Bermudez (2002) - The Sources of Self-Consciousness

8/2/2019 Bermudez (2002) - The Sources of Self-Consciousness

1/22

The Sources of Self-Consciousness

Author(s): Jos Luis BermdezSource: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 102 (2002), pp. 87-107Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Aristotelian SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4545364 .

Accessed: 13/06/2011 12:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aristotelian. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The Aristotelian Society andBlackwell Publishing are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

extend access to Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=blackhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aristotelianhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4545364?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aristotelianhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aristotelianhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4545364?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aristotelianhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black


2/22

V*WTHE SOURCES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS1

by Jose Luis Bermu'dezABSTRACT Thispaper exploresthe relationbetweentwo waysof thinkingaboutthe sources of self-consciousness.We can think about the sources of self-con-sciousness eitherin geneticterms (as the originsor precursorsof self-consciousthoughts) or in epistemicterms (as the groundsof self-conscious udgements).Using ChristopherPeacocke's account of self-consciousjudgements in BeingKnownas a foil, this paperbringsout some important ways in which we needto drawupon the sources of self-consciousnessn the geneticsense for a properunderstandingof the sources of self-consciousnessn the epistemicsense.

IIn thinkingaboutthe sourcesof self-consciousness e need toseparateout two dimensions of the problem.There is, first, agenetic dimension. One might wonder about the origins of thecapacity to think full-fledgedself-consciousthoughts. That is tosay, one might be asking about where this capacity comes from.How does it emerge n the normal courseof humandevelopment?What are the genetic foundations on which it rests? Are theremore primitive types of first-personcontents from which full-fledgedself-consciousthoughts emerge?

The problem of the sources of self-consciousnesshas an epis-temic dimension as well as a geneticone. From the point of viewof ontogeny or phylogeny,when we ask about the sources of self-consciousness we arereally asking factualquestionsabout whereand when self-consciousnessemerges in an individual or in aspecies. When we ask about the sources of self-consciousnessfrom an epistemic point of view, however, the questions thatemergeare of a fundamentallydifferenttype. Herewe aretaking1. Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at a conference on Self-knowledgeheld at the University of Fribourg in November 2000, at the Institut Jean Nicod inParis, at the Philosophy Department of the University of Eastern Piedmont at Ver-celli in April 2001, and at the University of Glasgow in June 2001. I am grateful toaudiences at those occasions for very helpful discussion, and to Alan Millar and BrieGertler for written comments.*Meeting of the Aristotelian Society, held in Senate House, University of London,on Monday, 3rd December, 2001 at 4.15 p. m.


3/22

88 JOSE LUIS BERMUDEZ

the sources of self-consciousnessto be the grounds of self-con-sciousness. Whatwe want to know are the reasons for whichself-conscious judgements and utterances are made. The questionsthat arise here include the following. How are suchjudgementsjustified?In virtue of what do they count as knowledge?In whatsenses are the differenttypes of self-consciousjudgements epis-temically privileged?What role do self-consciousnessudgementsplay in the cognitive economy?My interest in this paper is with the role that the geneticdimension of self-consciousnessplays in understanding he epis-temology of self-consciousness.I will take as my foil a recentaccount of some key features of the epistemic dimension of aparticular ype of self-conscious udgement-the account offeredby ChristopherPeacockein his recent book BeingKnown Peac-ocke 1999). Working through some of the consequences andimplicationsof Peacocke's account willbringout importantwaysin which we need to drawupon the sources of self-consciousnessin the genetic sense for a proper understandingof the sources ofself-consciousness n the epistemicsense.

IITwo questions stand at the fore when we think about the epis-temic groundsof full-fledgedself-conscious udgements.The firstquestion is: what are the groundson which suchjudgementsaremade? The second questionsis: in virtue of what can suchjudge-mentsqualify as knowledge?Clearly,answersto the second ques-tion will depend cruciallyon answers to the first. It is difficult,unless one leans towards the most extreme variety of epistemo-logical externalism,to separate a judgement's status as knowl-edge from the groundson which it is made.Peacocke distinguishes two different types of self-consciousjudgementsaccordingto their grounds. The first category com-priseswhat he terms representation-dependentirst-person udge-ments (I am slightly modifying his terminology and willhenceforth use 'representation-dependent' o abbreviate 'rep-resentation-dependent irst-person'). These judgements involvetaking a first-personrepresentationalcontent at face value andforminga correspondingbelief.So, for example,if I am enjoyinga visual state with the content that I am in front of the cathedral


4/22

THESOURCESOF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 89and, in virtueof that visual state, judge that I am in front of thecathedral,my judgementis representation-dependent.

The second category of full-fledgedself-consciousjudgementsare representation-independent.hese judgements are not madeby taking a first-personrepresentationalcontent at face value.Here are the examplesthat Peacocke himselfgives:I am thinkingabout Pythagoras' Theorem.I see a phone on the table.I rememberattendingthe birthday party.I remember hat Russell was born in 1872.I am beginningto dream.I fear that the motion will not be carried.

