1 Self‐Awareness Martine Nida‐Rümelin, Université de Fribourg (Switzerland) Abstract: Is a subject who undergoes an experience necessarily aware of undergoing the experience? According to the view here developed, a positive answer to this question should be accepted if ‘awareness’ is understood in a specific way, ‐ in the sense of what will be called ‘primitive awareness’. Primitive awareness of being experientially presented with something involves, furthermore, being pre‐reflectively aware of oneself as an experiencing subject. An argument is developed for the claims that (a) pre‐reflective self‐awareness is the basis of our understanding of what it is to be an experiencing subject and that (b) that understanding reveals what being an experiencing subject consists and what it is for experiences to belong to one single experiencer. Claim (b) is used in an argument in favor of the so‐called simple view with respect to synchronic and diachronic unity of consciousness. 1. Experiences and experiential properties Antonietta is sitting on a beach in the shadow of a tree, enjoying the fresh breeze on her skin, listening to the breaking waves and watching the flying birds above the water playing in the wind. Antonietta undergoes – within a few seconds ‐ a rich variety of experiences. To undergo an experience is to have experiential properties over a stretch of time. To say that Antonietta undergoes a blue experience, is to say that she is phenomenally presented with blue; to say that she has an acoustic experience is to say that she is phenomenally presented with a sound. All talk about Antonietta’s experiences can be expressed attributing certain properties to her, properties which I will call experiential properties. It is characteristic for experiential properties that it is something like for the subject concerned to have them. But the something‐like locution is not precise enough to capture what is essential for being an experiential property. We may say that experiential properties are properties of experiencing individuals such that instantiating them at a moment m partially constitutes what it is like for the individual concerned to live through moment m. This formulation excludes examples of properties such as being overweighed. Being overweighed determines only indirectly and not by itself what it is like to be in one’s present state and therefore cannot be said to partially constitute what it is like for the subject to live through the relevant moment.1 The debate about the nature of consciousness is standardly couched in a terminology which takes experiences to be its main target. But what is it for an event to be an experience? Here is the reply I take to be quite obvious: Experiences consist in the instantiation of experiential properties by a given conscious subject. All talk about experiences can thus be conceptually and ontologically reduced to talk about experiencing beings and their experiential properties. Therefore, making progress about 1 Compare for a precise account of the distinction here at issue Charles Siewert (2013), section 2. 2 the nature of experiences is only possible by making progress about the nature of experiential properties and experiencing subjects. I therefore recommend addressing the latter issue directly and will focus on experiential properties and those individuals capable of having them.2 2. Experiences and experiencing subjects Some philosophers think that we can understand what it is for an experience to occur without thereby presupposing that there is someone, an experiencing subject, undergoing the experience and they typically accept the corresponding ontological claim as well: experiences do not require (at least not in any substantial sense) someone as their ‘bearer’.3 I will defend the opposite view with respect to both, the conceptual and the ontological claim: in a substantial sense to be specified of ‘experiencing subjects’, experiences require an experiencing subject undergoing them and we cannot even think the occurrence of an experience without thereby thinking it as involving an experiencing subject.4 The ontological and the related conceptual claim just formulated can easily be trivialized and thereby misunderstood. The trivialization I have in mind involves the implicit assumption that these claims must be understood as supported by nothing more than a simple argument which I will call the argument from instantiation which uses as its crucial premise P2 a general metaphysical assumption about the instantiation of properties: P1: An experience is the instantiation of an experiential property. P2: For a property to be instantiated means that there is something that has that property. P3: An experiencing subject is an individual capable of instantiating experiential properties. These premises allow us to conclude that the occurrence of an experience (see (1) below) implies there to be an experiencing subject involved in the experience (see (4) below): (1) An experience occurs at moment m. (2) An experiential property is instantiated at moment m. [From (1) with P1] (3) There is something having an experiential property at moment m. [From (2) and P2] (4) There is an experiencing subject having an experiential property at moment m. [From (3) with P3].5 2 A detailed argument for the view that the terminology here chosen (the framework of experiential properties) is preferable to the one commonly used (to the experience property framework) is developed in my paper (2016). 3 Philosophers who accept some version of the Humean claim according to which the experiencing subject is nothing but a “bundle of perceptions” are arguably committed to the conceptual and to the ontological claim here criticized. A revealing discussion of the issue can be found in the classical paper Roderick Chisholm (1969). The ontological claim under consideration is famously defended in Derek Parfit (1984), chapters 10‐13. 4 I would like to thank Katalin Balog and Uriah Kriegel for extended discussions about this topic which helped me a lot to develop the ideas presented in this paper and in particular in the present section. 5 The trivialization just formulated concerns the ontological claim if the premises of the argument are read as ontological theses; it concerns the conceptual claim if the premises are read as claims true in virtue of our understanding of the concepts they involve. 3 The argument is valid and I agree with all its premises. However, it does not capture the substantial insight philosophers wish to express when they insist that experiences require an experiencing subject. Those philosophers, I take it, intend to express a claim the truth of which can be seen by reflecting on the nature of experiences and experiencing subjects. No such insight plays any role in the above argument which is solely based on a general metaphysical claim (P2) and a terminological stipulation (P3). In order to capture the insight the claim at issue is supposed to express we need an argument of the following general form: P1: An experience is the instantiation of an experiential property. P2’: Given the nature of experiential properties, experiential properties can be instantiated only when instantiated by members of a particular kind of individuals (experiencing subjects). The argument then continues in the obvious manner: (1) An experience occurs at moment m. (2) An experiential property is instantiated at moment m. [From (1) with P1] (3’) There is some experiencing subject having an experiential property at moment m. [From (2) and P2’] Obviously, not every argument with the above structure is of the kind we are searching for. For instance, P2’ could be read in a way which makes it possible to deduce P2’ from the premises P2 and P3 in which case the argument would just be the argument from instantiation. The relevant difference between the argument from instantiation and the argument we are searching for lies (a) in the way in which P2’ is motivated and justified and (b) in the content thereby given to P2’. The crucial premise P2’ must be justified in a way which makes substantial use of an account of the nature of experiential properties and of experiencing subjects. Furthermore, the account must provide a reading of P2’ according to which that premise is a substantial claim which does not flow from mere stipulation. The ideas developed in the present paper can, I hope, as a by‐product, provide an understanding of experiential properties and experiencing subjects which fulfills these two conditions. 3. Basic intentionality Being phenomenally presented with colors, odors, landscapes or a piece of music are paradigmatic examples of experiential properties. In those and similar cases something is presented to someone. 4 The event consisting in someone being presented with something has a subject‐object structure in the sense just hinted at. One may say that an event having such a structure exhibits a simple and fundamental form of intentionality. I will say of events having such a structure that they exhibit basic intentionality. Let us call experiential properties of this kind (having them consists in being presented with something) p‐experiential properties. I will not take a stance on whether having a p‐experiential property is always to be phenomenally presented with something. To think about something, for instance, is, in my view, an experiential property and it is a p‐experiential property (something is presented to the subject in thought) but it is perhaps misleading to talk here of phenomenal presence. Basic intentionality ‘relates’ an object and a subject but basic intentionality only requires the existence of the subject, it does not require the existence of the object the subject is presented with.6 Let us now come back to the conceptual issue raised earlier: can we conceptualize the occurrence of a particular experience without thinking of a subject who undergoes the experience? For experiences involving the instantiation of p‐experiential properties, the question amounts to this: can we conceptualize an event which consists in something being presented to someone without thereby thinking that there is someone to whom something is present? For instance, can we conceptualize the event consisting in someone being phenomenally presented with blue and yet not thereby think of there being someone to whom blue is phenomenally presented? The answer should, quite obviously, be negative. Perhaps we can think a thought one might try to capture by the words “blue is occurring”. But this is only to conceptualize the ‘occurrence’ of the content of the experience and not the event we are concerned with as a whole. The conclusion here drawn is conceptual: when we consider experiences which are instantiations of p‐experiential properties, then the idea that they might occur without there being a subject involved simply does not make sense because presentation (in the sense at issue) requires there to be someone to whom something is presented. Although this result may well appear so obvious that it hardly needs any argument, the contrary thesis is so wide‐spread at least among philosophers that it is important to understand how one might possibly think that experiences of the relevant kind can be conceptualized in a ‘subject‐free’ manner. Elements of such an error theory will be briefly proposed in the following section. 6 In hallucination, for instance, the presented ‘object’ does not exist, or so I would claim. An argument can be developed for the more radical thesis that phenomenal presence and more generally ‘presentation’ in the relevant sense never involves an existing object (compare my paper [2011] and my book [in preparation], chapters 3). 