On the Knowledge of My Existence: Towards My Existence as the Adverbial Transcendent/Immanent

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper is very interesting and of high quality. It raises the problem of the ontology of subjective individual existence but does not reduce this to first personal experience but rather looks at what it means to be a subject of experience including thought – and how subjects might be individuated. The author enters a well-established current in philosophy but does not attempt a historical reconstruction of the debate but offers their own account. This is a valuable enterprise in itself and deserves publication. Having said this there are inevitably further issues which the author could address in this paper. I point to some of these below:

The most general point to make here is that the structure of the piece could be more transparent. It would be very helpful to the reader to have the moves being made spelled out a the beginning in more detail, and then referred back to along the way. Currently the paper reads well, however, at several junctures new themes are introduced without much warning which makes the piece feel somewhat disorganized and loose. Enforcing a clear structure would go a long way to making the argument more pellucid. 

It is not clear what work the term ‘peculiar’ is doing for the author in the claim ‘I exist in the universe as something peculiar’. The term suggests that there is something special about the reflexive pronoun and how it refers, but this would need some fleshing out. If the term is meant to merely signify the existence of a particular the author should change the term to ‘particular’ – this seems however to go against the grain of the paper which focuses on what is special about being an ‘I’.

The idea that I can experience my own existence is interesting and worth exploring. It is not clear however that this question needs to be combined with the distinct question of whether I know I exist. When it comes to the latter question the author seems to be making an assumption that experience of existence is necessary for knowledge of existence. This is a problematic assumption which the author does not make seem plausible.

The author makes an analogy on p. 2 between knowing a fact about the world – in this case Prime Minister giving a speech – and first personal acquaintance with the self as subject. The analogy does not hold. First personal knowledge of the self of the form ‘I exist’ cannot ‘happen’ to be true because having the knowledge cannot be separated from existing. This seems to be a possible problem for the author. If the human being that I happen to be exists but I don’t exist, then when the human being says ‘I exist’ it is not me saying it but that human being. If I do exist then there is no logical space for me to make a mistake about this fact. Another way to look at this is to point out that knowledge is truth entailing: if I know something then it must be true – otherwise I could not know it. Only truths can be known, and to know something is to know that it is true. As much as in the Prime Minister case it might be the case that I was mistaken that there is a speech taking place, and so in fact had no knowledge, in my own case it is impossible for me to be mistaken about my existence. Vice versa: I may ‘happen’ to be right in a sort of Gettier case that the Prime Minister is giving a speech, but this fails as knowledge as there is no correct justification/warrant etc. However there cannot be a parallel Gettier case with self-knowledge: thinking ‘I exist’ does not seem to admit of any further warrant or justification. (Additionally the claim that in the dream scenario with the prime minister speaking ‘I happen to know’ that the prime minister is speaking is false on many influential theories of knowledge post Gettier. On Gettier’s account my saying that ‘I know the prime minister is speaking’ is strictly not knowledge precisely because of the lack of the appropriate justification, or causal relationship between the truth and my belief. Arguing otherwise would require more sustained engagement with current theories of knowledge in epistemology.)

Further on (p)2 the author says ‘My existence would remain transcendent of this my experience.’ There is a question whether we can experience our own existence on top of having experiences, or as an extra fact. However even if we answer the question in the negative it is still true that if I am in the position to make the claim ‘I exist’ it is in virtue of the fact that I do exist. Again, no logical space for making a mistake. In other words experience of existence is not necessary in the first personal case. Indeed being the subject of any experience – e.g. wearing a hat – is sufficient to confirm my existence as a subject of that experience.

The author seems to reject this sort of analysis by positioning themselves contra Descartes in the conclusion of the paper. This seems to me insufficient to address the Cartesian position on this point. The author should either do this early on or alert the reader to the reasons why this is not necessary.  