The idea that there is a fundamental difference between thesetwo types of judgement is really quite plausible. Judgements nthe firstcategory, those which are representation-dependent, rederived from correspondingfirst-personcontents in a way thatjudgements in the second category (those which are represen-tation-independent)quite simply are not. When I think aboutPythagoras'theorem, for example, the content of my thought isthe relation that holds between the lengths of the sides of right-angled triangles.The fact that I am thinking about that relationis not in any sensepartof the thought. So, the ensuing udgementthat I am thinking about Pythagoras'theorem is ampliative.Incontrast, when I look at the cathedral in front of me there is asense in which the fact that I am in front of the cathedral s partof what I see. What is seen is not just the cathedral,but ratherthe state of affairsof the cathedralstandingin certain specifiablespatial relations to me. So, the judgement is in some sense anendorsementof the content of my perception.Both representation-dependentand representation-indepen-dent thoughts involve ascribingcertainpropertiesto oneself, butthe properties are different in the two cases. Judgements thatare representation-independent re typically psychological self-ascriptions,whereas the propertiesattributedto oneself in rep-resentation-dependentudgementswill usuallynot be psychologi-cal. One would expect, therefore, that when these two thoughtsqualify as knowledge there will be different account of whatmakes this the case.


5/22

90 JOSELUIS BERMUDEZAccording to Peacocke, representation-dependentself-con-scious thoughts qualify as knowledge when the following three

things hold:(a) The thinker is taking a first-personal representationalstate at face value.(b) That first-personrepresentational tate is true.(c) Certain relevant background informational conditionsconcerningthe properfunctioningof the faculty generat-ing the state in question are fulfilled.

The basic idea here, put more simply, is that I know that thecathedralis there in front of me if I see that there's a cathedralin front of me with all my perceptualsystems functioning as theyought to be and that perceptionleads to my judgementin a suit-ably non-inferentialway.Clearly, no account along these lines can be given for self-conscious judgements which are not representation-dependent.There is no way in which taking my occurrentthoughts aboutPythagoras' theorem at face value will justify my self-ascriptivejudgement that I am thinking about Pythagoras'theorem. Forrepresentation-independentudgementsPeacocke offers what hecalls the delta account.We can best get a gripboth on what it isand on why he calls it the delta account by looking at theexplanatory diagram he offers:conscious mental stateor event judgementof type v and contentp 'I v thatp'

co-consciousnessrelations

relation of relation ofownershipby reference

the subject

An appropriately ormedrepresentation-independentelf-ascrip-tion will alwaysbe a trueself-ascription althoughnot necessarily


6/22

THE SOURCES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 91

a true belief).2This is because the judgementthat, for example,I am thinking about Pythagoras' theorem is co-conscious withmy thought about Pythagoras'theorem,and hence the first-per-son elementin the self-ascriptionwill necessarilyreferto the veryindividual thinking the first-orderthought. But a belief can betrue without counting as knowledge. What makes a represen-tation-independent self-ascription knowledgeable? Peacocke'sanswerhere is essentially that it is an a priori truth that a rep-resentation-independent elf-ascriptionformed in the appropri-ate way will be true (with respect to its self-ascriptivecomponent-see note 2) because it is an a priori truth that anyoccurrenceof the first-person n thought will referto the thinkerof that thought. So, a representation-independent elief formedin the appropriateway will count as knowledge because it is apriori that it is true.

IIIThe key theoretical differencebetweenrepresentation-dependentjudgements and representation-independentudgements is thatthe formerbut not the latter involve takingat face value a rep-resentationalcontent in which the firstpersonfeatures.It is natu-ral to ask how we should understand hese firstperson contents.We have alreadyseenone exampleof a representation-dependentjudgement-namely, the judgement that I am in front of acathedralmade on the basis of a perceptionof the cathedral. Itis very clear that my perception of the cathedral does have animportantfirst-persondimension.An integralpart of what I seewhen I see the cathedral is that it stands in certain spatialrelations to me. But what is the relationbetween the content ofthe perceptualstate and the content of the self-ascriptionmadeon the basis of that perceptualstate?Peacocke himselfmaintainsa studiedneutralityhere:2. The distinction between true self-ascriptions and true beliefs emerges when thesubject self-ascribes a factive state. There is a sense in which I might truly form thejudgement that I remember that the storming of the Bastille took place in 1790,although of course I can't really remember that the storming of the Bastille tookplace in 1790, given that it took place on 14 July 1789.3. Again, we need to restrict the truth to the self-ascriptivecomponent. It is not thecase that all beliefs which are a priori true qualify as knowledge simply in virtue ofbeing a priori. Thanks to Brie Gertler on this and the preceding footnote.


7/22

92 JOSELUIS BERMUDEZWe can more generallyconsiderexamples in which the thinker'sreason for making his judgement 'I am F' is his being in somestate, other than a belief state, which representsa certaincontentC as correct.In the class of examplesI want to consider, the con-tent C may, but need not, be the same as the content 'I am F.'Some theoristsbelieve that perceptualstates have non-conceptualcontentswhichare distinct in kindfrom the contentswhichfeaturein beliefs. What I have to say is orthogonal to that issue. In theclass of exampleson whichI want to focus, it will be the case thatthe content C, even if it is distinct from the content 'I am F', isstill one which stands in an implicationalrelationto the content 'Iam F' (p. 264).

