Katja Crone, Kristina Musholt, Anna Strasser

Towards an Integrated Theory of Self-Consciousness

Final version published in: Grazer Philosophische Studien 84 (2012), pp. 1-12

Self-consciousness is an issue that is of fundamental theoretical significance in

philosophy. It is at the root of many other philosophical issues ranging from
epistemological questions (i.e., the problem of self-knowledge) to those that are
metaphysical (i.e., the concept of a person or a "self") or moral (i.e., issues of moral
agency or autonomy). In the philosophy of mind the problem of self-consciousness is
closely related to various other philosophical issues, such as cognition, phenomenal
consciousness, personal identity and so on.
So far, many attempts have been made to provide a theory of
self-consciousness. Following the linguistic turn in analytical philosophy, such a theory
is often thought to be found through an analysis of the linguistic expressions of
self-consciousness, in particular the semantics of the first person pronoun (Spitzley
2000). However, this approach has been called into question, both by proponents of
phenomenological accounts and, more recently, by those advocating theories of
nonconceptual content. Proponents of these alternative approaches argue that in
order to give an account of self-consciousness we ought to look at nonreflective or
nonconceptual ways of representing the self that provide the foundation for our later
ability to acquire a concept of ourselves (e.g., Zahavi 2005; Frank 1991; Bermúdez
1998; Hurley 1997; Legrand 2006, 2007; Vosgerau 2009). Accordingly, following this
view, self-consciousness can be conceived of as a complex phenomenon that
manifests itself in multiple ways. Needless to say, this broader way of addressing the
issue raises a number of new questions. For example, how are we to understand the
thesis that there are nonconceptual or nonreflective forms of self-consciousness? What
is its structure and how does it relate to higher-level forms of self-consciousness?
More generally, the debate on self-consciousness has expanded in scope in
recent years and, at the same time, has become more specialised. In addition to the
investigation of so-called nonconceptual forms of self-consciousness and their relation
to higher-level, conceptual forms of self-representation, other research has
emphasized the intersubjective or temporal aspects of self-awareness. Unfortunately,
despite intensive research in many of these areas discussions of these different facets
of self-consciousness have remained relatively isolated. This may be due in part to the
different methodological angles from which they tend to be approached.

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 The aim of the present special issue of Grazer Philosophische Studien is to
address this thematic isolation and methodological fragmentation by bringing together
a number of carefully selected articles that explore and bridge the discussion of
different facets of self-consciousness. The articles are intended not only to represent
the state of the art in their respective areas of research, but also to highlight relations
between different research questions as well as different research methodologies,
ranging from philosophy of language and mind to phenomenology and cognitive
science. In choosing this integrative approach, we hope to bring to the forefront a
number of previously underexposed, yet important connections between different
approaches.

1. Three facets of self-consciousness

As indicated above, one can identify three general focal points of the current debate:
(1) the relationship between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of
self-representation; (2) the role of intersubjectivity; and (3) the temporal structure of
self-consciousness.

(1) The relationship between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of

self-representation

Proponents of theories of nonconceptual content hold that there are ways of

representing the world that are independent of the possession of the concepts needed
to specify the content of these representations. This view has been applied to the
problem of self-consciousness by authors who argue that there are nonconceptual
forms of self-representation; candidates for these are, for example, ecological
perception, somatic proprioception, or the sense of agency (e.g., Hurley 1997;
Bermúdez 1998; Vosgerau 2009). Proponents of this view often make use not only of
insights from philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, but also from the
empirical sciences, such as developmental psychology or cognitive neuroscience and
hence offer interesting connections to these areas of research. In addition, the debate
on nonconceptual self-consciousness offers intriguing, albeit often neglected,
connections to the notion of pre-reflexive self-consciousness that was developed
based on discussions of the work of Fichte (see, e.g., Frank 1991), as well as based on
phenomenological investigations of the structure of self-consciousness that have
recently gained renewed attention (e.g., Zahavi 2005; Legrand 2006; Crone 2009).

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(2) The role of intersubjectivity

An exploration of the ontogenetic roots of our ability for self-conscious thought quickly
brings to the forefront the importance of intersubjectivity for the acquisition of this
ability. There are different perspectives from which this issue can be discussed. First,
phenomenological analyses show that self-consciousness and intersubjectivity are
inextricably linked to each other (e.g., Husserl 1973; Zahavi 2001), and that social
interaction – in various forms - is an important component in the development of
awareness of oneself and of others (e.g. Gallagher & Hutto 2008). Second, insights
from cognitive science and developmental psychology suggest that the development
of self-consciousness is correlated with the development of a theory of mind (e.g.,
Happé 2003; Wellman et al. 2001). Third, following Strawson (1959) and Evans (1982),
one can argue that the ability to ascribe states and properties to oneself implies the
ability to ascribe these also to others who are not oneself.
The relation between intersubjectivity and self-consciousness also offers interesting
connections to questions of embodiment and narrative identity.

(3) The temporal structure of self-consciousness

Debates on self-consciousness rarely address its temporal structure.

Self-consciousness, taken as a mental process, is not only a temporally extended
episode itself; it also represents the subject's own diachronic persistence (e.g., Bieri
1986; Dainton 2000). Therefore, it would seem that a proper analysis of
self-consciousness must take into account its temporal dimension. One way of doing
this is by applying the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of
self-consciousness to the representation of the self over time. In a nonconceptual form
diachronic self-consciousness can be described as the temporally extended
perspective of the experiencing subject, which may be elucidated with the help of
phenomenological theories of "inner" time consciousness (Husserl 1985; Zahavi 2003;
2007; Gallagher 2005). In a conceptual form diachronic self-consciousness is narrative
in structure and integrates different life episodes allowing for a (more or less) coherent
self-understanding (e.g., Schechtman 1996, Gallagher 2007; Hutto 2007). The precise
relation between those different modes remains until now rather unexplored.
Focussing on the temporal aspects of self-consciousness allows for promising
systematic insights into different recent debates, such as analytical and
phenomenological accounts of self-consciousness and time consciousness as well as
theories of the transtemporal identity of sentient beings. Another interesting aspect of
this debate is the potential role of intersubjectivity for diachronic self-consciousness.
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2. Overview of articles

Taking on the epistemological issue of self-knowledge, Dretske in his article “Doubts

about cogito” introduces several distinctions, namely
1. Knowing what is ß vs. knowing that it is ß;

2. Awareness of a ß vs. awareness that it is ß;

3. Direct vs. indirect awareness of facts;

4. An ability to distinguish between ßs vs. an ability to tell they are ßs;

He goes on to argue that awareness of what one thinks does not imply knowledge that
one thinks. This is because the source of knowledge about what one thinks is quite
distinct from the source of knowledge about that one thinks. Rejecting an
“inner-sense“ view of self-knowledge, Dretske argues that direct awareness of one’s
thoughts (of what one is thinking), is never indicative of the fact that one is thinking.
Hence, the source of one’s knowledge that one is thinking cannot lie in any special
awareness of one’s thinking. Rather, it is something that one learns from others. Thus,
Dretske concludes, it is plausible that at a young age children may know what they are
thinking without knowing that they are thinking. Put differently, while we do have
privileged access to the content of our thoughts, we need others to know that we are
thinking. Dretske doesn’t tell us much about how we learn that we are thinking.
However, his emphasis on the role of other persons already hints at the necessity of
intersubjectivity (and possibly of being embedded in a linguistic community) for this
learning process that is picked up and explored further in the following articles.

In her article “From consciousness to self-consciousness” Baker distinguishes sharply

between consciousness on the one hand and self-consciousness on the other, and sets
herself the task of sketching the developmental road from one to the other. While she
concedes that there are nonconceptual forms of consciousness, which are
characterized by a rudimentary first-person perspective and are shared with certain
non-human animals, she argues – contra authors like Bermúdez (1998) – that there
cannot be any nonconceptual forms of self-consciousness. This is because
self-consciousness requires a robust first-person perspective, which, in turn, requires
the possession of the linguistic first-person concept. Her distinction arguably resonates
with Dretske’s claim that one can be aware of one’s thoughts without being aware that
one is thinking – though Dretske is less explicit on the need for concept possession for

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the latter. According to Baker, not only does self-consciousness require the ability to
refer to oneself in thought or language by means of the first-person pronoun (as in the
thought ‘I am tall’), but it also requires the ability to attribute first-person reference to
oneself (as in the thought ‘I wish that I was tall’). Only the latter is evidence for a
robust first-person perspective (and thus of the possession of a first-person concept).
On Baker’s view, concept possession requires the ability to apply the concept in
question in a range of relevant circumstances and this ability, in turn, only emerges
when one learns a language (and with it a range of empirical concepts that can then
be applied to oneself). Thus, on this view, the ability to think of oneself as oneself and
the ability to use the first-person pronoun are inextricably linked to each other.

Similar to Baker, Strasser claims in her paper “How minimal can self-consciousness
be?” that self-consciousness requires the ability to ascribe properties to oneself (and
thus to recognize oneself as the bearer of certain properties). However, she calls into
question the view that the latter requires linguistic abilities. On her view,
self-consciousness can come in various degrees, not all of which require language.
Using the notions of the sense of ownership, authorship and agency she argues that
we can distinguish three different senses in which a creature can be said to possess
the ability to ascribe properties to themselves. Strasser's aim in the article is to
investigate the cognitive abilities underlying each of these three senses, thereby
developing criteria by which we can decide whether an infant can be said to be
self-conscious or not. She concludes that minimal forms of self-consciousness can be
present in the absence of linguistic abilities, whereas on a stronger notion of
self-consciousness linguistic abilities are required. She then provides a detailed
discussion of several phenomena from the developmental literature (including
imitative behaviour, pretend play, perspective taking and theory of mind) in order to
put the criteria she has established to work. To the extent that Strasser’s stronger
notion of self-consciousness is equivalent to Baker’s notion of self-consciousness,
Strasser and Baker seem to be in agreement. However, Strasser’s notion – in contrast
to Baker’s - does not seem to require the ability to attribute self-reference to oneself.
Moreover, Strasser’s view makes room for a weaker notion of self-consciousness as
well, which Baker would reject.

In her article “Self-consciousness and intersubjectivity” Musholt also makes the case
for a conceptual distinction between consciousness on the one hand and
self-consciousness on the other. Similar to Baker, she argues that it is one thing to
have a perspective, but quite another to be aware of having a perspective. On her
view, while the former implies the presence of implicit self-related information, the

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latter requires explicit self-representation. And only the latter is indicative of
self-consciousness. Musholt further argues that in order to account for the transition
from self-related information that is implicit in perception and bodily experience to an
explicit representation of oneself as a subject among other subjects one has to
consider the role of intersubjectivity. Specifically, she claims that self-awareness
requires an awareness of other subjects and the ability to contrast one’s own mental
and bodily states with those of others. Having alluded to the parallels of this approach
with certain aspects of theories developed in the tradition of German idealism as well
as in phenomenological approaches, she then uses insights from the cognitive
sciences (in particular developmental psychology) to develop a multi-level account of
this perspectival differentiation. Thus, her paper explicitly bridges the discussion about
nonconceptual and conceptual forms of (self-)consciousness with the discussion of the
role of intersubjectivity in acquiring self-consciousness.

The notion of intersubjectivity also plays an important role in Gallagher’s paper on

“The body in social context: Some qualifications on the ‘warmth and intimacy’ of
bodily self-consciousness“. Gallagher takes William James’ discussion of the warmth
and intimacy of bodily self-consciousness as his point of departure and discusses
various pathologies associated with the awareness of one’s body. The aim of the paper
is, one the one hand, to demonstrate that the concepts of body image and body
schema can be fruitfully applied to achieve a better understanding of such pathologies
and, on the other hand, to show that bodily self-awareness is already permeated by
social dimensions. The first part of the paper deals with a defence of the distinction
between body image and body schema against a number of criticisms and against
alternative approaches that focus on the neural correlates of the various aspects of
(bodily) self-awareness. The second part of the paper introduces a novel aspect into
the discussion – namely the role of intersubjectivity for basic, bodily self-awareness.
Understanding the importance of the social dimension of bodily self-awareness is,
according to Gallagher, also important for an understanding of various pathologies.
Gallagher thus opens up a new and fascinating aspect of the debate on
self-consciousness and its pathologies. It remains to be seen, however, how his notion
of self-consciousness relates to the notions of self-consciousness developed in the
preceding (and the following) papers. Another interesting question for future research
that is raised by Gallagher’s article is whether the evidence he cites should lead us to
reject the principle of “methodological individualism“ in favour of assuming an
irreducibly intersubjective dimension of embodied social cognition.

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Bridging the discussion of conceptual and nonconceptual ways of representing the self
with the discussion of the temporal aspects of self-consciousness, Bermúdez’ paper on
“Memory judgments and immunity to error through misidentification” focuses on a
feature that many authors take to be a central feature of self-conscious thoughts,
namely their immunity to error through misidentification relative to the first-person
pronoun. He argues that while first-person judgments that are made on the basis of
autobiographical memories typically possess this feature, it can neither be accounted
for in terms of the possession conditions of the relevant concepts involved in the
self-attribution of the memories in question, nor in terms of their experiential features.
Rather, Bermúdez claims, it is the fact that the remembered episodes are located
within an autobiographical narrative that provides the key to an understanding of why
a thinker who forms a first person judgement that is grounded in an autobiographical
memory must ipso facto grasp that this judgement cannot misidentify.
The “narrative self” takes centre stage in some of the following articles as well.

In his paper “The time of the self”, Zahavi distinguishes two philosophical conceptions
of the self in its relation to temporality. On the first view, being a self (as opposed to
merely being conscious or sentient) is an achievement, which depends on one’s (more
or less successful) self-understanding and self-interpretation. This, in turn, depends on
the life story that we tell to ourselves and to others. It is only through the weaving of
such a story that we can synthesize life’s diverse aspects and experiences into a
unique and stable identity. Importantly, as Zahavi points out, one’s life story – which
will be determined by one’s values, goals and aims – cannot be understood in isolation
from one’s social community, as well as one’s cultural and historical context. Thus, as
Zahavi puts it, while we might be our lives’ stories’ main characters and narrators, we
are not its sole authors. But, asks Zahavi, does the narrative account do full justice to
the first-personal character of our conscious experience? On Zahavi’s view, conscious
experience is characterized by a specific mode of givenness – namely its first-personal
character or "mineness". Importantly, this first-person character itself also possesses a
temporal dimension. He argues that this experiential perspective of the subject is left
out by narrative approaches. However, approaches that focus on the experiential
perspective of the subject alone are also insufficient on his view, as they are unable to
account for the persistence of the self across interruptions in the stream of
consciousness. (Also see the papers by Dainton and Crone for a discussion of this
problem.) He concludes that we need both accounts of the self: On the one hand, an
account that emphasizes its experiential dimension, and in particular its first-personal
character, which must include the temporality of this character. And on the other
hand, an account that relies on the narrative approach in order to provide a dimension

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of temporality and identity that extends beyond the horizon of first-personal
givenness.

The intimate relation of temporality and self is also at issue in Dainton's paper
"Selfhood and the Flow of Experience". Dainton's argument is based on the
assumption that it is perfectly possible to fit a conception of a "self" into a naturalistic
metaphysical framework. According to Dainton, the self is a subject of experience
whose essential attribute is a persisting capacity for a unified and continuous
experience. This view, however, seems to be challenged by two recent accounts on
the self: Galen Strawson holds that selves are essentially conscious subjects who are
nonetheless extremely short-lived (their duration may be less than a second). And
Mark Johnston argues that selves are nothing but synchronically existing "arenas of
presence". (A related view is also defended in Flanagan's paper in this issue.) Now,
according to Dainton, there is no obligation to follow these two contributors in their
rejection of a diachronically persisting self. He argues that neither Strawson nor
Johnston do justice to an important phenomenological feature: the continuity of
ordinary experience. If correctly spelled out, phenomenal continuity can be shown to
be constitutive for selves: metaphorically speaking, brief phases of experiences
directly flow into the next; they make up overlapping chains of diachronic co-conscious
states. Crucially, according to Dainton, incidental disruptions of diachronic conscious
experience are bridged by the subject's persisting capacity for continuous
experiences. Selves can cease to be conscious and continue to exist provided they
retain the potential to be continuously conscious.

Crone's article "Phenomenal Self-Identity Over Time" is directly linked to Dainton's

argument as it criticises one central claim. She agrees with Dainton on the overall idea
that experiential features of mental states are functionally related to the persistence
of a person. However, as Crone argues, phenomenal continuity fails as a criterion for
this persistence: streams of experience are interrupted every now and then (for
instance, in dreamless sleep), and Dainton's strategy cannot properly solve this
problem. (A similar criticism of Dainton's view is also expressed in Zahavi’s paper.) As
a consequence, Crone suggests to move away from the search for constitutive criteria
of personal persistence and to instead turn to a different philosophical problem: to the
analysis of a particular psychological state, namely the (non-inferential) awareness of
self-identity over time. While the continuity of experience (the stream of
consciousness) is doubtless an important source for a person's sense of self-identity
over time, it cannot be the only one since it is unable to explain identity over longer

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durations of time. Crone argues that it is certain experiential features of episodic
autobiographical memories that underwrite our sense of self-identity over time. These
ideas bear an interesting relation to Bermúdez' discussion of the immunity to error
through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun of judgements based on
episodic autobiographical memories.

The distinction between different philosophical conceptions of the self and its relation
to time that is drawn by Zahavi is echoed in a distinction urged by Flanagan in his
paper “Phenomenal and historical selves”. Flanagan argues that on one view of
personhood, which he associates with John Locke, and which he terms the
forensic-narrative view, a person is seen in abstraction from self-experience. This
abstraction is based on autobiographical memory and is related to the narrative
accounts described by Zahavi. According to Flanagan, it can be seen to be useful for
the way in which we navigate our social sphere, in particular in the context of holding
each other responsible for past actions. However, Flanagan claims, this view also
necessarily remains impoverished and restrictive and we should consider replacing it
with a more basic and more flexible view of how different individuals experience
themselves as persons, which he associates with William James and Galen Strawson.
Flanagan argues that while we remain continuous historical beings throughout our
lives, we can experience a disconnect between the way we phenomenally experience
ourselves in the present and the kind of person we were in the past (or will be in the
future). Our ‘streams of consciousness’ can assume different patterns over time, as it
were. Thus, he seems to be in agreement with Zahavi’s claim that narrative accounts
cannot do full justice to the experiential dimension of being a conscious self. However,
while Zahavi, Crone and Dainton emphasize the unifying nature of the first-person
perspective, Flanagan asks us to consider the possibility of experiencing ourselves as
rather different from the person we used to be. If he is right, we might in a certain
sense at different points in our lives literally become different persons – there might
simply not be a unique self-identity that is preserved throughout our lives.
Acknowledging this, according to Flanagan, not only gives us a philosophically richer
and more accurate view of personhood, it is also frees us up to recognize our
experiences for what they are and to engage more authentically in the project of
self-understanding and self-improving.

---
As this brief overview shows, the articles in this special issue address and bridge many
different facets of and approaches to the study self-consciousness. We hope that this
issue demonstrates the value in seeking a more integrated approach in the study of

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self-consciousness and that it will provide the point of departure for new research and
debate in this area.

The inspiration for this special issue first grew out of a workshop on “Facets of
self-consciousness” that was organized by the three editors and held at the Berlin
School of Mind and Brain in March 2010. We would like to thank all the presenters and
participants in this workshop for their stimulating contributions, and the School and
the German Research Foundation (DFG) for their support.

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