person, the self, and the self in time—explored at length in the book.


The personal horizon is, Valberg contends, the subject matter whose center each of us occupies, and which for each of us ceases with death. This ceasing to be presents itself solipsistically not just as the end of everything "for me" but as the end of everything absolutely. Yet since it is the same for everyone, this cannot be. Death thus confronts us with an impossible fact: something that cannot be but will be.


The puzzle about death is one of several extraphilosophical puzzles about the self that Valberg discusses, puzzles that can trouble everyday consciousness without any contribution from philosophy. Nor can philosophy resolve the puzzles. Its task is to get to the bottom of them, and in this respect to understand ourselves—a task philosophy has always set itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691128597
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/23/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	520
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

J. J. Valberg is Senior Fellow of Philosophy at University College London. He is the author of The Puzzle of Experience.

Table of Contents

Preface     xv
Introduction: Philosophical Discovery and Philosophical Puzzles     1
Discovering What We Already Know     1
The Socratic Conception of Philosophical Discovery     2
Wittgenstein: Insidership and Philosophical Discovery     3
Philosophical Discovery and Resistance     6
The Presumptuousness of a Claim to Philosophical Discovery     7
Conceptual Analysis and the Communal Horizon     9
The Personal Horizon     11
Philosophical Anticipations of the Personal Horizon     13
Two Types of Philosophical Puzzle     18
The Extraphilosophical Puzzles     20
Dream
The Meaning of the Dream Hypothesis
The Dream Hypothesis and the Argument from Internality     27
Our Purpose in Raising the Dream Hypothesis     27
That the Dream/Reality Contrast Is Extrinsic to the Subject Matter of the Dream Hypothesis     28
The Argument from Internality     31
Dream and the Law of Excluded Middle     34
The Dream Hypothesis and Space     40
The Dream Hypothesis and Time     43
The Dream Hypothesis and the World     48
The Dream Hypothesis: Identity and the First Person     53
A Puzzle about Identity     53
Representation and Identity     54
A Way out of the Puzzle     57
The Dream Hypothesis and the First-Person Singular     61
The Subject versus the Dreamer of a Dream; The Positional Conception of the Self     64
Emerging from a Dream and the First Person     68
The Confusion of Standpoint     71
Dreams and the Infinity of Time     71
Time and the Confusion of Standpoint     74
Descartes and the Dream Hypothesis     76
Dream Skepticism versus Memory Skepticism     78
Real-Life Uncertainty about the Dream Hypothesis     80
The Subject Matter of the Dream Hypothesis     84
Is the Argument from Internality Valid?     84
The Subject Matter of the Dream Hypothesis and Grammatical Illusion     86
Alternative Formulations of the Dream Hypothesis     88
Reality     91
What Is the Subject Matter of the Dream Hypothesis?     94
The Horizonal versus Phenomenal Conception of Mind     97
Dream Skepticism
The Dream Hypothesis and the Skeptical Challenge     101
The Skeptical Argument     101
The Usual Argument for Dream Skepticism; Immanent versus Transcendent Dream Skepticism     105
The Uniqueness of Transcendent Dream Skepticism     108
Dream Skepticism and the External World     110
Nozick on the Tank Hypothesis     113
Responding to Dream Skepticism     119
Is the Dream Hypothesis a Pseudo Hypothesis?     119
Whether It Would Matter if This Were a Dream     122
The General Form of My Response to the Dream Hypothesis     126
I Am with Others: Metaphysical Equality and the Claim to Preeminence     128
The Commitment to (O)     131
Raising the Dream Hypothesis in Conversation: Forcing a Withdrawal to the First Person     134
Withdrawing to the First Person and the Horizonal Use of the First Person     136
Why It Is Rationally Impossible to Believe the Dream Hypothesis     138
The Space of Horizons     141
Other Minds     144
Skepticism and Solipsism     146
Death
The Meaning of Death
I Will Die     153
Dream and Death; Discovering the Meaning of Death     153
Being Disturbed by the Prospect of Death     154
That the Prospect of Death Holds Up Something Not Just Awful but Incomprehensible; Death and Self-Deception     157
Reacting to the Prospect of Death: A Text     160
Philosophical Reflection and Real-Life Disturbance      165
The Subject Matter and "Mineness" of My Death     168
The Prospect of Death     168
I Will Cease to Be     171
Death and the Stream of Mental States     173
The World and the Subject Matter of Death     177
The "Mineness" of My Death and the Horizonal Use of the First Person     181
Death and Solipsism
Solipsism     185
My Horizon and the Horizon     185
The Solipsism of Wittgenstein's Tractatus     188
Solipsism and Self-Consciousness     192
Kripke on the Solipsism of the Tractatus     195
Negativism     198
Death and the Truth of Solipsism     201
Solipsism and My Life with Others     201
Relativized Solipsism     204
Solipsism and the Meaning of Death     206
Qualifying the Nothingness of Death     209
The Awfulness and Incomprehensibility of Death     215
The Awfulness of Death     215
The Two Forms of the Impossibility of Death     219
The Temporal Impossibility of Death     220
Consciousness and Causation     222
The Solipsistic Impossibility of Death     227
The "Aloneness" of the Dying Subject     228
