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

It is argued that although George Bealer's influential ‘Self-Consciousness argument’ refutes standard versions of reductive functionalism (RF), it fails to generalize in the way Bealer supposes. To wit, he presupposes that any version of RF must take the content of ‘pain’ to be the property of being in pain (and so on), which is expressly rejected in independently motivated versions of conceptual role semantics (CRS). Accordingly, there are independently motivated versions of RF, incorporating CRS, which avoid Bealer's main (...) type of refutation. I focus particularly on one such theory, which takes concepts to be event types that are individuated by their psychological roles, which has the resources of responding to each of the more specific worries Bealer expresses. (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.

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)

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)

Self-consciousness constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to functionalism. Either the standard functional definitions of mental relations wrongly require the contents of self-consciousness to be propositions involving “realizations” rather than mental properties and relations themselves. Or else these definitions are circular. The only way to save functional definitions is to expunge the standard functionalist requirement that mental properties be second-order and to accept that they are first-order. But even the resulting “ideological” functionalism, which aims only at conceptual clarification, (...) fails unless it incorporates the thesis that the mental properties are fully “natural” universals. Accordingly, mental properties are sui generis: first-order, nonphysical, natural universals. (shrink)

-/- 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 (...) class='Hi'>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)

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

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)

The study of actions is of major importance in social science regardless of whether the investigator is or isn’t a behaviorist. Actions constitute much if not all of an observational substratum which both prompts explanation and confirms prediction. Actions are of interest both as samples of what an animal can do and as symptoms of underlying structures, either psychic or physical. Doubtless, actions as symptoms of underlying structures are, in the long run, of greater importance in social science than actions (...) as samples of capacities, for to be able to predict an organism’s further performance on the basis of knowledge of capacities is not necessarily to understand the organism. Understanding actions, if it is indeed the desideratum of social science—as I take it to be—involves more, however, than the viewing of actions as symptomatic of underlying structures. Actions are obviously bearers of meaning in and for a given social context, and this meaning is for both the agent and actual or imagined spectators. Spectators can be said to do their viewing both at the time the action takes place and also, in a sense, at later times when recalling or reading reports of a now past action. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation and argues that the latter is required for self-consciousness. It is further argued that self-consciousness requires an awareness of other minds and that this awareness develops over the course of an increasingly complex perspectival differentiation, during which information about self and other that is implicit in early forms of social interaction becomes redescribed into an explicit format.

The study of actions is of major importance in social science regardless of whether the investigator is or isn’t a behaviorist. Actions constitute much if not all of an observational substratum which both prompts explanation and confirms prediction. Actions are of interest both as samples of what an animal can do and as symptoms of underlying structures, either psychic or physical. Doubtless, actions as symptoms of underlying structures are, in the long run, of greater importance in social science than actions (...) as samples of capacities, for to be able to predict an organism’s further performance on the basis of knowledge of capacities is not necessarily to understand the organism. Understanding actions, if it is indeed the desideratum of social science—as I take it to be—involves more, however, than the viewing of actions as symptomatic of underlying structures. Actions are obviously bearers of meaning in and for a given social context, and this meaning is for both the agent and actual or imagined spectators. Spectators can be said to do their viewing both at the time the action takes place and also, in a sense, at later times when recalling or reading reports of a now past action. (shrink)

What are the roots of human normativity and when do children begin to behave according to standards and norms? Empirical observations demonstrate that we are born with built-in orientation toward what is predictable and of the same - henceforth what deviates from it -, what is the norm or the standard in the generic sense of the word. However, what develop in humans is self-consciousness, transforming norms from “should” to “ought” and making human normativity profoundly different from any (...) other forms expressed in infancy, other animals, or any smart machines. Self-consciousness is the ability to objectify oneself through the evaluative eyes of others. It sets us apart as a species and is at the roots of human normativity. A developmental blueprint capturing the progressive co-emergence of self-consciousness and normativity in the human child is proposed. (shrink)

Many spiritual traditions employ certain mental techniques (meditation) which consist in inhibiting mental activity whilst nonetheless remaining fully conscious, which is supposed to lead to a realisation of one’s own true nature prior to habitual self-substantialisation. In this paper I propose that this practice can be understood as a special means of becoming aware of consciousness itself as such. To explain this claim I conduct some phenomenologically oriented considerations about the nature of consciousness qua presence and the (...) problem of self-presence of this presence. (shrink)

