Proximity Vitalism: Consequences of the Commitments

Proximity Vitalism (PV) rests on three commitments (3C): private experience occurs (EE), public anchors are required for experience (PE), and differences between experiences imply differences in their public anchors (the Proximity Principle, PP). Many Theories of Mind (TOM) accept these commitments; others reject one or more; many more stay silent. This paper demonstrates the consequences of holding these commitments firmly and refusing anything extra. Ontological-Epistemological Blurring Several classic puzzles follow a familiar pattern: an unremarkable epistemic fact is quietly upgraded into an ontological claim. This pattern is well understood in the literature. PV offers a different analysis. PV exposes the assumptions and rejections beneath each puzzle, allowing puzzles normally treated separately — and at length — to be dissolved quickly using only the 3C. Persistence The question of Persistence — what makes an experience, or a self, "the same" across time — is itself a persistent topic. From PV’s POV, the question is unanswerable. PV commits only to the instantaneous pairing of experience and experiencer. Whether there is a lasting thing or simply a temporal pattern is unknowable within the 3C. Experiential Causality The apparent causal relationship between private experience (E) and the public domain (P) receives many treatments: non-causal, overdetermined, identity, necessitarian, libertarian and others. Much literature is dedicated to accusing one treatment of being equivalent to, or implying, another treatment. PV agrees that many treatments are equivalent — but on an even broader basis. From PV’s POV their relevant distinction is binary: does the public domain track experience, or not?