Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Pre-reflective Situational Self

  • Published:
Topoi Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

It is often held that to have a conscious experience presupposes having some form of implicit self-awareness. The most dominant phenomenological view usually claims that we essentially perceive experiences as our own. This is the so called “mineness” character, or dimension of experience. According to  this view, mineness is not only essential to conscious experience, it also grounds the idea that pre-reflective self-awareness constitutes a minimal self. In this paper, we show that there are reasons to doubt this constituting role of mineness. We argue that there are alternative possibilities and that the necessity for an adequate theory of the self within psychopathology gives us good reasons to believe that we need a thicker notion of the pre-reflective self. To this end, we develop such a notion: the Pre-Reflective Situational Self. To do so, we will first show how alternative conceptions of pre-reflective self-awareness point to philosophical problems with the standard phenomenological view. We claim that this is mainly due to fact that within the phenomenological account the mineness aspect is implicitly playing several roles. Consequently, we argue that a thin interpretation of pre-reflective self-awareness—based on a thin notion of mineness—cannot do its needed job within, at least within psychopathology. This leads us to believe that a thicker conception of pre-reflective self is needed. We, therefore, develop the notion of the pre-reflective situational self by analyzing the dynamical nature of the relation between self-awareness and the world, specifically through our interactive inhabitation of the social world.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. This idea is, of course, also deeply embedded in the phenomenological tradition such as the work of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.

  2. Gallagher and Zahavi clarify these ideas in the following way: “experiences are characterized by a quality of mineness or for-me-ness, the fact that it is I who am having these experiences. All the experiences are given (at least tacitly) as my experiences, as experiences I am undergoing or living through. All of this suggests that first-person experience presents me with an immediate and non-observational access to myself, and that (phenomenal) consciousness consequently entails a (minimal) form of self-consciousness. In short, unless a mental process is pre-reflectively self-conscious there will be nothing it is like to undergo the process, and it therefore cannot be a phenomenally conscious process” (Gallagher and Zahavi 2015, §1).

  3. Nida-Rümelin (2014) herself calls her interpretation of mineness awareness of basic intentionality. In her 2014 paper, she adds two further interpretations of mineness, namely mineness as basic intentionality and primitive awareness. The former will be discussed in the context of the structure-awareness view. However, we will disregard the latter view here, since it is only loosely connected to the issue of the self and pre-reflective self-awareness.

  4. The important claim here is that phenomenology and metaphysics come apart. Nida-Rümelin (2014) thinks that the confusion in the discussion of mineness as pre-reflective self-awareness is that these concepts are often not disentangled. According to her, it is still possible that phenomenology may give us the right kind of access to metaphysical aspects of experience. One theory that runs both aspects together in the relevant way is the so called identification (Lewis 1995) or revelation thesis (Johnston 1992). This thesis claims that simply by having an experience E, I know, or am in the position to know, the essence of E. The truth of this thesis is highly controversial (Campbell 2009 ; Damnjanovic 2012; Lewis 1995; Lihoreau 2014; Stoljar 2009).

  5. Thanks to a reviewer for suggesting this phrasing.

  6. Nida-Rümelin (2014) understands being aware of not as being aware of some object. She agrees with the standard phenomenological view that this type of awareness reveals the subject of experience, namely me, in an immediate and non-observational manner.

  7. We follow Hutto (this issue) here.

  8. Hutto (this issue) refers to this as the individualist view.

  9. We want to thank an anonymous reviewer for her/his input.

  10. We want to thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that this needs more explanation.

  11. Zahavi now argues that his notion is not purely formal but just very thin. He and Kriegel write that we should construe “[…] for-me-ness as an experiential aspect of mental life, a bona fide phenomenal dimension of consciousness." (Zahavi and Kriegel 2015, p. 36).

  12. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer to press us here.

  13. A possible explanation may stem from the structure-awareness view, which holds that pre-reflective self-awareness or mineness, does not make an experience conscious.

  14. This case is similar to what we added to the Mick and Mack thought experiment above. There Mick has an experience, due to some metaphysical accident, that is actually Mack’s. Of course, this seems more radical, but the consequence is the same. If we believe only in Zahavi’s thin notion of mineness, it is unclear how subjectivity becomes my subjectivity. Here, this is described in terms of a subject hosting an experience, instead of owning it.

