CONSCIOUSNESS

1. Philosophy 71
lating to, and thinking about the environment and self. (DSM-IV section 300.14 (dissociative
disorders) Dissociative Identity Disorder (sometimes called Multiple Personality Disorder) is
a form of dissociation, similar to that originally described by Pierre Janet in L’automatisme
psychologique (Alcan, F. L’etat mental des hysteriques. (The mental state of hystericals).
Paris, 1889). Dissociation is a brain mechanism which divides an individual’s experience
into conscious and non-conscious streams by focusing their attention on one part only of the
currently available field of experience. Dissociation of identity is generally regarded as an
adaptive response to trauma (especially in childhood). Recent brain imaging studies of people
with DID show that overtly manifest personality switches (in these subjects) correlate with
changes in brain activity which suggest that each personality has access to a different set of
autobiographical memories (Reinders, S. et al. One brain, two selves. NeuroImage, Vol. 20,
2119, 2003; Tsai, G. et al. Functional magnetic resonance imaging of personality switches
in a woman with dissociative identity disorder. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, July/August
1999. ) Studies of state-dependent memory in normal people suggests that compartmentalization
of autobiographical memory is not wholly confined to those with DID. (Ref: Ronald
C Petersen, “Retrieval Failures in State-dependent Learning”, Psychopharmacology No 55
pp 141-146, 1977) and observational studies show that distinct shifts in personality can be
discerned in normal people across different situations. (Ref: Walter Mischel,Continuity and
Change in Personality, American Psychologist 1969 24(11):1012-1018) In this presentation I
argue that the personality changes seen in normal people are similar (though not as extreme)
as those observed in people with DID, and that they are accompanied by a shift of consciousness
such that the experience associated with one state is qualitatively different from that of
another. Hence the normal “stream” of consciousness is disjunctive, even though a person’s
sense of it is one of continuity. I also suggest that the partial form of identity dissociation
observed in non-DID individuals is becoming more common and more marked in response
to an increasingly fast-changing and cultural diverse world. Such multiplicity is potentially
beneficial, because it allows a person to function more effectively in challenging situations
and provides them with protection from stress-related illness. This is especially so if a person
has insight into their own multiplicity. People who report having many different “selves”, for
example, have been found to suffer fewer mood disorders, headaches, backache and menstrual
problems than those who feel themselves to be unitary (Ref: Linville P.W. Self complexity
as a cognitive buffer against stress-related illness and depression. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, Vol. 52, pp. 663-76, 1987.) C15
64 The Presence of Experience and the Experience of Presence Wolfgang Fasching
(Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna,
Austria)
Conscious experiences, it is said, have a “first-person ontology” (Searle), i.e. they exist
by being subjectively experienced. Yet what or who is this “first person” or subject who “has”
the experiences? What am “I” as the experiencer of my experiences? Today, philosophers are
quite reluctant to posit a “self”-entity that would be the bearer or owner of its experiences.
Rather, the “co-subjectivity” of experiences is usually understood as being constituted by the
experiences’ being somehow bound together: i.e. by relations between the experiences instead
of a common relation they all share to one and the same experiencing subject or self. Yet how
much sense does this make if each experience only exists as being subjectively experienced
(i.e. as being experienced by a respective subject) in the first place? My present experience
is experienced by me completely irrespective of the relations it might have to other experiences.
It is necessary to first understand what this experiencing “I” of my present experience
is before one can ask what it might mean that several succeeding experiences are experienced
by the same “I”. Hence, the fundamental question with regard to the nature of the self is
what makes my present experience mine (experienced by me). What I find when I reflect on
my present being qua subjectivity is the taking-place of presence of manifold experiential
contents (= experiences). This presence is as what I exist right now: What makes my present
experiences mine is nothing other than that they are present (experienced) in this presence as
which I am taking place. So I, qua subject, am not an agglomeration of my experiences but