Question about consciousness.. How can Metzinger say that there is no subject?

Question

What does he mean?

Answer 1

Metzinger's argument is that our ordinary concept of the self does not pick out any sort of individual substance that persists through time. All we find in the mind are ever-changing psychological states. One way to think of this is imagine one of those signs that are made up of a bunch of blinking light bulbs. On a baseball scoreboard, for example, the pattern of lights might give you the idea of a baseball traveling across the sign. But if you think about it, the "baseball" traveling across the scoreboard is just an illusion of substance. In actual fact, all of the light bulbs are stationary; they just sit there and blink. This is an example of the illusion of substance in a situation where there really is no substance (or at least there is no substance that is moving across the scoreboard, like there appears to be). Notice that there is substance of a sort – the scoreboard is substantial – but so long as we are caught up in the illusion of the baseball traveling across the screen, this illusory substance masks the real substance beneath the surface, and it masks the real nature of the apparent motion.

Now in the case of a scoreboard we are easily able to shift our attention to the substance of the scoreboard, and no longer be fooled by the illusion of substance. Achieving a similar shift of awareness with regard to the self is notoriously difficult (if, in fact, it is possible at all). To get an idea of how the self might not be substantial, you might try this thought experiment. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the entire universe was created just a second ago. Every atom was created in its current form and in the middle of whatever process necessary to create this moment in time as we currently experience it. Our sense of the past would be an illusion insofar as all of our memories, etc., would be created instantaneously along with everything else. We might also imagine that whatever process created the universe, subsequesntly destroys it within the same instant. From a metaphysical point of view this is an insanely rigorous form of skepticism, but the basic point is that we can imagine a way in which our sense of self as being a substance existing over time could be an illusion. Epistemologically, there would be no way to tell the difference between the universe as we think we know it, and the universe as an instantaneous flash of existence.

Metzinger is NOT arguing for this sort of radically skeptical metaphysics, but he is arguing that the self is just a mental representation that arises from patterns of neurological activity. In this case, your brain cell firing patterns are playing the role of the lights on a baseball scoreboard, and your sense of self – as a being that endures from one moment to the next – is like the "baseball" traveling across the sign. There is an underlying substance (the brain cells) and there is a sense of self (the pattern of activity), but there is no substance that travels through time. Our sense of self is just a momentary event that comes into being full-fledged based on the patterns of neural activity. Since the patterns of neural firing have a history, and since this history is represented in the instantaneously created sense of self, our sense of self is born with a full sense of history, but in fact there is no SUBSTANCE that experienced this history. The patterns of neural activity evolve over time, but these patterns of activity are not a substance in the sense that we normally think of a soul or individual being as a substance. So, of course, on this view we would have to say that not only does the self not survive the death of the body, but it does not even survive past any given moment of consciousness. The death of the body would be like the destruction of the scoreboard. Without the flashing lights there would be no illusion of a baseball traveling across a span of space, and even when the lights are flashing, the appearance of a baseball traveling is only an illusion.

In some respects, this is similar to a Buddhist view of self, which I believe Metzinger himself points out.