(Ebook)(Philosophy Of Mind) John Campbell - Past, Space And Self - Chpt1
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1.1 The Distinction
1
Frames of Reference
There is a distinction that philosophers and psychologists
have
tried to draw between
different ways of thinking about space
,
about particular spatial regions. It is sometimes
called, and I
will call it, the distinction between absolute and egocentric
space
. But it is not a distinction between
different types of regions
. It is a difference between
ways of representing
, or thinking
about, a particular region. The distinction is at best very
indirectly related to the classifications
physicists
make of theories
of space
-time as
relativistic or absolute. For that reason
the
word 'absolute' is unfortunate. But it is what the literature
uses
, and I hope the reader
will be able to set
these
echoes
aside.
Intuitively , the distinction is between thinking about space
as a participant, as someone
plunged into its center, as someone
with things to do in that space
, on the one hand, and, on
the other hand, thinking about the space
as a disengaged
theorist
. Any animal that has the relations between
perception and
behavior needed
to direct action at particular places
, to reach
for things it can see
, must be capable
of this egocentric
spatial
thinking . But the more detached
absolute conception is not so
easily
available. The distinction is between
the way of thinking
of the space
one is in that one uses
when sitting at a dinner
table, moving and acting in that space
, and the way of thinking
of the space
used subsequently by the detective who tries to
reconstruct the scene
and to establish who did what. It is the
distinction between
thinking about the space
from a particular
point of view, as a subject at the center of one's world , and
thinking about the space
independently
of any particular viewpoint
on it, in an impersonal or absolute
way.
The idea of absolute space
sometimes
appears
in discussions
of self-consciousness
. When self-consciousness
is conceived
in
this way, it can seem
dizzying. What it demands is that one
should build up a synoptic picture of the world , one that
wholly abstracts
from one's own place in the throng, and then
somehow identify one of the people so pictured as oneself
.
What is dizzying is the kind of complete
objectivity, the degree
of abstraction from one's own busy concerns
, that is required.
A first interpretation is that what is wanted is a kind of top-
6 Chapter
1
down view, so that we think in terms of a kind of aerial photograph
, and then one has
to identify oneself
as one of the people
shown in the photo. But that would not be
enough, for it would
only give the viewpoint of the photographer, and we need a
picture of the world that is objective, in that it is not from any
viewpoint at all. It is a picture not drawn from any perspective
.
A natural reaction to this demand is to move the photographer
further away from the earth, but of course
no finite amount of
movement will be enough. And once he is at an infinite distance
, what will he be able to photograph? What would you
expect to be able to discern from nowhere?
One reaction to the vertigo here would be to say that we do
not need any kind of objective conception in order to be selfconscious
. Immersed
, as
we are, in the thick of things, we have
no need or use for such a conception in our everyday lives,
Frames of Reference 7
whereas self-consciousness is commonplace . So an objective
conception is not demanded by self-consciousness. But this re-
action leaves us in the dark about what self-consciousness
might be. The real problem is not the notion of an objective
conception as such but the way of interpreting the spatial imagery
that leads to the dizziness
just described. Self
-consciousness
does demand a kind of objectivity and does
use a conception of
absolute space
. But to understand the notion of objectivity involved
, what we have to look at is our ordinary thinking about
time. What matters is the way we think about the historical order
of events that have happened
and are going to happen and
about our own temporal location in that order-the span
of our
lives within it and where things stand now. We will see that this
really does involve a kind of objectivity and does use
a conception
of absolute
space
, and it certainly matters in ordinary life.
It is part of the distinction between absolute and egocentric
space that the absolute conception should not be somehow
reducible to, or definable in terms of, the egocentric spatial
thinking used in perception and action. For this reason
, the
distinction has characteristically been
rejected by philosophers
of an empiricist or pragmatist bent, who think that all ways
of representing
space
must be explicable in terms of their connections
with perception and action, in terms of their relations
to egocentric space
. In this chapter we will first look more
critically at the question of how to characterise
an egocentric
frame of reference
. We will then look at John O'
Keefe
's specific
description of an absolute frame of reference and determine
how well it stands up to empiricist-pragmatist criticism.
