## 1. Self-Consciousness in the History of Philosophy



A familiar feature of ancient Greek philosophy and culture is the
Delphic maxim "Know Thyself". But what is it that one
knows if one knows oneself? In Sophocles' *Oedipus*,
Oedipus knows a number of things about himself, for example that he
was prophesied to kill Laius. But although he knew this about himself,
it is only later in the play that he comes to know that it is *he
himself* of whom it is true. That is, he moves from thinking that
the son of Laius and Jocasta was prophesied to kill Laius, to thinking
that *he himself* was so prophesied. It is only this latter
knowledge that we would call an expression of self-consciousness and
that, we may presume, is the object of the Delphic maxim. During the
course of the drama Oedipus comes to know himself, with tragic
consequences. But just what this self-consciousness amounts to, and
how it might be connected to other aspects of the mind, most notably
consciousness itself, is less clear. It has, perhaps unsurprisingly,
been the topic of considerable discussion since the Greeks. During the
early modern period self-consciousness became central to a number of
philosophical issues and, with Kant and the post-Kantians, came to be
seen as one of the most important topics in epistemology and the
philosophy of mind.


### 1.1 Ancient and Medieval Discussions of Self-Consciousness



Although it is occasionally suggested that a concern with
self-consciousness is a peculiarly modern phenomenon, originating with
Descartes (Brinkmann 2005), it is in fact the topic of lively ancient
and medieval debates, many of which prefigure early modern and
contemporary concerns (Sorabji 2006). Aristotle, for example, claims
that a person must, while perceiving any thing, also perceive their
own existence (*De Sensu* 7.448a), a claim suggestive of the
view that consciousness entails self-consciousness. Furthermore,
according to Aristotle, since the intellect takes on the form of that
which is thought (Kahn 1992), it "is thinkable just as the
thought-objects are" (*De Anima* 3.4.430), an assertion
that was interpreted by Aristotle's medieval commentators as the
view that self-awareness depends on an awareness of extra-mental
things (Cory 2014: ch. 1; Owens 1988).



By contrast, the Platonic tradition, principally through the influence
of Augustine, writing in the fourth and fifth centuries, is associated
with the view that the mind "gains the knowledge of [itself]
through itself" (*On the Trinity* 9.3; Matthews 1992;
Cary 2000) by being present to itself. Thus, on this view,
self-awareness requires no awareness of outer things. In a similar
vein, in the eleventh century, Avicenna argues, by way of his Flying
Man thought experiment, that a newly created person floating in a
void, with all senses disabled, would nevertheless be self-aware. Thus
the self that one cognises cannot be a bodily thing of which one is
aware through the senses (Kaukua & Kukkonen 2007; Black 2008;
Kaukua 2015). On such views, and in contrast to the Aristotelian
picture, basic self-awareness is neither sensory in nature nor
dependent on the awareness of other things. This latter claim was
accepted by Aquinas, writing in the thirteenth century, who can be
seen as synthesising aspects of the Platonic and Aristotelian
traditions (Cory 2014). For not only does Aquinas claim that there is
a form of self-awareness--awareness that one exists--for
which, "the mere presence of the mind suffices", there is
another form--awareness of one's essence--that, as
Aristotle had claimed, is dependent on cognising other things and so
for which "the mere presence of the mind does not suffice"
(*Summa* 1, 87, 1; Kenny 1993: ch. 10).



This ancient and medieval debate concerning whether the mere presence
of the mind is sufficient for self-awareness is related to another
concerning whether self-awareness is itself sensory in character or,
put another way, whether the self is or is not perceptible. Aquinas
has sometimes been interpreted as offering a positive answer to this
question, sometimes a negative answer (see Pasnau 2002: ch. 11, and
Cory 2014: ch. 4, for differing views). These issues were also
discussed in various Indian (Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist) debates
(Albahari 2006; Siderits, Thompson, & Zahavi 2013; Ganeri
2012a,b), with a variety of perspectives represented. For example, in
the writing of the eleventh century Jain writer Prabhacandra,
there appears an argument very much like Avicenna's Flying Man
argument for the possibility of self-awareness without awareness of
the body (Ganeri 2012a: ch. 2), whereas various thinkers of the
Advaita Vendanta school argue that there is no self-awareness
without embodiment (Ram-Prasad 2013). There were, therefore,
wide-ranging debates in the ancient and medieval period not only about
the nature of self-consciousness, but also about its relation to other
aspects of the mind, most notably sensory perception and awareness of
the body.


### 1.2 Early Modern Discussions of Self-Consciousness



Central to the early modern discussion of self-consciousness are
Descartes' assertions, in the second of his
*Meditations*, that "*I am*, *I exist*, is
necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my
mind" (Descartes 1641: 80), and, in both his *Discourse*
and *Principles*, that "I think, therefore I am",
or "*cogito ergo sum*" (Descartes 1637: 36, and
Descartes 1644: 162; see the discussion of Reflection in the entry on
 seventeenth century theories of consciousness).
 The *cogito*, which was anticipated by Augustine (*On the
Trinity* 10.10; Pasnau 2002: ch. 11), embodies two elements of
self-awareness--awareness that one is thinking and awareness that
one exists--that play a foundational role in Descartes'
epistemological project. As such, it is crucial for Descartes that the
*cogito* is something of which we can be absolutely certain.
But whilst most commentators are happy to agree that both "I am
thinking" and "I exist" are indubitable, there is a
great deal of debate over the grounds for such certainty and over the
form of the cogito itself (Hintikka 1962; Wilson 1978: ch. 2, SS2;
B. Williams 1978: ch. 3; Markie 1992). Of particular concern is the
question whether these two propositions are known by inference or
non-inferentially, e.g., by intuition, an issue that echoes the
medieval debates concerning whether one can be said to perceive
oneself.



One philosopher who accepts the former, intuition-based, account is
Locke, who claims that 



> 
> 
> *we have an intuitive Knowledge of our own Existence*, and an
> internal infallible Perception that we are. In every Act of Sensation,
> Reasoning, or Thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our own
> Being. (1700: IV.ix.3) 
> 
> 
> 



A similar claim can be found in Berkeley's *Three
Dialogues* (1713: 231-234; Stoneham 2002: SS6.4).
Further, Locke makes self-consciousness partly definitive of the very
concept of a person, a person being "a thinking intelligent
Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it
self, the same thinking thing in different times and places"
(1700: II. xxvii.9; Ayers 1991: vol.II, ch.23; Thiel 2011: ch. 4), and
self-consciousness also plays an important role in his theory of
personal identity (see
 SS4.1).



If Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley can be interpreted as accepting the
view that there is an inner perception of the self, on this question
Hume stands in stark contrast notoriously writing that whilst 



> 
> 
> there are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment
> intimately conscious of what we call our self [...] For my part
> when I enter most intimately into what I call *myself*, I
> always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or
> cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can
> catch *myself* at any time without a perception, and never can
> observe anything but the perception. (Hume 1739-40: bk.1, ch.4,
> SS6; Pitson 2002: ch. 1; Thiel 2011: ch. 12; cf.
> Lichtenberg's famous remark that one should not say "I
> think" but rather, "it thinks", discussed in
> Zoller 1992 and Burge 1998) 
> 
> 
> 



Hume's view that there is no impression, or perception, of
oneself is crucial to his case for the understanding of our idea of
ourselves as nothing more than a "heap or collection of
different perceptions" (1739-40: bk.1, ch.4, SS6;
Penelhum 2000; G. Strawson 2011a), since lacking an impression of the
owner of these perceptions we must, in accordance with his empiricist
account of concept acquisition, lack an idea of such. It is clear,
then, that in the early modern period issues of self-consciousness
play an important role in a variety of philosophical questions
regarding persons and their minds.


### 1.3 Kantian and Post-Kantian Discussions of Self-Consciousness



Hume's denial that there is an inner perception of the self as
the owner of experience is one that is echoed in Kant's
discussion in both the Transcendental Deduction and the Paralogisms,
where he writes that there is no intuition of the self "through
which it is given as object" (Kant 1781/1787: B408; Brook 1994;
Ameriks 1982 [2000]). Kant's account of self-consciousness and
its significance is complex, a central element of the Transcendental
Deduction being the claim that a form of
self-awareness--transcendental apperception--is required to
account for the unity of conscious experience over time. In
Kant's words, "the 'I think' must be able to
accompany all my representations" (Kant 1781/1787: B132; Keller
1998; Kitcher 2011; see the entry on
 Kant's view of the mind and consciousness of self).
 Thus, while Kant denies that there is an inner awareness of the self
as an object that owns its experiences, we must nevertheless be aware
of those experiences as things that are, both individually and
collectively, our own. The representation of the self in this "I
think" is then, according to Kant, purely formal, exhausted by
its function in unifying experience.



The Kantian account of self-awareness and its relation to the capacity
for objective thought set the agenda for a great deal of post-Kantian
philosophy. On the nature of self-awareness, for example, in an
unpublished manuscript Schopenhauer concurs with Kant, asserting that,
"that the subject should become an object for itself is the most
monstrous contradiction ever thought of" (quoted in Janaway
1989: 120). Further, a philosophical tradition stemming from
Kant's work has tried to identify the necessary conditions of
the possibility of self-consciousness, with P.F. Strawson (1959,
1966), Evans (1980, 1982), and Cassam (1997), for example, exploring
the relation between the capacity for self-conscious thought and the
possession of a conception of oneself as an embodied agent located
within an objective world (see
 SS4.3).
 Another, related tradition has argued that an awareness of subjects
other than oneself is a necessary condition of self-consciousness (see
 SS4.4).
 Historical variations on such a view can be found in Fichte
(1794-1795; Wood 2006), Hegel (1807; Pippin 2010), and, from a
somewhat different perspective, Mead (1934; Aboulafia 1986).



Fichte offers the most influential account of self-consciousness in
the post-Kantian tradition. On the reading of the "Heidelberg
School", Fichte claims that previous accounts of
self-consciousness given by Descartes, Locke, and even Kant are
"reflective", regarding the self as taking itself not as
subject but as object (Henrich 1967; Tugendhat 1979: ch. 3; Frank
2004; Zahavi 2007). But this reflective form of self-awareness, Fichte
argues, presupposes a more primitive form since it is necessary for
the reflecting self to be aware that the reflected self is in fact
*itself*. Consequently, according to Fichte, we must possess an
immediate acquaintance with ourselves, "the self exists and
posits its own existence by virtue of merely existing" (Fichte
1794-1795: 97). Once more, this debate echoes ancient
discussions concerning the nature and role of self-consciousness.


