Do you, when you feel hunger, not feel the contractions of your muscles near your stomach? — Marty

No, you feel hunger. Nothing about suffering a muscle contraction will let you know that you have muscles. Feelings are not information about the objects felt, nor the objects feeling.

How does an adult understand that hunger requires an outside source to satiate it, without feeling hungry? He can't in advance search for something that he has no understanding of. The understanding would have to come first, and then once he understands his hunger, he begins to go outside to search for what can stop it. — Marty

It is exactly the opposite. A hungry child has no understanding whatsoever of its hunger or how to satiate it. All it has are instinctual compulsions that act in response to the hunger. It's only once these satiations take on regular patterns that 'objects' begin to come to the fore as capable of satiating that hunger. Food is itself an objectification of hunger, just as physical objects generally are a kind of objectification of felt spatial possibilities.

No, you feel hunger. Nothing about suffering a muscle contraction will let you know that you have muscles. Feelings are not information about the objects felt, nor the objects feeling. — The Great Whatever

Well, it's not a detached object. It's your body. There's obviously a difference between feeling your arm, and feeling your broken arm, right? Or say an extended metal piece that might be fulfilling that role. The prior is vital, and part of an embodied consciousness, and the latter sort of a lifeless thing - so there's a clear lack of "just raw sensations". Pain seems to indicate a vital part of you if it's in a particular area. Also, these don't seem like raw feelings to me, they seem to be a type of understanding. What do you think is particularly convincing in Henry's work that makes you think it has no directed intentionality? I don't buy into the intentionality project altogether - there's some work in Levinas that attempts to diverge from that type of philosophy. Anxiety, for example, seems to be one of the few types of moods that're unintentional. It has a general "intentionality" towards nothingness.

It is exactly the opposite. A hungry child has no understanding whatsoever of its hunger or how to satiate it. All it has are instinctual compulsions that act in response to the hunger. It's only once these satiations take on regular patterns that 'objects' begin to come to the fore as capable of satiating that hunger. Food is itself an objectification of hunger, just as physical objects generally are a kind of objectification of felt spatial possibilities. — The Great Whatever

I'm not sure how you can have no understanding of hunger if it's affecting you. Surely, it's not that type of know-how of hunger that correlates it to specific neurons in the brain, but it seems it's in a sense at least vulgar. Otherwise, I'm not sure what we're later rationalizing it into an object.

Can you sort of elaborate the reversal you have in mind more?

What do you think is particularly convincing in Henry's work that makes you think it has no directed intentionality? — Marty

This is not something that you need any philosopher's work to see. It's just pointing out that any purportedly intentional experiences are themselves composed of a non-intentional substrate (this much even Husserl admits), and that a good deal of them, not only every day in waking life but pretty much all of them at the start of life, do not have any intentional object whatsoever at which they're directed. The non-intentional is prior to the intentional and survives without it – and, if I am right, the 'intentional' is only the purportedly intentional in the end.

I'm not sure how you can have no understanding of hunger if it's affecting you — Marty

The feeling itself tells you nothing about how it arises, how it will go away, what controls it, what effects it has on anything, or even whether there is anything. What it does do is enforce a kind of compulsion on the one suffering it, and enough compulsions in enough directions can develop into a sort of 'world' that pieces together the various pathways that these compulsions can move along. If I am right, this never amounts to anything like intentionality, despite what philosophers have traditionally believes.

You need not understand at all what the source of or cure of your suffering is, just because the suffering affects you.

How am I even supposed to respond to this? — The Great Whatever

I eat every day at pretty much the same time. If I miss this eating time, then I get hungry. Maybe you always wait until you get hungry before you eat, but I know with certainty that it is not hunger which compels me to eat.

First up, I thought we were speaking about animals, not about humans. — John

Do you not consider a human being to be an animal? If you want to understand what causes animals to behave the way that they do, why not look at yourself?

In any case, you say that "at the first level it is habitual", but that can't be right since otherwise newborn animals would not feed. — John

This is just an issue of the direction of ordering, As evident to me, my awareness, habit is first, then instinct is deeper.

You say that "at the deeper level it's instinctual" but what could the instinct to eat be other than the felt urge to eat? — John

The instinct to eat, is the deeper urge to eat. The instinct to eat is not the feeling of hunger, it is classed with the habit of eating, which is clearly not the feeling of hunger, that is the point. These are two distinct things. Sometimes, if I don't eat when I normally do, I get hungry. If I reflect on this feeling, I will associate it with not having eaten, then I may get a strong desire to eat if I cannot quell this thought. That association, between the feeling of hunger, and not having eaten when I normal eat, takes a fairly high degree of intelligence to draw. I do not think that primitive animals have the degree of intelligence necessary to make this association.

