An examination of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of "alienated self-consciousness.".

You and I reach for a dollar bill on the floor, each saying “I saw it first.” The content of what we say is identically the same. How then is your claim referred to you and mine to me? We argue that the reference of self-ascriptions is effected by the occasion of the occurrence of the first-person indexical rather than by the content of the thought or assertion which then occurs. That this is true has further implications for exotic, self-fulfilling (...) self-ascriptions, like the Cartesian Cogito ; for views like those of Geach and Anscombe, who hold that ‘I’ is not a singular referring expression at all; and for views which hold that the first-person indexical is a singular referring expression with a very special, “systematically ambiguous” content. (shrink)

Wittgenstein distinguished between two uses of “I”, one “as object” and the other “as subject”, a distinction that Shoemaker elucidated in terms of a notion of immunity to error through misidentification (“IEM”); first-personal claims are IEM in the use “as subject”, but not in the other use. Shoemaker argued that memory judgments based on “personal”, episodic memory are not strictly speaking IEM; Gareth Evans disputed this. Similar issues have been debated regarding self-ascriptions of conscious thoughts based on first-personal awareness, (...) in the light of claims of “thought insertion” in schizophrenic patients. The paper aims to defend a Shoemaker-like line by critically engaging with some compelling recent contributions. Methodologically, the paper argues that to properly address these issues the all-inclusive term “thought” should be avoided, and specific types of thoughts countenanced. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary work contains the most sustained attempt at developing and defending one of the few genuine theories of consciousness.

Self‐consciousness is a topic located at the intersection of a range of different philosophical concerns. One set of concerns is metaphysical. Another is epistemological. When discussing the phenomenon of consciousness in general, philosophers generally think it possible to give an account of consciousness that is independent of how one understands the objects, properties, and events of which one is conscious. Self‐consciousness is important because of the role it plays in the cognitive economy. Self‐consciousness can be understood either (...) in terms of direct awareness of the self or in terms of propositional awareness. Self‐conscious thoughts can be based on a range of different sources of information. Some of these sources can provide information either about the self or about other people. Some influential accounts of self‐consciousness, such as those of Shoemaker (1963, 1968) and Evans (1982), have attributed a fundamental role to the phenomenon of immunity to error through misidentification. (shrink)

Self-consciousness can be defined as the ability to think 'I'-thoughts. Recently, it has been suggested that self-consciousness in this sense can (and should) be accounted for in terms of nonconceptual forms of self-representation. Here, I will argue that while theories of nonconceptual self-consciousness do provide us with important insights regarding the essential genetic and epistemic features of self-conscious thought, they can only deliver part of the full story that is required to understand the phenomenon of self-consciousness. I will provide (...) two arguments to this effect, drawing on insights from the philosophy of language and on structural differences between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of representation. Both arguments rest on the intuition that while self-consciousness requires explicit self-representation, nonconceptual content can at best provide implicit self-related information. I will conclude that in order to explain the emergence of self-conscious thought out of more basic forms of representations one has to explain the transition between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation. (shrink)

Does all conscious experience essentially involve self-consciousness? In his Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person, Dan Zahavi answers “yes”. I criticize three core arguments offered in support of this answer—a well-known regress argument, what I call the “interview argument,” and a phenomenological argument. Drawing on Sartre, I introduce a phenomenological contrast between plain experience and self-conscious experience. The contrast challenges the thesis that conscious experience entails self-consciousness.

Reviews the book, When self-consciousness breaks: Alien voices and inserted thoughts by G. Lynn Stephens and George Graham . In this book, the authors examine and explain the experience of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion in terms of an alienated self-consciousness, in which the person is directly or introspectively aware of an episode in mental life but experiences it as alien. Psychopathologists look to such episodes as a way to reveal the underlying pathology of mental illness. As philosophers, however, (...) Stephens and Graham are concerned with what such experiences might reveal about the underlying psychological structure and processes of human consciousness. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Sebastian Rödl undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. This profound work revives the thought that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself.

blurb from publisher: "In Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism, Dennis Schulting examines the themes of reflexivity, self-consciousness, representation and apperception in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism more widely. Central to Schulting’s argument is the claim that all of human experience is inherently self-referential and that this is part of a self-reflexivity of thought, or what is called transcendental apperception, a Kantian insight that was first apparent in the work of Christian Wolff and came to (...) inform all of German Idealism. In a rigorous text suitable for students of German philosophy and upper-level students of metaphysics, epistemology, moral and political philosophy, and aesthetics courses, the author establishes the historical roots of Kant’s thought and traces it through to his immediate successors Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He specifically examines the cognitive role of self-consciousness and its relation to idealism and places it in a clear and coherent history of rationalist philosophy." . (shrink)