### 1.4 Early Twentieth Century Discussions of Self-Consciousness



In the early twentieth century, Frege suggests a form of
self-acquaintance, claiming that "everyone is presented to
himself in a special and primitive way" (Frege 1918-1919:
333). In a similar vein, in early work Russell (1910) favours the idea
that we are acquainted with ourselves, but by the 1920s (1921: 141) he
seems to endorse a view more in line with Hume's sceptical
account. The same can be said of the Wittgenstein of the
*Tractatus*, who famously likens the self to the eye which sees
but does not see itself (Wittgenstein 1921: 5.6-5.641;
O'Brien 1996; Sullivan 1996). Husserl's philosophical
development seems to have taken the opposite trajectory to that of
Russell, with his (1900/1901, Investigation V, SS8) denial of the
inner awareness of a "pure ego" being subsequently revised
into something resembling Kantian transcendental apperception (Husserl
1913: SS57; Carr 1999: ch. 3; Zahavi 2005: ch. 2). Continuing with
the phenomenological tradition, Sartre (1937; Priest 2000) takes
Husserl's later view to task, arguing against the view that we
are continually aware of a transcendent ego, yet in favour of the
picture of consciousness as involving a "pre-reflective"
awareness of itself reminiscent of the Heidelberg School view (Wider
1997: ch. 3; Miguens, Preyer, & Morando 2016). Questions about the
nature of self-consciousness and, in particular, over whether there is
an immediate, or intuitive, consciousness of the self, were as lively
as ever well into the twentieth century.


## 2. Self-Consciousness in Thought



One natural way to think of self-consciousness is in terms of a
subject's capacity to entertain conscious thought about herself.
Self-conscious thoughts are thoughts about oneself. But it is commonly
pointed out that thinking about what merely happens to be oneself is
insufficient for self-consciousness, rather one must think of oneself
*as oneself*. If one is capable of self-conscious thought, that
is, one must be able to think in such a way that it is manifest to one
that it is oneself about whom one is thinking.



It is widely recognised that the paradigmatic linguistic expression of
self-consciousness in English is the first-person pronoun
"I"; a term with which one might be said to refer to
oneself *as oneself* (Sainsbury 2011). Plausibly, every
utterance of a sentence containing "I" is expressive of a
self-conscious "I-thought", that is a thought containing
the first-person concept. Thus, discussions of self-consciousness are
often closely associated with accounts of the semantics of the
indexical term "I" and the nature of its counterpart
first-person concept (e.g., Anscombe 1975; Perry 1979; Nozick 1981:
ch. 1, SS2; Evans 1982: ch. 7; Mellor 1989; O'Brien 1995a;
Castaneda 1999; de Gaynesford 2006; Recanati 2007; Rodl
2007: ch. 1; Bermudez 2016).



As Castaneda (1966; cf. Anscombe 1975) points out, there is an
ambiguity in certain ascriptions of belief containing "he"
or "she". I may say "Jane believes that she is
*F*" without implying that Jane realises that it is
*herself* that she believes to be *F*. That is, there is a
reading of "Jane believes that she is *F*" that does
not imply self-consciousness on Jane's part. But, in some cases,
we do intend to attribute self-consciousness with that same form of
words. To resolve this ambiguity, Castaneda introduces
"she\*" for self-conscious attributions. I will use the
more natural *indirect reflexive* "she herself".
Thus, "Jane believes that she is *F*" does not imply
that Jane self-consciously believes that she is *F*, whilst
"Jane believes that she herself is *F*" does. Before
the dreadful revelation, Oedipus believed that he was prophesied to
kill his father, but did not believe that he himself was so
prophesied.


### 2.1 The Essential Indexical



First-personal language and thought is commonly taken to be *sui
generis*, irreducible to language or thought not containing the
first-person pronoun or corresponding concept (Castaneda 1966,
1967; Perry 1977, 1979, 2001). Arguments for this view have typically
appealed to the essential role seemingly played by the first-person in
explanations of action. This point is supported by a number of
well-known examples. Consider Perry's case of the messy
shopper,



> 
> 
> I once followed a trail of sugar on a supermarket floor, pushing my
> cart down the aisle on one side of a tall counter and back the aisle
> on the other, seeking the shopper with the torn sack to tell him he
> was making a mess. With each trip around the counter, the trail became
> thicker. But I seemed unable to catch up. Finally it dawned on me. I
> was the shopper I was trying to catch. (Perry 1979: 33)
> 
> 
> 



As Perry points out, he knew all along that the shopper with the torn
sack was making a mess. He may also have believed that the oldest
philosopher in the shop (in fact himself) was making a mess, yet
failed to check his own cart since he falsely believed that Quine was
at the Deli Counter. Indeed, it seems that for any non-indexical term
*a* that denotes Perry, it is possible for Perry to fail to
believe anything naturally expressed by the sentence "I am
*a*". If so, it is possible for Perry to rationally believe
that *a* is making a mess without believing anything that he
would express as "I am making a mess". It was only when
Perry came to believe that *he himself* was making a mess that
he stopped the chase. Indeed, it would seem that only the
first-personal content can provide an adequate explanation of
Perry's behaviour when he stops. If Perry had come to believe
that John Perry is making a mess then, unless he also believed that he
himself was John Perry, he would not have stopped. The first-personal
content is "self-locating", thereby enabling action,
whereas the non-first-personal content is not. To use Kaplan's
(1977) example, if I believe that my pants are on fire, pure
self-interest will surely motivate me do something about it. If,
however, I believe that Smith's pants are on fire, pure
self-interest will only so motivate me if I also believe that I am
Smith.



On this widely accepted picture, then, first-personal thought and
language is irreducible to non-first-personal thought and language,
and is essential to the explanation of action (Kaplan 1977: 533; D.
Lewis 1979; McGinn 1983: ch. 6; Recanati 2007: ch. 34; Musholt 2015:
ch. 1; Prosser 2015; Garcia-Carpintero & Torre 2016).
Importantly, on Perry's view, what is irreducible is the
first-personal way of thinking about ourselves, not the facts or
states of affairs that make such thoughts true. So, whilst my belief
"I am *F*" is not equivalent to any
non-first-personal belief, it is true if and only if Smith is
*F*, this being the same fact that makes true the
non-first-personal "Smith is *F*". Thus, whilst
first-person representations are special, a special class of
first-person facts are nowhere to be found (for views that do accept
the existence of first-personal facts, see McGinn 1983; Baker 2013;
also see Nagel 1986).



Perry (1977, 1979) argues that terms such as "I" which
are, as he puts it, "essentially indexical", pose a
problem for the traditional Fregean view of belief as a two-place
relation between a subject and a proposition (cf. Spencer 2007).
Fregean senses are, according to Perry, descriptive and as Perry has
argued no description is equivalent to an essential indexical.
Consequently, no Fregean proposition can be the thing believed when
one believes first-personally. Essential indexicality, if somehow
forced into the Fregean mould, means that we must implausibly accept
that there are incommunicable senses that only the speaker (or
thinker) is in a position to grasp (see Garcia-Carpintero &
Torre 2016); cf.Evans 1981; Longworth 2013). D. Lewis goes further
than this, arguing, partly on the basis of his much discussed Two Gods
example (1979), in which each God knows all the propositions true at
their world yet fails to know which of the two Gods *he
himself* is, that the objects of belief are not propositions at
all but rather properties (or centred worlds). That is, since they
already know all the true propositions, there is no true proposition
the Gods would come to believe when they come to realise which God
they are. Essential indexicality forces us away from the model of
propositions as the objects of belief. Further, Lewis claims that not
just the explicitly indexical cases, but *all* belief is in
this way self-locating or, in his terminology, *de se*. On this
account, every belief involves the self-ascription of a property and
so, arguably, is an instance of self-consciousness (for discussion,
Gennaro 1996: ch. 8; Stalnaker 2008: ch. 3; Feit 2008; Cappelen &
Dever 2013: ch. 5; Magidor 2015).



Arguments such as Perry's might be challenged on the grounds
that it is not possible to rationally doubt that one is *the
subject of these conscious states*, where that formulation
involves an "introspective demonstrative" picking out
one's current conscious states. This, it might be claimed,
constitutes a reduction of first-person content (cf. Peacocke 1983:
ch. 5, although his goal is not reductive). Even if it is true,
however, that one cannot doubt that one is the subject of
*these* conscious states, it is not clear that this poses a
significant challenge to Perry's argument for the essential
indexicality of the first-person. For one thing, the content itself
contains a demonstrative, so indexical, element. Second, it has been
argued that our capacity to refer to our own experiences itself
depends on our capacity to refer to ourselves as ourselves (P.F.
Strawson 1959: 97; Evans 1982: 253). That is, to think of *these
conscious states* is to think of them as *these conscious
states of mine*. If to demonstratively think of one's
conscious state is, necessarily, to think of it *as*
one's own conscious state, then the purported reduction of
first-person thought to thought not containing the first-person will
fail.



Cappelen and Dever (2013) present a sustained attack on the
constellation of philosophical claims surrounding the "essential
indexical", including its purported relation to action, and both
Perry's and Lewis's arguments for it (for an alternative
objections to Perry and Lewis, see Millikan 1990; Magidor 2015). A
central element in their critique is the claim that cases, such as
Perry's shopper, that are often thought to show the special
connection between self-consciousness (I-thoughts) and the capacity
for action really only show that action explanation contexts do not
allow for substitution *salva veritate*, but rather are opaque
(Cappelen & Dever 2013: ch. 3). Just as, if I am at the airport
waiting for Jones, I will only signal *that man* if I believe
him to be Jones, so if I am looking for the shopper with the torn sack
I will only stop when I believe that *I* am that shopper. On
their view, despite the popularity of the view to the contrary, the
capacity for self-consciousness does not possess any philosophically
deep relation to the capacity for action. See the supplement: 
Scepticism About Essential Indexicality and Agency.


### 2.2 First-Person Reference



Because of its connection with the first-person pronoun, it is often
taken as platitudinous to say that self-conscious thought is closely
associated with the capacity to refer to oneself *as oneself*.
When I think self-consciously, I cannot fail to refer to myself. More
than this, it has often been claimed that for a central class of
first-person thoughts, there is no possibility of misidentifying
myself: not only can I not fail to pick myself out, I cannot take
another person to be me. But first-person reference, and indexicality
more generally, has sometimes been thought to pose a challenge to
theories of reference, requiring special treatment. Indeed, some have
argued that the platitude itself should be rejected.



Terms whose function it is to refer can, on occasion, fail in that
function. A use of the term "Vulcan" to refer to the
planet orbiting between Mercury and the sun, fails to refer to
anything for the reason that there is nothing for it to refer to. If I
see the head of one dachshund protruding from behind a tree and the
rear end of another protruding from the other side of the tree, and
utter "that dog is huge", my use of "that dog"
has arguably failed to refer due to there being too many objects. It
would seem that, by contrast, the term "I" cannot fail to
refer either by there being too few or too many objects.
"I" is guaranteed to refer.



As an indexical, the referent of "I" varies with the
context of utterance (see the entry on
 indexicals).
 That is, "I" refers to different people depending on who
utters it. Following Kaplan (1977), it is common to think of the
meaning of such terms as determining a function from context to
referent. In the case of "I", a natural proposal is the
"Self-Reference Rule" (SRR), that the referent of a token
of "I" is the person that produces it (Kaplan 1977: 491;
Campbell 1994: ch. 3). "I" is thus, unlike
"this" or "that", a pure indexical, seemingly
requiring no overt demonstration or manifestation of intention (Kaplan
1977: 489-91). SRR captures the plausible thought that
"I" is guaranteed against reference failure. Since every
token of "I" has been produced, the fact that
"I" refers to its producer means that there is no chance
of its failing to pick out some entity. This account of
"I", then, treats it as not only expressive of
self-consciousness, but also guaranteed to refer to the utterer.



