Abstract

Introspection reveals that the core of subjectivity -- the ‘I’ -- is identical to awareness. This ‘I’ should be differentiated from the various aspects of the physical person and its mental contents which form the ‘self’. Most discussions of consciousness confuse the ‘I’ and the ‘self’. In fact, our experience is fundamentally dualistic -- not the dualism of mind and matter -- but that of the ‘I’ and that which is observed. The identity of awareness and the ‘I’ means that we know awareness by being it, thus solving the problem of the infinite regress of observers. It follows that whatever our ontology of awareness may be, it must also be the same for ‘I’.