This chapter is about susceptibility to one type of division within our selves that can occur within self‐conscious experience and is present in certain mental disorders. This is the separation between experiencing oneself as subject and as agent. The chapter considers some disorders of self‐consciousness and examines the role that this particular division may play in those disorders. Companion to consciousness studies is not completed without attention to the philosophical psychopathology of self‐consciousness. The chapter also examines the case (...) of verbal auditory hallucinations. Investigators often say that hallucinations involve “loss of ego boundaries” or “internal/external confusion”. The chapter presents a case of alienated self‐consciousness, and explores the phenomenon of thought insertion. According to the standard or traditional account of thought insertion, the patient is aware of her own thoughts, but denies that they are hers and attributes them to someone else. So, thought insertion certainly seems to constitute alienated awareness of one's own thoughts. (shrink)

Poststructuralists hold Hegel responsible for giving rise to many of modern philosophy's problematic concepts--the authority of reason, self-consciousness, the knowing subject. Yet, according to Simon Lumsden, this animosity is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of Hegel's thought, and resolving this tension can not only heal the rift between poststructuralism and German idealism but also point these traditions in exciting new directions. Revisiting the philosopher's key texts, Lumsden calls attention to Hegel's reformulation of liberal and Cartesian conceptions of subjectivity, identifying a (...) critical though unrecognized continuity between poststructuralism and German idealism. Poststructuralism forged its identity in opposition to idealist subjectivity; however, Lumsden argues this model is not found in Hegel's texts but in an uncritical acceptance of Heidegger's characterization of Hegel and Fichte as "metaphysicians of subjectivity." Recasting Hegel as both post-Kantian and postmetaphysical, Lumsden sheds new light on this complex philosopher while revealing the surprising affinities between two supposedly antithetical modes of thought. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between two ways of thinking about the sources of self-consciousness. We can think about the sources of self-consciousness either in genetic terms (as the origins or precursors of self-conscious thoughts) or in epistemic terms (as the grounds of self-conscious judgements). Using Christopher Peacocke's account of self-conscious judgements in Being Known as a foil, this paper brings out some important ways in which we need to draw upon the sources of self-consciousness in the genetic sense (...) for a proper understanding of the sources of self-consciousness in the epistemic sense. (shrink)

A unique synthesis of the contemporary, Anglo-American philosophical approach with an abiding concern for classical philosophical problems. This book seeks to clarify the precise structure of self-consciousness and self-determination and elucidates their significance for our philosophical understanding of self-knowledge and human agency.The analysis challenges traditional models of theoretical self-knowledge and practical self-relation and elaborates an account of rationally grounded responsibility that jointly fulfills the demands of autonomy and authenticity.Tugendhat's study is a unique synthesis of the contemporary Anglo-American philosophical approach with (...) an abiding concern for classical philosophical problems. It brings the methods of linguistic analysis to bear on such epistemological, moral, and metaphysical issues as the meaning and interconnections of self-knowledge, ego identity, rational self-understanding, and freedom of the will. In this context, the views of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Mead, and Hegel are searchingly examined. The philosophical testimony of Kierkegaard, Freud, Habermas, and others is also presented and weighed. Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination is based on a series of lectures given at Heidelberg. The book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

"The book presents in accessible fashion recent important work on the self and self-consciousness and also moves the issues forward with interesting new ideas. It provides a notably crisp and clear treatment of some extremely intriguing topics." -- Jane Heal, Department of Philosophy, University of Cambridge In this book, José Luis Bermú dez addesses two fundamental problems in the philosophy and psychology of self-consciousness: (1) Can we provide a noncircular account of fully fledged self-conscious thought and language in terms of (...) more fundamental capacities? (2) Can we explain how fully fledged self-conscious thought and language can arise in the normal course of human development? Bermú dez argues that a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) arises from the apparent strict interdependence between self-conscious thought and linguistic self-reference. The paradox renders circular all theories that define self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun. It seems to follow from the paradox of self-consciousness that no such account or explanation can be given. Drawing on recent work in empirical psychology and philosophy, the author argues that any explanation of fully fledged self-consciousness that answers these two questions requires attention to primitive forms of self-consciousness that are prelinguistic and preconceptual. Such primitive forms of self-consciousness are to be found in somatic proprioception, the structure of exteroceptive perception, and prelinguistic forms of social interaction. The author uses these primitive forms of self-consciousness to dissolve the paradox ofself-consciousness and to show how the two questions can be given an affirmative answer. (shrink)

