STEVEN JAMES BARTLETT

Reflexivity and Self-reference

STEVEN JAMES BARTLETT

Reflexivity and self-reference are basic to a very wide range of phenomena, subject-matters, and applications. They have, however, seldom been studied in their own right as constituting an independent field of investigation. In much of my research and publishing I have focused attention on a variety of forms of self-reference or reflexivity (the two terms are used synonymously here; some readers are familiar with one term, some with the other).

There are many systems capable of self-reference, ranging from reflexive formal systems in mathematics and mathematical logic, to self-referential systems in artificial intelligence and the theory of computation, to self-referential systems that are physiologically based—the most advanced known example being that of human self-awareness and the capacity to reflect on that awareness. Interesting secondary applications arise in connection with breakdowns in reflexive functioning found in certain psychopathologies.

My interest in reflexivity or self-reference has taken two paths: One of these was to bring together the first of two collections of papers dealing with reflexivity. This collection, Reflexivity: A Source-Book in Self-Reference, consisted of “classical” papers in this field, papers that are seldom read side-by-side, and which together help to define a broad area of inquiry.

The second collection, Self-Reference: Reflections on Reflexivity, edited with Peter Suber, invited papers from contemporaries who have taken their own steps beyond the “classical” contributions of the first volume. As is often paradoxically the case in the world of publishing, the contemporary collection was published first, and the classical collection later.

In a pioneering or perhaps revolutionary spirit, my second path of interest has been to develop a method for the study of philosophical problems by means of a “therapy for concepts.” Its purpose is to demonstrate that many key philosophical concepts, and much of our routinely accepted conventional conceptual vocabulary as well, are self-referentially inconsistent. I have identified numerous “conceptual pathologies,” which lead to non-metaphorical “thought disorders,” using the first self-validating methodology for epistemology, i.e., a methodology which cannot not be accepted without self-referential inconsistency.

The variety of self-referential inconsistency employed in this way, called metalogical self-referential inconsistency, is new and distinct from the traditionally applied variety of performative self-referential inconsistency used in philosophical argumentation by men like John Passmore and Henry W. Johnstone, Jr. Unlike the performative variety, metalogical self-referential inconsistency demonstrates the in-principle impossibility that a certain form of reference can be meaningful. In this sense, it comprises a transcendental approach to understanding the preconditions of referring.

This radical and revisionary approach was first formulated within a phenomenological framework in which the concept of reference plays a logically primitive role; this approach was later separated from phenomenology in the form of a metalogic of reference. [See below under References: #1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11.]

I have applied the resulting methodology to a group of conceptually basic concepts (for example, space, time, causality, consciousness, etc.), concepts that are both relied upon in much ordinary thinking and are used in the formulation of many scientific theories. The result of these applications shows that many such concepts, which we routinely employ unquestioningly, are meaningless and stand in need of meaningful substitutes. For these, I’ve proposed self-referentially consistent replacement concepts. [See references #1, 3, 6 (Part III), 7, 9, 12.]

The following are links to information about the two collections of papers dealing with reflexivity or self-reference, and below these is a list of the publications cited above.

Self-reference: Reflections on Reflexivity

Steven J. Bartlett & Peter Suber (Eds.)

Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. Now published by Springer Science.

Reflexivity: A Source-Book in Self-Reference

Edited and with an Introduction by Steven J. Bartlett

Amsterdam: North-Holland / Elsevier Science Publishers, 1992

. . .

REFERENCES

Links to obtain copies of these publications, or to acquire further information, are often included:

 1. A Relativistic Theory of Phenomenological Constitution: A Self-Referential, Transcendental Approach to Conceptual Pathology, 2 vols. (Vol. I: French; Vol. II: English). Doctoral dissertation, Université de Paris, 1971: University Microfilms International #7905583. Dissertation director: Paul Ricoeur. An original work that develops the first self-validating phenomenological epistemology capable of identifying and correcting many conceptual pathologies.

2. Metalogic of Reference: A Study in the Foundations of Possibility, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 1975. A research monograph that formulates the author’s approach to epistemology in terms of self-referential argumentation and self-validating proofs.

3. Conceptual Therapy: An Introduction to Framework-relative Epistemology, Studies in Theory and Behavior, Saint Louis, 1983. An introductory text describing the author’s approach to epistemology in terms of self-referential argumentation and self-validating proofs.

