The Ultimate Insight: On the Explanatory Power of Absolute Self-Awareness

A recurrent theme on this blog is the idea of Absolute Idealism 2.0, i.e. a contemporary, ‘mathematized’ version of the age-old philosophy of Absolute Idealism, which runs from the ancient Upanishads to the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus to German and Anglo-American Idealists such as Schelling, Hegel, Green and Royce. Absolute Idealism 2.0 takes over their central insights but develops them in a novel way consistent with modern science, in particular with the central role of mathematics in physics. The following post gives a broad overview of the central principles of Absolute Idealism 2.0. and how these principles enable us to make sense of reality-as-a-whole.
The self-creating power of Absolute Self-Awareness We can provisionally define Absolute Idealism as the philosophical theory that everything exists because it is thought and/or experienced by an Absolute Mind, which in turn exists because It thinks/experiences itself. Thus, on the Absolute-Idealist view, the Absolute Mind constitutes its own existence by thinking/experiencing itself, that is, by being self-aware. The Absolute Mind, then, should first and foremost be defined as Absolute Self-Awareness. The idea that (pre-reflective) self-awareness has a self-creating aspect is most often associated with the German Idealist Fichte and his case for the “self-positing of the I”, but roughly the same idea can be found with other Absolute Idealists as well:

• The Vedantic sages of the Upanishads: “In the beginning this world was only Brahman, and it knew only itself (Atman), thinking: ‘I am Brahman.’ As a result, it became the Whole.” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10) 

• The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus: “The One [...] made itself by an act of looking at itself. This act of looking at itself is [...] its being.” (Ennead VI, 8, 16, 19-21)

• The German Idealist Schelling: “it is through the self's own knowledge of itself that that very self first comes into being” (Schelling 1800: 27).

• The American Idealist Royce: “if whatever exists, exists only as known, then the existence of knowledge itself must be a known existence, and can finally be known only to the final knower himself, who, like Aristotle's God, is so far defined in terms of absolute self-knowledge” (Royce 1899: 400).
   

By highlighting this self-creating aspect of Absolute Self-Awareness, Absolute Idealism is very attractive in that it offers a clear-cut and intuitively plausible answer to Leibniz’ famous question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” According to Absolute Idealism, there is something rather than nothing because Absolute Self-Awareness is self-creating. I call this answer to Leibniz’s question intuitively plausible mainly because of two reasons: (1) we are all self-aware and so we know – with Cartesian self-evidence – that self-awareness exists, indeed it is the only existence we are absolutely certain of, and (2) we have a glimpse of the self-creating power of Absolute Self-Awareness in the (self-)awareness we have of our own free will. This last point needs some elucidation.

Kant and the “unconditioned causality of freedom
Of course, when I talk of the self-creating power of self-awareness, I am not talking of individual human self-awareness. None of us has brought him- or herself and the universe into existence. As empirical individuals we are biologically conditioned, brought into existence by others, subject to time. So how then can I say that our own self-awareness gives a glimpse into the self-creating power of Absolute Self-Awareness?

In a way we do experience a degree of self-causation in ourselves, namely, insofar as we exercise positive freedom, i.e. autonomy. Positive freedom requires a capacity for what Kant called “spontaneity”, the “unconditioned causality of freedom” (Critique of Pure Reason, B561/A533), i.e. a capacity to initiate an entirely new course of action and/or thought ‘out of nothing’, unmotivated and/or uncaused by prior givens. But isn’t such a capacity for radical spontaneity – for initiating something out of nothing – precisely what is needed in order to answer Leibniz’s question, i.e. to explain how reality has lifted itself into existence preceded by nothing?

Insofar as our self-awareness reveals in us this ‘unconditioned causality of freedom’, then, we have all the more reason to take our self-awareness as the key to answering Leibniz's question. It is, moreover, the self-positing nature of self-awareness that explains this unconditioned causality of freedom in the first place. Obviously we aren't self-causing in any absolute sense (since, to repeat, we have not created ourselves), but we are relatively self-causing in that we can at least intervene in the causal order of reality by spontaneously initiating a completely new causal chain of events.