Thereare, as far as I can see, threepossiblepositions that mightbe adopted. The first position is that the content C just is theconceptualbelief content 'I am F'-that is to say, there is a unityof content between the perceptualstate and the self-ascription.The second position is that the content C is a first person non-conceptualcontent. Accordingto this second position the self isexplicitly represented n the content of the justifying perceptionin a way that underwrites,but somehow falls short of, the wayin which the self is represented n the content 'I am F.' The thirdposition is that content C is a non-conceptualcontent that hasno first person dimension. The self is not representedexplicitlyat all.Maintainingthe third option appearsto place pressureon thedistinction between representation-dependenceand represen-tation-independence.If the self is not representedat all in thejustifyingperceptualstate then it is hard to see how the content'I am F' can be reachedby taking the content of that state atface value. It would be much more like a case of representation-independence,where the thinkercapitaliseson the implicationalrelation between the justifying perception (e.g., the perceptionthat there is a telephone on the table) and the firstperson beliefformed on its basis (e.g., I am looking at a telephone). It looks,therefore,as if we do not have a choice betweenthe second andthird options. If we do not go with the first option then thesecond option is mandatory.But can we at least be neutral between the first and secondunderstandingsof the relationbetweenjustifyingperceptionandfirst-personbelief? Here matters are a little more complicated.


8/22

THESOURCESOF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 93According to the firstunderstanding, t will be remembered, hereis an identity of content between the targetperceptualstate andthe correspondingself-ascription.That is to say, the self is rep-resentedthe same way in the originalperceptionand in the self-ascription made on the basis of that perception. If the identityof content thesis is true then the self-ascriptiveudgementsimplyduplicates the content of the originalperception.The perceptualcontent is, roughly, I anmnfront of the cathedral.The self-ascrip-tivejudgementendorses that and is best representedas the prop-ositional attitude of belief being taken to the content I am infrontof the cathedral.The differencebetween the self-consciousjudgementand the perceptualstate on which it is basedis simplyat the level of force.The identity of content thesis has had, and continues to have,considerablecurrency n contemporaryphilosophyand mindandepistemology. It featuresmost conspicuously n the epistemicthe-ory of perception,accordingto which perceptionshould be ana-lysed in terms of the acquisition of dispositions to believe(Armstrong1968), but it is also maintainedby philosopherswhorejectthe epistemictheory. John McDowell is a case in point:

Suppose omeone s presentedwith an appearancehat it is rain-ing. It seemsunproblematichatif his experiences in a suitableway the upshotof thefact that it is raining henthe fact itselfcanmake t thecasethathe knowsthat it is raining.But thatseemsunproblematicrecisely ecause he contentof theappearancesthe contentof theknowledgeMcDowell,1982:213-214).The identity of content thesis is a consequence of McDowellsbrandof directrealism-it is becausewhat we believe is what wesee that what we know is available to us throughperception.The identityof content thesisraises an obvious question.Whathas happened to the familiardistinctionbetween the content ofbelief and the content of perception? f, as many authors(includ-ing of course Peacocke himself) have argued, there is a funda-mental difference between the content of perception and thecontent of belief (Peacocke 1992), then how can the content of abeliefmerelyduplicatethe content of a perception?We are famil-iar, for example, with the idea that propositionalattitudecontentis digital, while perceptualcontent is analogue. Why is this notenough to block the identity of content thesis?


9/22

94 JOSELUISBERMUDEZThe simple answeris that the analogue/digitaldistinctiondoesnot map precisely onto the perceptual/doxastic distinction.

Many theorists, once again including Peacocke, have proposedthat propositional attitude contents can contain elements thatare fundamentallyperceptual in form-what are often termedperceptual-demonstrative modes of presentation (Peacocke,1983, 1992).The examplewe areconsideringseemsclearlyto fallinto this category. The doxastic I am infront of the cathedral sbest viewed as containingthe relevant cathedral undera demon-strativemode of presentation.But adverting o perceptual-demonstrativeontentsin this waydoes not, I think, address the real worry with the identity ofcontent thesis. In essence, the problemis not to do with how thecathedral is represented,but rather with how the self is rep-resented.Whereasthere is a certainplausibility n suggestingthatthere is a single perceptual-demonstrativemode of presentationof the cathedral that can stand in the content both of perceptionand of belief, it is hard to see how anything comparableholdsfor the representationof the self in perception and perceptually-based beliefs. The self does not feature in perceptionin anythinglike the way in which it does in beliefs-even when the beliefs inquestion are perceptually-based.This conclusion follows, I think, from some basic reflectionson the natureof belief. I am takingthe content of belief to be anabstractobject, somethingthat can be believedby manydifferentpeople and that can be expressed in a declarativesentence. Itmust be possiblefor differentpeople, and indeed the samepersonat differenttimes, to take different attitudes to the same belief-content. Partly this is a matter of it being possible for you todisbelievesomethingthat I believe.Partlyit is a matter of it beingpossible for me to believe something that for you is merely anobject of hope or for me to come to believe that something isthe case whenpreviouslyI simplyfearedthat it might be the case.It's uncontroversial that any plausible general account of theobjects of belief must allow this to be the case. And this hascertainconsequences.Some of them are fairlyobvious. It cannotbe the case, for example,that I could believesomethingthat it islogically impossible for you to believe. But it also follows, andthis is slightly less obvious, that the content of belief must bedivorced from the grounds on which one might come to believe