We will see that a notion of absolute space
can ultimately be
sustained and that it is used in our ordinary thinking about
time. One question we will consider is whether, in constructing
such an absolute or objective frame of reference
,
physical objects play any role ; they certainly do not seem to
be needed in constructing an egocentric frame .
Let us begin, then, with egocentric
spatial thinking . The frame
of reference
that we use to identify places
in directing our actions
, in deciding where to move to, is an egocentric
frame. On
the face of it, an egocentric frame is a body-centered
frame or
one centered on a part of the body. The developmental psychologists
Herbert Pick and Jeffrey Lockman (1981) put the
idea as follows. They define a frame of reference
to be "a locus
or set
of loci with respect
to which spatial position is defined."
Egocentric frames of reference
then are those that "define spatial
positions in relation to loci on the body." They are contrasted
with allocentric frames of reference
, "which simply
means
that the positions defining loci are external to the person
in question" (1981, 40). This definition seems
indeed
to give a
reductive
account of the notion of an egocentric
frame, defining
it in terms of notions that genuinely seem
to be more fundamental
than it.
It is worth reflecting on the general
form of the definition. In
trying to say what is characteristic of an egocentric frame of
reference
, I am not dealing with a problem in pure mathematics
. It is not, for example, on a level with the question of
whether a frame of reference
uses
polar or Cartesian coordinates
. In purely formal terms, the best we could do would be
to say that it must be possible
, using an egocentric frame, to
specify spatial relations to a single privileged point, but that
would not separate
an egocentric frame from one centered
on
the sun, for example. We have to say something about the
physical significance
of the origin of the frame: we want to say
,
8 Chapter 1
1.2 Egocentric
Frames
for example, that it must be centered on the subject. This notion
of the subject is not a purely formal notion of pure mathematics
. But saying where the frame is centered
is only one way
of giving physical significance
to the formal notions. An alternative
would be to consider
the physical significance
of the axes
of the frame of reference and to take them as fundamental. An
egocentric
frame would then be one whose axes had a particular
kind of physical significance
. It would then be a substantive
thesis
, rather than a definition, that egocentric frames are invariably
centered on the body, or a part of the body. And it
would be quite wrong, on that approach, to suppose
that in
using an egocentric frame, one must be identifying places by
their relations to a body already identified.
The definition of an egocentric frame as a body-centered
frame takes for granted the general notion of an object-centered
frame of reference
, and it says
that the egocentric
frames
are a particular class of object-centered frame, namely, those
centered on the body or a part of the body. The general
notion
of an object-centered
frame is certainly legitimate. Consider an
object such as a table or a bus. We can think of the internal
spatial relations between its parts. We can use this system
of
internal spatial relations to identify points within the object.
There may be natural axes that the object has. For example
,
given a pillar -box, we could define a set of axes
by reference to
its long axis, its line of sight as
through the slot, and its coronal
plane as through which the door moves when it is opened
. So
far what we have is a way of identifying points internal to the
object. But the system of spatial relations that I have set up
between the parts of the thing can be further used to identify
points external to it. We could, for instance
, identify a coconut
on a palm tree as lying on a line through the bottom of one leg
of a table and the top of another, and a hundred yards distant
Frames of Reference 9
in the direction going from bottom to top . This way of identifying
places need not be used only with inanimate objects as its
basis. One could equally well take the internal spatial relations
between the parts of a horse, or its natural axes, and use them
to give fully allocentric identifications of the places around it .