SRR is Kaplan's specification of the *character* of
"I", which is fixed independently of the context of any
particular utterance. This character is to be distinguished from the
*content* of a tokening of "I", which it has only
in a context. On Kaplan's account, the content of an utterance
of "I am *F*" will be a singular proposition composed
of the person that produced it and *F*ness (Recanati 1993; for an
account that attributes to the utterance both singular content, and
the "reflexive content" *the speaker of this token is
F*, see Perry 2001; for an alternative "Neo-Fregean"
account in terms of object-dependent *de re* senses, see Evans
1981; cf. McDowell 1977; and Evans 1982: ch. 1).



Intuitively plausible as it is, SRR is open to a number of potential
counterexamples. Suppose, for example, that you are away from work due
to illness and I leave a note on your door reading "I am not
here now". Plausibly, whilst it was me that produced this token
of "I", it nevertheless refers to *you*. Or
consider a situation in which I walk into a petrol station, point to
my car, and say "I'm empty". In this case, it might
be suggested, my use of "I" refers to my car rather than
myself (for these and related cases, see Vision 1985; Q. Smith 1989;
Sidelle 1991; Nunberg 1993, 1995). If so, SRR cannot specify the
character of "I" and so, arguably, some tokens of
"I" fail to express the self-conscious thoughts of those
that produce them. In light of such cases, a variety of alternatives
to SRR have been proposed. Q. Smith (1989) suggests that
"I" is lexically ambiguous; Predelli (1998a,b, 2002)
offers an intention-based reference rule for "I"; Corazza,
Fish, and Gorvett (2002) offer a convention-based account; and Cohen
(2013) argues that the cases can be handled by a conservative
modification of Kaplan's original proposal (also see,
Romdenh-Romluc 2002, 2008; Corazza 2004: ch. 5; Dodd & Sweeney
2010; Michaelson 2014).



Although she didn't have Kaplan's formulation of SRR in
mind, an earlier criticism of such a rule can be found in the work of
Anscombe (1975) who argues that the rule cannot be complete as an
account of the meaning of "I" (for discussion see
O'Brien 1994). Anscombe considers a world in which each person
has two names, one of which (ranging from "B" to
"Z") is printed on their chest, the other (in every case
"A") is printed on the inside of their wrist. Each person
uses "B" to "Z" when attributing actions to
others, but "A" when describing their own actions
(Anscombe 1975: 49). Anscombe argues that such a situation is
compatible with the possibility that the people in question lack
self-consciousness. Whilst B uses "A" to refer to B, C
uses "A" to refer to C, and so on, there is no guarantee
that they are thinking of themselves *as themselves*, for they
may be reporting what are in fact their own actions without thinking
of those actions as things that *they themselves* are
performing. They may treat themselves, that is, just as the treat any
other. This is despite the fact that, in this scenario,
"A" complies with SRR.



Can the Self-Reference Rule be reformulated in such a way as to entail
self-consciousness on the part of those who use terms that comply with
it? According to Anscombe it can, but any such reformulation will
presuppose a prior grasp of self-conscious reference to oneself. For
example, if we say, employing the indirect reflexive, that
"I" is a term that a person uses to refer to *she
herself*, we have travelled in a tight circle since "she
herself" can be understood only in terms of "I"
(Anscombe 1975; Castaneda 1966; for discussion, see
Bermudez 1998: ch. 1). This can be seen clearly in the
first-person formulation of such a rule: "I" is a term
that I use to refer to *myself*. For here the
"myself" must itself be understood as an expression of
self-consciousness, i.e., we should really say that "I" is
a term that I use to refer to *myself* *as myself*.



In response to Anscombe's argument, it has been argued that SRR
is not intended to explain the connection between self-consciousness
and the first-person (O'Brien 1994, 1995a; Garrett 1998: ch. 7;
cf. Campbell 1994: SS4.2; Peacocke 2008: SS3.1). On this view,
all that the example of "A" users shows is that
self-consciousness has not been fully accounted for by SRR, not that
SRR fails as an account of the character of "I". Kaplan
himself, however, does appear to be more ambitious than this, claiming
that the "particular and primitive way" in which each of
us is presented to ourselves is simply that each "is presented
to himself under the character of "I"" (Kaplan 1977: 533). This
claim, it would seem, is indeed open to Anscombe's
challenge.



Anscombe's (1975) paper is perhaps most notable for her claim
that "I" is not a referring expression at all. Assuming
that if "I" refers it must be understood on the model of
either a proper name, a demonstrative, or an abbreviation of a
definite description, Anscombe argues that each of these kinds of
referring expression requires what she calls a
"conception" by means of which it reaches its referent.
This conception must explain the seemingly guaranteed reference of
"I": the apparent fact that no token of "I"
can fail to pick out an object. However, she argues, no satisfactory
conception can be specified for "I" since either it fails
to deliver up guaranteed reference, or it succeeds but only by
delivering an immaterial soul. Since we have independent reason to
believe that there are no immaterial souls, it follows that
"I" cannot be understood on the model of a proper name,
demonstrative or definite description, so is not a referring
expression (see Kenny 1979 and Malcolm 1979 for positive appraisals of
Anscombe's position. Criticisms can be found in White 1979;
Hamilton 1991; Brandom 1994: 552-561; Glock & Hacker 1996;
McDowell 1998; Harcourt 2000).



That "I" does not function as either a name or an
abbreviated definite description is widely accepted. The more
contentious aspect of Anscombe's case for the view that there is
no appropriate conception for "I" is her claim that
"I" does not function like a demonstrative. Her argument
for this claim is highly reminiscent of Avicenna's Flying Man
argument (see
 SS1.1),
 with which she was surely familiar. We can, she tells us, imagine a
subject in a sensory deprivation tank who has been anaesthetised and
is suffering from amnesia. Such a subject would, claims Anscombe, be
able to think I-thoughts, perhaps wondering, "How did I get into
this mess?". Since such a subject can think self-consciously in
the absence of any presented referent, it follows that "I"
cannot mean something like "this person", since
demonstratives require the demonstrated object to be presented to
conscious awareness. Treating "I" on a demonstrative
model, then, fails (cf. Campbell 1994: SS4.2; O'Brien 1995b;
see Morgan 2015 for a defence of a demonstrative account).



According to Evans (1982: ch. 7), the problem with Anscombe's
argument is that it fails to appreciate that "I" can be
modelled on "here" rather than "this".
According to Evans' account, the similarity between what he
calls "I"-Ideas and "here"-Ideas shows up in
their functional role (for an alternative broadly functional account,
see Mellor 1989; for an argument that, far from being amenable to a
functional analysis, self-consciousness poses a threat to the
coherence of functionalism, see Bealer 1997). Once we see how both
"I"-Ideas and "here"-Ideas stand at the centre
of distinctive networks of inputs (ways of gaining information about
ourselves and our locations respectively) and outputs (including the
explanation of action), we can see how to model "I" on
"here", thus escaping Anscombe's argument. For
further discussion, see the supplement:
 Evans on First Person Thought.


### 2.3 Immunity to Error Through Misidentification



In *The Blue and Brown Books*, Wittgenstein distinguishes
between two uses of the term "I" which he calls the
"use as subject" and the "use as object"
(1958: 66-70; Garrett 1998: ch. 8; cf. James' distinction
between the *I*, or pure ego, and the *me*, or empirical
self (1890: vol. 1, ch. X)). As Wittgenstein describes the difference,
there is a certain kind of error in thought that is possible when
"I" is used as object but not when "I" is used
as subject. Wittgenstein notes that if I find myself in a tangle of
bodies, I may wrongly take another's visibly broken arm to be my
own, mistakenly judging "I have a broken arm". Upon seeing
a broken arm, then, it can make sense to wonder whether or not it is
mine. If, however, I feel a pain in the arm, and on that basis judge
"I have a pain", then it makes no sense at all for me to
wonder whether the pain of which I am aware is mine. That is, it is
not possible for me to be aware, in the ordinary way, of a pain in an
arm but mistakenly judge it to be my own arm that hurts. On this
picture, self-ascriptions of pain, at least when based on the usual
introspective grounds, involve the use of "I" *as
subject* and so are immune to this sort of error of
misidentification.



Immunity to this sort of error should not be conflated with another
sort of epistemic security that is often discussed under the heading
of self-knowledge (see entry on
 self-knowledge).
 Some philosophers have held that, for a range of mental states, one
cannot be mistaken about whether one is in them. Thus, for example, if
one sincerely judges that one has a pain, or that one believes that P,
then it cannot turn out that one is not in pain, or that one does not
so believe. That the kind of immunity to error described by
Wittgenstein differs from this sort of epistemic security follows from
the fact that one may be sceptical of the latter while accepting the
former. That is, one may reject the claim that sincere judgements that
one has a pain cannot be mistaken (perhaps it is possible to mistake a
sensation of coldness for one of pain), whilst nevertheless
maintaining that if one is introspectively aware of a pain, then that
pain must be one's own. Immunity to errors of this sort has been
taken, by a number of philosophers, to be importantly connected to
self-consciousness.



Under the influence of Shoemaker (1968) this phenomenon has become
known as immunity to error through misidentification relative to the
first-person pronoun, or IEM. On Shoemaker's formulation, an
error of misidentification occurs when one knows some particular
thing, *a*, to be *F* and judges that *b* is *F*
on the grounds that one mistakenly believes that *a* is identical
to *b*. To this it is important to add that IEM is not a feature
that judgements possess in virtue of their content alone but only
relative to certain grounds (perception, testimony,
 introspection,
 memory, etc.). Thus, the judgement that I 
am jealous of *a*
might be IEM when grounded in introspection, but not when grounded in
the overheard testimony of my analyst. For I may have misinterpreted
my analyst's words, wrongly taking his use of
"Smith" in "Smith is Jealous of *a*" to
refer to me ("Smith" after all is a common name). IEM is
always relative, then, to the grounds on which a judgement is based.
Which grounds might give rise to first-person judgements that are IEM
is a contested matter, see the supplement:
 The Scope of Immunity to Error Through Misidentification.



On this account, first-person thoughts will be IEM relative to certain
grounds just in case errors of misidentification are not possible with
respect to them. That is, they will be IEM relative to grounds
*G* if and only if it is not possible that one knows,
*via* *G*, some particular thing, *a*, to be *F*
and judges oneself to be *F* in virtue of mistakenly believing
that *a* is identical to oneself. Whilst precise formulations
differ in various ways, this can reasonably be thought of as the
standard account of IEM (see, for example, Shoemaker 1968, 1970, 1986,
2012; Brewer 1995; Bermudez 1998: SS1.2; Peacocke 1999: ch.
6; 2008: SS3.2; 2014: SS5.1; Coliva 2006; Recanati 2007: part
6; Perry 2012; most of the papers in Prosser & Recanati 2012;
Musholt 2015: ch. 1).