Education, Self-consciousness and Social Action reconstructs the Hegelian concept of education, Bildung, and shows that this concept could serve as a powerful alternative to current psychologist notions of learning. Taking a Hegelian perspective, Stojanov claims that Bildung should be interpreted as growth of mindedness and that such a growth has two central and interrelated components, including the development of self-consciousness toward conceptual self-articulation and the formation of one's capacity for intelligent social action. The interrelation between (...) the two central components of education implies that learning is transformed into education only when it involves the self-consciousness and the identity of the learner. Since both are grounded in the ethical beliefs and values of the individual, transforming learning into education therefore requires that education also address students' everyday ethical assumptions, as well as their articulation and conceptualization. This claim has a number of implications for educational policy and pedagogy; one being that learning and teaching in schools are educative only if they have ethical significance for both students and teachers. Another implication is that the point of departure for educative teaching becomes the actual, everyday ethical beliefs and experiences of the students, rather than fixed curricular contents. Students' encountering with sciences and arts should aim at the conceptual articulation of those beliefs and experiences - an articulation which makes individual's rational autonomy and self-determination possible. Education, Self-consciousness and Social Action will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students interested in the philosophy of education. It should also be essential reading for anyone engaged in the study of Hegel's work. (shrink)

Elizabeth Schechter explores the implications of the experience of people who have had the pathway between the two hemispheres of their brain severed, and argues that there are in fact two minds, subjects of experience, and intentional agents inside each split-brain human being: right and left. But each split-brain subject is still one of us.

Review of Philosophy and Psychology has lately published a number of papers that in various ways take issue with and criticize my work on the link between consciousness, self-consciousness and selfhood. In the following contribution, I reply directly to this new set of objections and argue that while some of them highlight ambiguities in my work that ought to be clarified, others can only be characterized as misreadings.

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)

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)

This paper explores some of the areas where neuroscientific and philosophical issues intersect in the study of self-consciousness. Taking as point of departure a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) that appears to block philosophical elucidation of self-consciousness, the paper illustrates how the highly conceptual forms of self-consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of nonconceptual forms of self-awareness. Attention is paid in particular to the primitive forms of nonconceptual self-consciousness manifested (...) in visual perception, somatic proprioception, spatial reasoning and interpersonal psychological interactions. The study of these primitive forms of self-consciousness is an interdisciplinary enterprise and the paper considers a range of points of contact where philosophical work can illuminate work in the cognitive sciences, and vice versa. (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)

What does the fact that we feel shame tell us about the nature of self? Does shame testify to the presence of a self-concept, a self-ideal, and a capacity for critical self-assessment, or does it rather, as some have suggested, point to the fact that the self is in part socially constructed? Should shame primarily be classified as a self-conscious emotion, is it rather a distinct social emotion, or might this forced alternative be misguided? (...) In the chapter, I contrast certain prevalent cognitivist accounts of shame with different proposals that can be found in the phenomenological tradition and ultimately argue that prototypical forms of shame provide vivid examples of other-mediated forms of self-experience. (shrink)

This essay presents a critique of what Robert Hanna has recently called the ‘sensibility first’ reading of Kant. I first spell out, in agreement with Hanna, why the contemporary debate among Kant scholars over conceptualism and non-conceptualism must be understood only from within the perspective of what I dub the ‘priority question’—that is, the question whether one or the other of our “two stems” of cognition may ground the objectivity and normativity of the other. I then spell out why the (...) priority question may be asked only from within the perspective of self-consciousness. Specifically, the central issue to be dealt with is how what Kant calls the original combination of understanding and sensibility is a synthesis internal to an act of self-consciousness. Only then can we ask what that original synthesis might tell us about the possibility of prioritizing one capacity over another in a story of cognition generally. Once we see the central issue more clearly, then I will look at the ‘sensibility first’ view in its most general form and propose that it should be criticized for its failure to account for Kant’s notion of an objective unity of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Traditionally, what we are conscious of in self-consciousness is something non-corporeal. But anti-Cartesian philosophers argue that the self is as much corporeal as it is mental. Because we have the sense of proprioception, a kind of body awareness, we are immediately aware of ourselves as bodies in physical space. In this debate the case histories of patients who have lost their sense of proprioception are clearly relevant. These patients do retain an awareness of themselves as corporeal beings, (...) although they hardly feel their bodies. They can initiate movements, and with the help of visual feedback learn to control them. It is shown that the traditional view of the self as immaterial is not supported by these cases. But the argument against this view has to be amended. It relies too much on bodily sensations, and misses the importance of active self-movement. (shrink)