Do you think that a worm has the intelligence required to make an association between the feeling of hunger, and not having eaten when it should have? Do you see the issue here? The instinct to eat compels us to eat when we ought to eat. Hunger only begins, as a feeling, if we have not eaten when we should have. Therefore hunger is not what compels us to eat, it only begins as a feeling, if the mechanism which compels us to eat has failed to do so.

One would do well to reflect on Plato's disassociation of pleasure and pain. Pleasure is demonstrably something other than a relief from pain. To place pleasure and pain as logical opposites, pleasure being logically equivalent to not-pain, is a mistaken approach

Yes, I agree that we can establish such a distinction, whether it is a "proper" or improper one is an open issue, but in any case I can't see the relevance to the argument of our being able to establish such a distinction. Animals cannot establish such a distinction, and I think we must imagine that they eat when they feel the pangs of hunger, if food is available, or they go in search for it if it not. Alternatively we may say that they eat when they feel the urge, but whatever way we want to express it ,it is a feeling, an awareness, within the animal that motivates it to eat. And I had thought that you were arguing against TGW's position regarding "inner affection". — John

What I am arguing against, is the idea that human beings, as well as other animals, are "aware" of inner feelings, like the urge to eat. I think that the fact that we refer to these as "instincts" demonstrates that we are not aware of such things. An instinct is something which motivates us which we are not aware of.

The point was just that if you stop something from feeling hunger, it can die as a result, vitiating the (IMO absurd) claim that hunger doesn't compel eating — The Great Whatever

Since, as I pointed out to John, hunger only kicks in when the mechanism which compels us to eat when we should eat, fails to do so, then preventing something from feeling hunger would not cause that thing to die immediately. And, we all die eventually.

Hunger is not a signaling of any state of the body whatsoever to the organism, who need know nothing objective about its own body at all in order to be hungry. — The Great Whatever

If this is the case, then by what principle do you argue that hunger is a type of awareness? This is what is at issue here. To class "that which compels one to eat" as a type of awareness, we have to stretch, to absurd extents, the description of one, or both of these two.

I know with certainty that it is not hunger which compels me to eat. — Metaphysician Undercover

Since, as I pointed out to John, hunger only kicks in when the mechanism which compels us to eat when we should eat, fails to do so — Metaphysician Undercover

This is insane.

Starvation is likely to intensify self-consciousness because it's a crisis. It's something that will be remembered. Myths will be told about it... how God provided little round pieces of bread called manna.

Of coarse, the Self that looms large because it faced down annihilation is something seen in the rear view mirror. I'm alienated from it. I'm just its shadow.

... hunger only kicks in when the mechanism which compels us to eat when we should eat, fails to do so — Metaphysician Undercover

Fascinating. Can we apply this to other appetites too? I mean it totally explains my sex life.

This is insane. — The Great Whatever

To you, it appears to be insane, because you haven't taken the time to consider the reality of these issues. You simply accept as true, something which appears as logical to you, without delving into the complexities of the issue. Plato did much work on this subject, work which you display complete ignorance of.

Fascinating. Can we apply this to other appetites too? I mean it totally explains my sex life. — Baden

Yes, I think it applies to all the appetites, this is the principle which Plato pointed to through many dialogues, and it is fundamental to morality. Pain and pleasure cannot be opposed in a system of logic, as the sophists tried. This is because, as Plato demonstrates, pleasure is not simply a relief from pain, nor is it a lack of pain. We naturally seek pleasures which cannot be described as a lack of pain, or a relief from pain. Consistent with this, many activities such as sex, and eating, are naturally sought because they are pleasurable, they are not sought as a relief from pain.

The ramifications of this principle, into moral ethics, are extensive. We are inclined to act toward a perceived good; not because we are presently suffering in a state of deprivation, but because we apprehend some form of pleasure which may be derived from that apprehended good. This allows us to remove pain and suffering as a necessity in obtaining the good. We can define "the good" in relation to a pleasure that is sought, rather than in relation to a prior pain or deprivation.

The fact that this fundamental moral principle is utilized, and works, is evidence that our actions are not primarily motivated by a desire to relieve ourselves from pain. The principal motivation of action is a perceived pleasure. This allows us to develop morally, through seeking rewards, without having to be first punished.

To you, it appears to be insane, because you haven't taken the time to consider the reality of these issues. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, it appears to me to be insane because it is.

This is insane. — The Great Whatever

In fact MU points to problems for the position you want to promote.