One could do the same with a human body ; one could do the
same with what is in fact one's own body . And then, by Pick
and Lockman 's definition , what we have is an egocentric
frame . Evidently , there is a finer distinction that we want to
make here. For it is not as if we can assume extensionality : not
just any way of thinking of the subject will do. The notion of
egocentric space is a psychological notion ; the reason we want
it is to explain why the infant , for example , turns one way
rather than another . In particular , perceptual knowledge of the
body will not do . Merely seeing one's own body in a mirror ,
for example , and using it to set up a system of axes will not
provide one with an egocentric frame .
The obvious proposal is that the subject has to be using direct
, nonobservational knowledge of his own body constituted
by his possession of a body image. In one use of the phrase 'the
body image', it has to be thought of as referring to a relatively
long -term picture of one's own physical dimensions . So some-
one's body image might be changed as a result of their having
a skin graft or the loss of a limb or simply by growing up. In
this use of the term , one's body image provides one with ageneral
sense of what kinds of movement are possible for one. It
assigns a particular structure to a creature that underlies its
possibilities of movement . We cannot directly use this structure
to set up a system of axes: it assigns no particular shape to the
body . What we need is rather what O'
Shaughnessy calls the
"here and now " body image, which "is given by the description
or drawing or model one would assemble in order to say how
10 Chapter 1
Frames of Reference 11
the body seems to one at a certain instant. For example: torso
straight, right cylindrical arm stretched out from body,
crooked at right angles
, etc." (1980,241). If a person
has such
a body image
, he can plot the spatial relations between the various
parts of his body and use them to construct a body-centered
set of axes that will indeed be the egocentric axes. This
proposal relies on a direct relation between
the subject's body
image and his ability to act. We have to think of the body image
as
giving the subject a practical grasp of the ways in which
it is possible
to act, the possibilities of movement
open to him.
Of course
, there must be some relation between these two conceptions
of a body image. The immediate problem, though, is
to understand why this shift, from outer perception of the
body, such as seeing
it in a mirror , to inner perception, as
provided
by a short-term body image
, should be thought to
achieve
anything. After all, as
we saw, simply managing
to use
the spatial relations between the parts of the body to set up a
system of axes does not in general secure one an egocentric
frame. Why should we think that an egocentric
frame is guaranteed
if one relies on the spatial relations between the parts of
the body given in inner perception? The point here is that there
is in general no direct connection between the mere use of an
arbitrarily chosen
body to set up coordinate axes
and the sub-
ject's capacity for directed spatial action. What the present proposal
relies on is a direct relation between a subject's short-
term body image
and his ability to act. We have to think of the
short-term body image as giving the subject a practical grasp
of the ways in which he can act, the possibilities of movement
open to him. The reason this seems
promising is that the short-
term body image has direct connections
with action of the type
possessed by the egocentric axes. The proposal is that we can
view the direct connection between
action and egocentric
space
12 Chapter
1
as a product of the direct connection between action and the
short-term body image. But now we have to ask how the body
image has this direct connection with action. And we immediately
face
a dilemma. For how are the spatial relations between
the parts of the body given in the body image? One possibility
is that they are given in egocentric terms: one foot is represented
as to the right of another, below the rest of the body,
and so on. But then it can hardly be held that the subject uses
the natural axes of his body to set up the egocentric axes;
rather, he already has to use
the egocentric frame to grasp the
spatial relations between the parts of his body. Alternatively,
suppose
that the spatial relations between the parts of one's
body are given in nonegocentric
terms. Then there is no prospect
of using the axes of one's body to set up an egocentric
frame; one is in no better a position to do this with respect
to
the body of which one has
inner perception than one would be
with respect
to a body of which one has outer perception. In
both cases
the problem is the same
. One's grasp of egocentric
spatial axes
, with their immediate connections
to moving and
acting, cannot be generated from a grasp of spatial relations
that are nonegocentrically given. Grasp of egocentric spatial
axes
must be taken as
primitive .
