Ideologia

Space and Self-Awareness by John Louis Schwenkler A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy in the

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of the

Graduate Division

University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge:

Professor Alva Noë, Chair Professor John Campbell Professor Lynn Robertson Professor Stephen Palmer Fall 2009

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Space and Self-Awareness © 2009 by John Louis Schwenkler

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Abstract Space and Self-Awareness by John Louis Schwenkler Doctor of Philosophy inPhilosophy University of California, Berkeley

In contrast to such a picture, this dissertation proposes an account of visual spatial awareness according to which it is no less a source of self-consciousness than of the awareness of the objects around us, and an account of self-awareness in which visual experience is essentially implicated. I begin by arguing that we should think of visual spatialawareness not as necessary for the individuation of visual sensations but rather as an essential element in the awareness of an experientially objective world. In the subsequent chapters, I argue that in being visually aware of the egocentric positions of the worldly objects around us we are often aware also of our own spatial locations with respect to them, and that the visual experience of theworld around one and one’s own situation in it is often an essential component in the knowledge that a human agent will have of his own intentional actions.

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How should we think about the role of visual spatial awareness in perception and perceptual knowledge? A common view, which finds a characteristic expression in Kant but has an intellectual heritage reaching back farther than that,is that an account of spatial awareness is fundamental to a theory of experience because spatiality is the defining characteristic of “outer sense”, of our perceptual awareness of how things are in the parts of the world that surround us. A natural counterpart to this idea is to treat self-consciousness as residing in a kind of sense that is fundamentally “inner”, such as introspection or whateverelse gives one privileged access to his own mental states as well as the proprioceptive and kinesthetic awareness of bodily position. This division is compatible, of course, with the idea that inner sense provides an awareness of a distinctive kind of “body space”, but it treats that as importantly different from the awareness of the worldly space around one.

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Professor Alva Noë,Chair

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1. 2. 3. Can There Be Visual Perception Without the Visual Awareness of Space? Vision, Self-Location, and the Phenomenology of the Point of View ii iii v 1 17 39 61

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Perception and Practical Knowledge

List of Figures Figure 1: A representation of the Feature Integration Theory of visualattention Figure 2: Visual illusion of self-motion (vection) induced by a rotating drum Figure 3: The agent and observer models of action awareness Figure 4: Non-observational, practical knowledge of one’s intentional action Figure 5: The Ebbinghaus illusion 6 26 49 52 59

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Acknowledgments The intellectual, personal, and professional debts incurred in writing this dissertation...