Do we eat because we are hungry, because it is a habit, or because eating is pleasurable? Clearly if you want to promote some simplistic position here, you need to be able to show how you deal with this complexity of the issue.

groan

Actually, it appears to me to be insane because it is. — The Great Whatever

It appears to be X, therefore it is X, is faulty logic. You have no premise to exclude the possibility of mistake. You can look at others, and draw your conclusions about feelings and emotions, based in some appearances, and unsound deductive reasoning, or you can look at your own feelings and emotions and see how far they are from the logic you wish to apply. You seem to derive some pleasure from the former.

Referring back to the op, not only do we reflect, or introspect, when we desire to please others, but when we see others insisting on false principles, such as you do, then we are forced to reflect upon our inner selves, to determine the truth. In either case, it starts with a recognition of the other.

Yes, I think it applies to all the appetites... — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed, I don't have sex out of sexual hunger, I do it out of habit. My sexual hunger only kicks in when that mechanism that compels me to have sex fails. Of course, the only problem with this is that my lack of sexual hunger means I can never perform, so I never actually end up having sex. Weird.

Indeed, I don't have sex out of sexual hunger, I do it out of habit. My sexual hunger only kicks in when that mechanism that compels me to have sex fails. Of course, the only problem with this is that my lack of sexual hunger means I can never perform, so I never actually end up having sex. Weird. — Baden

Maybe what's weird is these kinds of mechanical accounts of mentality - hunger or whatever as bare qualia.

If you are forever constructing local observables in this fashion, you will forever be failing to deal with the phantasmal thing that is the "self" - the supposed observer.

That is why if you are going to talk about a construct like "hunger", it would have to break with the notion of it being just "the pangs I experience right here and now". What is hunger when it is stretched out over the kind of temporal span of a habit? Is it a concept rather than a percept now? Is it some very dilute version of the much more occasionally intense thing?

What TGW actually wants to argue is as usual quite opaque. He evades close questioning. But the problems with any kind of qualia-based account of mentality are pretty self-evident. It simply shows how strong a grip a mechanical notion of causality has on the popular imagination.

Putting a cherry on MU's shit sandwich isn't going to make it any more edible. Hmm, suddenly I'm not hungry anymore...

Well, all I can say is I feel the same way. There is absolutely nothing radical or new in what you are talking about. It is old hat in the oldest sense of hat. It was in Aristotle, it was in Ryle. Ask yourself this: if what you think is so radical, why does everyone agree with you? Why is everyone tripping over themselves to say things like the title of your OP, and why is any mention of Henry in a serious context made in order to dismiss him as vociferously as possible? — The Great Whatever

Hey, I'm not making any claim to 'radicality' here, but I don't think it's exactly a stretch to say that the idea that recognizing other-selves came 'first' phylogenetically is counter-intuitive. Perhaps it's even true that certain strands of philosophy and science have often questioned the self-evidence of self-consciousness of whathaveyou, but outside of a few small, academic circles, it's simply laughable to think that these ideas are as pedestrian as you'd think. The 'myth of the given', to use Sellars's term, still haunts all our discourse on consciousness.

And besides, not even 'advocates' can seem to discuss this properly; pretty much no one in this thread is actually discussing the OP, and as usual, things have taken a turn into qualia and other such mundane issues. No discussion of kinesthetics, of evolution, of mirror neurons, etc. Not complaining, as such (not that I've attempted to curate the thread in any particular direction either) - just saying, details are bothersome. As for Henry, I'm hardly someone to 'vociferously dismiss' him. I think he's a stunningly brilliant philosopher who took two steps forwards in his critique of phenomenology and then one step back in his positive conception of 'auto-affective Life'; a failed escape, but one no less impressive for the effort.

Putting a cherry on MU's shit sandwich isn't going to make it any more edible. — Baden

But I would have thought you would agree that TGW has been peddling the shit sandwich here.

The Vygotskian view is that it is indeed correct that introspective awareness is not a natural biological feature of brains/minds, but instead a socially and language scaffolded reflexive habit.

So we don't simply observe our pangs of hunger, we have to construct such an attentional state by way of learnt cultural concepts.

Of course there is something "in there" to be found. I've just checked in with my stomach and it tells me that although another part of me knows its lunchtime, it could take it or leave it another few hours. Yet I know from experience that as soon as I find something tasty leftover in the fridge, the gastric juices will start to flow and hunger pangs - being exactly that preparatory autonomic response - will appear.

So in a real sense, introspective awareness or self-consciousness does take the long way round to get there. It is a culturally evolved habit of thought that I need to master, a set of exterior concepts that I need to learn to apply in the right socially-approved way.