5 4. How one may overlook that experiences conceptually require an experiencing subject Token experiences are, in typical cases, events consisting in someone being phenomenally presented with some particular content. We can think of such contents of experiences without thinking of the subject to whom these contents occur. However, doing so is not to conceptualize the event which is the experience. Confusing the occurrence of a token experience with the ‘occurrence’ of its content may lead to the idea that one can conceptualize experiences in a subject‐free manner.7 This is a simple error theory and it might be an adequate description of what is going on in the mind of some who claim that they see no problem in the idea if an experience happening without a subject. But perhaps there is a deeper source of the mistake to be uncovered related to what we typically imagine when we conceptualize the occurrence of an experience. Before I describe that second and more interesting mistake in the form of an argument I would like to explain in an intuitive manner the kind of mistake I have in mind. Conceptualizations are often accompanied by acts of imagination. Conceptualizing the macro‐ physical event of a ball falling down from a tree is typically associated with imagining a ball which falls down from a tree. On the other hand, imaginations that typically accompany the conceptualization of mental events are imaginations ‘from one’s own perspective’. For instance, conceptualizing a blue experience is typically accompanied by imagining having a blue experience. Now there is a relevant disanalogy between these two kinds of imaginative acts which may play a role in the implicit reasoning of those who claim to be able to conceptualize subject‐free experiences. The imagination of a ball falling from a tree involves imagining a ball to be phenomenally given and this is imagining the ball to be given ‘as an object’ (in the sense of basic intentionality). What happens when we imagine the occurrence of an experience is fundamentally different. We then imagine undergoing the experience. For instance, in order to imagine a blue experience we imagine being presented with blue. To be presented with blue does not involve being presented with oneself ‘as an object’. As will be argued below, we are aware of ourselves in undergoing a blue experience, but that awareness does not itself exhibit basic intentionality. In the falling ball case, the entity which is imagined as involved in the event, is imagined as given as an ‘object’. Contrary to this, the entity involved in the event is not imagined as given as an ‘object’ when we imagine the occurrence of a 7 In the case of pain the confusion is wide‐spread. The term “pain” is often used in a systematically ambiguous manner, ambiguous between the event of a subject being presented with a certain event (“pain” referring to an experience) which appears to be located somewhere in the subject’s body and the apparently so located event itself (“pain” referring to the object given to the subject in that experience). 6 blue experience by imagining being presented with blue. In fact, the entity involved in the event is not imagined at all. The disanalogy just described between the imagination of familiar external events and imagining experiences ‘from inside’ may well invite the idea that we can think of experiences in a subject‐free manner. We can imagine them without a subject, or so someone might say. Why then should we deny that we can conceptualize them without a subject? A direct reply to this kind of reasoning can be formulated like this: to imagine being presented with blue is not to imagine a subject‐less experience. Rather it is to imagine being oneself presented with blue. The individual involved (the experiencing subject) is ‘present’ in that imagination but it is not present ‘as an object’. It is a mistake to conclude from the observation that imagining having an experience does not require imagining a subject that the event thereby imagined is in the relevant sense ‘subject‐free’. Furthermore, it is a mistake to think that the possibility of imagining an experience without imagining the subject involved implies the possibility of conceptualizing an experience without conceptualizing it as involving a subject. One might just stop the analysis here. But it might be revealing to have a closer look at a possible formulation of the mistaken argument at issue in order to see where exactly it goes wrong. (1) It is possible to imagine a blue experience by imagining being phenomenally presented with blue. [Premise] (2) Imagining being phenomenally presented with blue does not involve imagining a subject undergoing the experience. [Premise] (3) If it is possible to imagine a blue experience without imagining a subject undergoing the experience then it is possible to conceptualize a blue experience without conceptualizing it as involving a subject undergoing it. [Premise] (4) It is possible to imagine a blue experience without imagining a subject undergoing the experience. [From (1) and (2)] (5) It is possible to conceptualize a blue experience without conceptualizing it as involving a subject undergoing it. [From (3) and (4)] The argument is valid. But what about its premises? (1) should be uncontroversial. The doubtful premises are (2) and/or (3). Their acceptability depends on how one interprets “imagining a subject undergoing the experience”. There are two different interpretations of that locution available, but on none of them both premises can be accepted. According to the first interpretation to imagine a subject undergoing an experience requires imagining a subject. On the second interpretation to imagine a subject undergoing an experience only requires imagining an event which consists in the subject undergoing the event. On the first interpretation (2) is true, but (2) is false on the second interpretation. So if there is a common interpretation which renders both premises acceptable it 7 must be the first one. However, (3) is not acceptable on the first interpretation: Imagining being presented with blue is to imagine an event which consists in the subject at issue being presented with blue. Conceptualizing that event is impossible without conceptualizing it as involving the subject concerned. The latter claim is not undermined by the phenomenological observation that the event under consideration can be imagined ‘from the first person perspective’ and so in a way which does not involve imagining the subject concerned. Suppose it is accepted that we cannot think the occurrence of an experience without conceptualizing it as involving an experiencing subject. Is there a way, one may ask, to move from this conceptual insight to the corresponding ontological claim? There are two routes one might take to do so. The first is to argue that the conceptual fact is an element of our genuine understanding of what it is to experience. That we have such genuine understanding of the nature of experiences can be motivated by the description given below of the way in which that understanding is rooted in experience itself. The other way is to argue that we cannot successfully refer to experiences unless we take for granted that experiences require an experiencing subject. Such an argument can be elaborated along the following lines: When a philosopher proposes an account of experiences or develops a theory about their metaphysical nature he or she must use those concepts of experiences that are formed on the basis of experience. This is the only way to guarantee that he or she does not change the subject. Given the conceptual insight here at issue, using these concepts is to conceptualize experiences as involving an experiencing subject. Therefore, either one uses these concepts and thereby assumes the truth of the corresponding ontological claim or one loses the capacity to successfully refer to the phenomenon one wishes to theorize about. The upshot is that one should either stop theorizing about experiences altogether or accept that there cannot be any subject‐free experiences. 5. The general concept of an experiencing subject In daily life we constantly attribute experiential properties to others. In conversation with a person we are convinced that there is someone listening to us and hearing our words. When we observe a bird while it searches for food then we naturally take it to perceive its environment in some way or other. When we are not alone we take ourselves to be sharing experiences with other people who perceive the situation we are in in a somewhat similar way. Arguably, the contents of these natural and undoubtedly true beliefs are also the content of perceptual experience, but for the moment I will focus on belief. When we attribute such experiential properties to others, we implicitly use a general concept of an experiencing subject. We then think of those others as being someone to whom something is present; we think of them, for instance, as beings that are phenomenally and perceptually aware of a constantly changing environment. Thinking of them as being aware of a 8 changing environment involves the thought that there is one individual over a period of time with changing experiential properties. The capacity to think of others in the way just sketched is to master the general concept of an experiencing subject. If the above description is correct, then we permanently use the general concept of an experiencing subject in daily life. There is no word in natural language which unambiguously expresses that important notion. But this is not unusual for notions that are deeply incorporated in our thought. Given that we are never taught the concept explicitly in the process of language acquisition, one may wonder how and on what basis the general concept of an experiencing subject emerges in our cognitive architecture. The answer I wish to propose is this: each of us is permanently aware of him‐ or herself in a pre‐reflective and pre‐conceptual way in any moment of his or her conscious life. The general concept of an experiencing subject is acquired on that omnipresent pre‐reflective self‐ awareness. Before I start elaborating this thesis let me contrast it with an alternative view about how we acquire such a general concept which is quite often implicitly presupposed by philosophers working in the field. According to this view we acquire concepts, so‐called phenomenal concepts, of specific phenomenal kinds of experiences on the basis of undergoing experiences of the relevant kind. The general concept of experiences is formed by somehow abstracting the commonality from those specific kinds and thus forming a concept of events sharing that commonality. According to this idea, the concept of an experiencing subject can be explicated as follows: an individual is an experiencing subject if and only if it can be involved in events of that kind. If this were so, then the general concept of experiences would be prior to the general concept of an experiencing subject and the former could be assumed to be acquired by abstraction from special members of the relevant kind. Let us call this view about the way we acquire the general notion of an experiencing subject the thesis of abstraction. According to the view here proposed, the thesis of abstraction is based on a fundamental mistake. It is based on the assumption that we can conceive of kinds of experiences or even of a single token experience without thereby already conceiving of such an event as involving an experiencing subject. But this is not possible as argued before. The notion of an experiencing subject is conceptually prior to the notion of an experience and therefore cannot be acquired by abstraction from kinds of experiences. The analogous argument applies to the parallel thesis that the notion of an experiencing subject is acquired by abstraction from specific notions of experiential properties. 