An alternative way of formulating IEM can be found in the work of
variety of philosophers. On this view, a judgement "*a* is
*F*" is IEM if and only if it is not possible to undercut
one's evidence for judging that *a* is *F* without
thereby undercutting one's evidence that *someone* is
*F* (for variations on this idea, see Hamilton 1995; Wright 1998;
Pryor 1999; Campbell 1999a; 2002: ch. 5; for discussion see Coliva
2006; Joel Smith 2006a; McGlynn 2016). As Wright puts it, a claim 



> 
> 
> made on a certain kind of ground involves immunity to error through
> misidentification just when its defeat is *not* consistent with
> retention of grounds for existential generalization. (1998: 19) 
> 
> 
> 



The idea is that, for a wide range of judgements it is possible that
one knows that *something* is F but wrongly supposes that
*a* is *F*. That is, one has misidentified which thing is F.
For other judgements, perhaps including the introspection based
judgement that one has a headache, this sort of identification error
is not possible. After Pryor's (1999) influential discussion,
this is typically known as immunity to
*which*-misidentification, or *wh*-IEM.



That wh-IEM is a distinct phenomenon from IEM as it is standardly
formulated is shown by the fact one may consistently claim that a form
of experience, for example memory, does not put one in a position to
think, of some *a* distinct from oneself, that *a* was
*F*, yet nevertheless does put one in a position to think that
*someone* was *F*. That is, it might give rise to
judgements that are IEM but not *wh*-IEM. The converse,
however, is not possible. For since "*a* was
*F*" entails "*someone* was *F*",
it will not be possible for a judgement, relative to some grounds, to
be *wh*-IEM without it also being IEM. If a judgement is based
on an identification, it will be subject to errors of
*wh*-misidentification. For this reason, *wh*-IEM might
legitimately be considered the more fundamental notion (as it is by
Pryor 1999).



What is the philosophical significance of IEM? First, consider what it
would take for a form of experience to ground thoughts that are IEM.
Suppose that a form of experience, introspection for example, itself
has first-personal content. That is, suppose that the content of
introspective awareness is not adequately conceptualised as
*pain* but rather requires the first-personal form, *my
pain*. If so, then there would be no need for an identification of
some object as oneself, for the identity of the subject of pain is
already given as oneself. On this way of thinking, to determine which
forms of experience ground judgements that are IEM would be to
determine which forms of experience have first-personal content. And
that, according to some philosophers, is to determine which forms of
experience are themselves forms of self-consciousness (see, for
example, Bermudez 1998: 144). This issue is further discussed
in
 SS3.



Second, Wittgenstein suggests that the phenomenon of IEM is
responsible for the (in his view, mistaken) opinion that the use of
"I" as subject refers to an immaterial soul (1958: 66).
This is for the reason that one may be tempted to suppose that if
introspectively based self-ascriptions of psychological predicates do
not rely on an identification of a bodily entity, they must rely on
the identification of a non-bodily entity (1958: 70; for related
discussion, see Peacocke 1999: ch. 6; Coliva 2012).
Wittgenstein's view, of course, is that they rely on no
identification at all. As Evans puts it, they are identification-free.
Essentially the same point is made by Strawson in his diagnosis of
"the fact that lies at the root of the Cartesian
illusion", which is that "criterionless"
self-ascription gives rise to the idea of a "purely inner and
yet subject-referring use for 'I'" (P.F. Strawson
1966: 164-166). In short, the fact that a certain class of
first-person thoughts depend for their reference on no identification
of myself as some publicly presented object (they are
identification-free) gives rise to the idea that they pick out a
private object, a soul. There is a clear connection between this idea
and Anscombe's (1975) argument for the non-referential character
of "I". 


## 3. Self-Consciousness in Experience



Some philosophers maintain that, in addition to its manifestation in
first-personal thinking, self-consciousness is also present in various
forms of sensory and non-sensory experience (Bermudez 1998;
Hurley 1998: ch. 4; Zahavi 2005; Peacocke 2014; Musholt 2015). After
all, self-consciousness is presumably a form of consciousness (see
entry on
 consciousness).
 On the view that experience, like thought, has representational
content, this can be understood as the view that experiences, like
thoughts, can have content that is first-personal. On the further view
that the content of experience is non-conceptual (see the entry on
 non-conceptual
 mental content), the claim is that there is non-conceptual
first-person content (for a conceptualist response, see Noe
2002). Bermudez also argues that there is a non-conceptual form
of self-conscious thinking that arises from non-conceptual
self-conscious experience, which he calls "protobelief"
(Bermudez 1998: ch. 5; cf. Bermudez 2003).



The claim that there is a form of self-consciousness in experience,
one which arguably grounds the capacity to entertain first-personal
thought, can be understood in a number of ways. According to one view
there is a perceptual, or quasi-perceptual, consciousness of the self
as an object of experience. On another, there is a
"pre-reflective" form of self-consciousness that does not
involve the awareness of the self as an object. A third claims that
various forms of experience involve a distinctive "sense of
ownership" in which each of us is aware of our own states as
*our own*. In each case, the question is whether the mode of
experience in question can, in Peacocke's (2014: ch. 4) words,
act as the "non-conceptual parent" of the first-person
concept and associated phenomena, in particular that of immunity to
error through misidentification.


### 3.1 Consciousness of the Self



It is natural to suppose that self-consciousness is, fundamentally, a
conscious awareness of the self. On such a view, one is self-conscious
if, when one introspects, one is aware of a thing that is, in some
sense, presented as oneself. This is the view, mentioned in
 SS1.2,
 that Hume seems to be rejecting with his claim that when he
introspects he can never catch himself, but only perceptions (Hume
1739-40: bk. 1, ch. 4, SS6). Whilst Hume's claim has
been very influential, it has not found universal acceptance. Those
siding with Hume include Shoemaker (1986), Martin (1997), Howell
(2010), and Prinz (2012) (for a related, Jamesian perspective, see
Flanagan 1992: ch. 9). Those opposing him include Chisholm (1976: ch.
1), Cassam (1995), G. Strawson (2009), Damasio (2010) and Rosenthal
(2012).



As with first-person thought, the issue is not whether one is, or can
be, conscious of what is in fact oneself. If that were sufficient for
self-consciousness then, on the supposition that one is identical to
one's body, seeing oneself in a mirror would be a case of
self-consciousness, even if one were unaware that it was oneself that
one saw. Rather, the issue is whether one is, or can be, conscious of
oneself *as oneself*, a form of awareness in which it is
manifest to one that the object of awareness is oneself. If there is
such an awareness then this is philosophically significant, since one
might expect it to ground certain cases of self-knowledge,
first-person reference, and the immunity to error of certain
first-person thoughts (Shoemaker 1986; see the entry on
 self-knowledge).
 The inner consciousness of the self as *F*, for example, would
account for one's capacity to refer to oneself *as
oneself*, one's knowledge that one is *F*, and the fact
that such a thought cannot rest on a misidentification of another
thing as oneself. On the other hand, the claim that there is
*no* such conscious awareness of the self is philosophically
significant, not only because it undermines the possibility of such
explanations but also for the reason that it plays an important role
in various well known arguments: for example, in Kant's
*First Critique* (1781/1787), most obviously the Transcendental
Deduction, the Refutation of Idealism, and the Paralogisms, and in
Wittgenstein's discussion of the conceptual problem of other
minds (Kripke 1982: Postscript).



A simple argument for the claim that we are introspectively aware of
ourselves is that in introspection one is perceptually aware of
one's own mental properties, and that when one perceives a
property one perceives that which has that property, i.e., oneself.
Shoemaker (1984b, 1986) agrees that *if* there is an
introspective awareness of the self as an object, then it should be
understood as a form of self*-perception*. He argues, however,
that, on a plausible account of perception, introspection is not a
form of perception, so we do not introspectively *perceive*
anything, including the self. As such, we cannot conclude in this way
that we are introspectively aware of the self (cf. Martin 1997;
Rosenthal 2012).



Shoemaker further argues, in a way reminiscent of the Heidelberg
School (Frank 1995; Musholt 2015: ch. 1), that the postulation of an
introspective awareness of the self *as the self* would not be
in a position to explain all self-knowledge. According to Shoemaker
(1984b: 105), if inner perception revealed an object to be *F*,
then I would only be in a position to judge that I am *F* if I
already took myself to be that object that I perceive. But this both
presupposes some (non-perceptual) self-knowledge (i.e., that I am the
thing perceived *via* inner sense), and also implausibly opens
up introspection based first-person thought to the possibility of
errors of misidentification, since such a view would entail that
introspective self-knowledge is based in part on an identification of
the self.



A number of philosophers have maintained that, even if Hume is right
that introspection does not reveal the self as an object, there is
another form of perceptual experience which does:
 bodily awareness (see entry).
 Versions of this claim can be found in P.F. Strawson (1966: 102),
Evans (1982: ch. 7), Sutton Morris (1982), Ayers (1991), Brewer
(1995), Cassam (1995, 1997), Bermudez (1998, 2011). On this
view, through bodily awareness I am aware of my body "from the
inside" as a bodily self, as *me*. Brewer (1995), for
example, argues that since bodily sensations are both manifestly
properties of oneself and are perceived as located properties of
one's body, it follows that in bodily awareness one perceives
one's body as oneself.



If one's body is presented as oneself in bodily awareness then,
as mentioned above, we might expect this bodily self-perception to
ground first-person thought about one's bodily states. As
pointed out in
 SS2,
 it is plausible that first-person thoughts cannot fail to refer to
their thinker and further that this is manifest in the thinking of
them. Martin (1995, 1997) argues on the basis of these two claims that
if bodily awareness is a form of self-awareness, then one's body
as presented in bodily awareness must manifestly be oneself. That is,
if a form of awareness is to ground judgements which are manifestly
about myself, then that form of awareness must manifestly be an
awareness of myself. But this is arguably a condition that it does not
meet, since it is perfectly coherent to wonder whether or not one is
identical to one's body, just as Descartes famously did in the
*Meditations* (for a different, imagination-based, argument
against bodily awareness as a form of self-awareness, see Joel Smith
2006b; see Bermudez 2011 for a response; for discussions of the
relation between self-consciousness and imagination see B. Williams
1973; Reynolds 1989; Velleman 1996).



Another way in which it can be argued that the self figures in sensory
experience is in the self-locating content of perceptual experience,
most notably vision. Visual experience is perspectival, containing
information not only about perceived objects but also of their spatial
relation to the perceiver: I see the wall as in front of *me*,
the bookcase as to *my* left, and so on. The (bodily) self, it
might be argued, is experienced as an object in the world, the point
of origin of egocentric perception (Cassam 1997: 52-53; Hurley
1998: ch. 4; Bermudez 1998: ch. 5, 2002, 2011; Peacocke 1999:
ch. 6; Schwenkler 2014). On an alternative view, one consistent with
the rejection of any sort of awareness of the self as an object,
visual perception does not present the self at its point of origin,
but rather represents the locations of perceived objects in monadic
terms, as *ahead*, *to the left*, and so on, without
specifying what it is that they are ahead, or to the left, of
(Campbell 1994: SS4.1; 2002: SS9.3; Perry 1986).


