Gottfried Vosgerau
Mental Representation
and Self-Consciousness
From Basic Self-Representation to
Self-Related Cognition
mentis
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Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Problem of Self-Consciousness
Self-consciousness has been a central topic of philosophy, at least in modern times.
In ancient and medieval times, self-consciousness was usually not very clearly
distinguished from self-confidence and self-esteem and was often discussed in the
context of ethics and the good life. In modern times, Descartes (1641) was the one
to introduce a notion of self-consciousness that is basic to philosophy of mind
and, in his view, to all other branches of theoretical philosophy as well. This notion
refers to the ability of every (at least every healthy adult) human being to become
conscious of herself in a special way, namely to become conscious of herself as
herself, as it is often expressed. A nice illustrating example of what this should
mean was given by Ernst Mach (1886) who told the following story: One day
he climbed a bus while seeing another man climbing the same bus at the other
end. He thought to himself: “What tacky schoolmaster this is!” Shortly after, he
recognized that there was a mirror in the bus such that he saw himself and he
realized that he himself was the tacky schoolmaster. In the first moment, Mach
had become conscious of himself but without becoming conscious of the fact that
the man he was consciously thinking of was indeed himself. Therefore, although
he was indeed conscious of himself, he was not conscious of himself as himself.
Only after recognizing the fact that the schoolmaster was indeed he himself, he
became conscious of himself as himself. Hence, only the latter case is a case of
self-consciousness.
Descartes was interested in finding some basic truth which could not be questioned even by sceptical arguments. This basic truth was meant to build the secure
basis for a systematic philosophy. In his famous cogito-argument, he concludes
form the basic truth “I am thinking” (“cogito”) that “therefore, I am”(“ergo sum”). 1
The existence of oneself is then taken as the secure basis of his philosophy. In this
way, the self-conscious thoughts “I am thinking” and “I am” become the grounding not only of his philosophy of mind but also of his metaphysics. Also for Hume,
1
For a rational reconstruction of the argument and a discussion of its weaknesses see Newen (1996).
14
1. Introduction
the problem of self-consciousness became critical to his empiricism. Namely the
problem of the unity of self-consciousness was identified to be the main problem for his theory by himself: “there are two principles, which I cannot render
consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our
distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real
connexion among distinct existences” Hume 1978, 636. Self-consciousness played
a central role also in the philosophy of Kant (to mention just a third prominent
philosophers out of a huge list). He identified the “transcendental self” (which
is, of course, to be sharply distinguished from the “empirical self”) to be the
constituting basis for the mind by unifying all the different experiences. Again,
self-consciousness is viewed as the central phenomenon of the mind in general
(“The I think must be able to accompany all my representations [Vorstellungen]”
Kant 1787/1998, B 131).
In the beginning of the 20th century, the human mind became an object of
another discipline, namely psychology. Although self-consciousness played a central role in the Freudian tradition, the systematic exploration of the “unconscious”
opened the doors for a less consciousness-centered conception of man. Indeed,
behaviorism tried to describe the human cognitive system without reference to
any mentalistic vocabulary, of course thereby evading the phenomenon of consciousness and self-consciousness altogether. Even after the “cognitive turn” in
the 1950s, experimental psychology was not very much interested in conscious
processes—cognitive processes were investigated mainly independently of whether
they are conscious or not. According to this development in the empirical sciences, philosophers lost interest in self-consciousness: It was no longer viewed
as the most important human ability that is basic to all cognitive processing but
was rather viewed as the top of the iceberg which we call the conscious mind.
Consciousness now occupied the central place in the philosophical debate, and
there were long discussions whether it is the mark of the mental or the human,
and whether there is any chance of empirically investigating or explaining this
phenomenon. Self-consciousness was thereby marginalized and only debated as
a special (and even more complex yet less basic) form of consciousness.
Today, the philosophical problem of self-consciousness is best described as the
problem of how it is possible to become conscious of oneself as oneself (in the
sense of the above example). So, given that we are conscious of a lot of things
in the world, how come that we are conscious of ourselves not just as another
of these countless things (and people) but as something very special? Of course,
there are many aspects of this general questions and many special debates. Four
main types of questions can be differentiated: 1) The ontological question (“Is
there such an entity as the self?”), to which I will come in section 1.1.2. 2) The
question of personal identity, i. e. the question how (if at all) our personality is
constituted and what the criteria are for the individuation of persons. This specific
discussion is most relevant to ethical questions (Is the embryo already the same
1.1 The Problem of Self-Consciousness
15
person as the one to receive the PhD some decades later? Is patient N.N. still the
same person after the brain surgery? Are patients in a permanent vegetative state
persons at all?). In this work, I will not be able to contribute to this special aspect
of self-consciousness. 3) The epistemic question is concerned with the question
whether we are in an epistemically privileged position to know about the own
mental life “from the inside,” or, in other words, through introspection. What
is introspection, how does it work, and does it really lead to knowledge about
ourselves? This dimension of self-consciousness is mostly discussed under the
label “self-knowledge,” and I will outline some implications of my account for
this special question in section 9.3. 4) The cognitive question which will be the
main concern of the present investigation: What exactly constitutes the ability
to form I-thoughts and how is it possible to acquire this ability? What are the
specific mechanisms that bring about the peculiar kind of self-referentiality that
self-conscious thoughts have?
Of course, there are many factors contributing to the development of a “self:”
On the one hand, the individual and its interaction with the world are the basis
for any higher cognitive ability (including self-consciousness), and on the other
hand, self-consciousness is most certainly based on social interactions with other
people. On both sides, there are not only cognitive mechanisms at work, but
also perception (self-perception and quasi-perceptual introspection) and emotions
(the social dimension of emotions and self-directed emotions in particular) play
an essential role. However, in this work, I will confine myself to the cognitive
individual mechanisms that underly our ability to think about ourselves as ourselves. I am not thereby suggesting that the question of self-consciousness can
be fully accounted for by such an investigation, but I hope to convince you that
this account is able to explain the most essential features of self-consciousness.
However, certain phenomena related to self-consciousness will be completely left
aside, since they would lead us too far into other areas such as social cognition
and emotions.
1.1.1 Content and Phenomenology
The problem of self-consciousness is classically described as the problem of how
we become conscious of ourselves. However, another problem of the philosophy
of mind is the problem of consciousness, i. e. how we become conscious in general. Thus, the problem of self-consciousness is a special problem of the general
problem of consciousness. It is specified by the object of consciousness or, classically put, the content: It is consciousness about oneself as oneself. Therefore, the
dimension of consciousness is not specific for the problem of self-consciousness.
In representational terms, this means that the specific question is how self-representations (which represent oneself as oneself) are formed and how they work.
However, it is not part of a theory of self-consciousness how these representa-