9 To see how our general concept of an experiencing individual is based in our own experience one must try to understand in what way we are aware of ourselves in experience and how the general notion of an experiencing subject can be developed on that basis. These aims will be pursued here by developing an argument for the view that (a) there is a sense in which having an experiential property involves being aware of having it and that (b) being aware of having an experiential property involves being pre‐reflectively and pre‐conceptually aware of oneself and finally (c) sketching the way in which our understanding of what it is to be an experiencing subjects originates in that omnipresent self‐awareness. 6. Primitive awareness Many philosophers argue that there is a sense in which experiences are necessarily conscious. According to this intuitive idea, to have an experience necessarily involves being aware of having that experience. I agree with the basic idea that we cannot undergo an experience without being conscious or aware of undergoing that experience in a sense to be explicated. The point is not uncontroversial but many authors agree that it is even essential to experiences (constitutive of what they are by their nature) that the one who undergoes it is in some sense conscious of it.8 However, the sense of being “conscious of the experience” here at issue requires explanation and can be easily misunderstood. It should not be understood, or so I will argue, in a way which can motivate the idea that for a state to be conscious is for it to be the object of some higher order state or to be the object of itself. The whole idea that the experience is an object of awareness when we are in the relevant sense here at issue aware ‘of it’ is somewhat misguided. It is already quite misleading to adopt the common way of talking: to say that the subject is ‘conscious of an experience’ or ‘aware of an experience’ (e.g. of the blue experience it presently undergoes) suggests that the subject is somehow presented with an event which consists in someone being presented with blueness. But if the subject were presented with such an event (in the relevant kind of awareness which ‘comes for free’ with the experience itself) then it seems hard to understand how being the subject of the relevant event could suffice for being also presented with that event. Furthermore, the question then arises how the subject who is presented with the event can recognize the subject involved in the event it is presented with as being no one other than itself. But this is quite obviously and importantly a question that does not arise for the relevant kind of awareness. The way out must be to deny that 8 Famously, Brentano holds such a view in his distinction between the primary object of e.g. an auditory experience which is the heard tone and the secondary object of that same experience which is the hearing of the tone (see Brentano [1874], Vol.1, book 2). This basic idea is taken up in Kriegel’s self‐representational theory of consciousness (see Uriah Kriegel [2009]). A similar idea (about phenomenally conscious experience) is central as well in the motivation for so‐called higher order theories of consciousness (see for different versions William Lycan [2004] and David Rosenthal [2002]). The claim is sometimes combined with the view that the particular awareness of having the experience is included in the experience itself and yet does not involve the experience being an object of the experience or an object for the experiencing subject. Such one‐level and ‘non‐objectual’ views are defended in Dan Zahavi [1999], chapter 2, Zahavi [2006] and in Brie Gertler [2012]. 10 the relevant kind of awareness involves being presented with an event. As some philosophers have pointed out, we should not think of the blue experience we are aware of being involved in as being an additional object of our awareness while undergoing it.9 The only ‘object’ of awareness which necessarily ‘shows up in the stream of consciousness’ (in the totality of what it phenomenally presented to a subject in a given moment’) when someone undergoes a blue experience is the blueness itself. Therefore, or so I suggest, we should abandon such misleading locutions and opt for a simpler terminology which is quite obviously more adequate to the phenomena we wish to capture: a subject who is presented with blueness thereby necessarily is aware (in a sense to be explicated) of being presented with blueness. The general claim to be elaborated can then be expressed saying the following about experiential properties: experiential properties are such that having them necessarily involves being aware of having them. If one accepts ‐ as one should (according to the view presented above) ‐ that experiences are instantiations of experiential properties by experiencing subjects then this is the terminology which naturally suggests itself. If you are, for example, visually presented in a phenomenally conscious manner with a rich and beautiful landscape, then you are aware of being presented with such a landscape just by undergoing that visual experience. It is not easy to say what exactly that “awareness” consists in. But it is clear (or so one should, I think, be ready to concede) that there is some sense of awareness such that, on that specific understanding of awareness, it is impossible to have an experiential property without being aware of having it. Presupposing that this is so, it will be helpful to have a term to refer to that special kind of awareness. I will use the term “primitive awareness” and “to be primitively aware of” for that purpose. By stipulation, primitive awareness refers to the kind of awareness for which the claim is true that, in that particular sense of awareness, it is impossible to instantiate an experiential property without being aware of instantiating it. To get a grip on what primitive awareness consists in let us first see what it is not. Primitive awareness is not the result of what has been called introspection. By ‘introspection’ or, as I prefer saying, by “phenomenal reflection” I mean the activity humans are capable of which consists in attending to what it is like to instantiate a given experiential property. For instance, while listening to a violin, one may concentrate on the particular features of its sound and thereby on what it is like to hear that sound. Obviously, experiencing does not necessarily involve phenomenal reflection. Since primitive awareness, by stipulation, does not require for its presence anything more than experiencing itself, it follows that primitive awareness does not require phenomenal reflection. 9 For such non‐objectual views see end of the preceding footnote. Dan Zahavi uses the problem about recognition here briefly mentioned as one main motivation for his non‐objectual account of self‐consciousness (see D. Zahavi [1999], chapter 2, 17‐19). 11 However, as many have argued, being aware in the sense of primitive awareness of one’s own experiencing is required for phenomenal reflection as a precondition. For this reason one may say that primitive awareness is pre‐reflexive. Furthermore, we may say, for similar reasons, that primitive awareness is pre‐conceptual. Being aware of having an experiential property is the basis for the acquisition of an experience‐based concept of that property. But no such concept is required in order to have the relevant experiential property and to thereby be primitively aware of having it. Two distinct theoretical options are left open under the assumption that having an experiential property necessarily involves being primitively aware of having it: (1) Being primitively aware of instantiating P is something over and above instantiating P; these two different ‘aspects’ of a subject’s conscious life are however correlated with necessity. (2) Primitive awareness of instantiating P is nothing over and above instantiating P. – According to the second option which is the one I will be arguing for, it is part of the nature of experiential properties that no subject can possibly have such a property without thereby being aware of having them where “thereby” must be understood here in the strictest possible sense: to have an experiential property already is ‐ by itself ‐ to be aware of having it. This proposal may appear paradoxical. To say of a subject, or so someone may argue, that it has property P is one thing; to say of that subject that it is aware of having P, is quite another. Conceptually, there is a distinction to be made here. So how could it be that having one and the same property renders both descriptions true? Shouldn’t it be clear that there must be two distinct properties P1 and P2 such that having P1 is, for instance, to be presented with blueness and having P2 is to be aware of being presented with blueness? – The answer to this question, or so I suggest, should be negative. There is just one property which is properly attributed to a subject S by both locutions, by saying “S is presented with blueness” and by saying “S is primitively aware of being presented with blueness” and the same holds for every arbitrary experiential property. How could such a claim be argued for? Here is one way and perhaps the only way to do so: one must argue that reflection on what it is for a property to be experiential reveals that every experiential property is such that – in a specific sense of awareness – to have that property is to be aware of having it. So let us come back to the nature of experiential properties in order to develop such an argument. Experiential properties are such that, by their nature, the instantiation of such a property by a subject at a given moment m partially constitutes what it is like for the subject to live through moment m. Now there is an obvious and clear sense in which any subject is aware of what it is like for it to live through moment m just by living through that moment. One may say that the subject is immediately aware – without reflection and without conceptualization ‐ of every specific aspect of 12 what it is like for it to live through moment m while it is living through moment m. To admit this is already to admit what needs to be seen: given the nature of experiential properties, to be aware of such an aspect is to be aware of having the corresponding experiential property. This is why having an experiential property just is being aware of having it. So what is primitive awareness of having an experiential property so understood? To be primitively aware at moment m of having an experiential property at m is for a subject to be aware at that moment, just by living through that moment, of how it is for it with respect to the specific aspect at issue to live through the present moment. Awareness so specified obviously fulfills the condition by which we introduced the term ‘primitive awareness’: awareness of having the experiential property P cannot possibly lack in a subject who has property P since, by the nature of what it is to have property P, to have property P and to be aware of having it are one and the same thing. Some will say that to use ‘awareness’ for what I described as primitive awareness is to miss‐use the term. Awareness of having a property, they will insist, is a cognitive achievement to be distinguished from just living through a moment in which one instantiates the relevant property. In response to this I would say that this is true of usual properties such as living in a certain town or being 30 years old. There is no sense in which we are necessarily aware of having such usual properties just by having them. But, interestingly, or so I would like to add, this is different for experiential properties. They are characterized by the fact that one cannot have them without being aware of having them in a sense which is quite easy to grasp. It should be possible to agree that ‐ contrary to any other properties – instantiating an experiential property is for the subject to be immediately aware of having it just by the subject’s most direct awareness of how it is for it to live through the present moment. This is a way to formulate the substantial point at issue which is, I take it, when correctly understood, hard to deny. Whether or not one likes the use of the term “awareness” in that context is perhaps of minor importance. But there is reason to use that terminology. First, it is difficult to see how this intuition could be expressed in a different manner. Second, it is in line with common usage: philosophers who share and defend the intuition that having experiential properties necessarily involves being aware of having them can be best understood, as just argued, as really having in mind ‐ even though they would not themselves put it that way ‐ what has been called here primitive awareness. 