This underscores the difference between empirical, individual self-awareness and Absolute Self-Awareness: what the former has relatively and finitely, the latter has absolutely and infinitely. That is to say: Absolute Self-Awareness has (or is) absolute freedom. The self-evident experience of our own self-awareness gives us empirical access to the self-causation that can answer Leibniz's question, but to make full sense of this answer we have to generalize beyond ourselves. We have to project prereflective self-awareness to something that transcends us, the Absolute, the unconditioned 'thing' that conditions all of reality.

The mathematical unfolding of Absolute Self-Awareness
What then is the precise relation between Absolute Self-Awareness and individual self-awareness as it is found in you and me? To answer this question we have to move from Leibniz’ question to the next question: why is the universe the way it is? We do not just want to know why something exists, we also want to know why this something is the way it is, i.e. why reality has developed into this infinitely complex universe in which we find ourselves. It is especially here that I take the age-old philosophy of Absolute Idealism into a new direction, making it fit for the future by drawing on ideas from modern physics and mathematics. It is here that Absolute Idealism becomes Absolute Idealism 2.0.

Making creative use of some seminal ideas from the American Idealist Josiah Royce, I argue that the recursivity inherent in Absolute Self-Awareness – in short: its awareness of itself, its awareness of that awareness, its awareness of the awareness of that awareness, and so on – establishes an intrinsic connection between self-awareness and the recursively generated natural numbers and even the recursively generated set-theoretical universe of pure sets, which in a way contains the whole of mathematics (more about this here and here). Thus, from this perspective, the Absolute Mind comes out as a deeply mathematical being, generating – through the recursivity of its self-awareness – all of mathematics, and subsequently mirroring itself in those mathematical structures that best reflect its transcendent splendor.

The universe as the mathematical self-image of the Absolute
In my view, the resulting mathematical mirror image of the Absolute Mind is our physical universe (which, as modern physics shows, is indeed thoroughly mathematical in nature). Through mirroring and recognizing itself in this mathematical universe, and particularly in those mathematical structures that emulate intelligence (such as the algorithmic structure of the human brain), the Absolute Mind increases its own self-awareness and thus teleologically realizes its essence. In this way I explain the apparent fine-tuning of the universe, i.e. the fact that surprisingly many of nature’s fundamental constants – such as the ratio of the masses of electrons and protons, the energy density of the vacuum, even the three-dimensionality of space – are “just right” for the evolution of life. This bio-friendliness of the universe follows from the fact that the universe is the mathematical mirror image of the Absolute Mind.

It is, moreover, the self-recognition of the Absolute Mind in mathematical structures (such as the algorithmic structure of the human brain) that infuses these structures with phenomenal consciousness: it explains why the mathematical structure of the brain is “accompanied by an experienced inner life” (Chalmers 1996: xii). In this way I aim to solve the notorious “Hard Problem of Consciousness”. Moreover, as it is the mathematical structure of the universe as a whole in which the Absolute Mind mirrors itself, we must see the entire universe as infused with phenomenal consciousness, thus arriving at a panpsychist view of the cosmos.

This, then, answers the question we raised above about the relation between individual human self-awareness and Absolute Self-Awareness. Individual self-awareness, as experienced by individual organisms, is nothing but the self-reflection of the Absolute in specific mathematical structures, notably in those algorithms that “simulate” intelligent volitional agency, algorithms such as the ones that underlie the functioning of our brains. In this sense, Absolute Self-Awareness is the pre-reflective core of every finite individual form of self-awareness. One could say that each empirical instance of individual self-awareness (human or otherwise) is, as it were, a navel in the physical universe, connecting the latter through a transcendental umbilical cord with the Absolute Self-Awareness that grounds reality as a whole.

Explaining mind-body dualism
This explanation of what individual consciousness is – namely, the self-reflection of Absolute Self-Awareness in the complex algorithm that simulates brain functioning – also allows us to make sense of the apparent duality of mind and matter and, notably, the apparent supervenience of the former on the latter. This is one of the major difficulties faced by any kind of Idealism: if matter is just an appearance in consciousness, why and how then can it seem that matter exists apart from consciousness and, indeed, that (individual) consciousness appears to depend on matter?