### 3.2 Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness



If first-person thought is not grounded in an awareness of the self as
an object, then some other account is arguably required to account for
the capacity to entertain self-conscious thought (O'Brien
1995a). One suggestion is that subjects possess a form of
"pre-reflective self-awareness" as a necessary condition
of consciousness (Sartre 1937, 1943: Introduction; Zahavi 2005, 2007;
Legrand 2006; cf. Kriegel 2009. For criticism, see Schear 2009; also
see the entry on
 phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness).
 On this view, all conscious experience involves an implicit awareness
of oneself as its subject without explicitly representing the self as
an object of awareness (cf. Musholt's distinction between
"self-representationalist" and
"non-self-representationalist" accounts of non-conceptual
self-consciousness (2015: chs. 3-4)). Indeed, it might be argued
that the necessity of an active agent's possessing some form of
self-awareness follows from the connection between action and
self-consciousness that many suppose to have been established by
considerations of the essential indexical discussed in
 SS2.1
 (cf. Bermudez 1998).



These views are closely associated with theories that explain
consciousness in terms of self-consciousness
 (SS4.3).
 Pre-reflective self-awareness is "pre-reflective",
according to its proponents, in the sense that it does not require one
to explicitly reflect on one's own mental states, or to
otherwise take them as objects of attention. Rather, pre-reflective
self-awareness is manifest even in those situations in which
one's attention is directed outwards toward worldly objects and
events. Pre-reflective self-awareness, then, is implicit in all
consciousness, providing one with a continuous awareness of oneself as
the subject of one's stream of experience.



One way in which such views can be understood is as maintaining that
experience involves self-consciousness in the mode, rather than the
content, of conscious experience (Recanati 2007: part 5; 2012;
O'Brien 2007: ch. 6). This can be fleshed out by analogy with
the case of belief: one might claim that the concept of truth figures
in the mode, but not the explicit content of every belief. That is,
whilst every belief is a holding true, it is not the case that every
belief has the content that such and such is true. Similarly, whilst
every experience is an experience of one's own, it is not the
case that every experience has the content that such and such is
experienced by oneself. Rather, the *mode* of conscious
experience (introspection, bodily awareness, etc.) includes an
implicit awareness of the self. A related view is that the self can be
considered an "unarticulated constituent" of the
experience, just as some claim that "here" is an
unarticulated constituent of "It is raining" (Perry 1986;
Recanati 2007: parts 9 & 10; for scepticism about unarticulated
constituents, see Cappelen & Lepore 2007). So, just as the person
who believes "It is raining" is implicitly aware of the
fact that it is *here* that it is raining, so the subject of
self-conscious experience is implicitly aware of the fact that it is
*she herself* who is undergoing that experience.



Accounts of self-consciousness as involving unarticulated
constituents, or as implicit in the mode of consciousness, will need
to explain how the transition is made from such implicit
self-awareness to the explicit representation of the self in
first-person thought. One option is to appeal to the idea that certain
sources of information are self-tracking or, in Perry's (2012)
words, "necessarily self-informative". A form of
experience is self-tracking if it is a way of coming to know of the
instantiation of properties of a certain type and, necessarily, a
subject can come to know, in that way, of the instantiation of her own
states only. For example, if it is true that a subject can only
remember conscious episodes from *her own* past, then episodic
memory is self-tracking. If so, then the subject may legitimately
think the first-person thought "I was *F*", on the
basis of her episodic memory of being *F*. This account may also
be used to explain IEM, since if a form of experience is
self-tracking, then it will not be possible for me to know, in that
way, that *a* is *F* but mistakenly think that it is me that
is *F* on the grounds that I mistakenly believe myself to be
identical to *a* (Perry 2012; Recanati 2012; cf. Campbell 1999a;
Martin 1995). Here we have an architectural feature of a given form of
experience (that it is necessarily an awareness of oneself) being
employed in an explanation of an epistemic feature of self-ascriptions
based on such experience (that they are not partly grounded in an
identity judgement). If I know, in the relevant way, that *a* is
*F*, then it must be the case that I am *a*. On this view,
making a first-person judgement grounded in a given form of experience
is a matter of articulating the unarticulated self. The experience
itself is not explicitly first-personal, representing the self *as
oneself*. Nevertheless, it "concerns" the subject, in
that it is necessarily tied to the self (see Musholt 2015: ch. 5 for
an alternative account).


### 3.3 The Sense of Ownership



Pre-reflective, or implicit, accounts of the place of
self-consciousness in experience are often associated with the
so-called "sense of ownership", or "sense of
mineness" (Flanagan 1992; Martin 1995; Dokic 2003; Marcel 2003;
Zahavi 2005: ch. 5; de Vignemont 2007, 2013; Tsakiris 2011; Zahavi
& Kriegel 2015). According to some, a fundamental aspect of
conscious experiences is that they seem, in each case, to be
*mine*. In being aware of a thought, action, emotion,
perceptual experience, memory, bodily experience (and also my body
itself), I am aware of it as being *my own*. This sense of
ownership arguably does some work in explaining why it seems difficult
to conceive of what it would be like to experience a thought as
located in another's mind, or a pain as located in
another's body (Martin 1995; Dokic 2003). For such an experience
would involve being aware of a thought that seemed to be mine but as
located in a mind that did not seem to be my own. The sense of
ownership is also a candidate for explaining immunity to error through
misidentification since if conscious experiences seem to be
one's own, then there is presumably no need for any
identification of the experience's subject as oneself.



Whilst the sense of ownership would, presumably, be accounted for by
an introspective awareness of the self, it can also arguably be
explained with the more minimal commitments of the implicit view. The
sense of an experience as my own can be understood as nothing over and
above the fact that the self is implicitly given in the mode of
conscious awareness (Musholt 2015: SS4.2). Thus the focus on the
sense of ownership might be thought to provide a minimal answer to
Humean scepticism about self-perception. As Chisholm points out, for
example, although Hume complained that he could find no self in
introspection, he reported his findings in first-personal terms. That
is, he was aware not only of his mental states, but also aware of them
*as his own* (Chisholm 1976: ch. 1; cf. P.F. Strawson's
1959: ch. 3, attack on the "no-ownership" view).



Even within the context of an implicit account of self-consciousness
in experience, we can further distinguish between reductive and
non-reductive construals of the sense of ownership (Bermudez
2011; Zahavi & Kriegel 2015; Alsmith 2015). For example, Zahavi
and Kriegel (2015; cf. Kriegel 2003, 2009; Zahavi 2014) defend a
non-reductive understanding of the sense of ownership as a distinct
aspect of the phenomenal character of experience. By contrast, a
reductive account will explain the sense of ownership in terms of
cognitive and/or experiential states whose existence we are
independently willing to endorse. For example, Bermudez (2011:
161-166) argues in favour of a reductive account of the sense of
ownership over one's own body, according to which it consists in
nothing more than the phenomenology of the spatial location of bodily
sensations alongside our disposition to judge the body in which they
occur to be our own (cf. Dainton 2008: SS8.2; Prinz 2012).
Bermudez's argument for the reductive view is, in part,
based on the claim that, despite appearances, the non-reductive sense
of ownership is not in fact able to explain first-personal judgements
of ownership (cf. Schear 2009; for a response see Zahavi & Kriegel
2015).



It is sometimes claimed that the variety of ways in which
self-consciousness can break down poses a challenge to the claim that
the sense of ownership is a universal characteristic of experience
(e.g., Metzinger 2003: SS7.2.2). Thought insertion, anarchic hand,
alien limb, anonymous memory, and anonymous vision, all seemingly
involve subjects who are aware of their own conscious states, actions,
or body parts, but without being aware of them as their own (for
references, see the supplement:
 The Scope of Immunity to Error Through Misidentification).
 They may disown them or attribute them to others. For example, in
cases of thought insertion, a symptom of schizophrenia, subjects
report that they are aware of the thoughts of other people or objects
entering their own minds (see, for example, Saks 2007: ch. 2; for
general discussion of schizophrenia and self-consciousness see Parnas
& Sass 2011). On the assumption that such subjects are actually
aware of what are, in fact, their own thoughts, this might seem to be
a case of a conscious experience that lacks the sense of ownership.
Thus, either the sense of ownership is not a necessary feature of
experience, or perhaps there is no sense of ownership at all (see, for
example, Chadha 2017).



A common response to this line of thought involves, first,
distinguishing between the sense of ownership and the sense of agency
and, second, claiming that subjects of thought insertion lack the
latter whilst retaining the former (Stephens & Graham 2000;
Gallagher 2004; Peacocke 2008: SS7.8; Proust 2013: ch. 12). The
sense of agency is the awareness of being the source or the agent of
some action or activity, including mental agency. It is the sense that
it is *me* that is thinking a given thought (Bayne 2008;
O'Brien & Soteriou 2009; Proust 2013: ch. 10). According to
this standard view, cases of thought insertion or anarchic hand, for
example, can be wholly explained by postulating a lack of a sense of
agency. The usual sense of being the agent of a thought is lacking,
but the sense of ownership remains since the thought seems to the
subject be taking place in their own mind.



We might, however, wish to make a three-way distinction between the
sense of agency (the sense that one is the *author* of a mental
state), the sense of ownership (the sense that one is the
*owner* of a mental state), and what we might call the sense of
location (the sense that a mental state is located *within*
one's own mind). The sense of location might be understood as
being possessed if one is aware of a mental state in the ordinary way,
i.e., introspectively. Crucial, it would seem, for evaluating the
significance of thought insertion and related cases, and so of the
standard view, will be determining which, if any, of the senses of
agency, ownership, or location remain intact. For it might be argued
that what such subjects retain is in fact the sense of location,
rather than the sense of ownership. That is, it may be possible to
take their descriptions at face value when they deny, in thought
insertion for example, that the thoughts in question are their own (or
were thought by them), whilst nevertheless accepting that the inserted
thought occurs within the boundary of their own mind (for criticisms
of the standard view, see Bortolotti & Broome 2009; Pacherie &
Martin 2013; Fernandez 2013: ch. 5; Billon 2013).


## 4. The Conditions of Self-Consciousness



Much of the philosophical work on self-consciousness concerns its
relation to a variety of other phenomena. These include the nature of
personhood, rationality, consciousness, and the awareness of other
minds. In each case we can ask whether self-consciousness is a
necessary and/or sufficient condition for the phenomenon in
question.


### 4.1 Self-Consciousness and Personhood



As was mentioned in
 SS1.2,
 Locke characterises a person as "a thinking intelligent Being,
that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self,
the same thinking thing in different times and places" (1700:
II.xxvii.9). On such a view, self-consciousness is essential to
personhood. In particular, on Locke's view it is the capacity to
reidentify oneself at different times that is important, a claim which
is in keeping with the central role of memory in his account of
personal identity (see Ayers 1991: vol. II, chs. 22-25; Thiel
2011: ch. 4; Weinberg 2011; G. Strawson 2011b; Snowdon 2014: ch. 3;
entry on
 personal identity).
 As such, Locke considers the capacity for self-conscious thinking to
be a necessary condition of personhood. What is less clear is whether,
on this view, self-consciousness is sufficient for personhood. One
reason for doubt on this score is that since it is concerned with
self-conscious thought the account provides no reason to suppose that
creatures that enjoy non-conceptual self-consciousness are persons. A
second is that the requirement of being able to reidentify oneself
over time is not one that we need consider met by all self-conscious
creatures for, we can suppose, it is possible for a self-conscious
subject to lack the conceptual sophistication to understand the past
and future tense.