7. Pre‐reflective self‐awareness Let us now turn to a different issue: does having experiential properties necessarily involve some kind of awareness of oneself? Is it the case that every subject is in some sense necessarily aware of itself while it undergoes an experience? If there is such self‐awareness which is necessarily included in having an experiential property, then it does not involve any reflection upon the experience and it 13 does not involve any conceptualization of oneself since neither of the two is required for having an experiential property. Therefore, if having an experiential property necessarily implies some kind of awareness of oneself, then that awareness must be non‐reflective and non‐conceptual. It is plausible to assume that any kind of reflective awareness of ourselves and any concept we may form of ourselves as experiencing subjects is based on that kind of self‐awareness. This motivates calling the kind of awareness here at issue pre‐reflective and pre‐conceptual. I will not defend the general claim that all experiential properties are such that having them necessarily involves being aware of oneself in the relevant manner. I will rather restrict the claim to a subclass of experiential properties. Usual experiential properties are such that having them is to be presented with something. In other words: having them is to be involved in an event exhibiting basic intentionality. I will call those experiential properties p‐experiential properties (“p” is taken from “presented”).10 The phenomenological claim I would like to defend is this: being presented with something necessarily involves being pre‐reflectively and pre‐conceptually aware of being the subject to whom something is presented. Let us reconsider at this point the example at the beginning of this paper: When Antonietta sees the birds flying above the lake she is aware of being presented with that visual scenery. She is thereby aware, as one may put it, of being in the subject position of an event exhibiting basic intentionality. Being aware of being in the subject position of an event with that structure does not involve conceptualizing that event as having such a structure; it does not involve conceptualizing oneself as being in the subject position of such a structure; it does not involve conceptualizing oneself as being a subject. However, seeing the birds flying above the see does involve that one is – in a certain weak non‐conceptual and non‐reflective way ‐ aware of being the one to whom that scenery is presented. According to the view here proposed, pre‐reflective self‐awareness is an awareness of oneself as an experiencing subject. Why this description is adequate will be explained in some detail in later sections of the present paper. But one reason can already be given here: by their nature experiencing subjects are capable of being experientially presented with something. Therefore, to be aware of one‐self as being in the subject position of basic intentionality is to be aware in a non‐conceptual manner of something that partially constitutes what it is to be an experiencing subject. Saying that in pre‐reflective self‐awareness we are aware of ourselves as (experiencing) subjects is a way to express 10 I am leaving it open here if every case in which an object is given to a subject in an experience which exhibits basic intentionality is a case of phenomenal presence. Perhaps one should take phenomenal presence as a sub‐kind of a relevant more general kind of being presented to someone. ‐ Not all experiential properties are p‐experiential properties. There is at least one exception: being aware of oneself in the way here at issue is an experiential property since being in that way aware of oneself is part of what it is like to experience. But, that kind of awareness does not exhibit basic intentionality. 14 the idea that such self‐awareness involves awareness of one’s own nature as an experiencing being. In section 12 I will further explain how this use of ‘as a subject’ is different but yet related to the way this locution is commonly used in similar contexts. As just noted, adding that the relevant kind of awareness is an awareness of oneself ‘as a subject’ is not meant to simply deny that we are aware of ourselves in such cases ‘as an object’. But it is part of the view here developed that pre‐reflective self‐awareness is non‐objectual as many philosophers have pointed out.11 When a subject instantiates a p‐experiential property, then it is aware of being in the subject position of basic intentionality. But being so aware of oneself (as the one in the subject position) does not involve being in any way presented to oneself, or so it seems to me important to note. Metaphorically speaking one might express what it is for that awareness to be non‐objectual in the following manner: the subject is aware of itself in a way which does not involve its occurrence in its own stream of consciousness. In other words: pre‐reflective self‐awareness does not exhibit basic intentionality. ‐ To say of such self‐awareness that it is non‐objectual may however be easily misunderstood and such a misunderstanding may invite two objections which are discussed in the next section. 8. The subject as an object of pre‐reflective self‐awareness – answering two objections Both objections that I am going to address start with the correct observation that to describe an item of awareness by the phrase “S is aware of having property P” commits one to accepting that the awareness so described is veridical if and only if S has property P. They both presuppose, furthermore, a plausible account of what it is for an item of awareness to have a certain thing X as its object which may be put, roughly, as follows: a given item of awareness has X as its object if and only if its veridicality depends (in the canonical manner) on the properties of X. It follows that a subject’s S primitive awareness of having a certain experiential property P is an item of awareness which has the subject itself, S, as its object since the veridicality of that item of awareness depends on whether or not S actually has property P. Two problems for the view here proposed may appear to follow from this result. The first problem can be put like this: If a person S is primitively aware of being visually presented with a patch of blue then this item of awareness is veridical if and only if S is actually, at that moment, visually presented with a patch of blue. Using the above explicated plausible assumptions it 11 It is one thing to say that the experience itself is not an object for the subject in having the experience and quite another to say that the subject is not an object of the experience (or is not given to the subject undergoing the experience). Non‐ objectual views of self‐consciousness usually can be understood as claiming both (see for references end of footnote 9). These two issues are clearly distinguished and discussed separately in Siewert [2013]. 15 follows that the subject’s primitive awareness has the subject S itself as its object and that therefore the subject must be said to be aware of itself whenever it is primitively aware of having that particular (or any other) experiential property. Therefore, or so the objection continues, the claim proposed above (according to which primitive awareness of having an experiential property involves self‐awareness) is trivially true and does not add anything to the claim that having experiential properties involves being primitively aware of having them. The second problem is based on the same observation just argued for that a subject’s primitive awareness of having a given experiential property trivially implies that the subject is itself an object of that item of awareness. According to the second objection this result undermines the thesis that the subject is self‐aware in that case in a non‐objectual way. The subject is an object of its own self‐ awareness according to the argument given above. So how or in what sense can one insist that the kind of self‐awareness here at issue is nonetheless non‐objectual?12 My answer to the second objection is to distinguish between a phenomenological reading of “being an object of a given item of awareness” and a semantic reading of “being an object of an item of awareness”.13 The semantic reading of that locution is the one the two objections draw on and can be explicated, roughly, as follows: for an entity to be an object of a given item of awareness in the semantic sense is to figure in the veridicality conditions of that item of awareness: it is to be one of those things that must have certain features in order for the item of awareness to be veridical. On the other hand, the phenomenological sense of being an object of an item of awareness can be explicated saying that X is an object of an item of awareness if and only if that item of awareness exhibits basic intentionality with respect to X (in other words: X is presented to the subject in the relevant item of awareness). The second problem formulated above is resolved if one can plausibly deny that to be an object of an item of awareness in the semantic sense implies to be an object of that item of awareness in the phenomenological sense. A way to motivate such a denial is to point out that there is no reason in sight in favor of the contrary claim. The two ways of being an object of awareness are clearly distinct. At least an argument would therefore be required for the claim that to be an object of an item of awareness in the semantic sense implies being an object of an item of awareness in the phenomenological sense. Furthermore, counterexamples to the relevant claim are quite easy to find. Consider for instance Lilly, a small dog, who seems to see a big and dangerous dog 12 The first objection is the way I now understand the worry formulated by Franz Knappick in october 2015 after my talk at the institute Jean Nicod in Paris. The second objection is how I interpret Charles Siewert when he critized my view on the same occasion and a few weeks later in London at a small conference organized by Mark Textor at King’s college. I would like to thank both philosophers for having helped me to see how the view here proposed must be further clarified. 13 To call this account the ‘semantic sense’ suggests itself since it is in line with a natural and common understanding of what it is for an expression occurring in a sentence to refer to a given object. 