David Lewis's account of the de se has two parts. The first part involves treating the objects of the attitudes, not as propositions but as properties. The second part involves treating our attitude to these properties as that of self‐ascription. In particular, much recent literature has tried to incorporate his account simply by treating the objects of the attitudes as centered worlds, where a centered world is an ordered pair of a possible world together with a spatiotemporal location. The (...) explanation of the account in terms of centered worlds originates with Lewis himself, in his development of some comments from Quine. This chapter examines some of other potential costs of Lewis's approach, those that stem from the idea of primitive self‐ascription. Lewis's account of the de se is both more radical, and more unintuitive, than has been appreciated. (shrink)

There are two parts to Lewis's account of the de se. First there is the idea that the objects of de se thought (and, by extension of de dicto thought too) are properties, not propositions. This is the idea that is center-stage in Lewis's discussion. Second there is the idea that the relation that thinkers bear to these properties is that of self-ascription. It is crucial to LewisÕs account that this is understood as a fundamental, unanalyzable, notion: self-ascription of a (...) property is not ascription of a property to the self, on a par with ascription to someone else. This has been overlooked in much recent discussion, especially when Lewis's account is understood in terms of centered worlds. When it is back in focus it brings problems. An almost Cartesian starting point is required; and first-person plural ascriptions, and those with first person pronouns other than in subject position, become unmanageably complex. (shrink)

De se beliefs typically pose a problem for propositional theories of content. The Property Theory of content tries to overcome the problem of de se beliefs by taking properties to be the objects of our beliefs. I argue that the concept of self-ascription plays a crucial role in the Property Theory while being virtually unexplained. I then offer different possibilities of illuminating that concept and argue that the most common ones are either circular, question-begging, or epistemically problematic. Finally, I argue (...) that only a primitive understanding of self-ascription is viable. Self-ascription is the relation that subjects stand in with respect to the properties that they believe themselves to have. As such, self-ascription has to be primitive if it is supposed to do justice to the characteristic features of de se beliefs. (shrink)

David Lewis argues that believing something is self‐ascribing a property rather than holding true a proposition. But what is self‐ascription? Is it some new mysterious primitive? Is Lewis saying that every belief you have is about you? Several recent authors have suggested that, in the light of these questions, Lewis's theory should be rejected, despite its enormous influence. But this neglects the fact that Lewis makes two relevant proposals about belief: one about belief de se , another about (...) belief de re . It is the second that prompts these questions but the first that is central to his theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:69 HUME, DEMONSTRATIVES, AND SELF-ASCRIPTIONS OF IDENTITY I. In his A Treatise of Human Nature1(hereafter referred to as the Treatise and, for purposes of citation, abbreviated as 'T'), Hume says that "[T]he identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one..." (T 259) Although some commentators read this as tantamount to the claim that we can have no idea of a mind, this seems (...) too strong. To see what Hume is getting at, we need to return to the beginning of the section entitled "Of Personal Identity" where he says: There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. (T 251, my emphasis) "Unluckily", he continues, we do not have "any idea of self, after the manner it is here explain'd." (T 251, my emphasis) What this suggests, I think, is that it is only the idea of a simple, changeless mind that ought to be called fictitious. With respect to the question "What kind of an idea of mind à o we have?", Hume suggests what has come to be called the "Bundle Theory of Mind". According to the bundle theory, every object of awareness is an individual perception and "what we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations..." (T 207) In other words, Hume is saying that what we are aware of is a stream of perceptions, none of whose members is a perception of a simple, changeless mind. However, given Hume's account of (strict/perfect) identity, an acceptance of the bundle theory seems to entail the rejection of the 70 continuous existence of any mind. Put differently, if true the theory seems to require that the very idea of a mind continuous through time is a fiction. This raises the following problem which Hume must address: Since the ordinary (vulgar) person has a great propensity to ascribe identity through time to minds (T 253), then, from the point of view of a study of human nature, it is important to provide an answer to the question: "why do the vulgar have such a propensity?" Understanding Hume's answer to this question is, I believe, dependent upon the recognition that it is only the idea of a simple, changeless mind that Hume believes is fictitious. Once this is seen, it follows that the ascription of strict identity through time to a mind must, on Hume's account, be a result of the activity of the imagination (see T 209). As Hume says:...identity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions, and uniting them together; but is merely a quality, which we attribute to them, because of the union of their ideas in the imagination, when we reflect upon them (T 260). Although the qualities that unite ideas typically include causation, resemblance and contiguity, Hume excludes contiguity as a factor in the case of ascriptions of strict identity through time to minds (T 260) and restricts his attention to the relations of resemblance and causation. Of these two relations, a 2 number of commentators have found the relation of resemblance especially problematic. Accordingly, in what follows I will consider whether Hume's explanation of the role of resemblance is sufficient to account for and justify self-ascriptions of strict identity through time. Contrary to the judgement that Hume's explanation of the role of resemblance fails as an account of self-ascriptions of strict identity through time, I will suggest that by recognizing a primitive 71 theory of demonstrative content in Hume's explanation of the role of resemblance many of the problems that the explanation seems to give rise to can be avoided. II. I begin with Hume's description of the role of resemblance: To begin with resemblance; suppose we cou'd see clearly into the breast of another, and observe that succession of perceptions, which constitutes his mind or thinking principle, and suppose that he always preserves the memory of... (shrink)

