This book argues that the primary function of human thinking in language is to make judgments, which are logical-normative connections of concepts. Robert Abele points out that this presupposes cognitive conditions that cannot be accounted for by empirical-linguistic analyses of language content or social conditions alone. Judgments rather assume both reason and a unified subject, and this requires recognition of a Kantian-type of transcendental dimension to them. Judgments are related to perception in that both are syntheses, defined as the (...) unity of representations according to a rule/form. Perceptual syntheses are simultaneously pre-linguistic and proto-rational, and the understanding makes these syntheses conceptually and thus self-consciously explicit. Abele concludes with a transcendental critique of postmodernism and what its deflationary view of ontological categories—such as the unified and reasoning subject—has done to political thinking. He presents an alternative that calls for a return to normativity and a recognition of reason, objectivity, and the universality of principles. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the nature of consciousness within the framework of the information concept. The paper proposes a definition of consciousness as an informational environment in which an extended model of reality is realized. The process of realization of this extended model is defined as thinking. The result of thinking is information objects that form a system in the form of information environment. Information objects are reflections of the real world properties, not directly, (...) but by means of translation through a special object – a carrier of consciousness. In the case of human consciousness, such a carrier is a human being (represented in the form of his nervous system). As a result, consciousness can be qualified as a simulacrum of reality, i.e., a model of a model: an information model of the carrier of consciousness, which in turn is a means of physical modeling of the real "big" world. Possible mechanisms mediating thinking are considered. For this purpose, two new concepts are introduced: neural circuit and neurophysical pattern. An approach to the study of self-consciousness based on the localization of the consciousness carrier in the multidimensional space of states of initial real objects, as well as their reflections in the form of information objects is proposed. This localization is ensured by the presence of feedbacks. Summarizing the results of the study, the article states the following connection between consciousness, self-consciousness and subjectness: under certain conditions (when consciousness is localized in the state space of the carrier of consciousness), consciousness acquires the property of self-consciousness, a special case of which (when the initiator of changes determining localization is the carrier of consciousness) is self-consciousness endowed with subjectness. (shrink)

Dorpat personalism school starts its metaphysical inquary with the question of existence and analyzes the concept of subject through immediate self-consciousness as the basis of existence. As representatives of a school of critically-oriented thinkers, personalists develop new insights based on critical evaluation of preceding philosophical systems, emphasizing the importance of the history of philosophy. Therefore, to determine what is understood by the immediate self-consciousness as the basis of personality in metaphysics of personalism, this paper will (...) describe personalist criticism of Leibniz’s doctrine of monads. In the introduction, I briefly outline personalism tendencies in philosophy and describe the Dorpat personalism school. The first part of the paper describes personalism philosophy and Leibniz’s metaphysics, emphasizing the importance of immediate self-consciousness. The second part describes the distinction of the types of existence in personalism and consistency that follows, relating them to immediate self-consciousness. In the third part the basics of personalism ethics will be outlined. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a new interpretation of Kant’s notion of consciousness of oneself as a Subject on behalf of a polemic with a recent reading suggested by Longuenesse. My central aim is to provide a systematic interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics of consciousness in general. I present and defend new interpretations for four capital Kant’s notions. First, I present a reading of Kant’s sensible intuition as a de re form of mental representation without conceptual content and (...) any structure. It makes the subject aware only in the limited sense of demonstratively representing what appears to him. In the sequence, I present a reading of empirical consciousness as the result of a first-order representation. The important introduction of §16 of the first Critique is construed here as expressing what is known today as the access consciousness. Lastly, I propose a new reading for the transcendental Apperception as an intransitive form of consciousness. (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)

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)

Kant points to two forms of self-consciousness: the inner sense, or empirical apperception, based on a sensory form of self-awareness, and transcendental apperception. Through the notion of inner sense, Kant also allows for an introspective account of self-awareness; nonetheless, Kant holds an utterly sophisticated notion of basic self-consciousness provided for by the notion of transcendental apperception. As we will see, the doctrine of apperception is not to be confused with an introspective psychological approach: in (...) reality, it is a formal model for the thinking activity itself which explains the most central concepts regarding subjecthood. (shrink)

The topic of this book is self-consciousness, which is a kind of knowledge, namely knowledge of oneself as oneself, or self-knowledge.

Henrich (1966) has contributed to the revival of philosophical debates on subjectivity and its irreducibility, starting from Fichte’s notion of "insight", and focusing his attention on the reflective model of self-consciousness. Subsequent studies have followed the same line from different perspectives, emphasizing the basic role of pre-reflective self-consciousness as the condition of possibility of conscious experience. The so-called ubiquity thesis has been developed through analysis of indexical thinking.