The Puzzles of Death and the Causation of Consciousness     232
The Self
Possibility and the Self
Imagination and the Cartesian Self     237
What Is "the Self"?     237
The Cartesian Argument     237
Imagination and Proof     240
Exhibiting Possibilities in Imagination     242
Imagination and Experiential Possibility     245
Experiential Possibilities and Possibilities of Essence     247
The Paralogism of Imagination     249
The Cartesian Reply     251
Metaphysical Possibility and the Self     255
Metaphysical Possibility     255
Metaphysical Possibility and the Self     257
The Logic of the Self     259
Naturalizing the Self     261
The Positional Conception of the Self
Preliminary Reflections on the Positional Conception of the Self     264
Nagel's Puzzle about "Being Me"     264
Individual Essence: Frege on Our "Particular and Primitive" Mode of Self-Presentation     265
My Body and Me (the Human Being That I Am)     269
The Multiplicity of the Phenomenology of the Subject Position     271
The Standing/Operative Ambiguity     273
Causal Centrality     275
Causation and the Phenomenology of the Subject Position     279
Orientational Centrality     281
The Sense in Which the Positional and Horizonal Conceptions of the Self Are "Always in Play"     282
The Phenomenology of the Subject Position     286
Perceptual Centrality: The Visual and Tactual Appearing of My Body     286
Perceptual Centrality: The Visual Appearing of Myself     290
Perceptual Centrality: Views of Myself     293
Centrality of Feeling: Figuring as the Space of Feeling     297
The Centrality of Feeling: The Sense in Which the Space of Feeling (My Body-Space) Is a "Space"     299
Centrality of Feeling: The Ontological Dependence of My Body-Space on My Body     304
Volitional Centrality: Acting/Will and the Phenomenology of the Subject Position     307
Volitional Centrality: The Phenomenology of Will     309
Volitional Centrality: The "Mineness" of My Actions     315
Volitional Centrality: Phenomenology and Causality     319
The First Person
The Uses of the First Person     321
Introduction     321
The Referential Use of the First Person     322
Reference and the Use of "I" as Subject/Object     324
"I Am Thinking.../I See..."     329
The Positional Use of the First Person      334
The Horizonal Use of the First Person     337
What Makes First-Person Reference First Personal?     342
The Meaning of the Question We Are Asking     342
Following the Rule for the Use of "I"     343
Inner First-Person Reference     346
Attitudes de Se     351
First-Person Reference and the Positional Conception of the Self     354
The First Person and Emptiness at the Center     355
Time and the Self
Temporalizing the Self     359
Introduction     359
Tense and the Phenomenology of the Subject Position     360
The Tense Asymmetry in the Phenomenology of the Subject Position     364
Tense and the Horizonal Self     366
The Problem of Personal Identity     370
The Special Philosophical Problem of Personal Identity: The Problem of First-Person Identity     370
Imagining Myself Persisting through a Change of Human Beings (Bodies)     373
Locke's View of Personal Identity     376
Persistence and the Horizon     380
Remembering; The Past-Self Ambiguity     382
Possibility, Personal Identity, and Naturalizing the Self     387
Time and the Horizon     394
The Oneness of the Horizon      394
Skepticism about the Oneness over Time of My Horizon     397
Kant's Third Paralogism: The Self "in Time" and the Self That "Time Is In"     400
My Past     408
The Availability in Memory of Past Events     408
The Argument from Pastness     410
Being Open to the Availability of the Past     413
Memory Images     417
Letting the Past Be Past     420
Moving from Inside to Outside the Sphere of Phenomenological Reflection     422
The Puzzle of Memory and the Puzzle of Experience     426
The Puzzle of Memory and the Problems of First-Person Identity     429
My Future     432
My Future versus the Future     432
My Future and My Brain: Jumping over Death     434
Parfit on My Future Self     439
Nozick's "Closest Continuer" Theory     444
My Future: The Puzzle of Division     450
Personal Identity and Possibility (Review)     450
The Possibility of Division     451
Parfit on Division     454
Other Responses to the Puzzle of Division: Nozick and Lewis     458
The Puzzle of Division and the Identity-Framework     463
Horizonal Doubling versus Splits within the Horizon      465
The Impossibility of Horizonal Doubling     468
The Unity of Consciousness     470
The Puzzle of Division     472
Conclusion: The Extraphilosophical Puzzles     474
The Extra-versus Purely Philosophical Puzzles     474
The Puzzle of Division as an Extraphilosophical Puzzle     476
The Puzzle of Division and the Puzzle of the Causation of Consciousness     478
Our Causal Entrapment in the World     480
The Extraphilosophical Puzzles and the Horizonal Subject Matter     482
Bibliography     487
Index     491

What People are Saying About This

Randall Havas

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"

From the Publisher

"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

Winblad

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

Editorial Reviews

"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."—-Barry Stroud, Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

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.

Times Literary Supplement - Barry Stroud

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.
— Barry Stroud

Times Literary Supplement