Cases of apperceptive agnosia, and to a lesser extent brains split at a mature stage of development, provide examples of how apperception, and the apperceptive “I” is in fact relevant to performing typical cognitive functions. I try to be careful not to make sweeping blanket statements about features of experience with a variety of uses or subtle aspects (e.g. “self = illusion”; “perception = illusion”; “judgment = illusion”; “thought = illusion”; “existence = illusion”; “illusions = ???” …now let’s just claim that “sense-data” grounds scientific methodology and knowledge, somehow… ).
The fact that information doesn’t converge in a single location in the brain does not imply that a functionally coherent “I” is not realized with access to sensory signals (and internally produced sensory imagination) and a capacity to make judgments about such content—even if physics says any instantiation within our domain of knowledge ultimately is timeless, not located in discrete 3D space and with subtle permutations manifested throughout a many-worlds space of causal possibility.
Epistemology (grounds for our ability to know anything at all, albeit without total certainty) precedes ontology (knowledge from scientific sources like empirical observation, logical analysis, mathematical modeling, Bayesian prediction, etc.) and at a deep level epistemology still reduces to basic intuitions of time and space accessed as frames of existence in which functional apperception—however it is instantiated—must integrate components of sensory perception (uni- or multimodal) into coherent physical objects as well as into collections of physical objects in unified perceptions.
Kant’s epistemology had major flaws, most centrally his weak attempt to claim his world-access idealism was just as warranted as his world-access realism, but he was right when he claimed that without functional apperception—which probably is achieved largely by temporal coordination in addition to shared access to similar information by different brain regions—we would have as many functionally discrete “I”s as we have elements of experience. On the contrary, personal experience, which we seem to be able to intersubjectively communicate and display via behavior, negates that possibility (even for people with partial disorders of apperceptive access).
Other issues relevant to the claim of a coherent, integrated “self” over longer time scales (from a subjectively “timeful” view of a given causal path) with memory or even among similar paths in the same “time slice” seems to be less substantial though not completely insignificant. However, there seems to be no basis whatsoever for claiming relevant continuity of physical instantiation (i.e. atoms aren’t localized and matter may not even “pass through” time).
I should mention I find both the “timeless/multiverse/non-experientially-determined” and “timeful/trajectory/experientially-undetermined” interpretations of physics to be helpful to consider as the “real context” to the best of our knowledge, as a global whole and an imagined/predicted local trajectory of one’s experience. The first interpretation offers means of gaining some detachment from the vicissitudes of life and some tolerance for risk and loss (e.g. delivering a campaign speech to a large crowd). The second interpretation promotes the inclination to seek optimal outcomes and reasoned selectivity among a wide array of options (e.g. choosing a better platform than “Free beer and toilet paper!”—unless one is running for a student office on a campus where satire sells).
Cases of apperceptive agnosia, and to a lesser extent brains split at a mature stage of development, provide examples of how apperception, and the apperceptive “I” is in fact relevant to performing typical cognitive functions. I try to be careful not to make sweeping blanket statements about features of experience with a variety of uses or subtle aspects (e.g. “self = illusion”; “perception = illusion”; “judgment = illusion”; “thought = illusion”; “existence = illusion”; “illusions = ???” …now let’s just claim that “sense-data” grounds scientific methodology and knowledge, somehow… ).
The fact that information doesn’t converge in a single location in the brain does not imply that a functionally coherent “I” is not realized with access to sensory signals (and internally produced sensory imagination) and a capacity to make judgments about such content—even if physics says any instantiation within our domain of knowledge ultimately is timeless, not located in discrete 3D space and with subtle permutations manifested throughout a many-worlds space of causal possibility.
Epistemology (grounds for our ability to know anything at all, albeit without total certainty) precedes ontology (knowledge from scientific sources like empirical observation, logical analysis, mathematical modeling, Bayesian prediction, etc.) and at a deep level epistemology still reduces to basic intuitions of time and space accessed as frames of existence in which functional apperception—however it is instantiated—must integrate components of sensory perception (uni- or multimodal) into coherent physical objects as well as into collections of physical objects in unified perceptions.
Kant’s epistemology had major flaws, most centrally his weak attempt to claim his world-access idealism was just as warranted as his world-access realism, but he was right when he claimed that without functional apperception—which probably is achieved largely by temporal coordination in addition to shared access to similar information by different brain regions—we would have as many functionally discrete “I”s as we have elements of experience. On the contrary, personal experience, which we seem to be able to intersubjectively communicate and display via behavior, negates that possibility (even for people with partial disorders of apperceptive access).
Other issues relevant to the claim of a coherent, integrated “self” over longer time scales (from a subjectively “timeful” view of a given causal path) with memory or even among similar paths in the same “time slice” seems to be less substantial though not completely insignificant. However, there seems to be no basis whatsoever for claiming relevant continuity of physical instantiation (i.e. atoms aren’t localized and matter may not even “pass through” time).
I should mention I find both the “timeless/multiverse/non-experientially-determined” and “timeful/trajectory/experientially-undetermined” interpretations of physics to be helpful to consider as the “real context” to the best of our knowledge, as a global whole and an imagined/predicted local trajectory of one’s experience. The first interpretation offers means of gaining some detachment from the vicissitudes of life and some tolerance for risk and loss (e.g. delivering a campaign speech to a large crowd). The second interpretation promotes the inclination to seek optimal outcomes and reasoned selectivity among a wide array of options (e.g. choosing a better platform than “Free beer and toilet paper!”—unless one is running for a student office on a campus where satire sells).