-/- Human beings are conscious not only of the world around them but also of themselves: their activities, their bodies, and their mental lives. They are, that is, self-conscious (or, equivalently, self-aware). Self-consciousness can be understood as an awareness of oneself. But a self-conscious subject is not just aware of something that merely happens to be themselves, as one is if one sees an old photograph without realising that it is of oneself. Rather a (...) self-conscious subject is aware of themselves as themselves; it is manifest to them that they themselves are the object of awareness. Self-consciousness is a form of consciousness that is paradigmatically expressed in English by the words “I”, “me”, and “my”, terms that each of us uses to refer to ourselves as such. -/- A central topic throughout the history of philosophy—and increasingly so since the seventeenth century—the phenomena surrounding self-consciousness prompt a variety of fundamental philosophical and scientific questions, including its relation to consciousness; its semantic and epistemic features; its realisation in both conceptual and non-conceptual representation; and its connection to our conception of an objective world populated with others like ourselves. (shrink)

The claim that consciousness constitutively involves self-consciousness has a long philosophical history, and has received renewed support in recent years. My aim in this paper is to argue that this surprisingly enduring idea is misleading at best, and insufficiently supported at worst. I start by offering an elucidatory account of consciousness, and outlining a number of foundational claims that plausibly follow from it. I subsequently distinguish two notions of self-consciousness: consciousness of oneself and (...) consciousness of one’s experience. While “self-consciousness” is often taken to refer to the former notion, the most common variant of the constitutive claim, on which I focus here, targets the latter. This claim can be further interpreted in two ways: on a deflationary reading, it falls within the scope of foundational claims about consciousness, while on an inflationary reading, it points to determinate aspects of phenomenology that are not acknowledged by the foundational claims as being aspects of all conscious mental states. I argue that the deflationary reading of the constitutive claim is plausible, but should be formulated without using a term as polysemous and suggestive as “self-consciousness”; by contrast, the inflationary reading is not adequately supported, and ultimately rests on contentious intuitions about phenomenology. I conclude that we should abandon the idea that self-consciousness is constitutive of consciousness. (shrink)

Chimpanzee behaviour with mirrors makes it plausible that they can recognise themselves as themselves in mirrors, and so have a 'self-concept'. I defend this claim, and argue that roughly similar behaviour in pigeons, as reported, does not in fact make it equally plausible that they also have this mental capacity. But for all that it is genuine, chimpanzee self-consciousness may differ significantly from ours. I describe one possibility I believe consistent with the data, even if not very (...) plausible: that the chimpanzee is aware of itself only as a material being, and not as a subject of any psychological states. As I try to make clear, this possibility exists even if the chimpanzee has psychological states, and is aware of some of them. (shrink)

Is self-consciousness intentional? Consciousness of oneself-as-object is, in the sense that the subject is there taken as its own object of intentional consciousness. Contrastively, it has been argued that consciousness of oneself-as-subject is not intentional, precisely in that it does not involve taking oneself as an intentional object. Here, it is rather proposed that consciousness of oneself-as-subject is tied to intentionality in that it involves being conscious of oneself as an intentional (...) subject, i.e. as a subject directed at intentional objects transcending oneself-as-subject. This form of self-consciousness is neither reflective, in the sense that it does not involve to take oneself as an object of reflection, nor reflexive, in the sense that it does not involve to be related to oneself but to what-one-is-not, i.e. to the transcending intentional object. It is further argued that consciousness of oneself-as-subject involves two dynamics, as the subject would be indicated to himself by the objects towards which he directs himself. These considerations are here unfolded to consider in particular bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that ordinary conscious experience involves some form of sense of self or consciousness of oneself. Moreover, this claim is often restricted to a ‘thin’ or ‘minimal’ notion of self-consciousness, or even ‘the simplest form of self-consciousness’, as opposed to more sophisticated forms of self-consciousness which are not deemed ubiquitous in ordinary experience. These formulations suggest that self-consciousness comes in degrees, and that individual subjects may differ with (...) respect to the degree of self-consciousness they exhibit at a given time. In this article, I critically examine this assumption. I consider what the claim that self-consciousness comes in degrees may mean, raise some challenges against the different versions of the claim, and conclude that none of them is both coherent and particularly plausible. (shrink)

