Replies to Paul, Brennan, O’Brien

The Practical Self begins with Descartes’s withdrawal into isolation. And it ends where the Meditations end: in a world of others, offering objections and replies, holding one another to account. But its route from self-consciousness to objectivity is decidedly not Cartesian—it denies that we can establish a connection between self-consciousness and the world on theoretical grounds alone. Instead, it argues that we have practical grounds to accept that we are the agents of our thinking and that our assent to this claim is sustained by practices which relate us to an objective world. Elliot Samuel Paul’s thoughtful comments identify two gaps in this argument and argue that Descartes’s account of agency and objectivity is needed to bridge them. The route from self-consciousness and objectivity needs supplementation with Cartesian resources.