10/22

THE SOURCESOF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 95that content on any particular occasion. Let's suppose, forexample, that I come to the true belief that I am in front of thecathedral because I see it in front of me, while at the same timeyou come to the erroneous belief that at that very moment I amnot in frontof the cathedralbecauseyou have been told by some-one whom you believeto be a good authorityon my movementsthat I am in fact in the museum. There is a single belief-contenthere which we are evaluating in different ways namely, thebelief-contentthat I am in front of the cathedral. And if we areto disagreeabout its truth-value then it cannot be the case thatwhat I believe is tied to, or in any way reflects, the fact that Iarrivedat the belief on the basis of perception-because if it wasthen it wouldn't be in conflict with your belief whichyou arrivedat on the basis of testimony.But if this is right then it cannot be the case that what I believeis what I see. What I believe, the content of my belief, must besomething that is independentof the particularform in whichmy being in front of the cathedral became manifest to me. As Ihave stressed,the fact that I am looking at the cathedralis partof what I see and the self is represented n perceptionas stand-ing in certainspecifiablerelationsto the cathedralassociatedwithmy physical location at the origin of a particularvisual array.But then this cannot be the way in which the self is representedin my belief that I am in front of the cathedral. Any such rep-resentationof the self would be too specificto featurein a suit-ably objectivebelief-content.

IVSo how is the self represented n belief? We can remain neutralon the question of whether the first-person concept should beanalysedas the sense of the first-personpronoun (as suggested,for example, in Evans 1982)while still noting that there are sig-nificant commonalities between the way in which the self ispicked out linguistically and the way in which it is representedin belief (and other propositional attitudes). The key to both thefirst-person pronoun and the first-person concept is the type/token distinction. The first-person pronoun is a linguistic typewhose meaning is exhausted by the rule specifying that anyappropriatelyutteredtoken of that type refersto its utterer.Simi-larly, the first-personconcept is a type which, when it is tokened


11/22

96 JOSELUISBERMUDEZin thought, plays a familiarlydistinctive functional role for thesubjectwho tokens it. Adequateaccounts of both the first-personpronoun and the first-personconcept, therefore, will have tooperateat two levels. One familiarway of doing this for the firstperson pronoun is to definethe linguisticmeaning (or character,as it is sometimescalled)of the firstpersonpronounas a functionfrom contexts to contents, where contents are functions frompossible worlds to the individual of the context (Kaplan, 1982:505-507). One would expect a structurallysimilar account tohold for the first-personconcept, so that the first-personconceptis that concept whose tokening generatesthoughts with a highlyspecific and irreduciblefunctional role for the subjectwho hasthem. In the case of both pronoun and concept, the account ispitchedat the level of the type rather than the token. The mean-ing of 'I' is located at the level of the function from contexts toindividuals,rather than at the level of the individualspicked outby particulartokenings of 'I'. So too is the nature of the firstpersonconcept fixed in a way that is independentof its tokeningin particular ndividuals.In light of this the differencebetween the representationof theself in perception and in thought becomes clear. Frege remarkedin 'The Thought' that 'everyone s presentedto himself in a spe-cial and primitiveway in which he is presented to no one else'(Frege, 1918: 12). Appearancessuggest that Frege was intendingthis peculiarperspectiveto be reflected at the level of thought,and his comments have usually been interpretedas applying tothe sense of the first-personpronoun. What I would like to sug-gest, however, is that Frege's pithy phrase applies quite accu-rately to the way in which the self is presented n perception, buthas no application at all to the way in which the self is rep-resented in the content of belief and other propositional atti-tudes. There is nothing perspectival about the first personconcept.This basic thoughtcan be motivatedfurtherby considering herange of representation-dependenthoughts available in othersensory modalities. I can come to the belief that I am near thechurchbecauseI hear the ringingof the nearbychurch-bells.Myauditoryperceptionhas a first-personcontent, namely,that I amnot far from the source of the sound. This is part of the contentof perception.It is not something that I infer from what I hear.


12/22

THESOURCESOF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 97So, the self must be represented n auditoryperception-and yetin a fundamentallydifferent mannerfrom the way in which it isrepresented n beliefs based upon auditoryperception.The sameholds withevenmore force for self-consciousbeliefsderivedfromsomatic proprioception. Somatic proprioception is a source offirst-personcontents.Nonetheless, the self does not featurein thecontent of somaticproprioception n anything ike theway it doesin the contents of beliefs based upon somatic proprioception.