In The Paradox of Self-Consciousness, Jose Luis Bermúdez presents an abductive argument for what he calls ‘the Symmetry Thesis’ about self-ascription: in order to have the ability to self-ascribe psychological predicates to oneself, one must be able to ascribe psychological predicates to other subjects like oneself. Bermúdez discusses joint engagement as a key phenomenon that underwrites his abductive argument for the Symmetry Thesis. He argues that the ability to self-ascribe is “constituted” by the intersubjective relations that are realized in joint (...) engagement. I will argue in §1 that although Bermúdez may be correct that these phenomena support the idea that pre-linguistic infants and non-linguistic animals possess primitive forms of self-consciousness, for conceptual reasons, his account of joint engagement cannot be used to argue for the Symmetry thesis. I will argue in §2 that while Bermúdez is correct that joint engagement is significant for the constitution of self-ascription, his description of that phenomenon is too robust, because it requires that the infant have a mental representation of the other as a psychological subject of perceptions. I argue that Bermúdez’s description requires an iteration of representations each of which requires a form of self-reference, which goes against Bermudez’s aim of avoiding the paradox of self-consciousness. In presenting his argument for the Symmetry thesis and his account of joint engagement, Bermúdez critiques P. F. Strawson’s argument for the Symmetry Thesis. In §3 of the paper, I turn to the positive project of presenting a constructive argument for the Symmetry thesis. In a variety of sources, P. F. Strawson and Gareth Evans present a transcendental argument for the Symmetry thesis. I suggest that an argument for the Symmetry thesis is available in Strawson’s notion of the primitiveness of the person. In §4, this leads to a corresponding account of joint engagement. Instead of the robust account of joint engagement presented by Bermúdez, I suggest that the infant perceives the mother’s acknowledgement of the infant without the capacity for self-reference that the Bermúdez’s iteration requires. I reconstruct an account of other-ascription in terms of what I call “person perception,” relying on a recent discussion of Strawson’s view by Axel Seemann (2008). On the Strawsonian account that I provide, an adult summons a child to recognize and acknowledge a form of life in which it participates as a person. In closing, I consider how my account of other-ascription differs from two classic accounts— the theory-theory and the simulation theory— and discuss how my account provides a genuine third alternative: the Persons theory. I would argue that the Persons theory offers a new approach to key issues in philosophy and psychology concerning self-consciousness and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to clarify the relation between epistemic feel- ings, mental action, and self-ascription. Acting mentally and/or thinking about one’s mental states are two possible outcomes of epistemic or metacognitive feelings. Our men- tal actions are often guided by our E-feelings, such as when we check what we just saw based on a feeling of visual uncertainty; but thought about our own perceptual states and capacities can also be triggered by the same E-feelings. The first (...) section of the pa- per presents Dokic’s argument for the insufficiency of the “ascent routine” to account for non-transparent cases of self-ascription, as well as his account of E-feelings. The second section then presents a two-level model of metacognition that builds on Dokic’s account and my own view of the issue. The two-level model links E-feelings to a min- dreading capacity in order to account for non-transparent self-ascriptions. Finally, the third section develops a deeper characterization of the relation among E-feelings, mental action, and self-ascription of mental states based on epistemic rules. In the context of self-knowledge, these remarks suggest the existence of means of forming self-ascriptions other than the ascent routine. (shrink)

Among recent theories of the nature of self-knowledge, the rationalistic view, according to which self-knowledge is not a cognitive achievement—perceptual or inferential—has been prominent. Upon this kind of view, however, self-knowledge becomes a bit of a mystery. Although the rationalistic conception is defended in this article, it is argued that it has to be supplemented by an account of the transparency of belief: the question whether to believe that P is settled when one asks oneself whether P.