Ernst Tugendhat's study is a unique synthesis of the contemporary, Anglo-American philosophical approach with an abiding concern for classical philosophical problems. It brings the methods of linguistic analysis to bear on such epistemological, moral, and metaphysical issues as the meaning and interconnections of self knowledge, ego identity, rational self-understanding, and freedom of the will. In this context the views of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Mead, and Hegel are searchingly examined. The philosophical testimony of Kierkegaard, Freud, Habermas, and others is also presented and (...) weighed.Ernst Tugendhat is Professor of Philosophy at the Freie Universitat in Berlin. Self Consciousness and Self-Determination is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

The Body Claim states that a transcendental condition of self-consciousness is that one experience oneself as embodied. The contention of this thesis is that popular arguments in support of the Body Claim are unconvincing. Understanding the Body Claim requires us to have a clear understanding of both self-consciousness and embodied experience. In the first chapter I lay out two different conceptions of self-consciousness, arguing that the proponent of the Body Claim should think of self-consciousness as first-person thought. I point out (...) that since arguments for the Body Claim tend to proceed by stating putative transcendental conditions on self-reference, the proponent of the Body Claim must maintain that there is a conceptual connection between self-consciousness and self-reference. In the second chapter I argue against views, originating from Wittgenstein and Anscombe, which reject this connection between self-consciousness and self-reference. In chapter three I show that a well known principle governing the ascription of content, that which Evans calls ‘Russell’s Principle’, occupies an ambiguous position with regards to the Body Claim. I argue that Russell’s Principle should be rejected. Chapter four distinguishes between two conceptions of embodied experience: bodily-awareness and bodily self-awareness. I argue that there is no such thing as bodily self-awareness and so it cannot be a transcendental condition of self-consciousness. Chapter five looks at, and finds wanting, arguments for the Body Claim that can be found in the work of Strawson. Chapter six argues that it is a transcendental condition of self-consciousness that one enjoy spatial experience. Chapters seven and eight assess two influential arguments that attempt to complete a defence of the Body Claim: the solidity argument and the action argument. I argue that neither argument is convincing. Although the conclusions are primarily negative, much is learned along the way about the nature of both self-consciousness and embodied experience. (shrink)

If Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology is to justify our capacity to know the world as it is, by examining a complete series of forms of consciousness, why and with what justification does he omit the Cartesian ego-centric predicament? By augmenting Franco Chiereghin’s explication of Hegel’s concept of thought, and of why Hegel provides it only at the start of the second half of ‘Self-Consciousness’, this paper shows how Hegel showed that Pyrrhonian, Cartesian and Humean scepticism, and also mental content internalism, all (...) depend upon the deductivist model of rational justification (scientia), and that this model is suited only to strictly formal domains, not to the non-formal substantive domain of empirical knowledge. Hegel thus refutes the epistemological presuppositions of the ego-centric predicament; hence he may omit it from the forms of consciousness examined in the Phenomenology. (shrink)

It is accepted that first-person thoughts are immune to error through misidentification. I argue that there is also immunity to error through misascription, failure to recognise which has resulted in mistaken claims that first-person thoughts involving the self-ascription of bodily states are, at best, circumstantially immune to error through misidentification relative to.

We investigated the properties of the sustained attention to response task . In the SART, participants respond to frequent neutral signals and are required to withhold response to rare critical signals. We examined whether SART performance shows characteristics of speed–accuracy tradeoffs and in addition, we examined whether SART performance is influenced by prior exposure to emotional picture stimuli. Thirty-six participants in this study performed SARTs after being exposed to neutral and negative picture stimuli. Performance in the SART changed rapidly over (...) time and there was a high correlation between participants errors of commission rate and their reaction time to the neutral targets . Regardless of exposure self-reported thoughts significantly correlated with both errors of commission and reaction times. Overall, the results support the view that the SART is a better measure of impulsive responding than sustained attention. (shrink)

Stephens and Grahamset themselves an apparently modest task, to understand why people who experience alien voices and inserted thoughts do not believe that they themselves are the source of these experiences. However, it soon becomes clear that there are many connected issues here. In eight short chapters, they address the phenomenology and ontology of consciousness, the phenomenology of alien voices, inserted thoughts, obsessive-compulsive thoughts and feelings, and other cases of unusual experience often associated with psychopathology, including brief (...) discussion of multiple personality disorder. They survey some of the main empirical explanations of the phenomenology, set out the shortcomings of these theories, and end by proposing their own schematic account. (shrink)

This book strives to deal with Hegel's thought by means of a thorough, unitarian and logical approach and to enforce the idea that philosophy is rigorous as far as it is able to consistently tackle the question of self-consciousness. It results that the logic underlying every philosophical interest traces back to the self-referring investigation about life in the mode of self-consciousness, by which social practices and their history can be grasped. Once we assess that self-consciousness is life through the concept, (...) we would be able to realize the logical structure underlying its historical outcomes. (shrink)