I raise three related objections to aspects of Katharina Kraus’s interpretation in Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation. First, I reject her claim that representations count as merely subjectively valid for Kant if they represent objects from the contingent perspective of a particular subject. I argue that Kant in fact describes consciousness of subjectively valid representations as consciousness of one’s own perceptions rather than of the objects perceived, and therefore that it plays a bigger role in (...) his account of self-consciousness than Kraus allows. Second, whereas Kraus argues that the transcendental unity of apperception structures the content of any consciousness that is possible for a subject, I note that Kant also allows for a merely empirical unity of apperception, which he describes as in principle different from transcendental unity. Finally, I raise some worries for Kraus’s suggestion that we can be aware of the activity of thinking through inner sense. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker, developing an idea of Wittgenstein’s, argues that we are immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun. Although we might be liable to error when “I” (or its cognates) is used as an object, we are immune to error when “I” is used as a subject (as when one says, “I have a toothache”). Shoemaker claims that the relationship between “I” as-subject and the mental states of which it is introspectively aware is tautological: when, (...) say, we judge that “I feel pain,” we are tautologically aware that feels pain is instantiated and that it is instantiated in oneself. Moreover, he contends that this relationship holds not just for bodily sensations, but also for the sense of agency and for visual perception. But we deny that this relationship is tautological; instead, we treat Shoemaker’s principle (IEM) as a hypothesis. We then proceed to show that certain pathological states and experimentally-induced illusions can be adduced to show that IEM describes not a necessary relationship but a contingent relationship, one that sometimes fails to obtain. That we are not immune to error in the way Shoemaker describes has grave consequences for many aspects of his ideas concerning the first-person perspective. In the course of arguing that these empirical phenomena count against IEM, we also show that not only can the content of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the subject: that is, not only can the what of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the who. (shrink)

Context: Contemporary philosophy of consciousness has not yet come up with an acceptable theory of consciousness. Philosophers are still not able to reach agreement, and have come to a deadlock, since all possible approaches seem to have been exhausted and all the arguments repeatedly discussed. Problem: It may be assumed that the crisis has been caused by factors rooted in initial, wrong attitudes to knowledge or, more specifically, in epistemology focused on first-order cybernetics. The situation might be altered (...) if philosophy of consciousness can be refocused on second-order cybernetics. This means that any attempt to apply the subject-object model to consciousness and specifically to reflection should be given up, while consciousness should not be seen as a certain objective essence observable by a researcher. It also means that the principles underlying theories of consciousness should be revised: any attempts that aim to explain the mechanism of generating consciousness through non-consciousness should be abandoned. The purpose of this article is methodological, pointing out the approaches to studying consciousness that might be more effective. It also gives the author’s vision of a new way of treating consciousness, taking into account the stated methodology. Method: Theoretical conceptual methods of argumentation, such as logical and philosophical kinds of proof. Results: The research shows that the epistemology underlying second-order cybernetics can eliminate many of the paradoxes typical of present-day theories of consciousness that are related to different versions of reductionism. It also explains that, in contrast to the dualistic subject-object model used for description of consciousness, the latter can and should be seen as a strictly self-describing system, where the diversity of forms and states is explained by inherent differences. Implications: The article could be productive for epistemic theories, philosophy of mind theories, mind-body theories, and phenomenological theories of consciousness. Constructivist content: The research applies the principles of von Foerster’s second-order cybernetics, von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism, and some of Bateson’s ideas about difference, information, and mind structure directly to the epistemological assumptions underlying philosophy of consciousness. (shrink)

Abstract: This article considers the conceptual connections between self-consciousness, objectivity, and time. The model of conceptual analysis employed examines the necessary conditions of the meaningfulness of expressions in language. In the course of this analysis two distinct options for the explanation of self-consciousness are identified and examined. According to the first (Strawsonian) view, self-consciousness is based upon the distinction between the self and other subjects of consciousness; according to the second (Kantian) view, (...) self-consciousness is based upon the distinction between the self and the world. The first option is rejected, and a variation of the second option is adopted. According to it, in self-consciousness one is conscious of oneself as a temporally extended point of view (consciousness) over an objective and temporal realm of reality. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a novel reconstruction of Hegel’s argument for his mysterious claim that “self-consciousness is desire itself.” In section I, I motivate two interpretive constraints, which I refer to as the practicality constraint and the continuity constraint. According to the former, the kind of desire that Hegel argues is a necessary condition of self-consciousness involves a practical (and so not merely theoretical or contemplative) relation between subject and object. According to the latter, (...) Hegel’s argument takes as its sole starting point a shape of consciousness that has itself as object or, as Hegel puts it, a shape that consists in “a distinguishing of what is not distinct.” I argue that recent influential interpretations openly or tacitly violate either the practicality constraint or the continuity constraint. In section II, I piece together my own, alternative interpretation of Hegel’s argument, which heeds the two constraints in a way that fits Hegel’s text more closely than do other interpretations. I thus hope to shed new light on Hegel’s view that the I or consciousness can have itself as its object only if it also relates to external objects in a desirous, destructive way. (shrink)

