Persons

3. Reductionism

The issue of reductionism is perhaps the most complex topic that any theory of persons must address. In order to assess reductionism, we must be clear about what the position involves, what reasons there are to believe in it, and what arguments there are against it. Reductionism is an ontological view of persons. We can begin to understand the view by contrasting it with two different ontological views of persons. One view is Cartesian: persons are immaterial substances which are only contingently linked to their bodies (see Descartes, R. §8; Dualism). The other view, which we might call the Intermediate view, holds that persons are psychophysical substances, which are necessarily embodied. This is a version of the Lockean view defended in the previous section.

Unlike defenders of the latter views, the reductionist holds that the ontological status of persons is secondary or derivative. The primary elements of our ontology are mental states (pains, ‘thinkings’, ‘rememberings’ and so on) and physical bodies. Reductionism has received expression in a number of ways. The most common is that a person is nothing ‘over and above’ their body and mental life. Alternatively, facts about persons and personal identity are ‘verbal’. It is a verbal issue whether we choose to call two people at different times ‘the same person’, just as it is a verbal decision whether to call seasickness ‘pain’. However, these suggestions are rather vague, and need to be sharpened. The key thought is that we can completely describe all mental and physical events impersonally, without reference to persons. The experiences that make up a person’s life, on this view, are not essentially events in the life of a person, any more than the bricks that make up a house are essentially parts of a house.

Thus understood, why should we believe in reductionism about persons? One reason is that reductionism has been thought to be the only serious alternative to Cartesianism. But as we have seen, this overlooks the possibility of the Intermediate view. It is worth emphasizing that there is no instability in the Intermediate view. This view implies that no reductive account of persons is available. This would be problematic only if all genuine concepts and relations must admit of reductive analyses. That condition is simply a dogma.

It might be thought that another reason favouring reductionism is Hume’s famous remark about the unencounterability of the subject in introspective experience. Hume wrote that ‘when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception’ (Hume 1739 (1976): 252). However, Hume’s failure to encounter himself in experience is a fact about the phenomenology of inner reflection. It does not imply that the self does not exist or that we can completely describe all mental life without reference to persons.

Reductionism thus lacks any compelling motivation. In addition, the view faces a number of difficulties. First, reductionists have a problem explaining why we find it so hard to make anything of the idea of an unowned or subjectless experience. A particular toothache, for example, has to be had by someone. Experiences require subjects. But there is a deeper problem for the reductionist. The mental life of a human being does not, of course, simply consist in experiences of pleasure and pain. The mental life of a normal human includes mental states with complex contents, for example, intending to visit grandmother next month, or remembering how Alice Springs looked at dawn last year. The contents of these mental states appear to presuppose personal identity. I can only be said to remember, from the inside, my own experiences; I can intend only that I do such-and-such. But in that case there seems to be no prospect of a complete and impersonal description of these mental states – personal identity is built into them.

The standard manoeuvre in the face of this objection is to invoke the concept of, for example, quasi-memory. This concept is stipulated to be like ordinary memory in all relevant respects, except that quasi-memory does not presuppose personal identity. I can quasi-remember, from the inside, someone else’s experiences. For example, as the result of a brain-graft, I may come to have a quasi-memory of standing in front of the Taj Mahal (even though I know that I have never been to India). Since quasi-memory does not presuppose personal identity, the reductionist can re-describe the psychological life of a person without using terms, such as memory and intention, which presuppose personal identity.

The crucial question is whether the notion of quasi-memory can serve the reductionist’s purposes. Is the concept of quasi-memory intelligible independently of the concept of memory? Is the content of a quasi-memory really identity-neutral? Quasi-memories are illusions of memory; so the content of a quasi-memory is not identity-neutral, it is merely illusory in respect of its identity-involving content. This parallels what we are inclined to say about the contents of perceptual illusions. Consequently, despite its ingenuity, the retreat to quasi-memory cannot stave off a fundamental objection to reductionism (McDowell 1993: §6). These objections to reductionism, only gestured at here, are powerful. The onus is upon the reductionist to reply to them.