My thesis tests a novel definition of consciousness by applying it to theories of self-consciousness. This definition attempts to distinguish the phenomenon of consciousness from those of knowledge, belief, awareness, and perception by describing it as the noticing of objects and the registering of facts in thought. My investigation of self-consciousness is phenomenological in that it leaves aside questions as to whether selves exist or what their nature is and just examines what the contents of self-consciousness are. The main question, (...) throughout the thesis, is whether there are any contents that necessarily enter self-consciousness understood as consciousness associated with meaningful use of the first personal pronoun. My answer to this question is that there are not. This answer is reached after the discussion of a range of prominent theories that have emanated from Kant. All these theories have in common that they can be phenomenologically clarified with the help of my description of consciousness. Kant’s own views of “empirical self-consciousness” are phenomenologically relatively modest; but what he says about “transcendental self-consciousness”, incorporating a priori consciousness of one’s identity, cannot be phenomenologically supported. Similar restrictions apply to Fichte’s theory, which develops the notion of transcendental self-consciousness, explicating it as consciousness of “this very consciousness”. Strawsonian theories of self-consciousness (P.F. Strawson, G. Evans, Q. Cassam) claim that self-consciousness requires some awareness of oneself as a spatiotemporally located physical object. I argue that such a claim cannot be phenomenologically substantiated. The Strawsonian theories rely on a questionable “discrimination requirement”; but even if it is assumed that they are justified in claiming that, as self-conscious beings, we have to know, believe, perceive or be aware that we are physical objects, it still does not follow that we have to be conscious, in my sense, of ourselves as such objects. There is no particular type of object that is necessarily noticed and no particular type of fact that is necessarily registered in thought by a person who can meaningfully use the first personal pronoun. In the last part of the thesis, some of the results of the earlier chapters are applied to the problem of how to explain first person authority and an explanation which is compatible with those results is suggested. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe and Anthony Kenny disagree on whether or not it is possible to doubt the existence of one’s own body. Anscombe believes that such doubt makes sense while Kenny argues that it could make sense only if one supposed that he had become a bodyless Cartesian ego. To resolve the issue I explore the knowledge one acquires of himself, and thus the manner in which such knowledge might be weakened into doubt. Siding with Anscombe, I argue that under the (...) conditions of sensory deprivation some very basic questions asked of oneself such as, “Which body?” cannot be answered. Without such answers, one can be uncertain about his own body. Such uncertainty, however, is to be explained by the autonomy of the relevant ‘J-thoughts’ and not because one had become a Cartesian ego. (shrink)

In recent philosophy of mind, it is often assumed that consciousness and self-consciousness are two separate phenomena. In this paper, I argue that this is not quite right. The argument proceeds in two phases. First, I draw a distinction between (i) being self-conscious of a thought that p and (ii) self-consciously thinking that p. I call the former transitive self-consciousness and the latter intransitive self-consciousness. I then argue that consciousness does depend on intransitive self-consciousness, and that the common reasons for (...) denying the dependence of consciousness upon self-consciousness apply only to transitive self-consciousness. (shrink)

The capacity of human knowers to turn their cognitive powers upon themselves has long fascinated philosophers. My book Transparency and Reflection grew out of an attempt to comprehend a fundamental thought from Kant about the significance of this capacity for self-consciousness: namely, that it transforms the general character of human knowing, giving rise to a distinctively rational form of cognition and supplying the basis for a distinctively philosophical understanding of our own minds and of the world with which they engage. (...) In seeking to understand these Kantian ideas, however, I found myself struggling with difficulties that led me to re-think my approach, moving away from a Kantian formulation of these points and toward one inspired by ideas from Sartre. In the present essay, I describe the difficulties that led me from Kant to Sartre, and I also seek to explain how, in spite of this shift in perspective, my book bears out various fundamental Kantian thoughts about the significance of human self-consciousness. (shrink)

Explores the understanding of self-consciousness and personal identity - two fundamendtal features of human subjectivity - as it developed in early modern philosophy. Udo Thiel presents a critical evaluation of these features as they were conceived in the sevententh and eighteenth centuries. He explains the arguments of thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hume, as well as their early critics, followers, and other philosophical contemporaries, and situates them within their historical contexts. Interest in the issues of self-consciousness and (...) personal identity is in many ways characteristic [of] and even central to early modern thought, but Thiel argues here that this is also an interest that continues to this day, in a form still strongly influenced by the conceptual frameworks of early modern thought. In this book he attempts to broaden the scope of the treatment of these issues considerably, covering more than a hundred years of philosophical debate in France, Britain, and Germany while remaining attentive to the details of the arguments under scrutiny and discussing alternative interpretations in many cases"--Publisher's description, p. [4] of dust jacket. (shrink)