From the perspective of Absolute Idealism 2.0, this duality between mind and body comes down to the distinction between, on the one hand, the mathematical structure of the recursive self-unfolding of Absolute Self-Awareness, and the latter’s self-recognition in certain privileged parts of that structure on the other. The mathematical structure in which the Absolute reflects itself is the structure of matter, i.e. the structure discovered by physics. But it is the self-reflection of the Absolute in this structure, the fact that it recognizes itself in it, that – so to speak – infuses the structure with phenomenal awareness. It is this act of self-recognition that explains why the mathematical structure of matter is – as Chalmers put it – “accompanied by an experienced inner life”. This holds in particular for the structure of the brain (human or otherwise), which is the kind of mathematical structure in which the Absolute recognizes most of itself (intelligent and volitional agency); hence the infusion of this structure with individual consciousness.

Hence the duality of brain and consciousness, and the apparent dependence of the latter on the former. The brain as a physical object is simply the underlying mathematical structure as experienced from the outside by another conscious organism (i.e. another brain / individual consciousness), whereas individual consciousness is that very same mathematical structure as experienced ‘from within’, i.e. as an object for the Absolute’s self-recognition. We can call these, respectively, the first-person and the third-person experiences of the mathematical structure of the brain. The fact that individual consciousness appears to be causally dependent on the brain is due to the fact that individual consciousness is ontologically dependent on the mathematical structure in which the Absolute recognizes itself.

The funny thing here is that we, human beings, are in principle capable of both a first-person and a third-person perspective on the mathematical structures of our own brains; for example – to take a rather drastic example – when we open up our skull and use a mirror to look at our own brain. We then experience its underlying mathematical structure in two ways simultaneously: from the inside as the object of the Absolute’s self-recognition, which gives us our individual consciousness, and from the outside, i.e. from a third-person perspective, which gives us this strange lump of grey matter that is supposed to be us. Something similar happens, though less drastically, when we look at a CT scan of our own brain. 

Morality as self-recognition in the other
To repeat: Absolute Self-Awareness is the pre-reflective core of every finite individual consciousness, insofar as the latter is nothing but the self-recognition of the Absolute in the mathematical structure of the brain. Thus, as the Vedanta philosophy based on the Upanishads puts it, we are all in principle capable of discovering the same Self (Atman) as the innermost core of our individual self-awareness. This Universal Self, this core in each of us, is the Absolute Self-Awareness as it reflects itself empirically in the self-awareness of finite organisms in the universe. Thus, the “unconditioned causality of freedom” we detect in our self-awareness really is the unconditioned causality of the self-causing Absolute as the ground of all reality. In that sense the (self-)awareness we have of our own free will does give us a glimpse into the endlessly creative source of the universe.

Insofar as we are capable of this glimpse, i.e. of ‘seeing’ the Absolute as the prereflective core of our own self-awareness, we start to appreciate that the same holds for all living beings. We start to realize that all organisms are essentially nothing but different manifestations of one and the same creative essence, the Absolute, the Universal Self, which senses, thinks and acts through all these organisms. This gives an enormous feeling of connection and love for others. Suddenly you can empathize with others and take their perspective much more easily, because you know they are not fundamentally different from you. You start to experience other beings as different versions of yourself, i.e. of your innermost Self, the creative essence of the universe. It is this empathy with others, through the non-dual sense of cosmic unity, that is the foundation of all sincere morality.