  15. In a discussion of Prinz (2003).

  16. Believing a priori that the self-dimension needs to be constant, in this particular case, can only be established, if one thinks that there is no alternative to the standard phenomenological account of the minimal self. In Sect. 3 we will go on to develop an alternative.

  17. But not maximally thin: see discussions of different types of thinness including the purely metaphysical kind of thinness (Zahavi and Kriegel 2015).

  18. See also Kiverstein’s account (this issue) of how predictive processing can provide an account of what he calls a phenomenological theory of selfhood. Further discussion of this point goes beyond the scope of this paper, but it is our contention that predictive processing seems to naturally align with a dynamic account of pre-reflective self-awareness like that developed by Damasio.

  19. Parnas and Zahavi (2002) explain the importance of phenomenology within psychiatric diagnosis and classification. Zahavi and Parnas (1998) argue explicitly against a representational account of consciousness based on phenomenological considerations about the nature of pre-reflective self-awareness, which leads to a better understanding of phenomenal consciousness and the way we should think about the self.

  20. A point we shall return to below.

  21. We contend that these situational and pre-reflective senses of self are not obviously or essentially forms or artefacts of narrative. To really defend this claim against all possible interpretations of the narrative theory of self goes beyond the scope of this paper, although we give some indication of our reasons for this below.

  22. The reason L & L refer to their theory as dialogical is because they hope to encourage—for therapeutic reasons—the dialogue between different self-positions.

  23. In the light of what was argued in Sect. 2, we can see here that the situational view of self does not simply add something to Zahavi’s account. Even when considering Gallagher’s pattern view of self (Gallagher 2013), our view does not try to add further aspects to an overall pattern of the self, namely the situational aspects. The theory consists in an alternative to Zahavi’s minimal experiential self-model.

  24. Unfortunately, detailed discussion of Damasio’s notion of the core self goes beyond the scope of this article, but let us say here that Damasio’s core self is clearly also not the thin notion defended by Zahavi. It seems that the thin notion could have trouble in a number of programs in cognitive science with which it is typically associated.

  25. See also (Colombetti 2017; Mendonça 2017).

  26. It is especially worth considering the developmental alongside these embodied dimensions of pre-reflective self-experience (Ciaunica and Fotopoulou 2017), although unfortunately it goes beyond the scope of this paper, to consider their view.

  27. Another possibility is that the pre-reflective sense of self is only under very particular conditions accessible to consciousness. In this case it is hardly surprising we do not notice that our sense of self may be changing as we inhabit different situations.

  28. One reason Goffman’s view might be seen as different is that, insofar as we are wearing a mask, and “staging” the self for others, there is a sense both that the self is not pre-reflective and also that it is not a real self (although the latter point is complex and the arguments would take us beyond the scope of this paper).

References

  • Alsmith AJT (2015) Mental activity and the sense of ownership. Rev Philos Psychol 6(4):881–896

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell J (2009) Consciousness and reference. In: McLaughlin B, Beckermann A, Walter S (eds) The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 648–662

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciaunica A, Fotopoulou A (2017) The touched self: psychological and philosophical perspectives on proximal intersubjectivity and the self. In: Durt C, Fuchs T, Tewes C (eds) Embodiment, enaction, and culture: investigating the constitution of the shared world. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 173–192

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark A (2002) Is seeing all it seems? Action, reason and the grand illusion. J Conscious Stud 5–6:181–202

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark A (2015a) Embodied prediction. In: Metzinger T, Windt JM (eds) Open MIND: 7(T). MIND Group, Frankfurt am Main

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark A (2015b) Surfing uncertainty: prediction, action, and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Clowes RW (2015) The reality of the virtual self as interface to the social world. In: Fonseca J, Gonçalves J (eds) Philosophical perspectives on self. Peter Lang, Lisbon, pp 221–276

    Google Scholar 

  • Clowes RW (2018) Rethinking the ipseity disturbance theory of schizophrenia through predictive processing. In: Hipólito I, Gonçalves J, Pereira JG (eds) Schizophrenia and common sense. Springer, New York, pp 113–136

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Cole J, Spalding H (2008) The invisible smile: living without facial expression. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Colombetti G (2017) The embodied and situated nature of moods. Philosophia 45(4):1437–1451

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colombetti G, Krueger J (2015) Scaffoldings of the affective mind. Philosophical Psychology 28(8):1157–1176