This paper defends Lewis’ influential treatment of de se attitudes from recent criticism to the effect that a key explanatory notion—self-ascription—goes unexplained. It is shown that Lewis’ treatment can be reconstructed in a way which provides clear responses. This sheds light on the explanatory ambitions of those engaged in Lewis’ project.

An analysis of the first/third person asymmetry and in the light of Moore's paradox and Shoemaker's views on first person perspective.

Recent work in moral theory has seen the refinement of theories of moral standing, which increasingly recognize a position of intermediate standing between fully self-conscious entities and those which are merely conscious. Among the most sophisticated concepts now used to denote such intermediate standing is that of primitive self-consciousness, which has been used to more precisely elucidate the moral standing of human newborns. New research into the structure of the avian brain offers a revised view of the cognitive abilities (...) of birds. When this research is approached with a species-specific focus, it appears likely that one familiar species, the chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), also exhibits primitive self-consciousness. Given the likelihood that they are primitively self-consciousness, chickens warrant a degree of moral standing that falls short of that enjoyed by persons, but which exceeds the minimal standing of merely conscious entities. (shrink)

Many philosophers and a few psychologists think that we understand our own minds before we understand those of others. Most developmental psychologists think that children understand their own minds at about the same time they understand other minds, by using the same cognitive abilities. I disagree with both views. I think that children understand other minds before they understand their own. Their self-understanding depends on some cognitive abilities that develop later than, and independently of, the abilities involved in understanding other (...) minds. This is the general theme of this chapter. (shrink)

This paper examines the two leading simulation approaches to mental selfascription, Alvin Goldman’s introspectionist account and Robert Gordon’s nonintrospectionist, “ascent routine” account, with a view to determining their adequacy as accounts of our ordinary self-ascriptions of mental states.I begin by reviewing the features of everyday mental state ascriptions and argue that an adequate account of mental state attribution must be able to account for the salient features of those mental attributions we make by using the sentences of a language we (...) know (section 1). By way of introducing the simulation accounts, I outline the tenets of the ‘Theory’-Theory of mental state ascription and sketch the simulationists’ objections to it (section 2). The specific proposals of Alvin Goldman (section 3) and Robert Gordon to ascent routine simulation approach (section 4) are then examined in detail. I argue that both Goldman’s and Gordon’s approaches to mental self-ascription have serious shortcomings. However, the difficulties facing their respective positions suggest *investigating a third approach to the self-ascription of mental states. (shrink)

is tendentious. (Throughout this paper I shall refer to this claim as.

In the late preschool years children acquire a "theory of mind", the ability to ascribe intentional states, including beliefs, desires and intentions, to themselves and others. In this paper I trace how children's ability to ascribe intentions is derived from parental attempts to hold them responsible for their talk and action, that is, the attempt to have their behavior meet a normative standard or rule. Self-control is children's developing ability to take on or accept responsibility, that is, the ability to (...) ascribe intentions to themselves. This is achieved, I argue, when they possess the ability to hold an utterance or rule in mind in the form of a quoted expression, and second, when they grasp the causal relation between the rule and their action. The account of how children learn to ascribe intention to themselves and others will then be used to explore the larger question of the relations amongst language, intentional states and the ascription and avowal of those states. (shrink)

In Section 5 of his interesting article, Goldman suggests that the consideration of imaginary cases can be valuable in the analysis of our psychological concepts. In particular, he argues that we can imagine a system that is isomorphic to us under any functional description, but which lacks qualitative mental states, such as pains and color sensations. Whether or not such a being is empirically possible, it certainly seems to be logically possible, or conceptually coherent. Goldman argues from this possibility to (...) the conclusion that our concepts of qualitative mental states cannot be analyzed entirely in functional terms. (shrink)

Subjects suffering from extreme peripheral deafferentation can recruit vision to perform a significant range of basic physical actions with limbs they can’t proprioceptively feel. Self-ascriptions of deafferented action – just as deafferented action itself – fundamentally depend, therefore, on visual information of limb position and movement. But what’s the significance of this result for the concept of self patently at work in these self-ascriptions? In this paper, I argue that these cases show that bodily awareness grounding employment of the self-concept (...) in self-ascriptions of action can be fundamentally third-personal and concern a body that is not presented as one’s own, but as an object among others. (shrink)