In this way, a kind of self-recognition in others – a seeing of yourself in others – takes place, but the self that is recognized here is not primarily the individual self but rather the Self, the Universal Self, the Atman, the Absolute. One could say that in this way the universe as the mathematical self-image of the Absolute is all the more true to its archetype: just as the Absolute recognizes itself in the otherness of the physical universe, so the universe mirrors this Divine Self-Recognition by evolving organisms that recognize themselves (i.e. their Self) in each other. Through the evolution of this self-recognition among organisms, this “mutual recognition” as Hegel calls it, the universe evolves into an ever improving mirror of the Absolute, thereby contributing to the latter’s essence as self-awareness.       Relation to Enlightenment in Eastern spirituality As the above reference to the Vedanta indicates, this (self-)realization of the Absolute as the prereflective core of our own individual self-awareness has a deep connection to what in Eastern spirituality is known by such terms as "Enlightenment", "Awakening", "(Self-)Realization", and "Liberation". This marks an important difference between Western and Eastern forms of Absolute Idealism. Whereas the Western forms are mostly theoretically oriented, aimed at a purely intellectual understanding of reality, the point of virtually all Eastern spirituality is primarily practical, aimed at a radical existential transformation of human life. Hence the terminological distinction I draw between Western philosophy and Eastern spirituality. It is certainly not the case that philosophical theorizing is entirely absent in the East – quite the contrary, Eastern spirituality contains some of the deepest philosophical thinking ever done. It is just that in Eastern spirituality all theorizing is ultimately subordinated and subservient to the spiritual goal of Liberation: theory for the sake of theory is rejected, because it stands in the way of the spiritual goal. The notion of Absolute Self-Awareness, then, signifies in the Eastern context not just the ultimate nature of reality, it also signifies the individual’s realization of the Absolute as his / her own innermost Self and as such the final Liberation from the suffering inherent in finite human existence. In Eastern spirituality, then, Absolute Self-Awareness is first of all not a theoretical concept (as it is in Western Absolute Idealism) but an experience or intuition, the experience of Enlightenment, the awakening to or realization of one’s true nature, the intuition of the Absolute as the core of one’s being. This is the experience that accomplishes the longed for Liberation from suffering. Here the Vedanta of the Upanishads provided the original template for all later Eastern spiritual traditions aimed at Enlightenment (even if these traditions criticized certain aspects of the Vedanta). For the Upanishadic sages, the key insight “Brahman is Atman” is not just a theoretical insight into the ultimate ground of reality, it is also the liberatory insight into the ultimate core of one’s own self, the realization “I am Brahman”, freeing one from the suffering inherent in finite human life. This comes out clearly in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which we quoted earlier as clearly pronouncing the basic realization of the self-causing nature of Absolute Self-Awareness: “In the beginning this world was only Brahman, and it knew only itself (Atman), thinking: ‘I am Brahman.’ As a result, it became the Whole.” (1.4.9) This remarkable passage doesn’t stop here: it goes on pronouncing with equal clarity the spiritual significance of this realization: “If a man knows ‘I am Brahman’ in this way, he becomes this whole world. Not even the gods are able to prevent it, for he becomes their very Self (Atman)... He is the one who is beyond hunger and third, sorrow and delusion, old age and death.” (1.4.10, 3.4.2) Here the spiritual significance of Absolute Self-Awareness, the Liberation from the suffering inherent in finite existence, is clearly announced. The ultimate insight that explains everything? What all this makes clear is that the Enlightenment experience has both a theoretical and a practical value, indeed it is the ultimate accomplishment both philosophically and spiritually. Enlightenment is not just the insight that liberates from the confines of finite existence, it is also the insight that provides the ultimate epistemological foundation for the Absolute-Idealist worldview. This implies an extreme form of rationalism, such that in principle everything is explainable for us, finite human beings, because insofar as we are self-conscious beings we have a prereflective intuition of the nature of Absolute Self-Awareness as the self-causing cause of reality-as-a-whole. Looked at from the theoretical perspective, Enlightenment is the insight into the essential core of our own self-awareness as the absolutely free (i.e. self-causing) source of all reality, as the recursive fountainhead of all mathematics and thus of the physical universe as our own innermost mathematical self-image, and as the source of all morality qua self-recognition in others. Enlightenment, in short, is the ultimate insight that allows us to explain everything. But, so a critic might ask, does it even make sense to attempt an explanation of ‘everything’? Isn’t such an all-encompassing notion logically incoherent? I want to finish this post by taking a closer look at this objection and how Absolute Idealism can deal with it. Leibniz’s question, paradox, and self-awareness This objection has in particular been raised by analytic philosophers such as Alfred Ayer and Bertrand