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Damasio AR (2000) The feeling of what happens: body, emotion and the making of consciousness. Vintage, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Damnjanovic N (2012) Revelation and physicalism. Dialectica 66:69–91

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dennett DC (1991) Consciousness explained. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth

    Google Scholar 

  • Flanagan OJ (1992) Consciousness Reconsidered. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Fuchs T (2015) Pathologies of intersubjectivity in autism and schizophrenia. J Conscious Stud 22(1–2):191–214

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher S (2000) Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science. Trends Cognit Sci 4(1):14–21

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher S (2013) A pattern theory of self. Front Hum Neurosci 7:443. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00443

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher S, Zahavi D (2015) Phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness. In: Zalta EN (ed) The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/self-consciousness-phenomenological/

  • Gärtner K (2018) Conscious experience and experience externalization. In: Hipólito I, Gonçalves J, Pereira JG (eds) Schizophrenia and common sense: explaining madness and social values. Springer, New York, pp 97–112

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Goffman E (1959) The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday, Garden City

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldman A (1970) A theory of human action. Prentice-Hall, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Hohwy J (2013) The predictive mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hume D (2000) A treatise of human nature. Oxford University Press, Oxford. (Original work published in 1739)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutto D (this issue). Selfless activity and experience: radicalizing minimal self-awareness. Topoi

  • Johnston M (1992) How to speak of the colors. Philos Stud 68:221–263

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kiverstein J (this issue) Free energy and the self: an ecological-enactive interpretation. Topoi

  • Kriegel U (2009) Subjective consciousness. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Krueger JW (2011) The who and the how of experience. M. In: Siderits E, Thompson, Zahavi D (eds) Self, no self?: perspectives from analytical, phenomenological, and indian traditions. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 27–55

    Google Scholar 

  • Krueger JW (this issue). Schizophrenia and the Scaffolded Self. Topoi

  • Lane T (2012) Toward an explanatory framework for mental ownership. Phenomenol Cognit Sci 11(2):251–286

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis D (1995) Should a materialist believe in qualia? Austral J Philos 73:140–144

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lihoreau F (2014) Revelation and the essentiality of essence. Symposion 1:69–75

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Linson A, Clark A, Ramamoorthy S, Friston K (2018) The active inference approach to ecological perception: general information dynamics for natural and artificial embodied cognition. Front Robot AI. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2018.00021

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lysaker PH, Lysaker JT (2008) Schizophrenia and the fate of the self. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mendonça D (2017) Situating moods. Philosophia 45(4):1453–1467

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Metzinger T (2004) Being no one: the self-model theory of subjectivity. Bradford Book, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Metzinger T (2011) The no-self alternative. In: Gallagher S (ed) The Oxford handbook of the self. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 279–296

    Google Scholar 

  • Nelson B, Parnas J, Sass LA (2014) Disturbance of minimal self (ipseity) in schizophrenia: clarification and current status. Schizophr Bull 40(3):479–482

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nida-Rümelin M (2014) Basic intentionality, primitive awareness and awareness of oneself. In: Reboul A (ed) Mind, values, and metaphysics. Springer, New York, pp 261–290

    Google Scholar 

  • Noë A (2002) Is the visual world a grand illusion? J Conscious Stud 9(5–6):1–12

    Google Scholar 

  • Noë A (2004) Action in perception. Bradford Books, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Nordgaard J, Parnas J (2014) Self-disorders and the schizophrenia spectrum: a study of 100 first hospital admissions. Schizophr Bull, 1300–1307

  • O’Regan JK (2002) The grand illusion and sensorimotor approaches to consciousness. J Conscious Stud 9(5–6):1–12

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Regan JK, Noë A (2001) A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behav Brain Sci 24:939–973

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parnas J (2003) Self and schizophrenia: a phenomenological perspective. In: Kircher T, David A (eds) The self in neuroscience and psychiatry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp 217–241

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Parnas J, Handest P (2003) Phenomenology of anomalous self-experience in early schizophrenia. Compr Psychiatry 44(2):121–134

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parnas J, Sass L (2011) The structure of self-consciousness in schizophrenia. In: Gallagher S (ed) The Oxford handbook of the self. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 521–546

