Why Are Reflective Theories of Self-Consciousness Unconvincing? Some Remarks on Self-Consciousness and the Concept of the Self
Abstract
The goal of this paper is to present reflective and pre-reflective theories of self-consciousness and put forward arguments against the former. In the first part, I outline the basic features of both theories and work out the concept of mineness as a designation for a unique and invariant access of self-conscious subject to its own experiences from the first-person point of view.
Furthermore, I assert that the invariant mode of giveness or rather manifestation of experiences in the first-person perspective can serve as a basis for explaining the unified stream of our conscious life. I also show how advocates of the reflective theory of self-consciousness can successfully deal with the standard objection that their theory leads to an infinite regress.
In the second part, I put forward other arguments against this theory and try to construe the infinite regress argument in a different fashion. On the whole, I argue that problems of reflective theories of self-consciousness should lead us to the conclusion that the aim to reduce (self-)consciousness to relations between numerically different mental states is not promising and that we should prefer the pre-reflective theory of self-consciousness.