Russell: they argue that all-encompassing concepts like “everything” and “reality as a whole” lead to paradoxes of self-reference, akin to the paradoxes of the early ("naive") set theory developed by Cantor, Dedekind and Frege. In my view, however, this self-reference ceases to be paradoxical once we realize that Absolute Self-Awareness is the self-causing cause of reality and that self-reference belongs to the essence of self-awareness. Naive set theory is so-called because it allowed sets that are deemed "too big", such as the universal set: the set containing all sets, including itself. Thus the universal set is self-membered, and this leads – directly or indirectly – to paradoxes, such as Cantor's paradox, the Burali-Forti paradox and Russell's paradox. One could argue that Leibniz's question produces similar paradoxes because, in a way, it totalizes existence. By posing the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", Leibniz invites us to look at reality as a whole, the totality of what exists, in order to find the cause or reason explaining this totality. But in conceiving this totality, aren't we relapsing into the naiveté of early set theory? Aren't we allowing a set that is "too big"? This was indeed the main objection raised by logical positivism against Leibniz’s question: it is meaningless because it leads to paradoxes of self-inclusion. Thus Alfred Ayer: "Supposing you asked a question like 'Where do all things come from?' Now that's a perfectly meaningful question as regards any given event. Asking where it came from is asking for a description of some event prior to it. But if you generalize that question, it becomes meaningless. You're then asking what event is prior to all events. Clearly no event can be prior to all events. Because it's a member of the class of all events it must be included in it, and therefore can't be prior to it." (Ayer quoted in Holt 2013: 24) Bertrand Russell too noted the paradoxical self-referentiality of the philosophical concept of reality-as-a-whole: “The comprehensive class we are considering, which is to embrace everything, must embrace itself as one of its members. In other words, if there is such a thing as “everything,” then “everything” is something, and is a member of the class of “everything”.” (Russell 1919: 136) Thus Russell was suspicious of all-embracing philosophical concepts such as reality-as-a-whole: “The difficulty arises whenever we try to deal with the class of all entities absolutely [...]; but for the difficulty of such a view, one would be tempted to say that the conception of the totality of things, or of the whole universe of entities and existents, is in some way illegitimate and inherently contrary to logic.” (Russell 1903: 362) With the concept of reality-as-a-whole out of the window, however, Leibniz's question can no longer be posed. If the concept of reality-as-whole is logically incoherent, then the question why that whole exists must be illogical as well. In response to this criticism we only have to point out that the set-theoretical paradoxes are defused by the phenomenon of self-awareness. For what appears as paradoxical in the foundations of mathematics – namely, self-reference – actually is a living reality in the phenomenon of self-awareness. Why then should we reject self-reference as paradoxical, and banish it from the foundations of mathematics, when self-reference is a clearly a bona fide aspect of reality, an aspect of which the existence is attested – with Cartesian self-evidence – by the undeniable phenomenon of self-awareness? Thus it becomes clear how the Absolute-Idealist view of reality as essentially a form of self-awareness – namely, Absolute Self-Awareness – saves Leibniz’s question from Russell's criticism. If we take reality as such to be self-awareness, then the self-inclusion of the totality of what exists ceases to be paradoxical, because such self-inclusion is to be expected of self-awareness. This self-inclusion is the inherent recursivity of self-awareness, which necessarily involves awareness of self-awareness, and awareness of awareness of self-awareness, and so on without end. In other words, self-awareness must include itself as one of the objects of which it is aware. Thus we can compare self-awareness to a ‘magical matryoshka’, a Russian nesting doll that somehow contains itself: if one opens up the doll, one finds the same doll inside… In short, then, the Absolute Idealist conception of self-awareness does not just enable us to answer Leibniz's question, it also enables us to pose that question in a meaningful way. It shows that the self-inclusion of the totality of what exists – a totality presupposed by Leibniz's question – is not a senseless violation of logic, because it belongs to the living essence of reality qua Absolute Self-Awareness. References -Chalmers, D. J. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford University Press.   -Holt, J. (2013), Why does the world exist?, Profile Books. -Kant, I. (1781/’87 [2009]), Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press. -Plotinus, Enneads, translation by A.H. Armstrong, Loeb edition. -Royce, J. (1899 [1959]), The World and The Individual, First Series: The Four Historical Conceptions of Being, Dover Publications. -Russell, B. (1903 [1964]), The Principles of Mathematics, George Allen & Unwin. -Russell, B. (1919 [1970]), Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, George Allen and Unwin. -Schelling, F.W.J. (1800 [2001]), System of Transcendental Idealism, translated by Peter Heath, University Press of Virginia. -Upanishads, translation by Patrick Olivelle, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Prereflective Self-Consciousness: What’s it all about?