And in Philosophy of Mind, we all have to learn to introspect in a way that makes "qualia" seem a true thing. It's part of the induction process to be part of the club. People will laugh at you if you claim not to get the ineffability of the colour red, the smell of a rose, a pang of hunger, or the taste of a shit sandwich dressed with a cherry.

No discussion of .... mirror neurons, etc. — StreetlightX

Speaking of shit sandwiches, that's a doozy from neuro-reductionism.

Sure, "mirror neurons" tell us something about embodied consciousness - the active construction of a self/world distinction. But introspective or self-conscious level awareness is a learnt cultural habit based on having the language skills to direct attention in a third person fashion.

Instead of simply being plugged in the world like an animal, we can distance ourselves from ourselves by forming an intervening habit of self-representation. "This is me in here having my thoughts, feelings and perceptions."

The 'myth of the given', to use Sellars's term, still haunts all our discourse on consciousness. — StreetlightX

It haunts our discussions mainly as something to accuse one's opponent of, in order to seem less like someone who would disagree with the sort of line you'r backing. Saying someone 'falls prey' to the myth of the given is like calling someone a racist – debate over. I've even seen it applied retrospectively to ancient philosophers. It's like the notion that a philosophy is in any way subjectivistic is immediate grounds for its dismissal.

Who would disagree with anything said in the OP of this topic in even a vaguely continental camp? Maybe some fringe analytics who no one take seriously and are crypto-dualists might. Even the vague nothing appeal to mirror neurons has become standard by this point, and the notion that this is supposed to be a discussion about biology isn't much of a cover.

Oh look, I mentioned the words 'mirror neurons' so I'm an arch-reductionist who must disagree with everything you just said.

It's not 'subjectivity' that's the issue - it's the matter of it's being accounted for. And yeah, any philosophy that posits subjectivity as brute immediacy or whathaveyou is immediate grounds for its dismissal.

It's not 'subjectivity' that's the issue - it's the matter of it's being accounted for. And yeah, any philosophy that posits subjectivity as brute immediacy or whathaveyou is immediate grounds for its dismissal. — StreetlightX

I realize this, but thank you for admitting it. Generally speaking there are a number of pairs of checkboxes that you have to check one side of to be a real continental philosopher, and none of these so far as I can tell are supported by anything other than vague Zeitgeist. I think that this thread, insofar as it serves only as a signal of your position on that divide (having the correct opinion – I mean come on, what could be more of a dogwhistle cliché than quoting 'outside' like that) isn't conducive to discussion, and was not really created to have any discussion. So there it stays.

Oh look, I mentioned the words 'mirror neurons' so I'm an arch-reductionist who must disagree with everything you just said. — StreetlightX

How do you live in the real world with such thin skin? But yes, you are being neuro-reductionist in your OP by going along with the idea that the evolution of the critical differences concerning the human mind are all biological mechanism rather than sociocultural, language-enabled, habits.

You might of course in fact agree with me on that further point. But it would be up to you say. Put your man pants on and give it a go.

Oh fuck off Apo.

I never claimed TGW was head chef. My beef here is with MU though. And I await his explanation of my paradoxical sex life. Although SX is right, the trail of breadcrumbs isn't really leading back to the OP at present...

Whether or not you take SX to be right depends on your understanding of what it means to be self-conscious, as far as I can see.

I understand TGW to be claiming that first awareness is of the inner milieu and I would certainly agree with that.

But if you understand self-awareness to be a linguistically mediated event then of course we must be aware of others first in order to learn language.

To clarify, the slide from introspection to self-consciousness in the OP, while fallacious, is not accidental in that it is the only model of self-consciousness possible once you've accepted that the only kind of consciousness is of something exterior. What the OP sees as a kind of discovery is therefore only a working out of prejudices. One of the primary critiques of intentionality is precisely that it can only model self-consciousness as reflexivity or introspection, and that it must see our own experiences as little things that we must view from a distance, like any external object.

Yes, I agree that 'introspection' is not a good term for inner awareness because it contains the distancing notion "inspection". I know from personal experience it is simply not like that. So introspection might be culturally mediated, but inner awareness certainly aint.

As usual, part of the problem here is in conceiving 'inside' and 'outside' as absolutes, rather than differentially produced boundaries. The OP is admittedly ambiguous because it conflates - or rather doesn't properly differentiate between - phylogenesis (evolution of the human being) with development (the growth of a single organism), and I think some of the flak here comes out of that confusion. So to be clear, I don't think that developmentally we are 'other-conscious before we are self-conscious'; as far as phylogenesis goes however, I find the thesis quite convincing.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean that I hold the opposite thesis at the level of development either - rejecting the notion that we are 'other-conscious before we are self-conscious' doesn't entail that we are 'self-conscious before we are other conscious'. I'd rather say instead that both self and other are derivative notions which become (roughly) sedimented into place based on a variety of developmental factors, both biological and social.

