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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 251 sufferer requires one to make a sharp distinction between one's own inner state and the sufferer's. Otherwise one abdicates one's actual self to the imagined self of the sufferer. Finally, the fourth case, in which one is oblivious to the consequences for others of one's neglect to prepare for a future contingency of one's own behavior, violates (b), for in it one fails to respect the validity of other people's normal expectations. This case treats one's audience's inner states - their justified expectations of a certain standard of performance, their assumptions and hopes of intellectual dialogue or edification - as surface objects of imagination, whereas one's own inner state - of confusion, oblivion, complacency, presumption, sloth, or self-indulgence - is a depth object. In this sort of case one fails to imagine with sufficient vividness the difference between others' inner states and one's own. Indeed, one identifies others' inner states with one's own. Like the first, this case illustrates a species of selfabsorption that approaches the primitively egocentric and narrowly concrete view, described earlier as resulting from a lack or failure of modal imagination. In general, then, an inappropriate level of imaginative involvement that violates (a) tends to abdicate the actual, present self to the imagined object. Call this a state of vicarious possession. One can be vicariously possessed by the thought of an actual or possible external event as well as by that of another person's inner states. (The possession is vicarious rather than actual because abdication of the self is in part voluntarily effected.) By contrast, an inappropriate level of imaginative involvement that violates (b) tends to express a failure to modally imagine the object as separate from the self altogether. This draws one closer to the primitively egocentric and narrowly concrete perspective earlier described. Call this a state of self-absorption. Vicarious possession and self-absorption are both a matter of degree, and each can take a variety of imaginative objects. I may be so self-absorbed in my experience of your discomfort as I conceive it that I am completely insensitive to your discomfort as you experience it in fact: Obsessed with reassuring you that your recent auto accident is not likely to reoccur, I fail to notice that my repeatedly broaching and dilating upon the topic only increases your anxiety. Conversely, I may be so vicariously possessed by your conception of me as I envision it that I am completely insensitive to the discomfort it actually causes me to conform to it: Inspired to feats of strength by the conception of me as physically powerful I imagine you to have, I pull unnoticed and uncounted muscles lifting the heavy objects of which, so I imagine, you think me capable. In all such cases, one is self-absorbed by one's own inner state if others' have little impact on it, and vicariously possessed by another's inner state if one's own has little impact on it. Someone who is self-absorbed has too little imagination regarding externals, whereas one who is vicariously possessed has too much. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
