Сергей Гладков – The Subject as a Process of Stabilizing Experience (страница 3)

The distinction between minimal and narrative selfhood helps to show that subjectivity is not single-layered. There are different levels of self-reference: a pre-reflective sense of presence, bodily orientation, agency, autobiographical history, social name, and role (Gallagher, 2000). This distinction is important, but it is not accepted as a ready-made classification of entities. It is used as an indication that the subject must be analyzed in a multilevel way. Different levels may support one another, diverge from one another, or require reconfiguration.

The Observer as an Effect of Organization

One of the most persistent forms of the fixed subject is the idea of an inner observer. It seems convincing because a person is indeed able to relate to one's own states as data: to notice a thought, distinguish an emotion, register a bodily reaction, or comment on one's own behavior. But the observability of states does not imply the existence of an observer as a separate object.

A negative move is useful here: thoughts are discovered, emotions are discovered, bodily sensations are discovered, linguistic formulations are discovered. But when the presumed observer itself has to be found as a separate entity, it does not appear in the same sense. What was called the observer turns out not to be an object, but a function of organization: attention to states, the capacity for distinction, linguistic self-description, memory of one's own changes, and the practice of maintaining distance from an immediate impulse.

Self-model theory radically calls into question the idea of the self as a substantial object and shows that experienced unity may depend on structures of modeling rather than on an inner entity (Metzinger, 2003). The proposed model does not reduce the subject to the self-model, but it accepts an important constraint: the experienced sense of a center must not be turned into evidence for a real inner center. The fact that experience is organized as belonging to someone does not yet prove that this "someone" exists as a separate observer inside experience.

If the observer is understood as an effect of organization, the task of theory itself changes. What must be explained is not where the observer is located, but which processes create the stability of self-reference. Why does experience seem connected? Why do some states become "mine"? Why is a person able to take distance from an impulse? Why does this distance sometimes disappear? These questions are more productive than the search for an inner object that would have to observe everything else.

The Fixed Subject as a Redundant Explanation

The fixed subject performs an important stabilizing function in theories and in everyday thought. It simplifies description: there is the one who experiences, and there is what is experienced. There is the one who acts, and there is the action. There is the one who changes, and there are the changes. But the explanation becomes suspicious when one and the same principle must simultaneously be the source of unity, the agent of decision, the bearer of memory, the observer of states, the guarantor of responsibility, and the basis of personal continuity.

Such expansion makes the concept of the subject too strong. It begins to explain everything, and precisely for this reason it ceases to explain precisely. If contradiction is explained by the subject, automatism is explained by the subject, memory is explained by the subject, rupture is explained by the subject, and continuity is explained by the subject, then the concept loses its power of discrimination. It becomes a name for what has not yet been analyzed into processes.

Scientific economy requires a different move. It is necessary to ask which functions actually require explanation. Here at least five such functions can be distinguished: self-reference, connectedness of experience, temporal continuity, integration of action into a history, and the possibility of reflexive distance. None of these functions requires a fixed subject accepted in advance. Each can be preliminarily described through processes of stabilizing experience.

This does not mean that the term "subject" should be eliminated. On the contrary, it is preserved, but its status changes. It no longer designates the hidden owner of experience. It designates a problem of organization: how experience is maintained as sufficiently coherent for self-reference, action, memory, and continuity to arise. This shift prepares the minimal formula: the subject is a process of maintaining the coherence of experience.

Chapter Summary

The fixed-subject model is insufficient not because subjectivity is illusory or unimportant. It is insufficient because it turns the complex organization of experience into a simple inner entity too early. It treats as an initial given what requires explanation: connectedness, observation, agency, continuity, and self-reference.

The limitations identified in this chapter show why the fixed-subject model proves insufficient. Contradictoriness shows that experience does not act as a fully unified center. Automatism shows that conscious decision is not the source of the whole organization of behavior. Variability shows that identity cannot be reduced to invariance. The analysis of the observer shows that reflexive distance does not require a separate inner entity. Together, these limitations allow a transition from the question "where is the subject located?" to the question "how is the coherence of experience maintained?"

From this transition follows the minimal model. If the fixed subject proves to be a redundant explanation, then the subject must be described differently: not as a thing, not as a hidden center, and not as a metaphysical bearer, but as a process of maintaining the coherence of experience.

The Minimal Model of the Subject

From Entity to Function

If the fixed subject proves to be a redundant explanation, this does not mean that the concept of the subject should be eliminated. What must be eliminated is not the concept itself, but its substantialist interpretation. The subject does not have to be thought of as an inner object, a hidden observer, or an unchanging bearer of experiences. It can be defined functionally: through the work without which experience would not be maintained as connected, self-related, and capable of continuing through change.

The minimal formula is this: the subject is a process of maintaining the coherence of experience. This formula does not assert a new entity. It does not say that there exists within experience a special object called the subject. It says that a number of processes must somehow maintain experience in a state of sufficient connectedness: so that experiences can be distinguished, actions can be included in a history, memory can be related to the present, and changes do not turn into the complete disintegration of self-reference.

A functional definition changes the direction of analysis. Instead of the question "what is the subject?" the question becomes "what organization of experience performs the subject function?" This shift makes it possible to preserve the reality of subjectivity without introducing an inner center as a separate explanatory principle. Subjectivity remains an object of analysis, but its unity is no longer accepted as an initial given. It becomes what has to be explained.

This position is close to anti-substantialist approaches to the self, but it does not fully coincide with them. Self-model theory shows that self-experience does not require a substantial I and may be connected with structures of modeling (Metzinger, 2003). However, the minimal model of the subject does not reduce the subject only to the self-model. The self-model explains an important aspect of self-organization, but maintaining the coherence of experience also includes attention, memory, bodily states, language, meaning, action, and external supports.

Scheme 1. General Model of the Stabilization of Experience

The scheme fixes the subject as a process of maintaining the coherence of multilevel experience and shows the main lines of stabilization, rupture, and possible reconfiguration.

What "Maintaining" Means

The word "maintaining" should not be understood as rigid fixation. To maintain experience does not mean to stop change, suppress divergences, or preserve one and the same form of self-description at any cost. Maintaining means supporting minimal connectedness, in which different elements of experience can remain related: sensation to action, action to motive, motive to memory, memory to history, and history to the possibility of further change.

Such maintaining may be stable, partial, conflictual, or temporary. A person may preserve self-reference even in a state of internal divergence. One may fail to understand one's own motives and still try to connect them into an intelligible sequence. One may undergo a crisis of identity and still continue to hold the question "what is happening to me?" as a form of minimal connectedness. The subject function therefore does not require the complete harmony of experience. It requires only that level of coherence at which experience can still be organized, revised, and continued.