A central development in recent philosophy of mind is the increasing adherence to, and elaboration of, a distinction between reflective and prereflective self-consciousness. This development has gone hand in hand with a remarkable confluence and cross-pollination of different philosophical traditions, from phenomenology (notably the seminal contributions by Brentano, Husserl, and Sartre) and the Heidelberg School deriving from Henrich’s reading of Fichte, up to contemporary analytical philosophers of mind such as Levine, Kriegel, and Williford (for overviews, see Zahavi 1999; Kriegel & Williford 2006; Frank 2015). This degree of consensus between philosophers from very different theoretical backgrounds is remarkable and suggests that the concept of prereflective self-consciousness latches on to something real, a theory independent reality. In this post I explain the basic idea of prereflective self-consciousness, why we need to distinguish it from reflective self-consciousness, and the importance of this distinction to philosophy of mind at large.

M.C. Escher, Self-Portrait in a Spherical Mirror

The paradoxes of the reflection model
The easiest way to understand prereflective self-consciousness is by contrast with reflective self-consciousness, which is self-consciousness in the mode of ordinary object-consciousness. In reflective self-consciousness, the subject is aware of itself in much the same way it is aware of other objects in the world. The claim that object-consciousness suffices to explain self-consciousness is known as the “reflection model of self-consciousness”: it basically sees self-consciousness as resulting from a turning around (re-flection) of object-consciousness away from external objects and unto the subject itself. Despite its prominence in Western philosophy, notably in early modern philosophers from Descartes to Kant, the reflection model has come under increasing attack in philosophy since Kant. It has become increasingly clear that the reflection model suffers from a number of paradoxes, infinite regresses and vicious circles. To explain self-consciousness, then, reflection does not suffice: we must postulate a sui generis form of self-consciousness, different in kind from reflective object-consciousness. The adjective “prereflective” indicates this special type of self-consciousness.

Below I will discuss the paradoxes of the reflection model in more detail. For now, a few examples will suffice. To repeat: the reflection model explains self-consciousness as the redirection of object-consciousness away from external objects and unto the subject itself. But how does the subject know that its new object, of which it thus becomes aware, is indeed itself and not another external object? The difficulty is nicely illustrated by the example of Ernst Mach who, sitting in a Vienna bus, noticed “a shabby-looking school teacher” (“ein herabgekommener Schulmeister”) sitting across from him… until he realized he was looking in a mirror (Mach 1922: 3, n.1). The lesson is that mere object-consciousness, if it is accidentally turned towards the subject, does not intimate that the object one is aware of is indeed oneself – to achieve that self-awareness, a further act of the mind is required, a mental act irreducible to object-consciousness. Thus, the reflection model fails to explain self-consciousness.

The model can evade this difficulty only by claiming that the turning around of object-consciousness towards the subject happens by no means accidentally but with the intention to get the subject in view: the subject intends to know itself and therefore turns its object-consciousness towards itself. This solves the problem of failed self-recognition (as in the Mach example), since the object is intended as oneself from the start, but only at the price of circularity. For how can the subject intend to know itself by means of object-consciousness if it isn’t already aware of itself to some extent? If the subject were completely oblivious of itself, it could not even intend to know itself. As the analytical philosopher Sydney Shoemaker notes:

“[I]f one were aware of oneself as an object in such cases (as one is in fact aware of oneself as an object when one sees oneself in a mirror), this would not help to explain one’s self-knowledge. For awareness that the presented object was φ, would not tell one that one was oneself φ, unless one had identified the object as oneself; and one could not do this unless one already had some self-knowledge, namely the knowledge that one is the unique possessor of whatever set of properties of the presented object one took to show it to be oneself.” (Shoemaker 1984: 105)

