Abstract

Published in two parts, the present article addresses whether self-awareness is necessarily involved in each of the six kinds of consciousness that The Oxford English Dictionary identifies under the word consciousness. Part I inquires into how, if at all, self-awareness enters consciousness1: a cognitive relation between people in which they have joint and mutual cognizance; consciousness2: a psychological process of conceiving of oneself in certain sorts of respects on a firsthand evidentiary basis; and consciousness3: being occurrently aware of anything at all, including nonexistent particulars. An instance of consciousness1 may or may not have a reflexive object, but it will perforce include both inner awareness and awareness of oneself as an object of the other’s awareness. Consciousness2 requires self-awareness in the forms of witnessing or having witnessed potential evidence about oneself, inner awareness of this witnessing when it occurred, inner awareness and self-awareness as involved in remembering having witnessed that evidence, occurrent awareness of features of one’s character or personality, and bringing self-witnessed evidence to bear in judging of the latter. In contrast, consciousness3, which in a particular instance may be an occurrent self-awareness, need not involve any self-awareness at all.