If one were to write a book titled TheVarieties of Self-Consciousness, one would start off with some distinctions. It will help to locate my topic in relation to those distinctions.The first distinction concerns that kind of self-consciousness which involves only the minimal ability on the part of a subject to self-represent, to be in mental states with first person content, be it conceptual or nonconceptual. This minimal ability involves very little as compared with the (...) more sophisticated states of which humans are capable. First person content can be present in the perceptual states of a creature capable of representing only some of its physical states and its relations to the physical environment, and not capable of representing anything beyond that. So the first distinction is between this minimal case, and richer varieties of self-consciousness. Some writers use ‘self-conscious’ to apply to a subject who is in any mental state involving first person content, and so they would appl. (shrink)

It is often claimed that a minimal form of self-awareness is constitutive of our conscious experience. Some have considered that such a claim is plausible for our ordinary experiences but false when considered unrestrictedly on the basis of the empirical evidence from altered states. In this paper I want to reject such a reasoning. This requires, first, a proper understanding of a minimal form of self-awareness – one that makes it plausible that minimal self-awareness is part of (...) our ordinary experiences. I will argue that it should be understood as Perspectival First-Person Awareness : a non-conceptual identification-free self-attribution that defines the first-person perspective for our conscious experience. I will offer a detailed characterization of PFP-Awareness in semantic and epistemological terms. With this tool in hand, I will review the empirical literature on altered states. I will focus on psychedelics, meditation and dreams, as they have been claimed to present the clearest cases in favor of a radical disruption of self-awareness. I will show that the rejection of the idea that minimal self-awareness is constitutive of our experience on the basis of this evidence is unfounded, for two main reasons. First, although there are good grounds to think that some forms of self-awareness that typically accompany our ordinary experiences are compromised, they do not support the claim that PFP-Awareness is absent. Secondly, the reports that could make us think of a radical disruption of self-awareness are most probably due to a confirmation bias – and hence we should mistrust them – derived from the expectations and metaphysical views of their subjects. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to show that phenomenal consciousness is realized by a particular level of brain operational organization and that understanding human consciousness requires a description of the laws of the immediately underlying neural collective phenomena, the nested hierarchy of electromagnetic fields of brain activity – operational architectonics. We argue that the subjective mental reality and the objective neurobiological reality, although seemingly worlds apart, are intimately connected along a unified metastable continuum and are both guided by (...) the universal laws of the physical world such as criticality, self-organization and emergence. (shrink)

At the phenomenal level, consciousness can be described as a singular, unified field of recursive self-awareness, consistently coherent in a particualr way; that of a subject located both spatially and temporally in an egocentrically-extended domain, such that conscious self-awareness is explicitly characterized by I-ness, now-ness and here-ness. The psychological mechanism underwriting this spatiotemporal self-locatedness and its recursive processing style involves an evolutionary elaboration of the basic orientative reference frame which consistently structures ongoing spatiotemporal self-location (...) computations as i-here-now. Cognition computes action-output in the midst of ongoing movement, and consequently requires a constant self-locating spatiotemporal reference frame as basis for these computations. Over time, constant evolutionary pressures for energy efficiency have encouraged both the proliferation of anticipative feedforward processing mechansims, and the elaboration, at the apex of the sensorimotor processing hierarchy, of self-activating, highly attenuated recursively-feedforward circuitry processing the basic orientational schema independent of external action output. As the primary reference frame of active waking cognition, this recursive i-here-now processing generates a zone of subjective self-awareness in terms of which it feels like something to be oneself here and now. This is consciousness. (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)

In Kant and the Demands of Self-Consciousness, Pierre Keller examines Kant's theory of self-consciousness and argues that it succeeds in explaining how both subjective and objective experience are possible. Previous interpretations of Kant's theory have held that he treats all self-consciousness as knowledge of objective states of affairs, and also that self-consciousness can be interpreted as knowledge of personal identity. By developing this striking new interpretation Keller is able to argue that transcendental (...) self-consciousness underwrites a general theory of objectivity and subjectivity at the same time. (shrink)

The article aims at a determination of Heidegger's contribution to a theory of subjectivity and self-consciousness. It does so through a discussion of Øverenget's book on this topic and in particular of his thesis that according to Heidegger the self is given “with” our consciousness of objects. Three ways are considered in which this thesis might apply on the one hand to Heidegger's argument and on the other to the phenomenon in question: with Kant as an (...) expression of a functional conception of our self-awareness, as a determination of its epistemic structure, and as a claim of the irreducible concreteness of subjectivity. It is, among other things, argued that the first way at best does not exhaust the thesis, that the second way corresponds to Heidegger's intention, but that his argumentation does not reach such a determination, and that the third way expresses both his ultimate intention and the field of his real contribution in the theory of subjectivity. Besides, it is argued that Heidegger at these points is much closer to German idealism than he and Øverenget realize. (shrink)