The crucial problem of self-consciousness is how to account for knowing self-reference without launching into a regress or without presupposing self-consciousness rather than accounting for it. In the literature we find two bottom-up proposals for solving the traditional problem: the postulation of nonconceptual forms of self-consciousness and the postulation of a pre-reflexive form of self-consciousness. However, none of them seems satisfactory for several reasons. In contrast, I believe that the only way (...) of solving this traditional puzzle is to assume another bottom-up approach, namely the one that accepts Baker’s challenge to naturalism and provides a naturalist framework for self-consciousness; in Baker’s terms, to account for self-consciousness in non-intentional, non-semantic, and non-mental terms. That is the aim of this paper. My thesis rests on two claims. The first is the metaphysical claim that every creature enjoys a fundamental relation to itself, namely identity. The second is Dretske’s epistemological claim that representations do not require a Self, traditionally understood as the principle that spontaneously organizes mental activity and lies behind all intentional acts. Briefly, I argue for a naturalization of self-consciousness that postulates non-linguistic, naturalized, and selfless form of representation of the cognitive system based on the metaphysical, fundamental relation everyone has to himself, namely identity. Self-consciousness emerges when brain states are selflessly recruited through learning to represent the cognitive system itself as a subject. (shrink)

Ontological functionalism's defining tenet is that mental properties can be defined wholly in terms of the general pattern of interaction of ontologically prior realizations. Ideological functionalism's defining tenet is that mental properties can only be defined nonreductively, in terms of the general pattern of their interaction with one another. My Self-consciousness Argument establishes: ontological functionalism is mistaken because its proposed definitions wrongly admit realizations into the contents of self-consciousness; ideological functionalism is the only viable alternative for (...) functionalists. Michael Tooley's critique misses the target: he offers no criticism of - except for an incidental, and incorrect, attack on certain self-intimation principles - and, since he himself proposes a certain form of nonreductive definition, he tacitly accepts. Finally, as with all other nonreductive definitions, Tooley's proposal can be shown to undermine functionalism's ultimate goal: its celebrated materialist solution to the Mind-Body Problem. The explanation of these points will require a discussion of: Frege-Russell disagreements regarding intensional contexts; the relationship between self-consciousness and the traditional doctrine of acquaintance; the role of self-intimation principles in functionalist psychology; and the Kripke-Lewis controversy over the nature of theoretical terms. (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 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)

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)

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)

This article defends two theses: that a mental state is conscious if and only if it has phenomenal character, i.e., if and only if there is something it is like for the subject to be in that state, and that all state consciousness involves self-consciousness, in the sense that a mental state is conscious if and only if its possessor is, in some suitable way, conscious of being in it. Though neither of these theses is novel, there (...) is a dearth of direct arguments for them in the scholarly literature and the relationship between them has so far gone underrecognized. This article attempts to remedy this lack, advancing the claim that if all conscious states have phenomenal character, then all state consciousness involves self-consciousness. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to show that consciousness entails self-consciousness by focusing on the relationship between consciousness and memory. More specifically, I addreess the following questions: (1) does consciousness require episodic memory?; and (2) does episodic memory require self-consciousness? With the aid of some Kantian considerations and recent empirical data, it is argued that consciousness does require episodic memory. This is done after defining episodic memory and distinguishing it from other (...) types of memory. An affirmative answer to (2) is also warranted especially in the light of the issues raised in answering (1). I claim that 'consciousness entails self-consciousness' is thereby shown via the route through episodic memory, i.e. via affirmative answers to (1) and (2). My aim is to revive this Kantian thesis and to bring together current psychological research on amnesia with traditional philosophical perspectives on consciousness and memory. (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)