For example, the child developmental psychologist Daniel Stern notes the basic 'awareness' in infants probably takes the form of what he refers to as 'vitality affects', which are kinds of 'life-feelings', or life-qualities': "These elusive qualities are better captured by dynamic, kinetic terms, such as ‘surging’, ‘fading away’, ‘fleeting’, ‘explosive’, crescendo’, ‘decrescendo’, ‘bursting’, ‘drawn out’, and so on. These qualities of experience are most certainly sensible to infants and of great daily, even momentary, importance."

Importantly, these vitality effects do not find their locus in a 'self' but are simply experienced 'as such': "infants experience these qualities both “from within” and “in the behavior of other persons” ... "In short, originary temporal structures of experience are cardinal in nature; vitality affects — surgings, fadings, and all such qualitative features of experience — are primary with respect to our experiences of ourselves and our experiences of others." In other words at this most basic level, there simply is no self-other distinction - there 'are' simply vitality affects. It's also important that these vitality affects are largely related to the infant's sense of proprioception and kinesthetic feeling, as per the OP.

That aside, the crucial thing is that vitality affects become differentiated into self and other by processes of symmetry breaking, as it were. The infant learns to be a 'self' - or rather learns to 'locate' these (trans-personal) affects within a self - by means of coming to grips with the regularities of bodily coordination which break the symmetry between self and other. These coordination processes are those of if/then relationships: if 'I' move this shape like so, then such and such follows. Nothing happens if I try and move the shape over there, however. Ipso: this shape is 'mine'.

Commenting on Stern's work, Erin Manning writes: "Stern's core sense of self is based on how these experiences veer the becoming-self toward new forms of relation. These new forms of relation in turn feed the process through which the infant becomes differentiated. Difference does not occur through the stratification of self and other or inside and outside. Difference emboldens processual shiftings between strata that foreground and background modes of experience, each of them affected by incipient reachings-toward, a reaching-toward not of the subject, but of experience itself. Senses of coherence emerge that unfold as feelings of warmth, intensity, texture, anguish."

Hope this clarifies things a little.

Interestingly, we can actually scientifically test the above. The rubber hand illusion is famous and should be self-explanatory in the above regard, and there are other tests as well, as when Thomas Metzinger managed to make test subjects 'feel' that they were the 'fake bodies' standing out a few feet in front of them by coordinating their movement together with sensory cues.

I'd rather say instead that both self and other are derivative notions which become (roughly) sedimented into place based on a variety of developmental factors, both biological and social. — StreetlightX

Yep. A dichotomisation that arises to structure the "bloomiing, buzzing, confusion".

The truth is that Experience is trained by both association and dissociation, and that psychology must be writ both in synthetic and in analytic terms. Our original sensible totals are, on the one hand, subdivided by discriminative attention, and, on the other, united with other totals, - either through the agency of our own movements, carrying our senses from one part of space to another, or because new objects come successively and replace those by which we were at first impressed. The 'simple impression' of Hume, the 'simple idea' of Locke are both abstractions, never realized in experience.
...
The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion; and to the very end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the fact that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which came to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same space.

William James - Principles of Psychology (1890)

For example, the child developmental psychologist Daniel Stern notes the basic 'awareness' in infants probably takes the form of what he refers to as 'vitality affects', which are kinds of 'life-feelings', or life-qualities': "These elusive qualities are better captured by dynamic, kinetic terms, such as ‘surging’, ‘fading away’, ‘fleeting’, ‘explosive’, crescendo’, ‘decrescendo’, ‘bursting’, ‘drawn out’, and so on. These qualities of experience are most certainly sensible to infants and of great daily, even momentary, importance." — StreetlightX

This is a good way to put it because it shows how early on there would just be a disembodied response. Raw sensory change would wash through the circuits like noise. The newborn would not be distinguishing between the changes caused by its actions vs the changes caused by a changing world. Either way, the same energy would be washing through with the direction not yet telling of a difference,

That aside, the crucial thing is that vitality affects become differentiated into self and other by processes of symmetry breaking, as it were. The infant learns to be a 'self' - or rather learns to 'locate' these (trans-personal) affects within a self - by means of coming to grips with the regularities of bodily coordination which break the symmetry between self and other. — StreetlightX

Agreed. But that is an animal embodied level of self. And Stern is of course alert to the later Vygotskian development of the linguistically-distanced self.

So this is where I think your account so far halts too soon.