Kant is said to be the first to distinguish between consciousness of oneself as the subject of one’s experiences and consciousness of oneself as an object, which he calls transcendental and empirical apperception, respectively. Of these, it is empirical apperception that is meant to enable consciousness of any empirical features of oneself; what this amounts to, however, continues to puzzle interpreters. I argue that a key to understanding what empirical apperception consists in is Kant’s claim that (...) each type of apperception corresponds to a distinct type of unity of apperception—that is, a distinct way in which representations can be related for a subject. Whereas transcendental unity of apperception requires that representations be actively combined by the understanding, empirical unity of apperception obtains when representations are passively combined by the reproductive imagination. In light of this, I develop a novel account of Kant’s two types of apperception, according to which they correspond to a cognitive subject’s consciousness of two essential aspects of herself—namely, her spontaneity and receptivity. (shrink)

Philosophers investigating the experiences of the dancing subject (Sheets-Johnstone 1980, 2009, 2011, 2012; Parviainen 1998; Legrand 2007, 2013; Legrand & Ravn 2009; Montero 2013; Foultier & Roos 2013) unearth vast variations of embodied consciousness and cognition in performing body experts. The traditional phenomenological literature provides us with descriptions and definitions of reflective self-consciousness as well as of pre-reflective bodily absorption, but when it comes to the states of self-consciousness dance philosophers refer to as thinking (...) in movement and a form of reflective consciousness at a bodily level – as well as to dancers’ re- ported experiences of being in a trance and yet hyper-aware – we are challenged in terms of terminology and precise descriptions. After empirical research on dancers’ experiences and studies of the above-mentioned philosophies of dance, aligning this material with Husserl, Zahavi and other phenomenologists’ descriptions of reflection and embodied self-consciousness, I find it plausible to acknowledge the existence of a third form of self- consciousness: embodied reflection, a reflective process experienced through and with the embodied and/or emotional self. In this article I aspire to capture the characteristics of this transcendence of the bodily self. (shrink)

The concept of the self is embedded in a web of relationships of other concepts and phenomena such as consciousness, self-consciousness, personal identity and the mind–body problem. The article follows the ontological and epistemological roles of the concept of selfconsciousness and the structural co-implication of consciousness and self-consciousness from Descartes and Locke to Kant and Sartre while delineating its subject matter from related inquiries into the relationship between the mind and the body, (...) personal identity, and the question whether consciousness is an irreducible reality sui generis or essentially a neurobiological entity. Over the course of its history, the modern self turns out to become an ever more elusive phenomenon, while its roles as a bearer of individual responsibility and as a subject of reflective endorsement of the truth become ever more pronounced. (shrink)

I argue for a basically Sartrean approach to the idea that one's self-concept, and any form of knowledge of oneself as an individual subject, presupposes concepts and knowledge about other things. The necessity stems from a pre-conceptual structure which assures that original self-consciousness is identical with one's consciousness of objects themselves. It is not a distinct accomplishment merely dependent on the latter. The analysis extends the matter/form distinction to concepts. It also requires a distinction between (...) two notions of consciousness: one relates to the employment of already formed concepts, the other to the structures of imaginative apprehension that help to constitute (empirical) concepts from the start. We need to see that (1) so far as objects are only conceptualized appearances, the material through which we apprehend them must be reflected in that apprehension itself; (2) the corresponding material consists of a manifold of pre-conceptually active anticipations and retentions concerning the course of one's own experience. The resultant structure imposes an orientation on the world of appearances that does not derive from a concept of oneself as an individual in it, but that nevertheless provides the only possible basis for such a concept. One's self-concept, at least as empirical subject, is simply that ofwhatever subject is indicated, in an appropriate way, by that orientation. (shrink)

Countless differences between Hegel and Husserl notwithstanding, there is a common element in both of their accounts of the genesis of otherness. According to both, only if one delves into the interiority of self-consciousness, can one account for the rudimentary appearance of the Other. Following the Hegelian and Husserlian variants of such a strategy, this paper argues that: at the primitive levels of self-consciousness, subjectivity is intersubjective through and through; an irreducible distance separates the Other from (...) the self, due to which plurality cannot be surpassed by totality. In contrast to the view which sees these claims as though they were irreconcilable with each other, this paper shows how each of them calls for its apparent opposite. While it is common to establish the unanimity of these claims in opposition to Hegel, or Husserl, or both, this paper shows how such a concordance itself emerges from an Auseinandersetzung between them. (shrink)