16 approaching. Lilly is an object of her perceptual state in the semantic sense since her perception is veridical if and only if a big and dangerous dog approaches Lilly. But Lilly is not perceptually aware of herself. Her perception exhibits basic intentionality with respect to the approaching dog (the big dog is presented to Lilly), but it does not exhibit basic intentionality with respect to Lilly. Lilly is not an object for Lilly in her perceptual experience in the phenomenological sense here at issue; her perception is non‐objectual with respect to Lilly. So being an object of an item of awareness in the semantic sense does not imply being an object of that same item of awareness in the phenomenological sense and the objection is thereby refuted. My answer to the first objection is similar. Let us introduce a semantic notion of self‐awareness: a subject is aware of itself in the semantic sense if it is an object of the relevant item of awareness in the semantic sense defined above. But the claim the objection is directed against does not involve the notion of self‐awareness in the semantic sense just defined. It is rather to be read as the stronger claim that we are self‐aware in a way which is manifest in the way it is like to live through the relevant moment. That phenomenological sense is still to be further described. Once that description will be developed it will be obvious that being an object of one’s own awareness in the semantic sense does not by itself imply that one is self‐aware in the phenomenologically manifest way here at issue. Also, we can use Lilly’s example to show that the implication does not hold. In her perception of the approaching dog, Lilly is self‐aware in the semantic sense. But this in itself does not give us any reason to suppose that Lilly’s perception of the approaching dog involves that she be aware of herself as an experiencing subject in the phenomenologically manifest way which I started to describe in the present section and which will be further developed later on (see sections 12. and 13.) 9. Basic intentionality and awareness of basic intentionality In order to avoid confusion one must clearly distinguish basic intentionality which is a metaphysical fact about the structure of experiences from awareness of basic intentionality which is a fact about the phenomenology of experience. It would be a mistake to suppose that basic intentionality is constituted by the subject’s awareness of basic intentionality. The view I propose is this: it is a metaphysical fact about experiences consisting in the instantiation of p‐experiential properties that they exhibit basic intentionality. And, on top of this, it is a phenomenological fact that the subject undergoing such an experience is pre‐reflectively aware of being the one to whom something is presented – in other words that the subject is aware of that metaphysical structure by being aware of being in its subject position. The metaphysical fact necessarily implies the phenomenological fact. 17 But the metaphysical fact is not constituted by the phenomenological fact, as some philosophers, or so it seems to me, tend to believe.14 There is thus an important disanalogy between the relation described earlier between having an experiential property and being primitively aware of having it on the one hand and the relation between basic intentionality and awareness of basic intentionality on the other. As argued before, to have an experiential property and to be primitively aware of having it is one and the same property. But basic intentionality and awareness of basic intentionality is not the same thing which means, to put it more precisely: for an event to exhibit basic intentionality does not consist in there being a subject who is aware of being in the subject position of that metaphysical structure. The metaphysical fact the subject is thereby pre‐reflectively aware of does not consist in the fact that the subject is aware of it. The metaphysical fact is rather the ‘content’ of that awareness (but we must recall that ‘content’ is to be understood here in a way which is compatible with the non‐objectual nature of pre‐reflective self‐awareness). Since the metaphysical fact is the content of the phenomenological fact we must try to develop a clear understanding of the former if we wish to understand the latter. In other words: We cannot hope to understand what it is to be aware of basic intentionality in the relevant sense without prior understanding of what it is for an event to exhibit basic intentionality. What can be said against someone who insists that basic intentionality is constituted by awareness of basic intentionality?15 More explicitly the view to address is this: it is the subject’s self‐awareness (as the one involved in the experience) which makes it the case that the experience exhibits basic intentionality. Can we make sense of this proposal? I don’t think we can. Suppose a subject S is presented with blueness. Let us call this experience E. In being presented with blueness the subject S is pre‐reflectively aware of being the one who is presented with blueness. To facilitate presentation let us introduce the following affirmations (E is the event consisting in S’s being presented with blueness): (1) E exhibits basic intentionality. (2) There is some subject s such that, in the event E, blueness is presented to s. (3) In undergoing E, S is pre‐reflectively aware of being the one who is presented with blueness. The view we must try to understand states that (1) is true in virtue of (3). Now (1) is true in virtue of (2). Therefore, there is only one way to argue that (1) is true in virtue of (3): it must be claimed that 14 For a revealing description of philosophical views which apparently include the mistake here described (or what I take to be a mistake) see Dan Zahavi [2005/2014]. 15 I would like to thank Davor Bodrozic for his helpful criticism of an earlier version of the argument in the present paragraph. 18 (2) is true in virtue of (3). That would mean: It is in virtue of the fact that the subject S is aware of itself as the one who is presented with blueness that there is a subject at all, involved in that event, who is presented with blueness. ‐ Can we make sense of that claim? I suggest that we cannot. It seems obvious that the subject’s awareness of itself as the one presented with blueness does not constitute the fact that there is someone who is presented with blueness; rather, the subject’s awareness of itself as someone presented with blueness presupposes that there is someone who has that property. 10. “Perspectives” Thoughts similar to those here expressed in terms of ‘basic intentionality’ and ‘pre‐reflective self‐ awareness’ are sometimes formulated saying that each of us has a ‘particular perspective on the world’ and that we are ‘aware of having such a perspective’.16 The metaphorical talk of perspectives may be interpreted in a way such that it is merely a different tool for pointing to the same double phenomenon (basic intentionality and awareness of being in the subject position of an event exhibiting basic intentionality). There is nothing to be said against that metaphorical locution if it is understood in this way. But one should avoid reading that metaphor as a reductive device, ‐ as sketching a way in which talk of basic intentionality and awareness thereof can be reduced to talking about perspectives in some non‐metaphorical sense. Basic intentionality and awareness of basic intentionality cannot be reduced to such talk about perspectives. It will suffice to briefly explain for visual perspectives why such a reduction is impossible. Proposal working with similar notions of ‘perspective’ would have to be treated analogously. When observing a bird looking at you while you are looking at the bird you are aware in a clear sense that you and the bird ‘have two different perspectives’. While interacting with a bird you are normally aware of the bird as viewing your shared environment from a spatial location which is different from the one you are located in and of the fact that, in virtue of this difference in location, you see things the bird cannot see and the bird sees things you cannot see. Being aware of the bird’s different visual perspective presupposes, as just stated and this is the crucial point, that you are aware of the bird as of ‘someone’ who sees its environment in a full sense of “seeing” which presupposes that there is subject ‘to whom’ things are experientially presented. It follows that being aware of the bird as having a certain visual perspective presupposes being aware of the bird as an experiencing subject. Being aware of the bird as having a certain perspective is thus not to be 16 A sophisticated version of this view which would need a more detailed response than can be developed in the present section can be found in Siewert [2013], 255‐257. 19 equated with being aware of it as an experiencing subject (as of an individual involved in events exhibiting basic intentionality). Similar observations apply to awareness of oneself as an experiencing subject. Being aware of oneself as experiencing the world from a certain perspective (which is surely part of visual phenomenology) presupposes, or so I would claim, being pre‐reflectively aware of being the one to whom the world is presented in a certain way. In short: being aware of one’s perspective presupposes pre‐reflective self‐awareness. But this can be doubted and I would need to argue for the claim just made. But suppose the claim is not true. The most plausible way to argue that pre‐ reflective self‐awareness is not required for being aware of one’s own perspective is to defend the view that the latter can occur without the former. The up‐shot is that there are two plausible views about how being aware of one’s perspective and pre‐reflective self‐awareness are related to one another: according to the first awareness of one’s perspective presupposes pre‐reflective self‐ awareness, according to the second awareness of one’s perspective can occur without pre‐reflective self‐awareness. In both cases it follows that pre‐reflective self‐awareness cannot be reduced to awareness of perspectives. 11. So‐called mine‐ness A number of contemporary philosophers agree with a lot of what I said so far about the phenomenology of experience but couch these observations in a different terminology. They talk of “mine‐ness” or “subjective character” of experiences to express some of the ideas that are here formulated in terms of primitive awareness and pre‐reflexive self‐awareness.17 The terms “mine‐ ness” and “subjective character” are used, or so it seems at a superficial level, as predicates serving to attribute a certain feature to experiences.18 This terminology strikes me as misleading. I will briefly explain why. In order to introduce the term subjective character it is sometimes stressed that experiences are, in some sense for someone. The point is usually expressed from the first person perspective along the following lines: when I am presented with a visual scenery that experience has a specific qualitative character determined, among other things, by the specific distribution of colors within my visual field. But that experience not only has a qualitative character it also has what one notices when one realizes that the scenery is there (in my case) for me or in your case for you. 17 I take this to apply, for instance, to Joe Levine [2006] and Uriah Kriegel [2009]. The terminology here criticized is part of what I call “the experience property framework” in my paper [2016] in which a detailed criticism of that framework is developed including a description of mistakes the framework invites about the relation between consciousness and self‐awareness. 