According to Lynne Rudder Baker’s Practical Realism, we know that we have beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes independent of any scientific investigation. Propositional attitudes are an indispensable part of our everyday conception of the world and not in need of scientific validation. This paper asks what is the nature of the attitudes such that we may know them so well from a commonsense perspective. I argue for a self-ascriptivist view, on which we have propositional attitudes in virtue of ascribing (...) them to ourselves. On this view, propositional attitudes are derived representational states, deriving their contents and their attitude types from our self-ascriptions. (shrink)

Arguing that the times of scientistic criticism of psychoanalysis are past and that psychoanalysis is now open to new intellectual and scientific horizons, the article aims at showing how the recent developments of neurobiology, cognitive psychology, as well as new theories of therapeutic change in psychoanalysis support a reformulation of the psychoanalytic unconscious. The author defends that the obvious terminological confusion between the neurobiological and cognitive non-conscious on the one hand and the dynamic unconscious, on the other, require clear definitions (...) of differences and of commonalities. Furthermore, the author also develops the idea that the dimensions of awareness and of selfascription (avowal/disavowal) help to determine what is the core of the dynamic unconscious, even though the cognitive non-conscious and the psychoanalytic unconscious overlap to a great extent. The article shows, finally, how a new interdisciplinary consensus offers now a chance for us to recognize the shortcomings of a rationalistic philosophy of mind. /// Argumentando que os tempos de uma crítica da psicanálise a partir do cientismo já passaram e que a psicanálise está agora aberta a novos horizontes intelectuais e científicos, o artigo pretende mostrar até que ponto os desenvolvimentos mais recentes da neurobiologia, da psicologia cognitiva bem como das novas teorias da mudança terapêutica em psicanálise suportam uma reformulação do inconsciente psicanalítico. O autor defende que a óbvia confusão terminológica entre o não-consciente neurobiológico e cognitivo por um lado e o inconsciente dinâmico por outro requerem definições claras das diferenças e dos aspectos comuns. Além disso, o autor desenvolve também a ideia de que as dimensões de conhecimento e de auto-atribuição (reconhecimento/nãoreconhecimento) ajudam a determinar aquilo que constitui o cerne do inconsciente dinâmico, mesmo que o não-consciente cognitivo e o inconsciente psicanalítico se sobreponham em grande medida. O artigo mostra ainda, finalmente, até que ponto um novo consenso interdisciplinar nos oferece agora uma oportunidade para reconhecer as limitações do racionalismo emfilosofia da mente. (shrink)

I consider whether the self-ascription theory can succeed in providing a tenseless (B-theoretic) account of tensed belief and timely action. I evaluate an argument given by William Lane Craig for the conclusion that the self-ascription account of tensed belief entails a tensed theory (A-theory) of time. I claim that how one formulates the selfascription account of tensed belief depends upon whether one takes the subject of selfascription to be a momentary person-stage or an enduring person. I provide two different formulations (...) of the self-ascription account of tensed belief, one that is compatible with a perdurantist account of persons and the other that is compatible with an endurantist account of persons. I argue that a self-ascription account of tensed beliefs for enduring subjects most plausibly involves the self-ascription of relations rather than properties. I argue that whether one takes the subject of self-ascription to be a momentary personstage or an enduring person, the self-ascription theory provides a plausible B-theoretic account of how tensed belief and timely action are possible. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: What explains first-person authority? What explains the presumption that an utterance is true when it is a sincere intelligible determinate first-person singular simple present-tense ascription of intentional state? According to Rockney Jacobsen, self-ascriptions each enjoy a presumption of truth because they are systematically reliable. They are systematically reliable because they are typically both truth-assessable and expressive. Such self-ascriptions, if sincere, are certain to be true. This article presents a defence and a critique of Jacobsen's theory. It is argued that (...) the purported prevalence of expressive self-ascriptions is at best contingent. This contingency cannot explain why self-ascriptions are necessarily authoritative.RÉSUMÉ: Comment expliquer l'autorité de la première personne? Comment expliquer la présomption qu'un énoncé est vrai lorsque c'est une attribution d'un état intentionnel, sincère et intelligible, à la première personne du singulier de l'indicatif présent. Selon Rockney Jacobsen, les auto-attributions jouissent d'une présomption de vérité parce qu'elles sont systématiquement fiables. Elles sont systématiquement fiables parce qu'elles ont pour caractéristique d'être à la fois expressives et évaluables en termes de vérité. Si de telles auto-attributions sont sincères, elles sont certainement vraies. Cet article présente une défense et une critique de la théorie deJacobsen. L'auteur soutient que la prétendue prévalence des auto-attributions expressives est au mieux contingente. Cette contingence ne peut pas expliquer pourquoi il est nécessaire que les auto-attributions fassent autorité. (shrink)