An alternative conception of personhood that also gives a central role
to self-consciousness can be found in Frankfurt's claim that it
is essential to persons to have a capacity for reflective
self-evaluation manifested in the possession of what he calls
"second-order volitions" (Frankfurt 1971: 110).
Second-order volitions involve wanting a certain desire to be
one's will, that is wanting it to move one to action. A subject
with second-order volitions has the capacity to evaluate their
first-order desires and this, it would seem, involves being aware of
them as (potentially) their own. Thus persons, thought of as subjects
with second-order volitions, are self-conscious (for discussion, see
Watson 1975; Dennett 1976; Frankfurt 1987; Bratman 2007: chs. 5 &
11).



An account of persons that would appear to distance that notion from
self-consciousness is that offered by P.F. Strawson in chapter 3 of
*Individuals*, 



> 
> 
> the concept of a person is the concept of a type of entity such that
> *both* predicates ascribing states of consciousness
> *and* predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics, a
> physical situation &c. are equally applicable to a single
> individual of that type. (1959: 101-102; for discussion, see
> Ayer 1963; Hacker 2002) 
> 
> 
> 



Frankfurt points out that this is inadequate as a definition of
personhood since "there are many entities beside persons that
have both mental and physical properties" (Frankfurt 1971: 5).
It may be, however, that Strawson's formulation here is somewhat
loose, and that his central idea is that persons are those entities
that *self*-ascribe both types of predicate, a condition
that perhaps rules out at least most non-human animals. After all
chapter 3 of *Individuals*, entitled "Persons", is
primarily concerned with the conditions of such self-ascription, with
"the use we make of the word 'I'" (P.F.
Strawson 1959: 94).



Strawson's primary goal is to argue for the claim that the
concept of a person is primitive, a position that he contrasts, on the
one hand, with Cartesian dualism and, on the other, with what he calls
the "no-ownership view": a view according to which we
don't really self-ascribe states of consciousness at all, at
least not with the use of "I" as subject (cf. Wittgenstein
1953: SS244; 1958: 76; Anscombe 1975; it is controversial whether
Wittgenstein ever really held this view, for discussion see Hacker
1990: chs. 5 & 11; Jacobsen 1996; Wright 1998). To say that the
concept of a person is primitive is, on Strawson's account, to
say that it is "logically prior" to the concepts
*subject* and *body*; persons are not to be thought of
as compounds of subjects and bodies. Strawson argues that the
primitiveness of the concept of a person is a necessary condition of
the possibility of self-consciousness (P.F. Strawson 1959:
98-103). His argument is that one can only self-ascribe states
of consciousness if one is able to ascribe them to others (for more on
this theme see
 SS4.4).
 This rules out Cartesian dualism, since ascribing states of
consciousness to others requires that one be able to identify others,
and one cannot identify pure subjects of experience or Cartesian egos.
The condition that one must be able to ascribe states of consciousness
to others also rules out the "no-ownership view" because
such a view is inconsistent with the fact that psychological
predicates have the very same sense in their first and third person
uses.



Closely related to the no-ownership view are a family of claims about
persons that Parfit dubs "reductionism" (Parfit 1984:
SS79). Two prominent members of this familiar are the claim that




> 
> 
> [a] person's existence consists in the existence of a brain and
> body, and the occurrence of a series of interrelated physical and
> mental event, (1984: 211) 
> 
> 
> 



and that 



> 
> 
> [t]hough persons exist, we could give a *complete* description
> of reality *without* claiming that persons exist. (1984: 212)
> 
> 
> 
> 



Parfit's reductionism, and it's relation to Buddhist views
of the self, has been widely discussed (see for example, Stone 1988;
Korsgaard 1989; Cassam 1989, 1993, 1997: ch. 5; Garrett 1991, 1998:
ch. 2; Siderits 1997; McDowell 1997; Blackburn 1997). As is the case
with the "no-ownership view" it has sometimes been argued
that reductionism is incompatible with self-consciousness so, since we
are indisputably self-conscious, reductionism must be false. Against
the claim that the (continued) existence of a person consists merely
in the (continued) existence of brain, body, and interrelated physical
and mental events that do not presuppose anything about
*persons* as such, McDowell (1997) for example, argues from a
broadly Evansian position on self-consciousness (see the supplement:
 Evans on First Person Thought)
 that there simply are no such "identity-free relations"
(1997: 378) to which a person's identity could be reducible.
That is, there is no way of characterising memory and the other
psychological phenomena relevant to personal identity without invoking
the identity of the person whose memory it is. As McDowell puts it,




> 
> 
> [i]n continuity of "consciousness", there is what appears
> to be knowledge of an identity, the persistence of the same subject
> through time. (1997: 361) 
> 
> 
> 



Memory, at least, cannot be employed in a reductive account of persons
(for discussion of McDowell's argument see Buford 2009;
Fernandez 2014; for related arguments from self-consciousness
to the falsity of reductionism, see Cassam 1997: ch. 5).


### 4.2 Self-Consciousness and Rationality



Is self-consciousness a necessary condition of rationality? A number
of philosophers have argued that rationality requires self-knowledge
which itself implies self-consciousness (see Shoemaker 1988, 1994;
Burge 1996; Moran 2001; Bilgrami 2006; Boyle 2009, 2011; for a general
discussion of this approach to self-knowledge, see Gertler 2011: ch.
6). In his case against perceptual theories of self-knowledge,
Shoemaker (1994) argues against the possibility of self-blindness;
against, that it is, the possibility that a rational creature with all
the necessary concepts might be simply unaware of its own sensations,
beliefs, and so on. A rational creature that is in pain, Shoemaker
argues, will typically desire to be rid of her pain, and this requires
that she believe that she is in pain. As Shoemaker puts it, to see
rational responses to pain 



> 
> 
> as pain behavior *is* to see them as motivated by such states
> of the creature as the belief that it is in pain, the desire to be rid
> of the pain, and the belief that such and such a course of behaviour
> will achieve that result. (Shoemaker 1994: 228) 
> 
> 
> 



This belief, that she is in pain, is a self-conscious one; it is a
belief that she herself is in pain. This connection between rational
behaviour and first-person thought is, of course, the one highlighted
by Perry's (1979) case of the messy shopper in his discussion of
the essential indexical (see
 SS2.1).



The connection between rationality and self-knowledge (and so
self-consciousness), Shoemaker argues, is even more pronounced in the
case of our awareness of our own beliefs. Rational subjects should
abide by certain strictures on the contents of their beliefs, updating
them in line with new evidence, removing inconsistencies, and so on.
And this, Shoemaker argues, requires that they not be self-blind with
respect to their beliefs. It requires that they are self-conscious. As
Shoemaker writes, 



> 
> 
> in an important class of cases the rational revision or adjustment of
> the belief-desire system requires that we undertake investigations
> aimed at determining what revisions or readjustments to make
> [...] What rationalizes the investigation are one's
> higher-order beliefs about what one believes and has reason to
> believe. (Shoemaker 1994: 240; also see Shoemaker's discussion
> of Moore's Paradox in Shoemaker 1988, 1994; for critical
> discussion of Shoemaker's arguments in the context of theories
> of self-knowledge see, for example, Macdonald 1999; Kind 2003; Siewert
> 2003; Gertler 2011: ch. 5)
> 
> 
> 



The connection that Shoemaker sees between the requirements of
rationality, on the one hand, and self-awareness, on the other, is
also stressed in so-called "rationalist" accounts of
self-knowledge, most prominently in the work of Burge (1996) and Moran
(2001; for critical discussion of the rationalist approach as an
account of self-knowledge see, for example, Peacocke 1996;
O'Brien 2003; Reed 2010; Gertler 2011: ch. 6). Burge focuses on
the notion of the *critical reasoner*. He writes, 



> 
> 
> [t]o be capable of critical reasoning, and to be subject to certain
> rational norms necessarily associated with such reasoning, some mental
> acts and states must be *knowledgeably* reviewable. (Burge
> 1996: 97; for a fuller argument for the same conclusion, see Burge
> 1998) 
> 
> 
> 



On Burge's account, the critical reasoner must be in a position
to recognise their reasons as reasons, and that requires "the
second order ability to think about thought contents or propositions,
and rational relations among them" (1996: 97). This is for the
reason that belief involves *commitments* and such commitments
involve meeting certain standards--providing reasons,
reevaluating where necessary, and so on.



A similar line of thought can be found in Moran's account of the
role of reflection on one's own state in practical deliberation
about what to do and how to feel (Moran 2001: ch. 2). Here the focus
is not so much on critical reasoning but rather practical deliberation
as that which requires self-consciousness. This is an idea that is
also central to much of Korsgaard's work (see, in particular,
Korsgaard 1996, 2009). A central concern of hers is to distinguish
between the sort of action of which all animals are capable and the
sort of autonomous agency of which we self-conscious subjects are
capable. The difference lies, on her broadly Kantian view, in simply
having one's most powerful desire result in action, on the one
hand, and counting that desire as a reason for action, on the other.
It is the latter that is constitutive of autonomous, deliberative
action understood from the perspective of practical reason. As she
writes, 



> 
> 
> [w]hen you deliberate it is as if there were something over and above
> all your desires, something which is *you*, and which
> *chooses* which desire to act upon. (Korsgaard 1996: 100) 
> 
> 
> 



Self-consciousness, on this view, 



> 
> 
> is the source of reason. When we become conscious of the workings of
> an incentive within us, the incentive is experienced not as a force or
> a necessity but as a proposal, something we need to make a decision
> about. (Korsgaard 2009: 119; for discussion of Korsgaard's
> account of the relation between self-consciousness and the perspective
> of practical reason, see, for example, Nagel 1996; Fitzpatrick 2005;
> Soteriou 2013: ch. 12).
> 
> 
> 



Self-awareness, on these views, is a necessary condition of
rationality (conceived as the capacity for critical reasoning or
practical deliberation). Burge also makes it clear that he regards the
capacity for critical reasoning to be a necessary condition of
(conceptual) self-consciousness, since to master and self-ascribe
psychological concepts such as belief, once must be able to recognise
their role in reasoning, and so employ them (Burge 1996: 97, n.3). As
he puts it, 



> 
> 
> [a]cknowledging, with the *I* concept, that an attitude or act
> is one's own is acknowledging that rational evaluations of it
> which one also acknowledges provide immediate [...] reason and
> rationally immediate motivation to shape the attitude or act in
> accordance with the evaluation [...] The first-person concept
> fixes the locus of responsibility. (Burge 1998: 253)
> 
> 
> 



The claim that there is a constitutive connection between
self-consciousness and rationality has been met with scepticism by
Kornblith (2011, 2012: ch. 2; for a related line of thought, see Doris
2015: ch. 2). Regarding the sort of responsiveness to reason involved
in updating one's beliefs in accordance with new
evidence--one of the capacities emphasised by both Shoemaker and
Burge--Kornblith argues that "[w]hile such responsiveness
may be achieved, at times, by way of reflection on one's beliefs
and desires, it does not require any such reflection" (2012:
49). Rationally revising beliefs in the face of evidence, Kornblith is
keen to point out, is a capacity enjoyed by non-reflective animals. He
further presents the rationalist view with a challenge: if one thinks
that (first-order) beliefs are not themselves responsive to reason,
how does adding (second-order) beliefs help? One response to this
challenge is to point out that the connection between self-awareness
and rationality that Shoemaker finds is intended to hold only for
"an important class of cases" (Shoemaker 1994: 240), that
is it holds for those cases of belief revision that themselves qualify
as exercises in rational investigation. On this view, whilst
non-reflective creatures may have some degree of rationality, their
lack of self-consciousness means that they are not, as we are, capable
of fully rational deliberation (for discussion of Kornblith's
scepticism concerning the role of self-consciousness in rationality,
see Pust 2014; M. Williams 2015; Smithies 2016).