A reciprocity framework is presented as an analysis of morality, and to explain and justify the attribution of moral rights and duties. To say an entity has rights makes sense only if that entity can fulfill reciprocal duties, i.e., can act as a moral agent. To be a moral agent an entity must (1) be self-conscious, (2) understand general principles, (3) have free will, (4) understand the given principles, (5) be physicallycapable of acting, and (6) intend to act according (...) to or against the given principles. This framework is foundational both to empirical and supernatural positions which distinguish a human milieu, which is moral, from a nonhuman milieu, which is not. It also provides a basis for evaluating four standard arguments for the rights ofnonhuman animals and nature-the ecological, the prudential, the sentimental, and the contractual. If reciprocity is taken as being central to the general concepts of rights and duties, then few animals, and no natural objects or natural systems, have rights and duties in an intrinsic or primary sense, although they may be assigned them in an extrinsic or secondary sense as a convenience in connection with human interests. Nevertheless, there are some animals besides humans - e.g., especially chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins, and dogs - which, in accordance with good behavioral evidence, are moral entities, and sometimes moral agents. On the grounds of reciprocity, they merit, at aminimum, intrinsic or primary rights to life and to relief from unnecessary suffering. (shrink)

Recent work in moral theory has seen the refinement of theories of moral standing, which increasingly recognize a position of intermediate standing between fully self-conscious entities and those which are merely conscious. Among the most sophisticated concepts now used to denote such intermediate standing is that of primitive self-consciousness, which has been used to more precisely elucidate the moral standing of human newborns. New research into the structure of the avian brain offers a revised view of the (...) cognitive abilities of birds. When this research is approached with a species-specific focus, it appears likely that one familiar species, the chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), also exhibits primitive self-consciousness. Given the likelihood that they are primitively self-consciousness, chickens warrant a degree of moral standing that falls short of that enjoyed by persons, but which exceeds the minimal standing of merely conscious entities. (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)

Recent discussions of emotions in Buddhism suggest that one of the canonical self-conscious emotions, shame, is an emotion to be endorsed and indeed cultivated. The canonical texts in the Abhidharma Buddhist tradition, endorse hiri as one of the wholesome factors “always found in all good minds” and as one of “the guardians of the world”. Shame is widely taken to be a self-conscious emotion, and so if hiri counts as shame, this seems to be in tension with the (...) central Buddhist claim that we should rid ourselves of the idea that there is a self. Buddhist moral education seems to promote an emotion that fundamentally presupposes something that Buddhist metaphysics fundamentally rejects: a self. This puzzle provides the motivation for our paper, and we will argue for a new understanding of hiri that also has implications for how we should think about one important “self-conscious” moral emotion, guilt. This puzzle about the Buddhist tradition also raises a basic philosophical question: What kinds of moral emotions are theoretically consistent with the denial of a self? We argue that anticipatory guilt might be such an emotion, and that it provides a plausible interpretation of hiri in key Buddhist texts. (shrink)

Philosophical work on self-consciousness has mostly focused on the identification and articulation of specific epistemic and semantic peculiarities of self-consciousness, peculiarities which distinguish it from consciousness of things other than oneself. After drawing certain fundamental distinctions, and considering the conditions for the very possibility of self-consciousness, this article discusses the nature of those epistemic and semantic peculiarities.