In recent years, the scientific study of meditation and psychedelic drugs has seen remarkable developments. The increased focus on meditation in cognitive neuroscience has led to a cross-cultural classification of standard meditation styles validated by functional and structural neuroanatomical data. Meanwhile, the renaissance of psychedelic research has shed light on the neurophysiology of altered states of consciousness induced by classical psychedelics, such as psilocybin and LSD, whose effects are mainly mediated by agonism of serotonin receptors. Few attempts have been made (...) at bridging these two domains of inquiry, despite intriguing evidence of overlap between the phenomenology and neurophysiology of meditation practice and psychedelic states. In particular, many contemplative traditions explicitly aim at dissolving the sense of self by eliciting altered states of consciousness through meditation, while classical psychedelics are known to produce significant disruptions of self-consciousness, a phenomenon known as drug-induced ego dissolution. In this article, we discuss available evidence regarding convergences and differences between phenomenological and neurophysiological data on meditation practice and psychedelic drug-induced states, with a particular emphasis on alterations of self-experience. While both meditation and psychedelics may disrupt self-consciousness and underlying neural processes, we emphasize that neither meditation nor psychedelic states can be conceived as simple, uniform categories. Moreover, we suggest that there are important phenomenological differences even between conscious states described as experiences of self-loss. As a result, we propose that self-consciousness may be best construed as a multidimensional construct, and that “self-loss,” far from being an unequivocal phenomenon, can take several forms. Indeed, various aspects of self-consciousness, including narrative aspects linked to autobiographical memory, self-related thoughts and mental time travel, and embodied aspects rooted in multisensory processes, may be differently affected by psychedelics and meditation practices. Finally, we consider long-term outcomes of experiences of self-loss induced by meditation and psychedelics on individual traits and prosocial behavior. We call for caution regarding the problematic conflation of temporary states of self-loss with “selflessness” as a behavioral or social trait, although there is preliminary evidence that correlations between short-term experiences of self-loss and long-term trait alterations may exist. (shrink)

“Leibniz on Consciousness and Self‐Consciousness” It is argued that Leibniz held a version of the so‐called “higher‐order thought” theory of consciousness. According to this theory, what makes a mental state conscious is that it is accompanied by a thought that one is in that state. For example, in elaborating on his theory of monads, Leibniz explains that an unconscious perception becomes conscious when it is accompanied by an apperception of it. Apperception is best understood as a form of (...) class='Hi'>self‐consciousness, and reflection is best understood as a sophisticated form of apperception. With these crucial terminological distinctions in place, it is then argued that treating Leibniz as a HOT theorist can help us understand how he did indeed hold that animals apperceive even if most of them are incapable of sophisticated forms of reflection and rationality. (shrink)

Empirical approaches on topics such as consciousness, self-awareness, or introspective perspective, need a conceptual framework so that the emerging, still unconnected findings can be integrated and put into perspective. We introduce a model of self-consciousness derived from phenomenology, philosophy, the cognitive, and neurosciences. We will then give an overview of research data on one particular aspect of our model, self-agency, trying to link findings from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Finally, we will expand on pathological aspects of self-agency, and in particular (...) on psychosis in schizophrenia. We show, that a deficient self-monitoring system underlies, in part, hallucinations and formal thought (language) disorder in schizophrenia. We argue, that self-consciousness is a valid construct and can be studied with the instruments of cognitive and neuroscience. (shrink)