### 4.3 Self-Consciousness and Consciousness



Central to the history of the self-consciousness sketched in
 SS1
 is a concern with the relation between self-consciousness and
consciousness. Since self-consciousness is itself a form of
consciousness, consciousness is, of course, a necessary condition of
it. But is self-consciousness necessary for consciousness? Positive
answers to this question come in both reductive and non-reductive
varieties.



One way in which consciousness might entail self-consciousness is if
the former is *reducible* to the latter. One such family of
views are
 higher order theories of consciousness
 which maintain that a psychological state is conscious if and only if
it is represented, in the right way, by a higher order state (Gennaro
2004; for a very different account that nevertheless posits a tight
connection between consciousness and self-consciousness, see
O'Shaughnessy 2002: ch. 3). A natural assumption is that this
higher order state is distinct from that which it represents. Higher
Order theories that accept this assumption fall into two camps: Higher
Order Thought (HOT) theories (Rosenthal 1986, 2005; Carruthers 2000,
2005), which maintain that the higher order state is a thought or
belief, and Higher Order Perception (HOP) theories (Armstrong 1968;
Lycan 1996, 2004), which by contrast maintain that the higher order
state is a perception-like sensory state--an exercise of the sort
of inner perception, or "inner sense", that was
extensively debated throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries (Thiel 2011; see SS3.1). Since, however, we can be aware
that someone *else* is in some conscious state, it seems that
simply being aware that a thought is occurring is insufficient to
render that thought conscious. Arguably, what is required is that one
be aware that *one* is in the relevant first-order state. That
is, one represents *oneself* as being in the state in question.
Since this seems to involve a form of self-awareness, the HOT and HOP
theories can be understood as holding that consciousness entails
self-consciousness (Gennaro 1996). Given this, it is natural to think
of the distinction between HOT and HOP theories of consciousness as
closely related to that between conceptual and non-conceptual
self-consciousness.



An alternative to HOT and HOP theories that still maintains the
ambition to reduce consciousness to self-consciousness is the
self-representational view (Kriegel & Williford 2006; Kriegel
2009; Caston 2002), according to which a psychological state is
conscious if and only if it represents itself. Such accounts are
higher-order views that deny that the first and second-order states
are distinct. As with both HOT and HOP, self-representationalism can
be thought of as supporting the view that a form of self-consciousness
is a necessary condition of consciousness. Kriegel (2003) dubs this
"intransitive self-consciousness", the phenomenon
purportedly picked out by phrases of the form "I am
self-consciously thinking that P", and distinguishes it from the
"transitive self-consciousness" purportedly picked out by
phrases of the form "I am self-conscious of my thought that
P". This is a version of the distinction between reflective and
pre-reflective self-consciousness discussed in
 SS3.2
 (and the views of Fichte and Sartre mentioned in
 SS1;
 cf. Kapitan 1999). If conscious states are those that represent
themselves then, it might be argued, consciousness entails
intransitive self-consciousness, since one's conscious states do
not only represent themselves but also (in some way implicitly)
represent *oneself* as having them (Kriegel 2003: 104).



Aristotle, considering a version of the HOP theory, argued that the
view suffered from a regress problem since the higher-order perception
must itself be conscious and so be accompanied by a HOP, which would
itself be conscious, and so on (*De Anima* 3.2; Caston 2002).
The standard way to diffuse such a worry is to deny that the higher
order state, be it perception or thought, need be conscious. An
alternative, of course, is to endorse a self-representational account.
There are other objections to higher order views, however, each of
which applies to one or more versions of the view. They include
worries about the possibility of objectless and non-veridical higher
order states (Byrne 1997; Block 2011), about whether it can account
for the conscious states of infants and non-humans (Dretske 1995: ch.
4; Tye 1995: ch. 1), the complaint that the postulation of a distinct
higher-order state for every conscious state leads to an unnecessarily
"cluttered picture of the mind" (Chalmers 1996: 231), and
the fundamental worry that no form of higher-order view has the
resources to *explain* consciousness at all (Levine 2006; cf.
Kriegel 2012). As such, higher-order and self-representational
theories of consciousness, that posit a necessary connection between
consciousness and self-consciousness, are far from being
established.



If consciousness cannot be reduced to self-consciousness, perhaps the
latter is nevertheless a necessary condition of the former. Some
non-reductive views, already mentioned, see pre-reflective
consciousness (see
 SS3.2),
 or the sense of ownership (see
 SS3.3)
 as necessary conditions of consciousness (see Zahavi 2005). A
different non-reductive, and broadly Kantian, argument for the claim
that self-consciousness is a necessary condition of consciousness
first of all claims that conscious experience is necessarily unified
and, second, that this unity of consciousness in turn depends on
self-awareness. Of primary interest here is the second step which is
articulated by Strawson in his discussion of Kant's
transcendental deduction as the claim that, 



> 
> 
> if different experiences are to belong to a single consciousness,
> there must be the possibility of *self*-consciousness on
> the part of the subject of those experiences. (P.F. Strawson 1966: 93;
> for discussion of Kant's views of the matter, see Henrich 1989;
> Powell 1990; Brook 1994; Keller 1998; Kitcher 2011; Allison 2015; for
> detailed discussion of whether consciousness is necessarily unified,
> see Bayne 2010; see also entry on
>  unity of consciousness).
>  
> 
> 
> 



One reason for supposing that there is a connection between
self-consciousness and the unity of consciousness is given by Kant,
who writes, 



> 
> 
> only because I can comprehend their manifold in a consciousness do I
> call them altogether **my** representations; for
> otherwise I would have as multi-coloured diverse a self as I have
> representations of which I am conscious. (Kant 1781/1787: B134) 
> 
> 
> 



That is, a single self must be able to "comprehend" its
own experiences together, otherwise they would not really be its own.
Such "comprehension" would seem to involve
self-consciousness. As Kant famously puts it, 



> 
> 
> [t]he **I think** must **be able** to
> accompany all my representations for otherwise something would be
> represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much
> as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else
> at least would be nothing for me. (Kant 1781/1787: B131-132)
> 
> 
> 
> 



On this view, it is the unity of the self that guarantees that
co-conscious experiences are jointly self-ascribable; that unity
requires self-consciousness (there is a question as to whether
self-consciousness is here supposed to *explain* the unity of
consciousness; cf. Dainton's strong and weak
"I-thesis" (2000: SS2.3)). This Kantian picture is
associated with the claim that unified self-consciousness requires a
conception of the world as objective; as transcending the perspective
that one has on it. The idea here is that to self-ascribe an
experience one must have some grasp of the distinction between
one's (subjective) experience that the (objective) condition of
which it is an experience (these issues are explored in P.F. Strawson
1966; Bennett 1966; Evans 1980; Cassam 1997; Sacks 2000; also see
Burge 2010: ch. 6).



The claim that the unity of consciousness requires self-consciousness
can be criticised in a number of different ways. How one evaluates the
claim will depend on whether one has conceptual or non-conceptual
self-consciousness in mind. As Bayne (2004) points out, the claim that
the unity of consciousness requires that one possess the concept of
oneself seems, implausibly, to imply that conceptually unsophisticated
infants and non-human animals could not possess a unified stream of
consciousness (of course, this worry applies quite generally to views
that connect consciousness with self-consciousness). The view that
non-conceptual self-consciousness is a necessary condition of the
unity of consciousness would appear to be vulnerable to the objection
that it implausibly rules out the possibility of cases such as
Anscombe's (1975) subject in a sensory deprivation tank, a case
in which the forms of experience typically classed as forms of
non-conceptual self-consciousness are lacking (for related cases see
Bayne 2004; also see G. Strawson 1999). A different worry about the
connection between self-consciousness and the unity of consciousness
is the "just more content" objection (B. Williams 1978:
ch. 3; Hurley 1994; and 1998 Part I). The concern is addressed to the
view that self-consciousness is not merely a necessary condition of
the unity of consciousness but is that in virtue of which it is
unified. For if the self-ascription of experiences is taken to be that
which is responsible for the unity of consciousness, how can we
account for the fact that the self-conscious thoughts are themselves
unified with the first-order experiences that they supposedly unify?
As Hurley puts it, 



> 
> 
> self-conscious or first-person contents [...] are *just more
> contents*, to which the problem of co-consciousness [i.e., the
> unity of consciousness] also applies (1998: 61) 
> 
> 
> 



To appeal to the third-order self-ascription of the self-conscious
thought would appear to invite a regress.


### 4.4 Self-Consciousness and Intersubjectivity



What is the connection between self-consciousness and the awareness of
others? On some views self-consciousness requires awareness of others,
on another view the awareness of others requires self-consciousness.
In each case we can distinguish between those accounts according to
which such awareness is merely an empirical condition from those
according to which it is a strictly necessary/sufficient condition.
There is also a distinction to be made regarding the sense of
"awareness of others" that is in play: whilst some
philosophers are concerned with knowledge of other minds, others are
content with the representation of others, veridical or not.



A familiar account of our knowledge of others takes the form of an
argument from analogy (Slote 1970: ch. 4; Avramides 2001: part I). The
argument from analogy presents an account of our justification for
moving from judgements about others' observable behaviour to
judgements about their unobservable mental states. I am aware from my
own case that, say, wincing is the result of pain so, on seeing
another's wincing, I am justified in judging them to be in pain.
On this picture, self-awareness, as manifest in the judgement about my
own case, is a necessary condition of knowledge of other minds. In
this respect the view is related to contemporary simulation theory,
standard versions of which see our capacity to attribute mental states
to others as dependent on our capacity to attribute them to ourselves
(Heal 1986; Goldman 2006: ch. 9; for a simulationist theory that
differs in this respect, see Gordon 1996). Associated with the
argument from analogy is a view according to which our grasp of mental
state concepts is an essentially first-personal affair. That is, we
understand what, for example, pain is first from our own case (Nagel
1986: SS2.3; Peacocke 2008: ch. 5-6; it has sometimes been
claimed that this view gives rise to the conceptual problem of other
minds, see Wittgenstein 1958: SS302; McGinn 1984; Avramides 2001:
part II).



