296 NONMONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSin, our introspective, meditative, or enlightenment experience is not
something that is introspectively (etc.) confirmable. Further, if one denies
that we are only what appears to, or in, our introspective (etc.) experience
one does not embrace a self-contradictory doctrine. Still further, we have
lots of tendencies, habits, dispositions, and properties that are not
introspectively (etc.) available to us – some (like our ability to make logical
inferences) are not always introspectively accessible, since we are not
always making inferences; some, like either our being indestructible or our
not being indestructible, are not ever introspectively available. Since the
view that we are what we introspectively seem to be is common to both
sides of the dispute, and an important part of their appeal to experience,
both are – to that important degree at any rate – mistaken. That
assumption is false.
One might revise the claim regarding introspection (etc.) to claim
merely that whatever structure the self seemed to introspection (etc.) to
have, or whatever fundamental sort it seemed to introspection to belong,
was the structure it had or the kind to which it belonged. But belonging to
a kind is not the sort of property that is introspectively discernible; if
persons are essentially self-conscious, and to be self-conscious is the
nature of persons, it still does not follow that self-consciousness being the
nature of persons is somehow introspectively accessible. Similarly, if one
has a triangular image before the mind’s eye, and being closed and three-
sided is essential to a triangle, it does not follow that being closed and
three-sided is essential to a triangle are part of one’s image. Neither self-
consciousness being the nature of persons nor being closed and three-
sided is the nature of triangles is an introspectively (etc.) accessible
quality.
It is crucial here that Descartes used both introspective report and
conceptual consideration. So did Locke: so also do Ramanuja, Hume, and
the Jain and Buddhist traditions. The substantivalists – Descartes,
Ramanuja, and the Jain tradition – take it to be true that it is logically
impossible that there be mental states that are not the states of some
person in the sense of being states of some mental substance. Here
Locke, who describes his experience in Humean and Buddhist terms,
agrees with Descartes, Ramanuja, and the Jains. For Jainism, Descartes,
and Ramanuja, what introspection yields is not a pain, but one’s being in
pain; not a (or the) thought that Abraham Lincoln was once US
President, but one’s thinking that Lincoln was President; not hunger,
but one’s being hungry. It is oneself-in-somestate that is introspected.
The Buddhist tradition typically takes this to be a correct account of
ordinary introspection, and to that extent agrees with the
substantivalists against Hume. Hence their appeal to meditative and
enlightenment experience which they take to be different.