A naturalistic account of self-consciousness is developed within a general framework in which thought contents are structured by concepts but conceptual content need not be exhausted at the level of reference. To motivate the first feature of this framework, possible-worlds- and property-based theories of thought content, which eschew structure, are criticized for overestimating and/or underestimating the attitude stock of ordinary agents. To motivate the second feature, it is argued that neo-Russellian and neo-Fregean accounts, which incorporate structure but differ on the (...) semantic classification of psychological modes of presentation, are more or less on a par with respect to standard parameters of evaluation . Though non-notational differences between these accounts remain, these differences add up to less than is commonly supposed. ;Neo-Russellians and neo-Fregeans agree on the explanatory relevance of conceptual modes of presentation, understood as reference-sustaining functional mechanisms; what they disagree about is whether those modes contribute to the content of a concept. Once the semantic dispute is set aside, questions about the nature of these mechanisms come to the fore. In the case of the self concept, what appears to distinguish this concept from coreferring items in an agent's conceptual repertoire is its privileged relation to inputs from internal monitoring systems, on one side, and outputs in control systems, on the other. Self-consciousness emerges as an atomistic conceptual capacity, sustained by both interoceptual mechanisms and agentive ones. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;We find ourselves in a world not of our own making; and in acquiring knowledge about the world and our situation in it we have nothing to go on but our psychological states; they are the immediate given. Let us label this claim the Basic Datum. What I shall call the Minimal Constraint is the claim, 'An account of the states of mind of subjects credited with knowledgeable (...) class='Hi'>thoughts about a mind-independent world must show how the intrinsic properties of such states of mind could yield such knowledge'. That is, a theory of thought must explain the Basic Datum. ;The Basic Datum may seen an obvious truism, and so too may the Minimal Constraint. But if 'obvious' means 'undisputed', neither of these claims is that. First, to say that is acquiring knowledge about the world we are restricted to the immediate deliverances of our psychological states, is to make a major concession to a central plank in the sceptic's argument against the possibility of knowing a mind-independent world. Many think that to deny the sceptic's conclusion we must reject this claim. Causal theories of reference, theories of direct acquaintance and so forth are often formulated with this aim in mind. ;Secondly, the Basic Datum is formulated from the first person perspective; as is the Minimal Constraint. Adoption of this perspective is necessary for generating scepticism; and many think that in order to rebut scepticism we must abandon the first person perspective when explaining the nature of knowledge. A fortiori, they hold that an explanation of the nature of a subjects psychological states when thinking knowledgeable thoughts about the world should not be constrained by questions raised from the first person perspective. ;Doubts of the first kind about the validity of the Constraint fall under what I shall call the Reference Debate; and doubts of the second kind under what I shall call the Reflectivity Debate. Throughout I shall be concerned with these debates as they apply to the phenomenology of experience-embedded thoughts, where by phenomenology I mean no more than the intrinsic properties of the state of mind of subjects credited with such thoughts. More specifically, I shall focus on the state of mind corresponding to the demonstrative component in experience-embedded thoughts expressible by such utterances as, "This is square". I shall refer to such states of mind as 'demonstrative states of mind'; and to experience-embedded thoughts containing a demonstrative component as 'demonstrative thoughts'. All my examples will be of vision-based demonstrative thought, but nothing is supposed to hang on this. (shrink)

Essays on the role of the body in self-consciousness, showing that full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness is built on a rich foundation of primitive, nonconceptual self-consciousness. These essays explore how the rich and sophisticated forms of self-consciousness with which we are most familiar—as philosophers, psychologists, and as ordinary, reflective individuals—depend on a complex underpinning that has been largely invisible to students of the self and self-consciousness. José Luis Bermúdez, extending the insights of his groundbreaking 1998 book, The Paradox of Self-Consciousness, argues that (...) full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness is built on a rich foundation of primitive, nonconceptual self-consciousness, and that these more primitive forms of self-consciousness persist in ways that frame self-conscious thought. They extend throughout the animal kingdom, and some are present in newborn human infants. Bermúdez makes the case that these primitive forms of self-awareness can indeed be described as forms of self-consciousness, arguing that they share certain structural and epistemological features with full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness. He offers accounts of certain important classes of states of nonconceptual content, including the self-specifying dimension of visual perception and the content of bodily awareness, considering how they represent the self. And he explores the general role of nonconceptual self-consciousness in our cognitive and affective lives, examining in several essays the relation between nonconceptual awareness of our bodies and what has been called our “sense of ownership” for our own bodies. (shrink)

In The Blue Book, Wittgenstein defined a category of uses of “I” which he termed “I”-as-subject, contrasting them with “I”-as-object uses. The hallmark of this category is immunity to error through misidentification (IEM). This article extends Wittgenstein’s characterisation to the case of memory-judgments, discusses the significance of IEM for self-consciousness—developing the idea that having a first-person thought involves thinking about oneself in a distinctive way in which one cannot think of anyone or anything else—and refutes a common objection to the (...) claim that memory-judgments exhibit IEM. (shrink)

A widely shared view in the literature on first-person thought is that the ability to entertain first-person thoughts requires prior non-conceptual forms of self-consciousness. Many philosophers maintain that the distinctive awareness which accompanies the use of the first person already presupposes a non-conceptual consciousness of the fact that oneself is the owner of a first-person thought. I call this argument The Argument for Non-Conceptual Self-Consciousness based on the Meaning of “I” and will demonstrate that most proponents of the presented (...) argument fail to establish their conclusion, even though I believe that the conclusion is actually true. The argument only justifies the claim that contextual information is needed in order to recognize oneself as the referent of an occurrence of the first person. However, it does not justify the thesis that this information needs to be given consciously and thus the existence of any non-conceptual self-consciousness. Finally, I shall present an argument for the assumption that some form of self-consciousness is needed to reflexively think about oneself via the first-person concept. In order to do so, I will draw on the general discussion about the functional role of consciousness. In particular, I will rely on results recently proposed by Frith and Metzinger (2016), Frith (Pragmatics & Cognition 18:497–551, 2010, Cognitive Neuroscience 2:117–118, 2011), Graziano (2013, Frontiers in Robotics and AI 4:article 60, 2017), and Graziano and Kastner (Cognitive Neuroscience 2:98–113, 2011), which suggest that one of the central functions of consciousness is to provide information about mental states for communication. (shrink)