This means
that a certain kind of reductive ambition for the
definition of an egocentric
frame as a body-centered
frame has
to be abandoned
. We cannot view this definition as
explaining
the notion of egocentricity in more fundamental terms. We
cannot see
it as defining egocentricity in terms of the generic
notion of an object-centered
frame of reference
plus the notion
of a body-centered
frame. For when we inquire into the needed
notion of body-centeredness
, it turns out that it already appeals
to the notion of the body as given in the body image
, with
its spatial relations given egocentrically. In particular, then, we
cannot take the body image to be more fundainental than the
egocentric
axes
; we cannot derive them from it. The egocentric
axes
have to be taken as
primitive , relative to the body image
.
It might be asked
whether the body image is not at any rate
coordinate with the egocentric axes
, so that they have to be
taken as
equally fundamental for spatial action. But while some
egocentric reference frame is evidently essential
if we are to
have spatial action- otherwise the action could not be regarded
as spatial at all-it does not seem
that a subject needs
to have
a body image
to be capable
of egocentric
spatial action,
action we would want to explain by appealing
to his possession
of an egocentric
frame of reference
. Coordination and direction
of spatial action may be achieved
by purely distal specifications
of the locations that are the endpoints of the actions, without
the subject's having a single central body image at all (Scott
Kelso 1982). If a body image is superimposed
on the subject's
egocentric
axes
, this is in addition to the requirements
for him
to be thinking about places
egocentrically. So
when the subject
is identifying places
egocentrically, he cannot be thought of as
doing so by first identifying a physical thing, himself, through
a body image and then identifying places
by their relation to
his body. Rather, his capacity to use
the egocentric
axes
is more
fundamental than his capacity to think in terms of a body image
. The egocentric
identification of places
does
not depend
on
a prior identification of a body. The notion of an egocentric
frame is more fundamental than the relevant notion of body-
centeredness
. It is only when we have elucidated the notion of
an egocentric frame that we are in a position to say what this
notion of body-centeredness
is.
How, then, are we to characterize
egocentric
frames
of reference
? One alternative approach would be to say that an egocentric
frame is one defined
by the axes
up, down, left, right, in
Frames
of Reference 13
14 Chapter 1
front, and behind, with the origin identified as here. Places cannot
be identified by directions from a single origin alone. We
have to add something about the way distances are measured
in this frame of reference
, or at least we need some kind of
order relation. Even so, this approach would not give us
enough to say
in general
what an egocentric
frame is. We want
to allow as intelligible the hypothesis that humans may use
many different egocentric frames. Consider, for example, the
axes defining the movements
of the hand in writing . There is
no reason to suppose
that this will be the very same
set of axes
used to define the movements of the whole body. Nevertheless
,
it is still an egocentric
frame. So an approach
that tries to define
what it is for a frame to be egocentric
by simply listing aparticular
set of axes will not work . Again, there is no reason to
suppose
that all species
will use
the same
egocentric
axes. For
example, creatures that are jointed differently from us or that
live deep underwater may use different axes. Finally, even if,
by listing a suitable set
of axes
, we could give an extensionally
correct identification of the egocentric frames
, we would still
have the explanatory work to do. We would still have to explain
what it was about the terms 'left' and 'right', for example,
that made them particularly connected to moving and acting,
for example. Even so, the right way to give a general
definition
of the notion of an egocentric frame of reference
may still be
by defining a class of axes
, rather than by making a general
demand about where the frames must be centered. And, of
course
, we expect that an extensional approach here will not
succeed: we have to grasp how the subject is apprehending
those
axes
.
The axes
distinctive of an egocentric
frame are those
that are
immediately used
by the subject
in the direction of action. They
may include, but need not be confined to, the natural axes of
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1.1TheDistinction1FramesofReferenceThereisadistinctionthatphilosophersandpsychologistshavetriedtodrawbetweendifferentwaysofthinkingaboutspace,aboutparticularspatialregions.Itissometimescalled,andIwillcallit,thedistinctionbetweenabsoluteandegocentricspace.Butitisnotadistinctionbetweendifferenttypesof...
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