In opposition to this package stand views on which our grasp and
application of mental state concepts is neutral between the first and
third-person cases. Theory theorists, for example, claim that we
attribute mental states to both ourselves and others by means of a
(tacitly held) psychological theory. They may also hold that
possession of such a theory constitutes our grasp of mental state
concepts (Carruthers 1996, 2011: ch. 8; Gopnik & Meltzoff 1997;
for an account that combines elements of theory with elements of
simulation, see Nichols & Stich 2003). While such views accord no
priority to the first-person case, they may see a tight connection
between self-consciousness and our capacity to think about others:
these are simply two aspects of the more general capacity to think
about the mind. A distinct, though related, family of views see both
self-consciousness and awareness of others as emerging from a
primitive "adualist" state in which self and other are not
distinguished (Piaget 1937; Merleau-Ponty 1960; Barresi & Moore
1996; Hurley 2005; Gallese 2005; also see D. Stern 1985: part II).
Against such "adualist" views, it is often claimed the
phenomena of neonate imitation, joint attention, and emotion
regulation show that infants display an awareness of others *as
others* from the very beginning of life (Meltzoff & Moore
1977; Trevarthen 1979; Hurley & Chater 2005; Eilan et al. 2005;
Legerstee 2005; Reddy 2008). One empirical proposal is that it is from
this early form of social interaction and capacity to understand
others that self-consciousness emerges as a self-directed form of
mindreading (Carruthers 2011; Carruthers, Fletcher, & Ritchie
2012; for an early such account, see Mead 1934). On such a view the
first-person case is treated as secondary, reversing the traditional
picture associated with the argument from analogy.



A more ambitious version of this approach to the relationship between
self-consciousness and awareness of others, prioritizing the awareness
of others, is to argue that knowledge of other minds is a necessary
condition of the possibility of self-consciousness. Well known
examples of such arguments can be found in the work of P.F. Strawson
(1959: ch. 3) and Davidson (1991; for the related Hegelian view that
various forms of self-consciousness depend on intersubjective
recognition, see Honneth 1995). Since knowledge of other minds is
typically considered to be open to sceptical doubt, and
self-consciousness is not, such lines of reasoning are transcendental
arguments and so potentially open to general criticisms of that form
of argument (Stroud 1968; R. Stern 1999, 2000). Strawson's
argument hinges on his claim that 



> 
> 
> the idea of a predicate is correlative with that of a *range*
> of distinguishable individuals of which the predicate can be
> significantly, though not necessarily truly, affirmed. (P.F. Strawson
> 1959: 99; cf. Evans' generality constraint, 1982: SS4.3)
> 
> 
> 
> 



This means, Strawson claims, that one can only ascribe mental states
to oneself if one is capable of ascribing them to others which, in
turn, means that I cannot have gained the capacity to think of
others' mental states by means of an analogical reasoning from
my own case. This, Strawson argues, shows that others'
observable behaviour is not a "sign" of their mentality,
but is a "criterion" of it. In short, we must have
knowledge of others' minds if we are self-conscious (for the
full argument, see P.F. Strawson 1959: 105ff; for critical discussion,
see R. Stern 2000: ch. 6; Sacks 2005; Joel Smith 2011).



Davidson's transcendental argument--the triangulation
argument--connects self-consciousness, knowledge of other minds,
and knowledge of the external world. At its heart is the claim that
for my thoughts to have determinate content there must exist another
subject who is able to interpret me. As Davidson puts it, 



> 
> 
> it takes two points of view to give a location to the cause of a
> thought, and thus to define its content [...] Until a base line
> has been established by communication with someone else, there is no
> point in saying one's own thoughts or words have a propositional
> content. (Davidson 1991: 212-213) 
> 
> 
> 



Since self-conscious subjects are aware of the contents of their
thoughts, they must know that there are other minds, since the sort of
intersubjective externalism that Davidson endorses guarantees it.
Self-knowledge, on this view, entails knowledge of others (for
discussion, see R. Stern 2000: ch. 6; Sosa 2003; Ludwig 2011).


## 5. Self-Consciousness in Infants and Non-Human Animals



At what age can human infants be credited with self-consciousness? Is
self-consciousness present beyond *homo sapiens*? Some
theorists, for example Bermudez (1998), claim that various
forms of perceptual experience constitute a non-conceptual form of
self-consciousness (see
 SS3).
 Others, for example Rosenthal (2005), claim that phenomenal
consciousness entails self-consciousness. If either view is correct
then self-consciousness, of some kind, can plausibly be attributed to
creatures other than adult humans. But when it comes to more
sophisticated forms of self-awareness, matters are less clear. What is
required is some empirical criterion for judging a creature
self-conscious even if, as with infants and non-human animals, they
are unable to provide evidence *via* their use of the
first-person pronoun. Such evidence, if available, may reasonably be
thought to shed light on both the phylogenetic and ontogenetic
development of self-consciousness (Ferrari & Sternberg 1998;
Terrace & Metcalfe 2005; see the entries on
 animal consciousness
 and
 animal cognition).


### 5.1 Mirror Recognition



It has sometimes been claimed, most forcefully by Gallup and
colleagues, that the capacity to recognise oneself in the mirror is a
marker of self-consciousness (Gallup 1970; Gallup, Anderson, &
Platek 2011; Gallup, Platek, & Spaulding 2014). It is easy to see
why this might seem to be so since, if first-person thought involves
thinking about oneself *as oneself*, then it is natural to
suppose that a capacity to recognise that a subject seen in a mirror
is *oneself* involves such a thought. In Evans's (1982)
terminology such thoughts involve an "identification
component".



Gallup (1970) devised a test for mirror self-recognition:
surreptitiously placing a red mark on a subject's forehead
before exposure to a mirror, then observing whether they touch the
relevant spot. It is well established that chimpanzees pass the mirror
test while other primate species fail (Anderson & Gallup 2011). It
has also been claimed that dolphins and some elephants pass the test
(Reiss & Marino 2001; Plotnik et. al. 2006). With respect to human
infants, the consensus is that success in the mirror test begins at
around 15 to 18 months of age, and that by 24 months most children
pass (Amsterdam 1972; M. Lewis & Brooks-Gunn 1979; Nielsen,
Suddendorf, & Slaughter 2006).



It is not universally accepted, however, that success in the mirror
test is an indication of self-consciousness. For example, Heyes (1994)
presents an influential critique of the claim that it is a marker of
self-awareness, arguing that all that is required for success is that
subjects be able to distinguish between novel ways of receiving bodily
feedback in order to guide behaviour, on the one hand, and other forms
of incoming sensory data, on the other. Such a view, however, needs to
explain why it is that passing the mirror test seems to be connected
with the phenomena arguably associated with self-consciousness, such
as experiencing shame and embarrassment (M. Lewis 2011). There
remains, then, significant controversy concerning what success in the
mirror test really shows, and so whether it can shed light on the
development of self-awareness (see, for example, Mitchell 1993;
Suddendorf & Butler 2013; Gallup, Platek, & Spaulding 2014.
For related philosophical discussion, see Rochat & Zahavi 2011;
Peacocke 2014: ch.8).


### 5.2 Episodic Memory



Another potential marker of self-consciousness is episodic memory, the
capacity that we have to recollect particular episodes from our own
past experience (see Tulving 1983; Michaelian 2016; entry on
 memory).
 As Tulving describes it, episodic memory involves
"autonoesis" or "mental time-travel", the
experience of transporting oneself in time (which also has a future
oriented dimension in expectation, planning, and so on; see
Michaelian, Klein, & Szpunar 2016). The connection between memory
and self-consciousness is one that is often made (see
 SS2.3,
 SS3, and
 SS4.1).
 If it is correct that episodic memory essentially involves a form of
self-consciousness, and we are able to test for the presence of
episodic memory in non-linguistic infants and animals, then we have a
way of detecting the presence of self-conscious abilities. Since,
however, episodic memory is not the only form of self-consciousness,
the lack of it does not indicate that a creature is not self-aware.
Indeed, the much discussed case of K.C. seems to be one in which, due
to an accident, someone has lost episodic memory but appears to remain
otherwise self-conscious (see Rosenbaum et. al. 2005).



Tulving himself argues that only humans possess episodic memory, and
only when they reach the age of around 4 years (2005; also see
Suddendorf & Corballis 2007). Whilst human infants and non-human
animals possess non-episodic forms of memory such as semantic memory
(remembering that such and such is the case), they lack the
"autonoetic" consciousness of themselves projected either
back or forwards in time. For example whilst most 3 year old infants
can remember presented information, most are unreliable when it comes
to the question of how they know--did they see it, hear it, etc.
(Gopnik & Graf 1988). The suggestion here is that the development
of the reliable capacity to report how they know some fact reflects
the development of the capacity to episodically remember the learning
event.



In the case of animals perhaps the most suggestive evidence of
episodic memory derives from work on scrub-jays, who can retain
information about what food has been stored, where it was stored, and
when (Clayton, Bussey, & Dickinson 2003). This evidence coheres
with the "what, where, when" criterion of episodic memory
originally proposed by Tulving (1972). It is, however, widely accepted
that this content-based account of episodic memory--episodic
memory is memory that contains information about what happened, where
it happened, and when--is inadequate, since non-episodic,
semantic memory often involves the retention of "what, where,
when" information. Due to the difficulties in finding a
behavioural test for "autonoetic" consciousness, it is
often, though not universally, claimed that there is no compelling
evidence for episodic memory, and thus this particular form of
self-consciousness, in non-human animals (Tulving 2005; Suddendorf
& Corballis 2007; Michaelian 2016: ch. 2; for discussion relating
to apes, see Menzel 2005; Schwartz 2005; for an alternative
perspective suggesting that episodic memory abilities come in degree,
see Breeden et. al. 2016).


### 5.3 Metacognition



Another body of research pertaining to the question of
self-consciousness in infants and non-human animals is the work on
metacognition (and metamemory). The term "metacognition"
typically refers to the capacity to monitor and control one's
own cognitive states, and is manifest in one's judgements (or
feelings) concerning one's own learning and consequent level of
certainty or confidence (J.D. Smith 2009; Beran et al. 2012; Proust
2013; Fleming & Frith 2014). The suggestion is that if a creature
is able to monitor their own level of confidence, they are to that
extent self-conscious. One common paradigm for testing metacognitive
abilities involves presenting subjects with a stimulus that they must
categorise in one of two ways. Crucially, they are also given the
opportunity to opt out of the test, with correct categorisation
resulting in the highest reward, opting out resulting in a lower
reward, and incorrect categorisation resulting in no reward. The
assumption is that the opt-out response reflects a meta-cognitive
judgement of uncertainty. Evidence gathered from such a paradigm has
been taken to show metacognitive abilities in some birds (Fujita et.
al. 2012), dolphins (J.D. Smith et. al. 1995), primates (Shields et.
al. 1997), and children from the age of around 4 years (Sodian et. al.
2012).



The view that success on metacognitive opt-out tests is indicative of
self-consciousness is not uncontroversial, however. For example, it
has been suggested that the uncertainty response is indicative not of
metacognitive uncertainty monitoring but rather of first-order,
environmental judgements concerning a third category between the
intended two (Kornell, Son, & Terrace 2007; Hampton 2009; also see
Carruthers 2008; Kornell 2014; Musholt 2015: ch. 7). On such an
interpretation, the research on metacognition does not provide
compelling evidence regarding self-consciousness in infants and
non-human animals (but for critical discussion see J.D. Smith 2005;
J.D. Smith, Couchman, & Beran 2014; also relevant is the
distinction between "evaluativist" and
"attributivist" accounts of metacognition outlined by
Proust (2013)). The question of the significance of opt-out tests for
attributions of self-consciousness remains controversial.