Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy
A Sense of Self
Duration: 2019 - 2021
Code: EIN2019-103297
Principal Investigator
Summary
Phenomenal consciousness and the features we are paradigmatically aware of when in a phenomenal conscious state, qualia, have been the object of philosophical scrutiny for several decades now in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science. Qualia are properties such as pains, orgasms, colors or tastes, which it is reasonable to think of as fully graspable only from the perspective of the conscious subject; features of experiences such that there is something it is like for a subject in virtue of having them. More recently, philosophers have turned to trying to characterize what is common to qualitative states as such, something that has been called ‘me-ishness’, ‘inner awareness’, ‘mineness’, ‘for-me-ness’, ‘pre-reflective self-awareness’, or simply ‘subjective character’. This was of course studied by the most influential philosophers with related terminology, including Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and Husserl and Sartre. As the names suggest, subjective character should make some contribution to the overall phenomenal character of a conscious state, and should in some way present the subject of that state; it is meant to be a phenomenal primitive self-presentation. The project aims to invoke a framework on singular representations in language and mind I have been elaborating over the past years, with the goal of clarifying the nature of subjective character thus understood. On the proposal to be developed, all conscious states involve non-representational, acquaintance real (as opposed to merely intentional) relations of their subject with instances of features they actually have, which allow de se, first-personal representations. In the most fundamental case, these are representations of the subject as embodied, as instantiating objective spatiotemporal features given by bodily sensations.