I argue that José Luis Bermúdez has not shown that there is a paradox in our concept of self-consciousness. The deflationary theory is not a plausible theory of self-consciousness, so its paradoxicality is irrelevant. A more plausible theory, 'the simple theory', is not paradoxical. However, I do think there is a puzzle about the connection between self-consciousness and 'I'-thoughts.

ABSTRACT Frege characterizes judgement as the acknowledgement of the truth of a thought, appearing thereby to rule out false judgement. First in this paper I explain Frege’s characterization so that it does not have this consequence. Frege is not saying that for a subject S to judge that p is for S to acknowledge the truth of the thought that p. Rather, he is articulating judgement’s nature within self-consciousness. From within, to judge means to acknowledge a truth. Second, I suggest (...) that this articulation is centrally operative in Frege’s argument for the indefinability of truth. As Frege argues, it follows from judgement’s self-consciousness that truth is indefinable. (shrink)

This paper uses certain of Michel Foucault's ideas concerning modern consciousness (from The Order of Things) to illuminate a central paradox of the schizophrenic condition: a strange oscillation, or even coexistence, between two opposite experiences of the self: between the loss or fragmentation of self and its apotheosis in moments of solipsistic grandeur. Many schizophrenic patients lose their sense of integrated and active intentionality; even their most intimate thoughts and inclinations may be experienced as emanating from, or under the (...) control of, some external being or mysterious foreign soul (‘I feel it is not me who is thinking’; ‘I have been programmed’). Yet the same patients may also experience the self as preeminent, all-powerful or all-knowing (‘My thoughts can influence things’; ‘This event happens because I think it'). Here one may feel confronted with the very paradigm of irrationality: profound contradictions suggesting regression to primitive ‘primary-process’ thinking or utter collapse of the higher faculties of mind. I argue, however, that these dualities so basic to schizophrenia can best be understood very differently: as consequences of a kind of alienation and hyper-self-consciousness (‘hyper- reflexivity') that is closely analogous to what occurs in the post-Kantian era of Western intellectual history. The parallel dualities of modern thought have been most extensively discussed by Foucault, who describes paradoxes, tensions and other dilemmas central to what he calls the modern ‘episteme'; these result from what Foucault sees as the modern human being's introverted and ultimately self-deceiving preoccupation with, and overvaluing of, the phenomenon of his own consciousness. Parallels between these contradictions and those characteristic of several withdrawn schizophrenic individuals are described and analysed. The paper concludes with an Afterword in which some possible neurobiological underpinnings of these schizophrenic experiences are discussed. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have shown a rapidly increasing interest in the problem of consciousness and it is arguably the central issue in current interdisciplinary discussions about the mind. Any convincing theory of consciousness has to account for the perplexing aspects of human self-consciousness. This paper deals with Ibn Sina’s view on the human self-consciousness with special reference to his well-known “Flying Man” thought experiment. In a brief comparative discussion, we will consider some of the parallels between Ibn Sina’s account (...) of “consciousness of consciousness” and the contemporary “higher-order” theories of consciousness. An important point of divergence between Ibn Sina’s line of argument and Descartes’ method over the problem of self-consciousness will be examined, as well. Further, Thomas Nagel’s famous view on the subjective character of conscious experience will be mentioned and compared with the implications of Ibn Sina’s dictum that “our self-consciousness is identical to our existence”. (shrink)

What José Luis Bermúdez calls the paradox of self-consciousness is essentially the conflict between two claims: (1) The capacity to use first-personal referential devices like “I” must be explained in terms of the capacity to think first-person thoughts. (2) The only way to explain the capacity for having a certain kind of thought is by explaining the capacity for the canonical linguistic expression of thoughts of that kind. (Bermúdez calls this the “Thought-Language Principle”.) The conflict between (1) and (...) (2) is obvious enough. However, if a paradox is an unacceptable conclusion drawn from apparently valid reasoning from apparently true premises, then Bermúdez’s conflict is no paradox. It is rather a conflict between the view that thought must be explained in terms of language, and the view that first person linguistic reference must be explained in terms of first-person thought. Neither view is immediately obvious, and nor is it obvious that the arguments for either are equally compelling. What we have here is a difference of philosophical opinion, not a paradox. (shrink)