    Google Scholar 

  • Parnas J, Zahavi D (2002) The role of phenomenology in psychiatric classification and diagnosis. In: Maj M, Gaebel W, Lopez-Ibor JJ, Sartorius N (eds) Psychiatric diagnosis and classification: World Psychiatric Association Series. Wiley, Hoboken, pp 137–162

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Parnas J, Møller P, Kircher T, Thalbitzer J, Jansson L, Handest P, Zahavi D (2005) EASE: examination of anomalous self-experience. Psychopathology 38(5):236–258

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prinz W (2003) Emerging selves: representational foundations of subjectivity. Conscious Cognit 12(4):515–528

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ratcliffe M (2017) Real hallucinations: psychiatric illness, intentionality, and the interpersonal world. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sass LA (2003) Self-disturbance in schizophrenia: hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection. In: Kircher T, David A (eds) The self in neuroscience and psychiatry, vol 870539117. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Sass LA (2004) Schizophrenia: a disturbance of the thematic field Gurwitsch’s relevancy for cognitive science. Springer, New York, pp 59–78

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sass LA, Parnas J (2003) Schizophrenia, consciousness, and the self. Schizophr Bull 29(3):427–444

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sass LA, Pienkos E, Nelson B, Medford N (2013) Anomalous self-experience in depersonalization and schizophrenia: a comparative investigation. Conscious Cognit 22(2):430–441

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schechtman M (2011) The narrative self. In: Gallagher S (ed) The Oxford handbook of the self. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 394–416

    Google Scholar 

  • Seth AK (2013) Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self. Trends Cognit Sci 17(11):565–573

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seth AK, Critchley HD (2013) Extending predictive processing to the body: emotion as interoceptive inference. Behav Brain Sci 36(3):227–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seth AK, Suzuki K, Critchley HD (2011) An interoceptive predictive coding model of conscious presence. Front Psychol 2:395

    Google Scholar 

  • Simons DJ, Rensink RA (2005) Change blindness: past, present, and future. Trends Cognit Sci 9(1):16–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stoljar D (2009) The argument from revelation. In: Braddon-Mitchell D, Nola R (eds) Conceptual analysis and philosophical naturalism. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 113–138

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams B (1973) Problems of the self. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi D (2000) Self and consciousness. In: Zahavi D (ed) Exploring the self: philosophical and psychopathological perspectives on self-experience. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 55–74

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi D (2004) Back to Brentano? J Conscious Stud 11(10–11):66–87

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi D (2005) Subjectivity and selfhood: investigating the first-person perspective. The MIT Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi D (2014) Self and other: exploring subjectivity, empathy and shame. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi D (2017) Thin, thinner, thinnest: defining the minimal self. In: Durt C, Fuchs T, Tewes C (eds) Embodiment, enaction, and culture: investigating the constitution of the shared world. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 193–199

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi D, Kriegel U (2015) For-me-ness: what it is and what it is not. In: Dahlstrom D, Elpidorou A, Hopp W (eds) Philosophy of mind and phenomenology. Routledge, Abingdon, pp 36–53

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi D, Parnas J (1998) Phenomenal consciousness and self-awareness: a phenomenological critique of representational theory. J Conscious Stud 5:687–705

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Robert W. Clowes’s work is funded by the FCT postdoctoral research fellowship (SFRH/BPD/70440/2010) and the IFILNOVA research fellowship (FCSH/NOVA UID/FIL/00183/2013). Klaus Gärtner’s work is funded by the CFCUL postdoctoral research fellowship (UID/FIL/00678/2013). We would like to thank Anna Ciaunica for her helpful feedback. Also, we would like to thank Steven Gouveia for the possibility to present some of the material at the Third International Conference on Philosophy of Mind “Minds, Brains and Consciousness” at the University of Minho, Braga and the audience for their feedback. Finally, we would also like to thank the Lisbon Mind and Reasoning Group for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA)/Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCSH), Av. de Berna, 26 - 4° Piso, 1069-061, Lisbon, Portugal

    Robert W. Clowes

  2. Center for Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL), Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, Edifício C4, 3° Piso, Sala 4.3.24, 1749-016, Lisbon, Portugal

    Klaus Gärtner

Authors
  1. Robert W. Clowes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Klaus Gärtner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert W. Clowes.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

Robert W. Clowes and Klaus Gärtner declares that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants and animals performed by any of the authors.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Clowes, R.W., Gärtner, K. The Pre-reflective Situational Self. Topoi 39, 623–637 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9598-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9598-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation