Abstract
I present considerations surrounding pre-reflective self-consciousness (PRSC), arising in work I am conducting on a new physicalist, process-based account of [phenomenal] consciousness. The account is called the meta-causal account (MCA) because it identifies consciousness with a certain type of arrangement of meta-causation. Meta-causation is causation where a cause or effect is itself an instance of causation (e.g., A’s-causing-B causes C). The proposed type of arrangement involves a sort of time-spanning, internal reflexivity of the overall meta-causation. I argue that, as a result of the account, any conscious process has PRSC. Hence, PRSC does not need to be taken as a stipulation or argued for on purely phenomenological grounds or as a necessary support for reflective consciousness. I also show how it is natural to the account that PRSC is not an additional, peripheral, sort of consciousness, but is intrinsic to all consciousness, thereby fitting claims about self-intimation and co-constitution by various authors, and also being amenable to an adverbial account. As part of this, consciousness of an external object is just the form that current self-consciousness takes, the meta-causal constitution of it being inextricably modulated by the causal relationship with the object. The article also discusses how MCA helps explore issues of for-me-ness, transparency of perceptual consciousness, and possible immediacy and non-relationality of self-consciousness.
Highlights
This article claims, in brief, that pre-reflective consciousness is physically constituted of meta-causation
While meta-causal account (MCA) is based on meta-causal linkage, which is inherently a time-spanning matter, it is the causation in an interval abutting a given time T within a process that meta-causally affects state at T
I hope to have presented some grounds for supposing that, if MCA—the metacausal account of consciousness—is at all reasonable, it provides a fruitful basis for further justification and exploration of pre-reflective self-consciousness (PRSC)/prereflective auto-consciousness (PRAC)
Summary
This article claims, in brief, that pre-reflective consciousness is physically constituted of meta-causation. This article’s account, called here MCA (Meta-Causal Account), gets to meta-causation from consciousness by the following route It first argues (as many have) that consciousness is based somehow on reflexivity—some sort of access the conscious system has to itself. That treatment does not need to be considered in order to understand the present article
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