18 20 So far a natural interpretation of so‐called for‐me‐mess or subjective character can be given in terms of basic intentionality: (R1) For an experience to have subjective character is for it to exhibit basic intentionality. This is the metaphysical interpretation of ‘subjective character’. Understood in this way the supposed ‘property of experiences’ called ‘subjective character’ or ‘mine‐ness’ is the property of having a specific metaphysical structure: the experience involves an experiencing subject to whom something is present. But proponents of subjective character typically say that subjective character of an experience is part of its phenomenal character.19 In other words, they take subjective character to be exhausted by how it is for the subject concerned to undergo it. Taking this assumption for granted we must look for a phenomenological interpretation of the locution which is of course readily at hand: (R2) For an experience to have subjective character means that the subject involved is pre‐ reflectively aware of its basic intentionality by being aware of being in the subject position of its subject‐object structure. Basic intentionality and awareness of basic intentionality are, however, at least conceptually distinct. So if I am right that both readings R1 and R2 are suggested by the way these terms are commonly used then there is reason to complain that “subjective character” and “mine‐ness” are commonly used in a systematically ambiguous manner. Now, to use a technical term in a systematically ambiguous manner is quite harmless if it is always clear from the context which of the two interpretations the author has in mind. However, if subjective character is (a) introduced and used in a way which invites reading it in the sense of R1 and if, at the same time, it is said that subjective character is part of phenomenal character, then the assumption that basic intentionality just is awareness of basic intentionality is incorporated into the conceptual framework so introduced. Two decisive reasons speak against using a technical language which incorporates that claim: first, the claim is – independently of its truth or falsity ‐ a substantial assumption and one should avoid using a language which incorporates substantial claims because using such a language does not allow one 19 The following citation taken from Uriah Kriegel [2012], p. 443 may serve as an example: “On my view, however, there is more to be said about phenomenal character – there is more structure to it than is typically recognized. In particular, I distinguish two components of the ‘bluish way it is like for me’ to have the experience: the bluish component, which I call qualitative character, and the for‐me component, which I call subjective character. To make a conceptual separation between qualitative and subjective character is not to imply that they can occur apart from one another. My view is that there are many determinate phenomenal characters – bluish‐for‐me‐ness, greenish‐for‐me‐ness, bitterish‐ for‐me‐ness, trumpet‐for‐me‐ness, etc. – and the determinable of all of them is for‐me‐ness as such. We grasp what subjective character is by fixing on what is common to all phenomenally conscious states, and grasp what qualitative character is by fixing on what varies among them.“ 21 anymore to address them. Second, according to the argument presented in section 9 the claim that basic intentionality and awareness of basic intentionality are one and the same is false. It follows that talking of “mine‐ness” and “subjective character” in the common way is to use a theoretical language which commits one to implicitly accepting a substantial false assumption.20 12. The classical ‘as object’ – ‘as subject’ distinction and the distinction here at issue The famous distinction between uses of the first person pronoun ‘as subject’ and ‘as object’ introduced by Wittgenstein and further developed, among others, by Shoemaker can be described, very roughly, as follows.21 The first person pronoun is used in a first person thought as subject, if the judgement is justified in a way which does not involve any self‐identification (any implicit de‐se‐ assumption on the side of the subject of being identical with a person specified in some other way); and the first person pronoun is used ‘as object’ in the contrary case. The distinction is sophisticated and can be made precise in various ways but these differences do not matter for my present purposes. I used similar locutions in the preceding paragraphs when I said that in pre‐reflective self‐ awareness (a) the subject is not given to itself as an object and that (b) it is given to itself as a subject or as an experiencing subject. I therefore should say how my uses of “as object” and “as subject” in the relevant context are related to the classical distinction expressed using those same words. In the present article the relevant locutions are used in order to express phenomenological observations concerning what it is like to undergo experiences and not – as these locutions are usually used – in order to distinguish first person judgements depending on their epistemic bases. But there are interconnections. Typical examples of judgements involving a use of the first person pronoun ‘as object’ are judgements based on perceptual experiences in which a person is aware of herself as an object in the relevant phenomenological sense. For instance, first person judgements based on seeing oneself in a mirror involve in their epistemic basis a self‐identification (I am the one I see in the mirror) and the perceptual experience is an awareness of oneself as object (the person is visually presented to herself). In order to get clear about the relation between the classical distinction and the way the relevant locutions are meant in this paper it is important to see the following difference between the former and the latter: the use of the first person pronoun ‘as subject’ is defined by its not being used ‘as 20 Talking of mine‐ness and subjective character understood as properties of experiences is part of what one may call the ‚experience property framework‘ which is criticized in detail in my paper [2016]. 21 Wittgenstein introduces the distinction in The Blue Book, p. 66‐67. Shoemaker [1968] proposes an influential more precise account by distinguishing between first person judgements which are immune to error through misidentification and first person judgments which do not have that special status. The phenomenon is further examined in Gareth Evans [1982], §§ 66, 7.2., 7.3. and 7.5. A careful analysis of the phenomenon and related important distinctions can be found in Jim Prior [1999]. For recent studies of the phenomenon compare Simon Prosser and François Récanati (eds.) [2014]. 22 object’. Contrary to this, for an item of awareness to be a case of being aware of oneself as a subject (as an experiencing subject) is not defined by its being a case of non‐objectual self‐awareness. This point has already been explained earlier (compare section 7). Nonetheless an interrelation can be found not only between the two locutions involving the words “as object” or “as an object” (as already explained) but also between uses of “I” ‘as subject’ in the traditional sense and awareness of oneself ‘as a subject’ in the relevant phenomenological sense. Typical cases of first person judgements using “I” ‘as subject’ of the form “I am F” are either self‐ attributions of experiential properties based on having the property F (as in the case of the judgement “I feel a pain” on the basis of feeling a pain) or self‐attributions of properties that are non‐ experiential but yet based on having a specific experiential property (as in the famous case “I have my legs crossed” on the basis of feeling the position of one’s legs via proprioception).22 Since those experiences involve pre‐reflective self‐awareness, these judgements can be said to be based on items of awareness of oneself ‘as an experiencing subject’. One might hope to develop a more systematic understanding of the relation between the two locutions by addressing the following question: can we explain our capacity to use “I” ‘as subject’ in such judgements on the basis of the phenomenological observation that we are pre‐reflectively aware of ourselves as an experiencing subject in experiences underlying those judgements? This is however a task to be left for a different occasion. 13. Self‐awareness based understanding of synchronic unity of consciousness We all have a general concept of an experiencing subject which is deeply incorporated into our cognitive architecture, ‐ into the way we think about ourselves and of others and into the way we perceive other conscious beings. This claim has been motivated in section 5. In section 7 the claim has been formulated and explained in a preliminary manner that pre‐reflective self‐awareness is awareness of one‐self as an experiencing subject. I would now like to address an issue already mentioned repeatedly but left open until now: how is the general concept we all have of an experiencing subject (our shared understanding of what it is to be an experiencing subject) based in pre‐reflective self‐awareness? Furthermore I would like to complete my answer to the question briefly addressed earlier: why is it adequate to say that pre‐reflective self‐awareness is a way of being aware of oneself as an experiencing subject? The basic ideas of what follows can be summarized like this: experiencing subjects are by their nature the kind of thing that can have experiential properties and this involves that (a) they ‘unite’ 22 Garreth Evans [1982], section 7.3. 23 simultaneous experiences and (b) they ‘unite’ subsequent experiences. How experiencing subjects are capable of doing so is something we are pre‐reflectively aware of in experience. On that basis we are capable to conceptualize what it is for a subject to ‘unite’ simultaneous and subsequent experiences. We thereby understand what being an experiencing subject essentially involves. But even before such conceptualization we are aware of ourselves as ‘uniting’ simultaneous and subsequent experiences. And if to unite simultaneous and subsequent experiences partially characterizes our own nature as experiencing beings, then this means that we are, in pre‐reflective self‐awareness, aware of ourselves as belonging to that particular ontological category; we are thus aware – in pre‐reflective self‐awareness – of ourselves as subjects in the following substantial sense: our own nature is present to us in such self‐awareness in a phenomenologically manifest way. I will now try to explain these ideas a little further. Let me start with the way in which we are pre‐reflectively aware of uniting simultaneous experiences. While you hear a bird’s voice, see a tree, feel the wind etc. you simultaneously instantiate various experiential properties. Now here is the phenomenological claim I would like to propose: not only are you in fact simultaneously having and primitively aware of having these various experiential properties, rather you are also aware of simultaneously having them. You are, in that sense, aware of being the one single individual who has those properties at once. This is one further way in which you are pre‐reflectively aware of yourself, ‐ not only as the one who is in the subject position of an event exhibiting basic intentionality (as pointed out earlier) but also as the one, the single one, who is in the subject position of a rich variety of such events simultaneously. Being pre‐reflectively aware of being the one single individual who has various experiential properties simultaneously is to be aware of what unites those experiences as belonging to one single subject. But such awareness is non‐conceptual and therefore does not yet include genuine understanding of what it is for experiences to be so united. However, on the basis of that omnipresent awareness of being the one single subject having various experiential properties at once such understanding can be developed and is in fact developed upon reflection. We all know, implicitly, even if we might not ever think about it in an explicit manner, what it is for a subject to have various experiential properties at once. This implicit understanding is based, I propose, on the way in which each of us is pre‐reflectively aware of simultaneously having various experiential properties in every moment of his or her conscious life. Now let us ask: what kind of understanding is this? In other words: what is it for experiences to be united in the relevant sense according to this understanding? Let us call that particular understanding of a subject of what unites experiences such 24 that the subject concerned