The body may be the object we know the best. It is the only object from which we constantly receive a flow of information through sight and touch; and it is the only object we can experience from the inside, through our proprioceptive, vestibular, and visceral senses. Yet there have been very few books that have attempted to consolidate our understanding of the body as it figures in our experience and self-awareness. This volume offers an interdisciplinary and comprehensive treatment (...) of bodily self-awareness, the first book to do so since the landmark 1995 collection The Body and the Self, edited by José Bermúdez, Naomi Eilan, and Anthony Marcel. Since 1995, the study of the body in such psychological disciplines as cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and neuropsychology has advanced dramatically, accompanied by a resurgence of philosophical interest in the significance of the body in our mental life. The sixteen specially commissioned essays in this book reflect the advances in these fields. The book is divided into three parts, each part covering a topic central to an explanation of bodily self-awareness: representation of the body; the sense of bodily ownership; and representation of the self. ContributorsAdrian Alsmith, Brianna Beck, José Luis Bermúdez, Anna Berti, Alexandre Billon, Andrew J. Bremner, Lucilla Cardinali, Tony Cheng, Frédérique de Vignemont, Francesca Fardo, Alessandro Farnè, Carlotta Fossataro, Shaun Gallagher, Francesca Garbarini, Patrick Haggard, Jakob Hohwy, Matthew R. Longo, Tamar Makin, Marie Martel, Melvin Mezue, John Michael, Christopher Peacocke, Lorenzo Pia, Louise Richardson, Alice C. Roy, Manos Tsakiris, Hong Yu Wong. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;It is the aim of this thesis to consider two accounts of 1st-person utterances that are often mistakenly conflated--viz. that involving the 'no-reference' view of 'I', and that of the non-assertoric thesis of avowals. The first account says that in a large range of 'psychological' uses, 'I' is not a referring expression; the second, that avowals of 1st-personal 'immediate' experience are primarily 'expressive' and not genuine assertions. ;The two (...) views are expressions of what I term 'Trojanism'. This viewpoint constitutes one side of a 'Homeric Opposition in the Metaphysics of Experience', and has been endorsed by Wittgenstein throughout his writings; it has received recent expression in Professor Anscombe's article 'The First Person'. I explore the ideas of these writers in some depth, and consider to what extent they stand up to criticism by such notable 'Greek' contenders as P. F. Strawson and Gareth Evans. ;I first give neutral accounts of the key-concepts on which subsequent arguments are based. These are the immunity to error through misidentification of certain 1st-person utterances, the guaranteed reference of 'I', avowal, and the Generality Constraint. I consider the close relation of Trojanism to solipsism and behaviourism, and then assess the effectiveness of two arguments for that viewpoint--Anscombe's Tank Argument and the argument from IEM. Though each is appealing, neither is decisive; to assess Trojanism properly we need to look at the non-assertoric thesis of avowals, which alone affords the prospect of a resolution of the really intractable problems of the self generated by Cartesianism. ;In the course of the latter assessment I consider the different varieties of avowal, broadening the discussion beyond the over-used example 'I am in pain'. I explore Wittgenstein's notion of 'expression', and discuss how this notion may help to explain the authority a subject possesses on his mental states as expressed in avowals. My conclusion is that an expressive account of avowals can provide a satisfactory counter to the Cartesian account of authority without our needing recourse to a non-assertoric or even to a non-cognitive thesis. ;Discussion of self-consciousness is implicit in discussion of the Homeric Opposition, but there is in addition a short chapter on the concept itself. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of self-consciousness typically begin by dividing experiences of the self into types, each requiring separate explanation. The stereotypical case of an out of body experience may be seen to suggest a distinction between the sense of oneself as an experiencing subject, a mental entity, and a sense of oneself as an embodied person, a bodily entity. Point of view, in the sense of the place from which the subject seems to experience the world, (...) in this case is tied to the sense of oneself as a mental entity and seems to be the ‘real’ self. Closer reading of reports, however, suggests a substantially more complicated picture. For example, the ‘real’ self that is experienced as separate from the body in an OBE is not necessarily experienced as disembodied. Subjects may experience themselves as having two bodies. In cases classed as heautoscopy there is considerable confusion regarding the apparent location of the experiencing subject; is it the ‘real mind’ in the body I seem to be looking out from, or is it in the body that I see? This suggests that visual point of view can dissociate from the experience of one’s own “real mind” or experience of self-identification. I provide a tripartite distinction between the sense of ownership, the sense of embodiment and the sense of subjectivity to better describe these experiences. The phenomenology of OBEs suggests that there are three distinct forms of self-consciousness which need to be explained. (shrink)

Empirical and experiential investigations allow the distinction between observational and non-observational forms of subjective bodily experiences. From a first-person perspective, the biological body can be (1) an "opaque body" taken as an intentional object of observational consciousness, (2) a "performative body" pre-reflectively experienced as a subject/agent, (3) a "transparent body" pre-reflectively experienced as the bodily mode of givenness of objects in the external world, or (4) an "invisible body" absent from experience. It is proposed that pre-reflective bodily experiences (...) rely on sensori-motor integrative mechanisms that process information on the external world in a self relative way. These processes are identification-free in that the self is not identified as an object of observation. Moreover, it is defended that observational self-consciousness must be grounded on such identification-free processes and pre-reflective forms of bodily experience. (shrink)

