(Philosophy Of Mind) John Campbell - Past, Space And Self - Chpt1.pdf

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Framesof Reference
The Distinction
There is a distinction that philosophers and psychologistshave
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 classificationsphysicists 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 theseechoes aside .
Intuitively , the distinction is between thinking about space
as a participant , as someoneplunged into its center, as someone
with things to do in that space, on the one hand, and, on
the other hand, thinking about the spaceas a disengagedtheorist
. 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
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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 sceneand to establish who did what. It is the
distinction between thinking about the spacefrom a particular
'
point of view, as a subject at the center of one s world , and
thinking about the spaceindependently of any particular viewpoint
on it, in an impersonal or absolute way.
The idea of absolute spacesometimes appears in discussions
of self-consciousness. When self-consciousnessis conceived i