IB Philosophy 10.1.5 Ayer's View of the Self Notes

The Problem of the Self for Logical Positivism

1. The question of the self poses a particular challenge for Ayer's logical positivism. As established in 10.1.1, the verification principle requires meaningful statements to be either analytic or empirically verifiable.
2. The self is not an observable object: we do not perceive a "self" the way we perceive a table. How can statements about the self be meaningful?
3. Traditional accounts invoke some form of substance dualism. Descartes (examined in 10.3) argued that the self is a thinking substance (res cogitans) distinct from body.
4. Religious traditions speak of an immortal soul. These accounts posit an enduring entity underlying changing experiences.
5. David Hume anticipated Ayer's position in the Treatise of Human Nature (1739). Hume reported that on introspection he could never catch himself without a perception.
6. The self, Hume concluded, is nothing but a bundle of perceptions, with no underlying substance to unify them.

Ayer's Reductionist Analysis

1. Ayer adopts and radicalises Hume's bundle theory (the view that the self is just a collection of passing experiences with no underlying owner). Where Hume expressed puzzlement about how perceptions are unified, Ayer dissolves the puzzle by treating it as a pseudoproblem (a fake puzzle that dissolves once you spot the linguistic confusion behind it), generated by the misuse of language.
2. The word "I" does not name a substance, but rather functions as a logical construction from experiential data.
3. On Ayer's account, to say "I am in pain" is not to report a relationship between a substantial self and a sensation. It is to describe a particular pattern of sense experiences occurring in a particular body.
4. The "I" is shorthand for experiential and bodily facts, not a reference to a hidden entity.
5. The philosophical stakes are high. If the self is merely a logical construction, then personal identity through time becomes a question about patterns and continuities rather than the persistence of a substance.
6. This has implications for moral responsibility, survival after death, and consciousness, all explored in Unit 1.
7. Ayer rejects all substance accounts as metaphysical nonsense. The claim "I have an immortal soul" is neither analytic nor empirically verifiable; it is cognitively meaningless on the same grounds that eliminated metaphysics in 10.1.2.
8. This reductionist approach connects to the phenomenalism discussed in 10.1.4. Just as physical objects are logical constructions out of sense experiences, the self is a logical construction out of experiences, memories, and bodily states attributed to a person.

Ayer's Reductionist Account in Detail

1. Ayer develops his account in Chapter 7 of Language, Truth and Logic. He argues that the self is definable in terms of sense experiences without remainder.
2. Every meaningful statement about a person can be translated into statements about experiences occurring in relation to a particular body.
3. The key concept is the sense-experience series: a person is constituted by a sequence of experiences unified by three factors.
   1. Memory chains.
   2. Bodily continuity.
   3. Causal connections.
4. Ayer treats the unity of the self as a logical rather than metaphysical matter. Experiences constituting "me" are grouped together by specifiable criteria.
   1. Association with the same body.
   2. Linkage by memory chains.
   3. Characteristic patterns of psychological continuity.
5. Ayer explicitly rejects the "pure ego" or transcendental subject standing behind experiences. Such an entity would be unverifiable in principle and therefore meaningless.