In the most influential chapter of his most important philosophical work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel makes the central and disarming assertions that "self-consciousness is desire itself" and that it attains its "satisfaction" only in another self-consciousness. Hegel on Self-Consciousness presents a groundbreaking new interpretation of these revolutionary claims, tracing their roots to Kant's philosophy and demonstrating their continued relevance for contemporary thought. As Robert Pippin shows, Hegel argues that we must understand Kant's account (...) of the self-conscious nature of consciousness as a claim in practical philosophy, and that therefore we need radically different views of human sentience, the conditions of our knowledge of the world, and the social nature of subjectivity and normativity. Pippin explains why this chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology should be seen as the basis of much later continental philosophy and the Marxist, neo-Marxist, and critical-theory traditions. He also contrasts his own interpretation of Hegel's assertions with influential interpretations of the chapter put forward by philosophers John McDowell and Robert Brandom. (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)

The nature of pre-reflective self-consciousness—viz., the putative non-inferential self-consciousness involved in unreflective experiences, has become the topic of considerable debate in recent analytic philosophy of consciousness, as it is commonly taken to be what makes conscious mental states first-personally given to its subject. A major issue of controversy in this debate concerns what pre-reflective self-consciousness is an awareness of. Some scholars have suggested that pre-reflective self-consciousness involves an awareness of the (...) experiencing subject. This ‘egological view’ is opposed to the ‘non-egological view’, according to which the subject, in being pre-reflectively self-conscious, is just aware of their own occurrent mental state. In this paper, I argue in favour of the egological view. The argument I develop is a qualified version of a line of reasoning originally provided by Rosenthal and builds on a proper clarification of the ontological status of token mental states. More precisely, I argue that token mental states are structured ‘fact-like’ entities having their subject among their constituents. Accordingly, one cannot be aware of one’s own occurrent mental state without thereby being aware of oneself. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. First, it aims to provide an adverbial account of the idea of an intransitive self-consciousness and, second, it aims to argue in favor of this account. These aims both require a new framework that emerges from a critical review of Perry’s famous notion of the “unarticulated constituents” of propositional content. First, I aim to show that the idea of an intransitive self-consciousness can be phenomenologically described in an analogy with the adverbial (...) theory of perception. In an adverbial theory of perception, we do not see a blue sense-data, but we see something blue-ly, whereas in intransitive self-consciousness we are not conscious of ourselves when we undergo a conscious experience—instead, we experience something self-consciously. But what does this mean precisely? First, I take transitive self-consciousness to be the first-person operator that prefixes the content of any experience that the subject undergoes, regardless of whether or not the subject is self-referred. Further, I argue that this first-person adverbial way of entertaining a content of any experience in Perry’s revised framework fixes the subject as part of the circumstance of the evaluation of the content of her own experience. We can only evaluate whether the content is veridical of falsidical relative to the subject undergoing the experience. This is referred to here as “self-concernment without self-reference.” When I am absorbed reading a book, I do not self-represent my own experience of reading a book, let alone see myself as a constituent of the content of this experience. Even so, I experience that reading self-consciously in the precise sense that I do belong the circumstance of the evaluation of the selfless content of my experience of reading the book. The content of the experience of reading a book is simply a propositional function, true or false of myself. (shrink)

I argue that consciousness is an aspect of an agent's intelligence, hence of its ability to deal adaptively with the world. In particular, it allows for the possibility of noting and correcting the agent's errors, as actions performed by itself. This in turn requires a robust self-concept as part of the agent's world model; the appropriate notion of self here is a special one, allowing for a very strong kind of self-reference. It also requires the capability (...) to come to see that world model as residing in its belief base , while then representing the actual world as possibly different, i.e., forming a new world-model. This suggests particular computational mechanisms by which consciousness occurs, ones that conceivably could be discovered by neuroscientists, as well as built into artificial systems that may need such capabilities. Consciousness, then, is not an epiphenomenon at all, but rather a key part of the functional architecture of suitably intelligent agents, hence amenable to study as much as any other architectural feature. I also argue that ignorance of how subjective states could be essentially functional does not itself lend credibility to the view that such states are not essentially functional; the strong self-reference proposal here is one possible functional explanation of consciousness. (shrink)