In a nutshell, semantic antirealism is the doctrine that if a statement is true, then it must be possible, at least in principle, to determine that it is true. Consider the particular case of self-ascriptions of attitudes such as beliefs, desires and intentions, i.e. statements of the form "I φ [that] p", where φ ranges over propositional attitude verbs and p provides the content of whatever is φd by the self-ascriber. Should we be semantic antirealists about these when the putative (...) bearer of the attitude is the only individual who may retrieve a warrant in favour of his φing that p? We can't provide an answer to the question unless we're clear about (i) whether or not the "at least in principle" clause is too weak, and (ii) what the right construal of positive introspection should look like. 2 Thus two issues: strict finitism on the one hand and the phenomenological nature of introspective warrants on the other. I shall argue that recent views defended by Peacocke and Pryor are found wanting with respect to both. (shrink)

David Lewis’s property-centered account of belief falls prey to the problem of egocentric omniscience: In self-ascribing the property of being an eye doctor, an agent is thereby self-ascribing the property of being an oculist. It is argued that the problem of egocentric omniscience can be made palatable for Lewis’s property-centered account of belief, at least for the case of linguistic beliefs. Roughly, my solution is as follows: An agent can believe that he or she has the property of being an (...) eye doctor/oculist under the description ‘eye doctor’ without believing that he or she has this property under the description ‘oculist’. Believing that one has a property P under a description D involves the additional self-ascription of the propositional property of inhabiting a world with respect to which that description denotes the property P. This is not the same sort of solution as the one proposed for singular beliefs by Nathan Salmon. Unlike Salmon’s account, belief on the account I am defending is regarded as a two place-relation rather than a three-place relation. Since, on Lewis’s account, self-ascriptive belief subsumes de dicto belief, my solution also sheds light on the problem of logical omniscience. (shrink)

David Lewis’s property-centered account of belief falls prey to the problem of egocentric omniscience: In self-ascribing the property of being an eye doctor, an agent is thereby self-ascribing the property of being an oculist. It is argued that the problem of egocentric omniscience can be made palatable for Lewis’s property-centered account of belief, at least for the case of linguistic beliefs. Roughly, my solution is as follows: An agent can believe that he or she has the property of being an (...) eye doctor/oculist under the description ‘eye doctor’ without believing that he or she has this property under the description ‘oculist’. Believing that one has a property P under a description D involves the additional self-ascription of the propositional property of inhabiting a world with respect to which that description denotes the property P. This is not the same sort of solution as the one proposed for singular beliefs by Nathan Salmon. Unlike Salmon’s account, belief on the account I am defending is regarded as a two place-relation rather than a three-place relation. Since, on Lewis’s account, self-ascriptive belief subsumes de dicto belief, my solution also sheds light on the problem of logical omniscience. (shrink)

Myin, Erik (2000) Direct Self-Consciousness (2)Bermúdez, José Luis (2000) Concepts and the Priority Principle (10)Bermúdez, José Luis (2000) Circularity, "I"-Thoughts and the Linguistic Requirement for Concept Possession (11)Meeks, Roblin R. (2000) Withholding Immunity: Misidentification, Misrepresentation, and Autonomous Nonconceptual Proprioceptive First-Person Content (12)Newen, Albert (2001) Kinds of Self-Consciousness (13)Bermudez, Jose Luis (2000) Direct Self-Consciousness (4)Bermudez, Jose Luis (2000) Prelinguistic Self-Consciousness (5)Gallese, Vittorio (2000) The Brain and the Self: Reviewing the Neuroscientific Evidence (6)Bermudez, Jose Luis (2000) The Cognitive Neuroscience of Primitive (...) Self-Consciousness (7) [Currently Displayed]Robbins, Philip (2000) Paradox Twice Lost (8)Fuller, Gary and Slater, Carol W. (2000) "I"-Thoughts: Criteria, Constitution, and Concept Possession (9)Evans, Cedric Oliver (2000) Prelinguistic Self-Consciousness (3)Bermudez, Jose Luis and Polytechnique, CREA Ecole (1999) The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (representation and Mind) (1). (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to open the question of this pervasiveness of the moral by arguing for the impossibility of delimiting the moral in one specific case, that of psychological self-ascription. The first part presents two views of the relationship between nature and morality found in forms of scientific and relaxed naturalism. In the main part, I argue, first, that psychological self-ascriptions are in most cases not to be understood on the standard model of observation and descriptions, but (...) rather as expressions of thoughts and feelings already present for us. And in the second, I contend that psychological self-ascriptions therefore always involve elements of endorsement and responsibility, which means that they are ways of situating ourselves morally in relations to others. (shrink)