is itself their common ‘bearer’ the “self‐awareness based conception” of the unity of one’s own experiences (or of synchronic unity in oneself). According to that self‐awareness based conception various experiences are united as belonging to oneself simply by the fact that the properties instantiated in those various experiences are all instantiated simultaneously by one and the same single subject, oneself. Furthermore, what it is to have various experiences simultaneously ‐ according to that understanding ‐ does not require and does not allow for any conceptual reduction. The subject understands what it is for itself to have various experiential properties at once without invoking any other relations causal or otherwise between instantiations of experiential properties. Furthermore ‐ and this is an important point to note ‐ that understanding purports to be nature revealing. Thinking of what it is for simultaneous experiences to be one’s own by thinking of having the relevant experiential properties simultaneously is to understand what makes them one’s own. This is at least how things appear to be. It seems obvious that one is able to understand, for instance, what makes it the case that an experience of a bird’s voice occurring at moment m and a simultaneous visual experience of a cloud are experiences which both belong to one‐self. It seems obvious that one simply has to think of oneself as simultaneously hearing a bird and seeing a cloud in order to understand what makes it the case that both experiences are one’s own. Let us call a notion or a conceptualization (of a property, a kind or a fact) conceptually simple if and only if it does not allow for conceptual reduction. And let us call a phenomenon (a property, a kind or a fact) ontologically simple if it does not allow for any ontological reduction. In what follows I will presuppose the following principle: if the conceptualization of a phenomenon is conceptually simple and if that conceptualization reveals the nature of the phenomenon so conceptualized, then the phenomenon so conceptualized is ontologically simple. Let us call the following view of what makes it the case that various simultaneous experiences are experiences of the same single subject the simple view: simultaneous experiences are experiences of one single subject in virtue of the fact that the properties instantiated in these experiences are simultaneously instantiated by one single subject and the latter fact cannot be further reduced to anything else. The simple view states that the fact that various simultaneous instantiations of experiential properties are instantiated by one and the same subject is ontologically irreducible. As noted before, the self‐awareness based conceptuali‐ zation of that fact is conceptually irreducible and it purports to be nature‐revealing. If it is in fact nature‐revealing then it follows, with the principle just stated, that the simple view (about what makes it the case that simultaneous experiences belong to the same subject) is correct. To be precise, it only follows that the simple view is correct when applied to those subjects who are capable of forming such a self‐awareness based conceptualization. It is quite obvious, however, that 25 the simple view is correct for all subjects if it is correct for the relevant subclass of conceptually sophisticated experiencing beings. An argument for this generalization will be developed below. So far we only considered the way in which each of us understands what it is for simultaneous experiences to be his or hers. The next step is to see how we understand for the case of other conscious beings (not identical to the thinker) what makes it the case that one of them is the single individual who instantiates various experiential properties at once. This understanding involves what I would like to call taking perspectives. Our natural understanding what it is for another conscious being to have various experiential properties at once is based on our understanding what it is for ourselves to have various experiential properties at once. We have no trouble thinking of another conscious being as having various experiential properties at once because we understand what it is to have various experiential properties at once on the basis of our own case. As pointed out before our conception of what it is for ourselves to have various experiential properties at once is conceptually simple. This feature carries over to our conception of what it is for others to have various experiential properties at once. The irreducibility is carried over to our thoughts about others because we use the conceptual resources acquired on the basis of pre‐reflective self‐ awareness to think about others. We understand what it is for Antonietta to feel the wind and to see the birds simultaneously by thinking of Antonietta as the one single individual who sees the birds and feels the wind at once. This thought about Antonietta cannot be conceptually reduced to any causal or other relations between the relevant instantiations of experiential properties. If we assume that this particular understanding of the fact that Antonietta is the bearer of both experiences is nature‐ revealing, then we arrive again (using the principle formulated in the preceding paragraph) at the result obtained earlier: The simple view about what makes it the case that simultaneous experiences belong to one single subject must be accepted. To summarize, we arrived at the following results so far: we have a self‐awareness based understanding of synchronic unity in our own case which is conceptually simple. If that understanding is nature revealing then the simple view is correct for those sophisticated being who can develop such understanding. Furthermore, by taking perspectives we also have a self‐awareness based understanding of synchronic unity in the case of all other conscious beings which is conceptually simple. If that understanding is nature revealing then the simple view is correct for all experiencing subjects. In order to turn this into an argument for the simple view about synchronic unity in all experiencing beings it remains to be shown that the conceptualization of synchronic unity in the case of others which is formed by taking perspectives is nature revealing. 26 The argument will be developed in two steps. First, it will be asked whether the conception each of us has of synchronic unity in his or her own case must be assumed to be nature revealing. The answer defended here will be positive. In a second step an argument will be developed for the following claim: one cannot accept a positive answer to that question and yet deny that the corresponding conception in thoughts about others, the conception involving taking perspectives, is nature revealing as well. Perhaps not much would have to be said about the first step. One might say that the point is so obvious (when properly understood) that one has difficulty to even understand what would have to be the case for its denial to be true. A sufficiently sophisticated person understands what it is for him or her to have various experiential properties at once by thinking of him‐ or herself as having various such properties at once in the particular first‐personal way here at issue which is based on pre‐ reflective self‐awareness as described above. An argument for the claim that this self‐awareness understanding of one’s own synchronic unity is not nature revealing could take the following form: in reality the fact that two simultaneous experiences are both yours consists in the fact that they are both part of a complex network of mental events which are causally connected in a way to be specified. You do not conceptualize synchronic unity in your own case in causal terms but it nonetheless consists in such causal facts. Now let us suppose this was true. It would follow not only that you have no full or complete understanding of what synchronic unity in your own case consists in which would perhaps be an acceptable result. Rather, it would follow that you have no understanding what‐so‐ever of what makes it the case that two simultaneous experiences are both yours. You do not grasp any causal relation between events when you think of two simultaneous experiences as both yours in the self‐awareness based manner. If synchronic unity in your case consists in causal relations then it follows that your self‐awareness based understanding of what it is for you to have various experiential properties at once does not include any understanding at all of what it is for you to have various experiential properties at once. This result, I suggest, is unacceptable.23 So let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that the following claim is established: the self‐ awareness based understanding of synchronic unity is nature‐revealing for one’s own case. Could it still be the case that by taking perspectives we do not acquire a nature revealing understanding of synchronic unity in others? In other words: could it be that you understand what it is for you to have 23 Expressed in the terminology introduced in Filipp Goff [2011] this would mean that we only have an ‘opaque concept’ of synchronic unity of consciousness, a concept which provides no understanding (not even any partial understanding) of what it is for two simultaneous experiences to involve the same subject. The argument here sketched is closely related to the arguments against property dualism developed in my paper [2007] and in Filip Goff [2011]. All these arguments work with assumptions about our access to the nature of a specific phenomenon where we have that access on the basis of the way we are aware of our own experience. An analysis of the commonalities and differences must be left to a different occasion. 27 certain experiential properties simultaneously by thinking of yourself as having various experiential properties in the normal self‐awareness based manner and that yet you do not understand what it is for me to have various experiential properties simultaneously when you think of me by taking my perspective, that is, when you think of me as having various experiential properties at once in the very same manner? The answer, I will argue, must be negative. There are (at least) three ways to see this. First, one may note that you conceptualize my synchronic unity when you think it by taking perspectives in exactly the same manner in which I conceptualize my synchronic unity. Therefore, it cannot be that I thereby grasp what it is for me to have two experiences at once while you don’t. Second, one may introduce the following plausible assumption: if the simple view is true of my synchronic unity, then you can understand what synchronic unity consists in in my case by taking perspectives. Since we are presupposing that my self‐awareness based understanding of my own synchronic unity is nature revealing, we already have the further premise available that the simple view is true of my synchronic unity. It follows that your understanding of my synchronic unity by taking perspectives is nature revealing. Third one may introduce the following further plausible claim: to think of synchronic unity in others by taking perspectives is to accept them as belonging to the same fundamental kind of individuals oneself belongs to, to the kind of experiencing subjects. Since others are in fact of the same fundamental kind, thinking synchronic unity in them by taking perspectives should do duty to what they essentially are as members of that kind. It should be noted that the result of the above argument covers all cases of experiencing subjects. It is not restricted to human beings; it is not restricted to beings capable of reflection about their own synchronic unity. The being who takes perspectives with respect to another must have a considerably complex mental life. But nothing in what it conceptualizes when thinking synchronic unity for the case of another subject by taking perspectives in any way presupposes similar cognitive complexity in the conscious being which is thought about. Therefore, if thinking synchronic unity by taking perspectives is nature revealing when you think about me or I think about you, then it is also nature revealing if one of us thinks synchronic unity by taking perspectives in his or her thoughts about a dolphin, a raven, a snake or a fly provided that all of these animals are experiencing subjects. 