This translation is of an article in the April–June 1948 issue of the Bulletin de la société française de philosophie (42, no. 3: 49–91). That article consists primarily of a lecture that Sartre had presented to La Société Française de Philosophie on 2 June 1947 in which he provided an overview of some of his main points in Being and Nothingness, with particular emphasis on its Introduction (especially its third section, ‘The Pre-Reflective Cogito and the Being of the Percipere’) as (...) well as on the first chapter of its second part, that is, “The Immediate Structures of the For-Itself” (covering content in three of its five sub-sections: I, III and IV). The title of the lecture thus does not wholly encompass the subjects that are discussed in it, although it may well be said to reflect its central theme (even in a literal sense, as the positioning of the hypothetically demarcated ‘Section III’ in the Table of Contents above shows). In addition to the presentation, the article in the Bulletin is preceded by a brief introductory statement – seemingly written by Sartre himself1 – which functions largely as a sort of ‘extended abstract’ for the talk (although not all the points in the introduction are covered in the presentation), and is followed by a transcript of the discussion that took place after the presentation between Sartre and some of the reputable scholars who were in attendance (i.e. a ‘question and answer’ session). (shrink)

When a mental state is conscious – in the sense that there is something it is like for the subject to have it – it instantiates a certain property F in virtue of which it is a conscious state. It is customary to suppose that F is the property of having sensory quality. The paper argues that this supposition is false. The first part of the paper discusses reasons for thinking that unconscious mental states can have a sensory quality, (...) for example in cases of absent-minded perception. If unconscious mental states can have a sensory quality, then sensory quality is an insufficient condition for consciousness. The second part of the paper argues that there are even better reasons to think that sensory quality is an unnecessary condition for consciousness. The idea is that mental states can be conscious even when they lack sensory quality, for example, in the case of certain conscious propositional attitudes. In the third part of the paper, an alternative to the rejected supposition, drawn from the phenomenological tradition, is offered: that consciousness is a matter of implicit self-awareness, rather than of sensory quality. According to this alternative, a mental state is conscious when, and only when, it involves implicit self-awareness. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the connection between Olivi’s views about the nature of conscious experience, on the one hand, and his views about the nature of the soul on the other. In particular, I argue that Olivi’s account of the soul as essentially active and essentially reflexive entails a commitment on his part to a kind of innate self-knowing. I further show that, for Olivi, this primal psychological self-reflexivity plays an important role in explaining the subjective character (...) of conscious states. (shrink)

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)

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 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)

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)

On the surface the concept of self-consciousness would seem to be understandable as consciousness of oneself. It is commonplace to resist this temptation by arguing that the self cannot properly be construed as the object of this form of consciousness. It is the subject. However, in this paper I show that any effort to see the self as the subject of consciousness converts it, willy nilly, into an object.Self-consciousness is (...) not to be understood by determining the logically appropriate role of the self in a univocal kind of consciousness. It differs from ‘ordinary’ consciousness because of the need for it to be unmediated and direct. If, on the one had, one is conscious of something, it is possible for that awareness to be indirect and mediated. On the other hand, if one is self-conscious it is necessary for that awareness to be direct. (shrink)

Observing that René Descartes's dualistic philosophy haunts our conceptualization of matter, this essay argues that Thomas Hobbes develops a non-Cartesian materialism, which is to say that he articulates a materialism in which matter is not construed as essentially unthinking. Tracing his accounts of sense, perception, and thinking, this essay reconstructs Hobbes's account of self-consciousness and proposes that in a subject conceived as wholly embodied, self-knowledge or self-awareness takes the form of memory. The essay elaborates how (...) Hobbes 's account of self-consciousness as memory transforms our understanding both of the form taken by the subject's self-mastery and of the relationship between the individual and the collective. It concludes by speculating about the implications of this account for our understanding of Hobbes's theories of ethics and politics. (shrink)

Evidence suggests that self-focused attention and cognitive failures may have disruptive effects on the use of specific coping strategies in stressful situations. In this study the personality factors of private self-consciousness (dispositional self-attention) and cognitive failures were investigated in relation to coping processes in specific stressful episodes reported by 139 female nurses. Multiple regression analyses were run to test for personality predictors of problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, and suppression-coping strategies. In examining the relationship between personality factors (...) and coping the possible mediational role of subjects' appraisals (importance of the episode and perceptions of control) were investigated. The results showed significant negative correlations between self-attention and emotion-focused and problem-focused coping only in mixed controllability situations. A significant negative correlation between cognitive failures and suppression was similarly dependent on subjects' situation specific control appraisals. The specificity of these relationships is interpreted in terms of the different effects which self-focus, cognitive failures, and control appraisals have on attention. (shrink)

As a problem for thought, racial slavery is seated at the intersection of moral philosophy and philosophy of nature where the figure of the slave, a being who is wholly determined by external forces, serves as the negative measure of the capacity to make ethical judgments beyond one’s own private inclinations or exercise self-restraint for the sake of the common good. Recent theoretical interventions into our political-ecological predicament tend to split when it comes to the modern autonomous subject. (...) This essay engages with contemporary theorizing on matters of materialism, freedom, and self-consciousness as they relate to our current predicament and to racial slavery and its system of classification. (shrink)