Paradox Of Self-Consciousness Research Articles

'I'-Thoughts and Explanation: Reply to Garrett

Brian Garrett has criticized my diagnosis of the paradox of self‐consciousness. In reply, I focus on the classification of ‘I’‐thoughts, and show how the notion of immunity to error through misidentification can be used to characterize ‘I’‐thoughts, even though an important class of ‘I’‐thoughts (those whose expression involves what Wittgenstein called the use of ‘I’ as object) are not themselves immune to error through misidentification. ‘I’thoughts which are susceptible to error through misidentification are dependent upon those which are not. The dependence here has to do with how a thinker understands what would defeat such thoughts.

The Paradox of Self–Consciousness Revisited

The so–called paradox of self–consciousness suggests that self–consciousness, understood as the capacity to think about oneself in a first–person way, cannot be explained. The author of the paradox contends that the only way to avert this result is by invoking the notion of nonconceptual first–person thought. This contention is rooted in adherence to the Linguistic Priority Principle, which dictates that pre–and nonlinguistic creatures lack concepts. I argue that the latter claim is dubious, and that the paradox of self–consciousness can be better disarmed by denying the dependence of first–person conceptual thought on first–person language.

The Paradox of Self-Consciousness

In this book, Jose Luis Bermudez addesses two fundamental problems in the philosophy and psychology of self-consciousness: (1) Can we provide a noncircular account of fully fledged self-conscious thought and language in terms of more fundamental capacities? (2) Can we explain how fully fledged self-conscious thought and language can arise in the normal course of human development? Bermudez argues that a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) arises from the apparent strict interdependence between self-conscious thought and linguistic self-reference. The paradox renders circular all theories that define self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun. It seems to follow from the paradox of self-consciousness that no such account or explanation can be given. Drawing on recent work in empirical psychology and philosophy, the author argues that any explanation of fully fledged self-consciousness that answers these two questions requires attention to primitive forms of self-consciousness that are prelinguistic and preconceptual. Such primitive forms of self-consciousness are to be found in somatic proprioception, the structure of exteroceptive perception, and prelinguistic forms of social interaction. The author uses these primitive forms of self-consciousness to dissolve the paradox of self-consciousness and to show how the two questions can be given an affirmative answer.

Nonconceptual Self-Consciousness And Cognitive Science

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

The Paradox of Self-Consciousness

The Paradox of Self-Consciousness

The Paradox of Self-Consciousness

The Paradox of Self-Consciousness

The paradox of self-consciousness

The paradox of self-consciousness the form of a solution content, concepts, and language the theory of nonconceptual content the self of ecological optics somatic proprioception and the bodily self points of view navigation and spatial reasoning psychological self-awareness - self and others solving the paradox of self-consciousness.