4. Self-Reference: Reflections on Reflexivity, edited with Peter Suber, Martinus Nijhoff, 1987; now published by Springer Science. The first of two collections (see #5 below), consisting of invited papers by leading contemporary authors in the new area of research, the general theory of reflexivity.

5. Reflexivity: A Source Book in Self-Reference, Elsevier Science Publishers, 1992. The second collection, consisting of classical papers by leading contributors of the twentieth century, published in the new area of research, the general theory of reflexivity.

6. The Pathology of Man: A Study of Human Evil, Charles C. Thomas, 2005. The first comprehensive scholarly study of the psychology and epistemology of human aggression and destructiveness. The 250,000-word study discusses and evaluates contributions by major twentieth century psychiatrists and psychologists including Freud, Jung, Menninger, Fromm, and Peck, and examines the psychology of war, genocide, terrorism, obedience, and other expressions of human aggression and destructiveness. The study includes original research by the author, such as a detailed description of the phenomenology of hatred and the psychology of human stupidity, and an extension and elaboration of the author’s earlier published work dealing with the epistemology of human thought disorders.

7. “Phenomenology of the Implicit,” originally published in Dialectica: Revue international de philosophie de la connaissance, Vol. 29, Nos. 2-3, 1975, 173-188. This paper marks a juncture between the author's studies in phenomenology and the transition he made to a study of what he has called a "metalogic of reference." The paper describes the author's "translation schema" that permits certain of the central goals of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology to be transposed to a framework that studies the preconditions of valid reference. The result of this translation was the development of the author's "de-projective" approach to phenomenology, which he later dissociated from phenomenology when he developed a pure metalogic of reference. Supplemented in 2016 with an addendum listing some of the author's related publications.

8. “Fenomenologia Tego, Co Implikowane,” a translation into Polish of “Phenomenology of the Implicit” (no. 7, above). Originally published in Roczniki Filozoficzne, Vol. XXII, No. 1, 1974, pp. 73-89. Supplemented in 2016 with an addendum listing some of the author's related publications.

9. “The Idea of a Metalogic of Reference,” Methodology and Science, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1976, 85-92.

10. “Self-Reference, Phenomenology, and Philosophy of Science,” Methodology and Science, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1980, 143-167.

11. “Referential Consistency as a Criterion of Meaning,” Synthese, Vol. 52, 1982, 267-282.

12. “Hoisted by Their Own Petards: Philosophical Positions that Self-Destruct,” Argumentation, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1988, 69-80.

13. “Roots of Human Resistance to Animal Rights: Psychological and Conceptual Blocks,” Animal Law (law review of the Northwestern School of Law, Lewis and Clark College), Vol. 8, 2002, 143-76. The first comprehensive legal study of the psychological and epistemological foundations of human resistance to compassionate treatment of animals. Electronically re-published October, 2002, by the Michigan State University’s Detroit College of Law, Animal Law Web Center, and maintained on an ongoing basis; available from the Animal Law Web Center, or here.

Translated into German: “Wurzeln menschlichen Widerstands gegen Tierrechte: Psychologische und konceptuelle Blockaden.” Can be downloaded here or online from www.simorgh.de/animallaw.

Translated into Portuguese: “Raízes da resistência humana aos direitos dos animais: Bloqueios psicológicos e conceituais,” in Brazilian Animal Rights Review (Revista Brasileira de Direito Animal), Vol. 2(3), July/December, 2007, and available online here.

14. "Towards a Unified Concept of Reality," ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 32, No. 1, 43-49. This is a study of the relativity of facts in relation to the frameworks of reference in terms of which those facts are established. In this early paper from 1975, intended for a less technical audience, the author proposes an understanding of facts and their associated frameworks in terms of complementarity. This understanding of facts leads to an integrated yet pluralistic concept of reality. In the Addendum, readers will find a partial listing of related publications by the author that extend the research described in this paper. Available online here and from PhilPapers.

15. Review article: Free Choice: A Self-Referential Argument by J. M. Boyle, Jr., G. Grisez, and O. Tollefsen. Review of Metaphysics, XXXII, No. 4, 1979, 738-740. This book review provides a brief descriptive overview of past efforts to use self-referential argumentation, distinguishing pragmatical from metalogical self-referential approaches. The reviewer claims that the pragmatical self-referential argument proposed in this book is itself metalogically self-referentially inconsistent, and directs the reader to other relevant published works by the reviewer. Available online here and from PhilPapers.