The so–called paradox of self–consciousness suggests that self–consciousness, understood as the capacity to think about oneself in a first–person way, cannot be explained. The author of the paradox contends that the only way to avert this result is by invoking the notion of nonconceptual first–person thought. This contention is rooted in adherence to the Linguistic Priority Principle, which dictates that pre–and nonlinguistic creatures lack concepts. I argue that the latter claim is dubious, and that the paradox of self–consciousness can be (...) better disarmed by denying the dependence of first–person conceptual thought on first–person language. (shrink)

Nishida Kitaro's reformulation of the major issues of Western philosophy from a Zen standpoint of "absolute nothingness" and "absolutely contradictory self-identity" represents the boldest speculative enterprise of modern Japan, continued today by his successors in the "Kyoto School" of philosophy. This English translation of Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness evokes the movement and flavor of the original, clarifies its obscurities, and eliminates the repetitions. It sheds new light on the philosopher's career, revealing a long struggle with such thinkers as Cohen, (...) Natorp, Husserl, Fichte, and Bergson, that ended with Nishida's break from the basic ontological assumptions of the West. Throughout labyrinthine arguments, Nishida never loses sight of his theme: the irreducibility and unobjectifiability of the act of self-consciousness which constitutes the self. Extensive annotation is provided for the first time in any edition of Nishida's work. Historians of Japanese philosophy and culture, and all those interested in the interaction of Eastern and Western thought-forms, now have a document which highlights many of the cultural, psychological, and intellectual dynamics that have shaped Japanese intellectual life in one of its most fascinating and ambitious manifestations. (shrink)

Kant points to two forms of self-consciousness: the inner sense (empirical apperception) grounded in a sensory form of self-awareness and transcendental apperception. The aim of this paper is to show that a sophisticated notion of basic self-consciousness, which contains a pre-reflective self-consciousness as its first level, is provided by the notion of transcendental apperception. The necessity for a pre-reflective self-consciousness has been pointed out in phenomenological literature. According to this account, every self-ascription of any property implies a more fundamental form (...) of self-consciousness, i.e., a kind of immediate familiarity with oneself. This pre-reflective self-consciousness is a non-relational and non-identificational form of self-consciousness and concerns an immediate acquaintance of the subject with itself. In the specific terms of transcendentalism every thought contains an implicit reference to a first-personal “givenness” or a sense of “mineness” that articulates a non-relational and non-identificational form of a pre-reflective model of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Consciousness has a number of puzzling features. One such feature is its unity: the experiences and other conscious states that one has at a particular time seem to occur together in a certain way. I am currently enjoying visual experiences of my computer screen, auditory experiences of bird-song, olfactory experiences of coffee, and tactile experiences of feeling the ground beneath my feet. Conjoined with these perceptual experiences are proprioceptive experiences, experiences of agency, affective and emotional experiences, and conscious thoughts (...) of various kinds. These experiences are unified in a variety of ways, but the kind of unity that I’m interested in here concerns their phenomenal character. Take just two of these experiences: the sound of bird-song and the smell of coffee. There is something it is like to have the auditory experience, there is something it is like to have the olfactory experience, and there is something it is like to have both the auditory and olfactory experiences together. These two experiences occur as parts or components or aspects of a larger, more complex experience. And what holds of these two experiences seems to hold – at least in normal contexts – of all of one’s simultaneous experiences: they seem to be subsumed by a single, maximal experience.2 We could think of this maximal experience as an experiential perspective on the world. What it is like to be me right now is (or involves) an extremely complex conscious state that subsumes the various simpler experiences that I outlined above (seeing my computer screen, hearing bird-song, smelling coffee, and so on). I will follow recent literature in using the term “co-consciousness” for the relation that a set of conscious states bear to each other when they have a complex phenomenology (Bayne and Chalmers 2003; Dainton 2000; Hurley 1998; Lockwood 1989). (shrink)

It is accepted that first-person thoughts are immune to error through misidentification. I argue that there is also immunity to error through misascription, failure to recognise which has resulted in mistaken claims that first-person thoughts involving the self-ascription of bodily states are, at best, circumstantially immune to error through misidentification relative to ‘I’ and, at worst, subject to error. Central to my thesis is that, first, ‘I’ is immune to error through misidentification absolutely, and that if there is (...) any problem with first-person thoughts this cannot be with the self-identification component, but only with the self-ascriptive component. Secondly, the ‘know who’, or ‘know what’, or ‘know which’ requirement is appropriately relevant to considerations of different self-ascriptive properties, and thus its inapproriateness in self-identification does not entail that ‘I’ may fail to refer and identify. (shrink)