VRepresentation-dependent udgements are judgements of theform 'I am F' that are made by takinga certain ustifyingpercep-tual content C at face value. There is nothing wrong with theidea of a content being taken at face value. It is quite clear thatwhen I form the belief that I am in front of the cathedral on thebasis of a perceptionof the cathedral n front of me I am takingmy experienceat face value. I am not, for example,making anysort of inference from my perception to the presence of thecathedral. The perceptionprovides an immediatereason for thebelief. But the question remainsof how best to understandthecontent that is taken at face value. We have rejectedthe identityof content thesis, according to which there is no difference incontent between the justifying perceptual state and the self-ascriptive belief which is formed on its basis. If the self isexplicitlyrepresented n perception then it cannot be representedthere in the sameway as it is in belief. Sincewe have also rejectedthe suggestion that there is no representationof the self in thecontent of thejustifyingperceptualstate, we are forcedto acceptthat representation-dependentudgements are grounded in aform of representationof the self that is essentiallynon-concep-tual. What this means, of course, is that an account is urgentlyneeded of the grounds of representation-dependentirst-personjudgements. We need an account of the first-persondimensionof the targetperceptual states.44. This is not a problem hat arisessimply for self-consciousudgementshat arerepresentation-dependent.tarisesalso foranimportantlass of representation-inde-pendentself-ascriptions. eacocke's ist of representation-independentirst-personjudgements ncludeautobiographicalmemories my self-ascribinghe memoryofattending he birthdayparty)and self-ascriptions f perceptionsmy self-ascribingtheperception f thephoneon thetable).Thesecondof these s quiteclearlyderivedfroma first-personontent.Whatmakes t truethat I see that the phone is on thetableis my occurrentperceptionof the phone on the table-and, as we'veseenat


13/22


Let me approach this at a tangent. There is a general issuehereabout the extent to whichperception s fully conceptual.Weare familiar with the idea that perceptionis concept-laden-thatthe content of perceptionfalls, as McDowell often puts it, withinthe space of reasons(McDowell 1994).We do not see objects ina neutral way, attending simplyto their geometric, sensory andkinematicpropertiesand then, on the basis of that neutralper-ception,work out how theyfit into our conceptual categorisationof the world.The conceptsarealreadybuilt into the way in whichwe perceive the world, although nobody has ever managed tomake veryclearhow this works.Nonetheless, to say that percep-tion is concept-ladenis not to deny that it has a non-conceptualdimension. In a sense it is completely obvious that perceptionmust have a non-conceptualcomponentbecause otherwisetherewould be no qualitativedifferencebetween the content of percep-tion and the content of propositionalattitudes.The criticalques-tion is not whetherperceptionhas a non-conceptualcontent, butwhether it has a non-conceptual representationalcontent-andseveralauthors have arguedpersuasively hat the non-conceptualcontent of experience is partially (and indeed perhaps com-pletely) representational.These authors, however, have focusedprimarilyon certainlimited aspects of the content of perception(see, e.g. Peacocke 1992,Ch. 3). They have stressed,for example,the way in which the content of perception is analogue ratherthan digital;the way in which it presentsdistancesin a unit-freemanner;and the way in which it supportsa fineness of grain thatis arguablyunavailable to conceptual thought.However, these three features of the content of perception donot by any means exhaust its non-conceptual representationalcontent. Thereis in the content of perception,I shall suggest, anontogeneticallyprimitiveform of representationof the self. Full-fledged self-consciousnessemerges,as I have stressedelsewhere(Bermu'dez 998), from a foundation of more primitive types ofsome length with the example of my seeing the cathedral, my occurrent seeing thatthe phone is on the table is a first-person content. The same holds for the thirdexample-my autobiographical memory of attending the birthday party (assuming,of course, that this memory is episodic). My episodic memory of attending the birth-day is a memory of my having attended the birthday party. In both these cases ofrepresentation-independent judgement we need to distinguish, just as we did in therepresentation-dependent case, between the way in which the self is represented inthe original perception or memory and the way in which it is represented in thedoxastic states formed on the basis of that target state.


14/22


self-awareness-in the propriospecificdimensionof exteroceptiveperception, in somatic proprioception, in the ability to locateoneself spatially within the world, in the self-representationimplicatedin primitive forms of social interaction. These primi-tive forms of self-consciousnessare priorto full-fledgedself-con-sciousnessin theorderof development-and indeed are necessaryconditions for the emergenceof full-fledged self-consciousness.This genetic story by no means entails, of course, that once full-fledged self-consciousness has been attained, these primitiveforms of self-consciousnesshave any further role to play in thecognitive economy. It could simplybe that theyjust drop out ofthe picture, rather like some of the basic perceptualexpectationsthat very young infants have about the behaviour of distalobjects.Yet, there is a fundamentaldisanalogybetween the perceptionof distal objects and the perceptionof the self in this respect.Itis plausibleto think that young infantsparsethe perceivedarrayinto object-likesegmentsthat obey certainbasic geometricalandkinematicprinciples.These have been studied at some length bydevelopmental psychologists. With the acquisition of conceptsand language,however,this way of perceivingthe world is over-ridden by the conceptual seeing-as that we have already brieflymentioned. Little if anything remains of the infant perceptualuniversein adult perception.But the perceptionof the self is notat all like that. The fundamentaldifferences n content betweenfirst-personrepresentational tates and first-personbeliefs basedon those states point us towards the persistenceof a fundamen-tally non-conceptualrepresentationof the self in ordinary per-ception. This provides the key to the way in which perceptualstates provide grounds for the representation-dependent irst-person judgements that are made by taking them at face value(althoughnot, as we have seen, by duplicatingthem).

VIThe best account of the non-conceptualrepresentationof the selfin visualperceptioncomes, I think, from J. J. Gibson'secologicalapproachto perceptionand I will simply brieflysketch some ofthe principalrespectsthat he has drawnto our attention in whichthe self is represented n visual perception(Gibson 1979).


