CONSCIOUSNESS

76 1. Philosophy
73 Consciousness and Its Selves: Subjectivity and the Autobiographical Ego
Kenneth Williford , David Rudrauf; Carissa Philippi (Philosophy,
The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX)
By ‘Self-Representationalism’ we mean the thesis that every stream or episode of consciousness
incorporates the awareness of that very stream or episode. This venerable model of
consciousness has natural explanatory implications that remain largely under appreciated. In
short, the model allows us to place the sense of subjectivity and the sense of personal identity
smoothly into the general naturalistic framework of contemporary neuroscience, and it allows
us to straighten out confusions about those senses that have led some neuroscientists to
dismiss what is, we believe, at the very core of consciousness. First, the model allows us to
escape implausible versions of the “no-subject” model of consciousness. There is always a
subject: the stream itself is the subject. Second, it allows us to escape homuncularist renderings
of that subject. There is no homunculus: the stream itself is enough. Third, the model
allows us to understand the emergence of the diachronic unity of the stream and the derivation
of the sense of personal identity. It is the same recurring structure of self-representation
that is retended and protended (in the Husserlian sense) at each moment in the stream. This
yields the sense of a single unified subject enduring over time; this sense of an enduring entity
is, however, a sort of illusion derived from the recurrence of a structure. This in turn leads
to the construction of a stable yet highly flexible model of oneself as an agent with a body,
a history, a context, and a future. Onto that rudimentary diachronic self are superimposed
accumulated memories, projects, and the knowledge of abiding dispositions. However, all
these memories, projections, etc. are less fundamental than the core, self-manifesting structure
and are evidently more susceptible to degradation and modification. We know this not only
because our sense of ourselves as characters in an autobiography changes gradually over time
in accordance with normal development but also because of radical changes brought on by
various pathologies, conversions, psychedelic experiences, affective revolutions, etc. At the
level of autobiographical cognition, our sense of personal identity indeed appears connected
to a quasi-narratival object, but the narrative theorists of self often confuse this autobiographical
self with the subjectivity of core consciousness, which is a basic mistake. This confusion
is also behind an important rift in contemporary neuroscientific approaches to consciousness.
Some (like Koch and Tononi) regard all forms of self-consciousness as derivative. Others
(like Damasio and Tranel) regard a minimal form of self-consciousness as essential. Our
model clarifies the different senses of ‘self’ at play here in a way that might go some way
toward ending this rift. Finally, our model can be naturally related to current neuroscientific
work on self-consciousness and, possibly, the Default Mode Network (DMN). DMN activity
has been associated with the processing of self-related information including autobiographical
memory retrieval. Some researchers suggest that beyond subserving self-relevant processing,
the DMN may be responsible for self-consciousness and our sense of self. We speculate
that it might undergird the recurrent structure of primitive self-representation at the core of
consciousness. C15
74 Self-Representation and Kant’s Transcendental Self-consciousness Jerry Yang
(Ellery Eells Memorial Center, National Taipei University of
Technology, Taipei, Taiwan-R.O.C. Taiwan)
The paper investigates whether Self-representationalism can be rooted in Kant’s theory
of consciousness. According to Self-representationalism, one’s mental state does not only
represent the world and the mental state, the content of which is about the world , it can also
represent one to oneself as the subject of that mental state. Brook recently (2006 & forthcoming)
suggests that Kant’s theory of consciousness, anchored in the conception of transcendental
apperception (TA), can provide an account of self -representing representations in
favor of Self-representationalism. The paper starts with a formulation of Brook’s account of
Kant’s theory of consciousness-Kant’s notion of the representational base of consciousness.
Afterwards, I shall present Strawson’s view expressed in Bounds of Sense, which implicitly
maintains that for Kant’s theory of consciousness to sustain, an empirical reference for each
subject of experience is required. Following Strawson’s steps, I point out that Kant’s account,