14. Pre‐reflective self‐awareness and diachronic unity The problem about diachronic unity may be formulated as follows: what makes it the case that experiences occurring at different moments all belong to one and the same subject? In contemporary philosophy it is common to assume that the answer must be reductive: the fact that 28 experiences occurring at different moments all belong to one single subject consists in other facts, according to that common view, where those other facts are usually assumed to concern causal relations between experiences. A minority of philosophers argues for the non‐reductive or simple view: The fact that experiences occurring at different moments belong to one single subject consists in the simple and non‐reducible fact that the properties instantiated in those events are instantiated at different moments by one single subject. The simple view about diachronic unity leads to or underlies the simple view about transtemporal identity of conscious beings.24 According to the simple view about transtemporal identity of conscious beings, the fact that an earlier existing conscious individual A is identical with a later existing conscious individual B does not allow for any non‐circular analysis. The simple view can be described as based on two assumptions: (A1) Connection between transtemporal identity and diachronic unity If an experiencing subject A existing at an earlier moment and an experiencing subject B existing at a later moment are identical, then this is so in virtue of the fact that A’s earlier experiences and B’s later experiences belong to one and the same subject. (A2) Simple view about diachronic unity If experiences occurring at different moments belong to one and the same subject, then this fact is a simple fact which does not allow for any ontological reduction to other facts. The assumption A1 must not be misunderstood: it is of course not meant as an attempt to ontologically reduce transtemporal identity to other facts since this understanding would render A1 hopelessly circular. Accepting the background assumption A1 one can say that the simple view about transtemporal identity of conscious beings and the simple view about diachronic unity are just two formulations of one and the same philosophical view. An argument resembling the one developed in section 13 (in favor of the simple view about synchronic unity) can be developed in favor of the simple view about diachronic unity. There is no room to develop this argument here but let me briefly describe its structure: Premise 1: Self‐awareness based understanding of diachronic unity in one’s own case Each of us has a self‐awareness based understanding of how the world would have to be for him or her to be the one single subject who instantiates various experiential properties at different moments in time. Let us call this understanding the self‐awareness based understanding (or conceptualization) of diachronic unity in one’s own case. 24 The dispute between reductionists and non‐reductionists with respect to transtemporal personal identity (and thereby with respect to diachronic unity) is well‐documented in the collection edited by Georg Gasser & Matthias Stefan, [2012]. The issue is usually treated as a problem about identity of people or human beings. The material here sketched suggests that it should rather be treated as a problem about transtemporal identity of experiencing individuals in general. 29 Premise 2: Understanding of diachronic unity in one’s own case and the simple view If the self‐awareness based conceptualization of diachronic unity in one’s own case is nature revealing then the simple view applies to the diachronic unity of the subject concerned (to the subject who conceptualizes his or her own diachronic unity in that way). [P2 presupposes P1] Premise 3: Nature revealing conceptualization (with respect to one’s own case) The self‐awareness based conceptualization of diachronic unity in one’s own case is nature revealing. Consequence 1: Simple view restricted to a subclass of conscious beings The simple view is true for diachronic unity of every subject who conceptualizes his or her diachronic unity in the self‐awareness based manner. [From premise 2 and premise 3] Premise 4: Self‐awareness based understanding of diachronic unity in others Each of us has – by taking perspectives ‐ a self‐awareness based understanding of how the world would have to be for another conscious being to be the one single subject who instantiates various experiential properties at different moments in time. Premise 5: Understanding of diachronic unity in others and the simple view If the self‐awareness based conceptualization of diachronic unity in others is nature revealing then the simple view applies to the diachronic unity of all conscious beings. Consequence 2 (or premise 6): Relating the conceptualization of synchronic unity for one’s own case and that conceptualization for others with respect to the feature of being nature revealing If the self‐awareness based conceptualization of diachronic unity in one’s own case is nature revealing, then the self‐awareness based conceptualization of diachronic unity in others (the conceptualization formed by taking perspectives) is also nature revealing. [In close analogy to the argument in section 14, one may (a) argue for this claim on the basis of consequence 1 or (b) treat it as a further premise which can be motivated independently.] Consequence 3 (or consequence 2): Nature revealing conceptualization of synchronic unity in the case of others The self‐awareness based conceptualization (formed by taking perspectives) of diachronic unity in the case of others is nature revealing. [From consequence 2 (or premise 6) and premise 4] Consequence 4 (or consequence 3): Generalized simple view about diachronic unity The simple view about diachronic unity of all conscious beings is true. [From consequence 3 and premise 5] Each premise used in this argument as well as some of the transitions need to be carefully explained, elaborated and motivated which must, however, be left to other occasions. Hopefully the above summary will suffice the reader to get an intuitive grip of the reasoning and the intuitions leading to the following strong result: we all have an adequate, self‐awareness based understanding of what it is for a conscious being to exist across time. We should trust that this natural understanding is adequate to the nature of conscious beings and we should therefore adopt the simple view about what constitutes their transtemporal identity.25 25 The simply view about transtemporal identity of conscious beings has an analogon with respect to identity across possible worlds which states that there is no non‐circular way to describe what it takes for a conscious being to exist under 30 15. Concluding remark If the view presented in this paper can be defended then the ontological issue about the nature of conscious beings on the one hand and the phenomenological issue about the way in which we are aware of ourselves in experience turn out to be intimately related in a way which excludes their successful independent analysis. The phenomenological thesis that we are in everyday experience pre‐reflectively and pre‐conceptually aware of ourselves as experiencing subjects can only be explained in a clear manner by an account of what experiencing subjects are. On the other hand, ontological claims about the nature of experiencing subjects, their capacity to be in the subject position of an event exhibiting basic intentionality and their capacity to ground synchronic and diachronic unity, can only be understood and can only be convincingly motivated on the basis of phenomenological insights concerning the way in which we are in every moment of our conscious life pre‐reflective aware of ourselves as experiencing beings. References Brentano, F. (1874), “Psychologie von empirische Standpunkt”. Chisholm, R.M. (1969), “The observability of the self”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30, 7‐12. Evans, G. (1982), The varieties of reference, ed. by John Mc Dowell, Oxford University Press. Gasser, G. & Stefan, M. (eds.), Personal Identity. Complex or Simple?, Cambridge University Press. Gertler, B. (2012), “Conscious states as objects of awareness: on Uriah Kriegel, Subjective consciousness: a self‐representational theory.”, Philosophical Studies 159: 447‐455. Goff, F. (2011), 'A posteriori physicalists get our phenomenal concepts wrong,' Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 89: 2, 191‐209. Kriegel, U. (2009), Subjective Consciousness: a Self‐Representational Theory, Oxford University Press. Kriegel, U. (2012). “Précis of Subjective consciousness: a self‐representational theory.” Philosophical Studies 159 (3): 443‐445. Levine, J. (2006), “Conscious Awareness and Representation”, in Kenneth Williford & Uriah Kriegel, eds., Self‐representational Approaches to Consciousness, MIT Press: 173‐198. counterfactual circumstances. This view is developed in my paper [2012]. To complete the motivation and defense of this further claim an argument similar to the one sketched here for transtemporal identity would have to be developed which will be done in chapter 10 auf my book [forthcoming]). 31 Lycan, W. (2004), “The superiority of HOT to HOP”, In R. Gennaro (ed.), Higher Order Theories of Consciousness: an Anthology. Philadelphia: Benjaminis, 93‐114. Nida‐Rümelin, M. (2007), “Grasping phenomenal properties” In Torin Alter & Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford University Press, 307‐388. Nida‐Rümelin, M. (2011), "Phenomenal presence and perceptual awareness: a subjectivist account of perceptual openness to the world." Philosophical Issues 21.1, 352‐383. Nida‐Rümelin, M. (2012), “The non‐descriptive Nature of Conscious Individuals”, in Georg Gasser & Matthias Stefan (eds.), Personal Identity. Complex or Simple?, Cambridge University Press, *. Nida‐Rümelin, M. (2016), “The experience property framework – a misleading paradigm”, in Trends in philosophy of language and mind, special issue of Synthese edited by Hanoch Ben‐Yami, Robyen Carston and Markus Werning. Nida‐Rümelin, M. (in preparation), “Conscious Individuals. Sketch of a Theory”, Oxford University Press (under contract). Parfit, D. (1984), Reasons and Persons, Oxford University Press. Prior, J. (1999), “Immunity to error through mis‐identification”, Philosophical Topics 26 (1), 271‐304. Prosser, S. & Récanati, F., eds. (2014), Immunity to error through misidentification, Cambridge University Press. Rosenthal, D. (2002), “Explaining consciousness”, in D. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind. Classical and contemporary readings.”, Oxford University Press, 109‐131. Shoemaker, S. (1968), “Self‐reference and self‐awareness”, Journal of Philosophy 65 (19): 555‐567. Siewert, Ch. (2013), “Phenomenality and self‐awareness” in U. Kriegel (ed.), Phenomenal Intentionality, Oxford University Press, 235‐259. Wittgenstein, L. (1958), The Blue and Brown Books, New York: Oxford. Zahavi, D. (1999), “Self‐awareness and alterity. A phenomenological investigation”, Northwestern University Press. Zahavi, D. (2006), “Thinking about self‐consciousness: phenomenological perspectives.”, in U. Kriegel and A. Williford (eds.), Self‐representational Approaches to Consciousness, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 273‐295.