15/22


Gibson stressescertainpeculiaritiesof the phenomenologyofthe field of vision. Notable among these is the fact that the fieldof vision is bounded. Vision revealsonly a portion of the worldto the perceiver at any given time (roughly half in the humancase, due to the frontal position of the eyes). The boundednessof the field of vision is partof what is seen, and the fieldof visionis bounded in a way quite unlike the way in which spaces arebounded within the fieldof vision. The self appears n perceptionas the boundaryof the visual field - a moveableboundarythatis responsiveto the will.The boundedness of the visual field is not the only way inwhich the self becomes manifest in visual perceptionaccordingto Gibson. The field of vision containsvariousbody-partswhichhide, or occlude,the environment.The nose is a particularlyobvi-ous example, so distinctively present in just about every visualexperience.The cheekbones, and perhapsthe eyebrows, occupya slightly less dominant position in the field of vision. And sotoo, to a still lesserextent,do the bodily extremities,hands, arms,feet and legs. They protrudeinto the field of vision from belowin a way that occludes the environment, and yet which differsfrom the way in which one non-bodily physical objectin the fieldof vision might occlude another. All objects, bodily and non-bodily, can presenta range of solid angles in the field of vision(where by a solid angle is meant an angle with its apex at the eyeand its base at some perceived object), and the size of thoseangles will vary accordingto the distanceof the object from thepoint of observation.The furtheraway the object is, the smallerthe angle will be. But the solid angles subtended by occludingbody-parts cannot be reduced below a certain minimum. Per-ceived body-parts are, according to Gibson, 'subjectiveobjects'in the content of visual perception.These self-specifying tructural nvariantsprovide only a frac-tion of the self-specifying nformation availablein visualpercep-tion. There are two more important types of self-specifyinginformation.The mass of constantlychangingvisual information generatedby the subject'smotion poses an immensechallengeto the per-ceptual systems. How can the visual experiences generatedbymotion be decodedso that subjectsperceivethat they aremovingthrough the world? Gibsons' notion of visual kinesthesis is his


16/22

THE SOURCESOF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 101

answer to this traditionalproblem.Whereasmany theorists haveassumed that motion perception can only be explained by thehypothesis of mechanisms which parse cues in the neutral sen-sations into information about movementand informationaboutstatic objects,the crucial idea behind visualkinesthesis s that thepatterns of flow in the optic arrayand the relationsbetween vari-ant and invariant features make availableinformation about themovementof the perceiver,as well as about the environment.As an exampleof such a visuallykinesthetic nvariant,considerthat the optical flow in any field of vision starts from a centre,that is itself stationary.This stationarycentrespecifiesthe pointthat is beingapproached,when the perceiver s moving. The aim-ing point of locomotion is at the vanishing point of optical flow.Striking experimentshave brought out the significanceof visualkinesthesis.In the so-called'moving-room'experiments,subjectsare placed on the solid floors of rooms whose walls and ceilingscan be made to glide over a solid and immoveablefloor. If exper-imental subjectsare prevented rom seeing theirfeet and the flooris hidden,then moving the walls backwardsand forwardson thesagittal plane creates in the subjects the illusion that they aremoving back and forth. This providesstrong supportfor the the-sis that the movement of the perceiver can be detected purelyvisually, since visual specificationof movement seems to be allthat is available.An evenmore striking llustrationemergeswhenyoung children are placed in the moving room, because theyactually sway and lose their balance.A further important form of self-specifying information isavailable to be picked up in the field of vision, accordingto thetheory of ecological optics. This is due to the direct perceptionof a class of higher-order nvariantswhich Gibson terms afford-ances. It is in the theory of affordances that we find the mostsustained development of the ecological view that the funda-mentals of perceptualexperienceare dictated by the organism'sneed to navigateand act in its environment,because the animaland the organismare complementary.Accordingto Gibson, thepossibilities which the environment affords are not learntthrough experience.Nor are they inferred.They are directly per-ceived as higher-order nvariants.And of course, the perceptionof affordances is a form of self-perception-or, at least, a wayin which self-specifying information is perceived. The whole


17/22

102 JOSELUISBERMUDEZnotion of an affordance is that of environmentalinformationabout ones own possibilitiesfor action and reaction.

VIIGibson's characterisationof the phenomenologyof visual per-ception offers importantinsights into how the self is representednon-conceptually n the content of perception.To return to ourearlier discussion of representation-dependentudgements, it isthe 'ecologicalself which features n the content of basicpercep-tual states and which provides the epistemic grounds for self-conscious judgements made on the basis of those perceptualstates.This bringsus to the second of the two questionsidentifiedat the beginning of section II. To understandthe epistemologyof full-fledged self-conscious judgements it is not enough tounderstandthe grounds on which those judgements are based.We need also to understandwhy, when those judgementscount

as knowledge, they should do so.It will be helpful to begin by examininghow representation-independent udgementsare grounded.Representation-indepen-dent judgementsare, in essence, self-ascriptionsof mental statesand it follows fromthe definitionof representation-independencethat the self-ascriptive omponentof the representation-indepen-dent judgement is not groundedin the content of the state thatthe subject self-ascribes. A representation-independentudge-ment is made when a subject makes the transition from p-ingthat p to the self-ascriptive udgement 'I am p-ing that p', butthere is nothing in the content p that correspondsto the first-person concept that appearsin the self-ascriptive udgement (inobvious contrast to representation-dependentudgements). Sohow does the subject make the transition?The simple answer isthat the transitionis availableto subjectswho have a basic mas-tery of what might be termed a simple theory of introspection(by analogy with the simpletheory of perceptionand action dis-cussedin Evans 1982 and Campbell 1994).In this case the simpletheoryof introspectionamounts to nothingmore than some levelof masteryof the a priori link betweenbeing awareof a thoughtand it being the case that one is thinkingit-which is, of course,the samea priori link that governs the status as knowledgeof theresulting representation-independentudgement (according to