There is a further issue with when Descartes is invoked. The author writes “For if Descartes is right, anyone’s thinking experience would have ‘I’ as the subject. In this manner, my existence would be pluralized; the certainty of my existence would become the certainty of the existence of plural thinking subjects.” (p.10, conclusion) If this is an interpretation of Descartes the author is drawing on this should be flagged up. Otherwise this needs sustained argument. On most standard interpretations Descartes’s epistemology may have solipsism as one of its consequences. There does not seem to be, in other words, any entailment between the cogito and the existence of any other consciousness let alone ‘plural thinking subjects’ – the only thing Descartes is committed to is that *for any* conscious being, certainty of its own existence would be unassuageable (but not that such beings must exist).   

 On p. 5 the author writes: “Of these two juxtaposed experiences, one is limited by my existence and is distinguished from the other experience. My existence, which limits this human’s experience, can be known from within the experience.” Except invoking the somewhat cryptic quotation from Wittgenstein the author does little to explain what they mean by ‘existence being a limit onto experience’. This should be fleshed out ideally with some examples.

On p. 7 the author writes “This human can write, on the ground of experience, ‘I exist in the universe as something peculiar”.  What is the relevance of ‘on the ground of experience’? More importantly whose experience? Mine or the human beings? This is relevant in light of the discussion of the Twin Earthian. Is the twin earthian who is not ‘I’ an ‘I-less’ creature or just a creature with a different ‘I’?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Quality of English is good. There a couple of unidiomatic expressions throughout the text. The editors should have no difficulty in correcting these.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review my manuscript. Your detailed comments were extremely illuminating and were very helpful in improving the manuscript.

Please find my responses below and the corresponding revisions highlighted in the re-submitted file.

1. Responding to your comment that the article could be more transparent, I have spelled out the steps of my argument at the beginnings of sections after Section 2 and have added explanations at the points where I move on to the next step.
2. Responding to the comment on the unclarity of my term ‘peculiar’, I have changed the sentence, ‘I exist in the universe as something peculiar’, to the sentence, ‘I exist in the universe in a unique manner’, which would express the point I would like to make more clearly and precisely. The new reference to Stephen Priest’s passage in Section 1 would tie this sentence to existing discussion.
3. To respond to your comment regarding the combination of the question as to experience and the question as to knowledge, I added note 10, which would also respond to the your final comment.
4. To respond to your comment regarding the analogy between the dream case and the case of the knowledge of my existence, I added more explanations after presenting the two cases in Section 1.
5. The new version of the final paragraph in Section 8 would respond to the your comments regarding the claim ‘I exist’ and Cartesian certainty.
6. To respond to your comment on Section 3, I extended my interpretation of Wittgenstein and my discussion based on it.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In short: the article engages in a novel way with an important and understudied issue, making a new contribution to the literature and merits publication in Religions. I noticed one or two typos/solecisms so the editors should proof read the MS carefully before publishing. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Fine

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking time to read my manuscript. I am extremely grateful for your positive comment, which is truly encouraging.

I have improved my manuscript by clarifying my argument, changing the terms and phrases which could be more precise, and adding more philosophical points.

Please find the revisions highlighted in the re-submitted files.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Although the paper is based on an interesting phenomenological fact - that one's own existence is not identical to the existence of a particular human being - and although it tries to account for the degree of certainty the Ego can have of its own existence as this peculiar human being, there are several problems with the paper: 

(1) The overall argument is too dense, and it is not always clear what the author intends to show. He deploys too many different debates in the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of mind, without engaging with each of these issues in sufficient depth. As a consequence, there are too many argumentative jumps and unclarities to be found in the paper.

(2) The debate on panentheism is insufficient and not related to current debates.

(3) It remains unclear how the Ego relates to God, how the Ego relates to other minds, how the Ego relates to the world. 

Therefore, the author should focus on fewer points and extent on these, instead of presenting too many points 

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review my manuscript. Your comments were extremely helpful in reconstructing my argument and adding more philosophical points.

Please find my responses below and the corresponding revisions highlighted in the re-submitted file.

1. To respond to your comment (1), I have spelled out the steps of my argument at the beginnings of sections after Section 2 and have added explanations at the points where I move on to the next step. I have also changed the terms and phrases which could be made clearer and more precise.
2. To Respond to your comments (2) and (3), I have added notes 8 and 10.
3. I have added a new reference to Stephen Priest’s passage in Section 1 to connect my question to existing discussion.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

N/A