Gil R, Arroyo-Anllo EM, Ingrand P, Gil M, Neau JP, Ornon C, Bonnaud V. Self-consciousness and Alzheimer’s disease. Acta Neurol Scand 2001: 104: 296–300. # Munksgaard 2001. Objectives – To propose a neuropsychological study of the various aspects of self-consciousness (SC) in Alzheimer’s disease. Methods – Forty-five patients with probable mild or moderate AD were included in the study. Severity of their dementia was assessed by the Mini Mental State (MMS). Fourteen questions were prepared to evaluate (...) SC. Results – No significant correlations were found between SC score and educational level, age, and duration of disease. A significant correlation was found between SC score and the severity of dementia, whereas frontal disturbances were just short of the significance threshold. The various aspects of SC were not impaired to the same degree. The most disturbed ones were awareness of cognitive deficiencies, moral judgements and prospective memory. The least disturbed aspects were awareness of identity and of mental representation of the body. Items relating to anosognosia and moral judgements were significantly correlated with the MMS score, whereas affective state, body representation disorders, prospective memory, and capacities for introspection were not related to the severity of the dementia. Consciousness of identity was sound, regardless of MMS score. Conclusions – AD clearly induces an heterogeneous impairment of SC. SC requires a convergence of many neural networks. In AD, neuronal alterations involve many cortical areas and information sent to the associative frontal cortex from memory, language and visuospatial areas is lacking or disturbed. Thus, the sequential order of successive stimuli cannot be maintained by the heteromodal associative cortex (dorsal convexity of the prefrontal cortex), and the supramodal associative cortex (located rostrally in the frontal lobes) is unable to provide reliable monitoring and assessment of simultaneous neural cognitive networks carrying insufficient and inadequate input. The core deficiency in AD patients might be impaired SC equated with the disability to maintain sequential and simultaneous ‘‘attention to life’’. The Self-Consciousness Questionnaire, a clinical scale providing multidimensional measurement, indicates that different aspects of consciousness are not correlated with overall cognitive deficiency as determined by the MMSE. (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.

The clinical and para-clinical examination of residual self-consciousness in non-communicative severely brain damaged patients remains exceptionally challenging. Passive presentation of the patient’s own name and own face are known to be effective attention-grabbing stimuli when clinically assessing consciousness at the patient’s bedside. Event-related potential and functional neuroimaging studies using such self-referential stimuli are currently being used to disentangle the cognitive hierarchy of self-processing. We here review neuropsychological, neuropathological, electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies using the own name (...) and own face paradigm obtained in conscious waking, sleep, pharmacological coma, pathological coma and related disorders of consciousness. Based on these results we discuss what we currently do and do not know about the functional significance of the neural network involved in “automatic” and “conscious” self-referential processing. (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)

Up to now, there is a big debate, about what self-consciousness is, what inhibits it, and how this is related to work. By referring to classical theories of mind by Hegel this paper advances the thesis of an apparent congruence of self-consciousness and work as a developmental process in social relationships. This paper aims to open up a wider philosophical horizon for the criticism of current digitalization and the increasing variety of new flexible forms of work (...) design. For example, the working conditions on large digital platforms for taxi drivers tend to inhibit the development of worker`s self-consciousness for two reasons: Firstly, workers on digital platforms are not able to further develop digital tools through their work and this inhibits their intellectual creativity and secondly, the developmental process of the self-consciousness remains restricted because of the asymmetrical recognition, which only obtains by virtue of a process of recognizing and being recognized by others. Creative work and recognition are important for the development of consciousness as self-reflection in digital business, in which organizations operate and people work. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the areaswhere neuroscientific and philosophical issuesintersect in the study of self-consciousness. Taking aspoint of departure a paradox (the paradox ofself-consciousness) that appears to blockphilosophical elucidation of self-consciousness, thepaper illustrates how the highly conceptual forms ofself-consciousness emerge from a rich foundation ofnonconceptual forms of self-awareness. Attention ispaid in particular to the primitive forms ofnonconceptual self-consciousness manifested in visualperception, somatic proprioception, spatial reasoningand interpersonal psychological interactions. Thestudy of these (...) primitive forms of self-consciousnessis an interdisciplinaryenterprise and the paper considers a range of pointsof contact where philosophical work can illuminatework in the cognitive sciences, and vice versa. (shrink)

The transition from self-consciousness as the unhappy consciousness to reason as the critique of idealism is among the most important in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Yet this transition is implicit and not readily discernible. This paper investigates (1) whether we can discover and describe any roadblock that the unhappy consciousness is able to knock down, or despite which it is able to maneuver, and so become reason; or (2) whether the unhappy consciousness arrives at an (...) impassable dead end and either manages to create a detour around it or just begins again, unexplained and unexplainably, almost ex nihilo, as reason; or (3) whether, despite its implicitness, there exists a continuous, tenable, and unimpeded path from self-consciousness to reason. (shrink)