18/22


Peacocke'sdelta account).5 What we see in this case is that thesubject'sreason for formingthe judgementis an appreciationofprecisely the factor that qualifies the judgement as knowledge.Let us describe epistemicsituations of this type as being canoni-cally internalist.In orderto see how representation-dependentudgementscanbe just as canonically internalist as representation-independentjudgements, we need to explore the relation between represen-tation-dependence,representation-independence nd the pheno-menon which Sydney Shoemakerhas described as immunitytoerrorrelativeto the firstperson pronoun. As Shoemakerputs it(with referenceto statementsrather thanjudgements):

To say that a statement 'a is p' is subject to error through mis-identificationrelativeto the term 'a' means that the following ispossible: the speaker knows some particularthing to be p, butmakesthe mistake of asserting'a is qp' ecause,and only because,he mistakenlythinks that the thing he knows to be p is what 'a'refers to (Shoemaker,1968:.7-8).

Immunityto errorthrough misidentificationrelativeto the firstperson pronoun (henceforthabbreviated to: immunity to errorthrough misidentification) s a property of judgements that arenot based upon an act of identificationof a particularobject asoneself. They are judgements that one has a certain propertybased upon groundssuch that knowing that something has thatproperty s ipsofacto to know that one has that propertyoneself.It is clear that representation-independentelf-ascriptionsareimmune to error.6 If I form the judgement that I am thinkingabout Pythagoras' theorem because I am aware of thinkingabout Pythagoras' theorem then that judgement is not basedupon an identification of myself as the author of the relevantthought. Rather,knowingthat thereis a thoughtabout Pythago-ras' theorem ust is knowingthat that thought is a thoughtwhichI am having. It is equally clear that representation-dependentthoughts share this feature of being immune to error throughmisidentification.If I form the judgement that I am in front of5. The simple theory of introspection might also contain such basic principles asthat, if one wants to find out whether one believes that p, the best way to proceed isto determine whether p is in fact the case.6. As Peacocke himself points out (Peacocke, 1999:270).


19/22

104 JOSELUIS BERMUDEZthe cathedral becauseI see the cathedral n front of me then thisis not because I form the belief that someone is in front of thecathedral and then identify that person as myself. Knowing onthe basis of perception in this way that someone is in front ofthe cathedral just is knowing that I myself am in front of thecathedral.The immunity to error through misidentification of first-person judgements is intimately linked with their status asknowledge, in virtue of the connection between immunity toerrorthrough misidentificationand the definingpropertyof thefirst-personconcept, namely, that of picking out the thinker ofany thought in which it features (in the appropriateway). In ajudgementof the form'I amF' whichis immune to errorthroughmisidentificationthe only possibility of error is with respect tothe predicative component. And hence, providedthat the infor-mation groundingthe predicativecomponent has been acquiredin an appropriate manner, one would expect the judgement tocount as knowledge.It is naturalto conclude, therefore,that anexplanationof the immunityto error of first-person udgementswill provide the key to explainingtheir status as knowledge.Nonetheless, representation-independent nd representation-dependent judgements secure their immunity to error throughmisidentification n fundamentallydifferentways. In the case ofrepresentation-independentudgements it is preciselythe featurewhich secures their status as knowledge that underwritestheirimmunity to error through misidentification-namely, the apriori link between being aware of a thought and its being thecase that one is thinking it. In the case of representation-depen-dentjudgements,on the other hand, immunityto errorthroughmisidentificationhas to be a function of the states on which theyare based. Let me offer the following conjecture.Representation-dependentjudgementsare immune to errorthroughmisidentifi-cation becausethey involve taking at face value first-personcon-tents which are themselves immune to error throughmisidentification.It is easy to see how this works in the case ofjudgements that are based on perceptual states, such as theexamplewe have been consideringof my forming the belief thatI am in front of the cathedral n virtue of seeing the cathedral nfront of me. When I see the cathedral n front of me I do not seethat the cathedral s in front of someone and then work out that