Self-ascriptions of thoughts and attitudes depend on a sense of the intentionality of one’s own mental states, which develops later than, and independently of, the sense of the intentionality of the thoughts and attitudes of others. This sense of the self-intentionality of one’s own mental states grows initially out of executive developments that enable one to simulate one’s own actions and perceptions, as genuine off-line thoughts, and to regulate such simulations.

Collective Identity, Oppression, and the Right to Self-Ascription argues that groups have an irreducibly collective right to determine the meaning of their shared group identity, and that such a right is especially important for historically oppressed groups. It provides a novel approach to issues of identity politics, group rights, and racial identity, one which combines and develops the insights of contemporary critical theory and race theory, and will thus be of special interest to scholars in these fields.

Neo-expressivism is the view that avowals—first-personal, present tense self-ascriptions of mental states—ordinarily express the very mental states that they semantically represent, such that they carry a strong presumption of truth and are immune to requests for epistemic support. Peter Langland-Hassan (2015. “Self-Knowledge and Imagination.” Philosophical Explorations 18 (2): 226–245) has argued that Neo-expressivism cannot accommodate avowals of one’s imaginings. In this short paper I argue that Neo-expressivism can, in fact, accommodate them.

The ‘self’ is increasingly used as a variable in cognitive experiments and correlated with activity in particular areas in the brain. At first glance, this seems to transform the self from an ephemeral theoretical entity to something concrete and measurable. However, the transformation is by no means unproblematic. We trace the development of two important experimental paradigms in the study of the self, self-face recognition and the adjective self ascription task. We show how the experimental instrumentalization has gone hand in (...) hand with a simplification of the self-concept, and how more conceptual and theoretical reflections on the structure, function and nature of self have either disappeared altogether or receded into the background. We argue that this development impedes and complicates the interdisciplinary study of self. (shrink)

Angela Mendelovici’s book The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality is a paradigm-establishing monograph within the phenomenal intentionality research program. Mendelovici argues that extant theories of intentionality that do not appeal to consciousness are both empirically and metaphysically inadequate, and a coherent, consciousness-based alternative can adequately explain (or explain away) all alleged cases of intentionality. While I count myself a fellow traveler, I discuss four choice-points where Mendelovici has taken, I believe, the wrong fork. (1) The explanatory relation that holds between intentional (...) and phenomenal properties is not identity but realization. (2) The mechanism that generates derivatively representational states is not content self-ascription but neural re-wiring. (3) The source of semantic structure within phenomenal-intentional states is not external structure and/or second-order co-instantiation but primitive phenomenal ascription. (4) The mode of presence of contents within phenomenal-intentional states is not being part of a superficial characterization, but being monadically present as an intentional object. (shrink)

The paper is an attempt to understand Strawson’s notion of the first person in the context of his general theory of a person. More specifically it will relook into the idea that the concept of a person is ‘primitive’, and see how Strawson’s idea of primitiveness of the concept of a person can be extended to his notion of the first person. One way of cashing out the notion of primitiveness in the context of the first person is in (...) terms of the way the pronoun “I” functions in self ascription, like “I am feeling terrible”. As Strawson himself points out, ‘use of “I” is guaranteed against two kinds of failure to which the uses of some other definite referring expressions are sometimes exposed: it is guaranteed against lack of reference, and it is guaranteed against mistaken or incorrect reference.’ Does this way of understanding the primitiveness of first person work? If it does what kind of a notion of first person and authoritative self-knowledge may be derived from it? Another related issue that will be dealt with in the paper is how can one construe the relationship between the first person and the world on the one hand and the first person and ‘the other’ on the other hand within the Strawsonian framework. (shrink)