20/22

THESOURCESOF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 105I am that person. Seeingthat someoneis in front of the cathedraljust is seeing that I am in front of the cathedral.And, given this,it is hardly surprising that the resulting judgement is itselfimmune to errorthroughmisidentification. t is plausibleto con-jecture that a broadly similar account is true of other types ofrepresentation-dependentudgements(suchas those based on thedeliverancesof somatic proprioception,for example).7In a sense, however, this merely pushes the problem one stepfurther back. Representation-dependentudgementsare immuneto errorbecause they are groundedin first-personstates that arethemselves mmuneto errorthroughmisidentification.But in vir-tue of what are those first-personstatesimmune to errorthroughmisidentification? mmunityto errorthroughmisidentification sa formal property of representationalstates. We need to knowwhat is responsible for it. The answer, in brief (and at least asfar as visual perceptionis concerned),lies in the simplefact thatthe information about the self provided within the content ofvisual perceptionis such that it is manifest to the perceiverthatit could not be about any creature except the self. To return tothe earlierexample, the information that I have about my ownspatial position relativeto the cathedralcould not be informationabout anyoneelse'sspatial position relativeto the cathedral.Thisis because the body is manifest as the originatingpoint of percep-tion in such a way as to ensurethat the self-conscious udgementthat I am perceiving the cathedral is immune to error throughmisidentification.In order to get a better understanding of why this is thecase we need to revert to the insights into the phenomenologyof visual perception gleaned from Gibson. The self is presentedin perception as a distinctive and peculiar form of object invirtue of certain features of the content of visual perception.Some of these derive from the fact that the world is presentedto the perceiver largely in terms of the affordances it offers.Others arise from the features that lead Gibson to describeperceived body parts as subjective objects in the field of view-the fact, for example, that body parts can vary in perceived sizeonly within a limited range. The way in which the body appears7. For furtherdiscussion f theimmunityo errorofjudgements asedupon somaticproprioception,ee Evans 1982,Cassam1995andBermudez 998.


21/22

106 JOSELUISBERMUDEZ

as the frame and boundaryof the visual arrayis also extremelyimportant.The embodied self is the originating point of percep-tion in a much richersense than the camera ens is the originatingpoint of a photograph. The way in which the embodied selfappears in perception, therefore, reflectsthe immunity to errorof the relevant perceptualcontent and, by extension, that of theresulting belief content.None of these featuresof the content of visual perceptionaretransmitted o the content of self-conscious udgementsmade onthe basis of visual perception, but nonetheless they underwritethe status as knowledgeof those self-conscious udgements.Theydo this because they make it the case that the perceiver'sreasonfor forming the judgementincludes an appreciationof preciselythose factors that qualifies the judgement as knowledge. Theimmunity to error of representation-dependentudgements is afunctionof the fact that the bodily self is the origin of perception.The distinctiveway in which the bodily self is presented n visualperception ensures that this is manifest to the perceiver it ispart of what is perceived.This ensuresthat, to return to the ter-minology introduced earlier, epistemic situations leading to theformation of representation-dependentudgements are canoni-cally internalist.

VIIIBy way of conclusion, then, let me returnto the general issueswith which I began. As I mentioned at the beginning of thepaper, we can understand the sources of self-consciousnessintwo differentways-in an epistemic way, as the grounds of self-consciousness and in a genetic way, as the origins of self-con-sciousness.What I have tried to argueis that the sourcesof self-consciousnessin the geneticsense are ultimatelyalso the sources

of self-consciousness n the epistemicsense. The primitivefoun-dations from which self-consciousnessemerges in the course ofcognitive developmentare also the foundation for the epistemicstatus of full-fledgedself-consciousthoughts. My discussion hasbeen restricted o the relativelystraightforward xample of visualperceptionand the Gibsonian account of its first-personcontent.Obviouslya fullerdevelopmentof this generaltheme will requireextending the analysis to other types of first-person content. I


22/22

THE SOURCESOF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 107hope that I have done enough to make it seem that this is a taskworth undertaking.Departmentof PhilosophyUniversityof StirlingStirlingFK9 4LA

REFERENCESArmstrong,D. M. (1968)A Materialist Theoryof Mind,London:Routledge.Bermuidez, . L. (1998) The Paradox of Self-Consciousness,CambridgeMA:MIT Press.Campbell, J. (1994) Past, Space andSelf, CambridgeMA: MIT Press.Cassam, Q. (1995) 'Introspectionand Bodily Self-Ascription' n J. Bermudez,A. J. Marcel and N. Eilan (eds.), The Body and the Self. CambridgeMA:MIT Press.Evans, G. (1982) Varietiesof Reference,Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.Frege, G. (1918) 'Thoughts', n G. Frege, Logical Int)estigations,dited by P. T.Geach, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977.Gibson, J. J. (1979) TheEcologicalApproach o T'isual erception,Boston:Bos-ton Mifflin.Kaplan, D. (1989) 'Demonstratives', n J. Almog, J. Perry and H. Wettstein(eds.), Themesrom Kaplan,Oxford: OxfordUniversityPress.McDowell, J. (1982) 'Criteria,Defeasibility and Knowledge', Proceedingsof theBritishAcademy,68: 456-479.McDowell, J. (1994) Mind and World,Harvard:Harvard University Press.Peacocke, C. (1992) A Studyof Concepts,CambridgeMA: MIT Press.Peacocke, C. (1999) Being Known,Oxford: Oxford University Press.Shoemaker,S. (1968) 'Self-reference nd self-awareness',n The Journalof Phil-osophy65: 555-567. Page references o Shoemaker1984.Shoemaker,S. (1984) Identity,Causeand Mind, Cambridge:CambridgeUniver-sity Press.

Documents

Bermudez (2002) - The Sources of Self-Consciousness