The reflection model, then, can explain self-consciousness only by presupposing self-consciousness. Thus, the model either fails or is guilty of circularity. Of course, it is not to be denied that reflective self-consciousness is in fact possible: I can, and occasionally do, observe and think about myself as one object among the other objects that populate the world. The point is, however, that this reflective self-consciousness is facilitated by a pre-existing – and therefore pre-reflective – self-consciousness, in a mode different from object-consciousness. As Dan Zahavi notes: “[W]hen one does in fact succeed in taking oneself as an object, one is dealing with a self-objectification which in its turn presupposes a prior nonobjectifying self-awareness as its condition of possibility.” (Zahavi 1999: 6-7)

The self-registration view of consciousness
The primary motivation behind the notion of prereflective self-consciousness may be the correct understanding of self-consciousness as such, but it certainly is not the only motivation. The notion of prereflective self-consciousness is central to philosophy of mind in general because self-consciousness is taken to be crucial for consciousness as such. That is, even conscious states such as thinking about and perceiving an external object, say, a tree, although they are ostensibly not about the thinking and perceiving subject, nevertheless seem to presuppose self-consciousness. This claim, that all consciousness presupposes self-consciousness, and thus that self-consciousness is ubiquitous in all conscious states, is known as the Ubiquity Thesis (the term was coined by Kapitan 1999; following common usage, I will refer to this thesis as “Ubiquity”). If Ubiquity is correct, and if reflective self-consciousness presupposes prereflective self-consciousness, then the latter must be central to our understanding of consciousness in general. A closer look at Ubiquity supplies us with further evidence of the paradoxes ailing the reflection model and hence the need for a notion of prereflective self-consciousness.

Ubiquity is motivated by a particular view of consciousness which has been and still is fairly dominant in Western philosophy and cognitive science. We can call it the “self-registration view”. On this view, which has been elaborated in many different ways, consciousness is due to a special “internal monitoring” (Lycan 1997) or “self-registration mechanism” (Frank 2015) enabling the mind to register its own processes. On this view, then, a perception of an external object is conscious because not just the object is registered by the mind but also the perception itself. Likewise, a thought is conscious because not just the propositional content of the thought is registered but also the thought itself. Mental process that are not thus registered by the mind remain unconscious. Since self-registration of mental processes by the mind amounts to a form of self-consciousness, we can summarize this view by saying that self-consciousness underlies consciousness (= Ubiquity). In other words: a mental process becomes conscious because the mind is self-conscious with respect to that process, i.e. it is conscious of its own mental process, which thereby is a conscious process. As said, this view of consciousness has been and still is fairly dominant in philosophy and cognitive science. It can be traced back to Aristotle, who argues in different places of his work that mental processes are conscious because they have, besides their external objects, also themselves as objects (De Anima III, 2,425b, 12; Metaphysics Δ, 9). As Kenneth Williford notes: “Its distinguished history, prominence in careful descriptions of consciousness, and visible if disputed place in the philosophy of mind, AI, and neuroscience lend the claim substantial prima facie credibility.” (Williford 2006: 111)

Problems for the higher-order theory of consciousness
So how does the self-registration view of consciousness provide further evidence for the paradoxes of the reflection model and the subsequent need for a notion of prereflective self-consciousness? The point is that the self-registration view remains problematic as long as we operate within the reflection model of self-consciousness. On the reflection model, the mind’s awareness of a mental state, which lifts the latter into consciousness, is conceptualised as an additional mental state, separate from the first. Mental states are primarily aimed at external objects, and as such they are unconscious. They become conscious only insofar as the mind turns its attention away from those external objects and unto those mental states themselves. A mental state, then, is lifted into consciousness by an additional mental act of reflection. On closer inspection, however, this leads to several problems.

It leads, first of all, to the same problem of self-recognition that we first encountered in the Mach example: if one becomes aware of oneself as an object, how does one know that this object is oneself? One can recognize the object as oneself only if one already has self-awareness to some extent. Or, in terms of the self-registration view, how does the mind know that the mental state, of which it becomes aware through an additional reflection, is indeed its own mental state? Clearly, this already presupposes at least some minimal form of self-awareness, which must therefore be prereflective and in a mode different from object-consciousness. Secondly, the reflection model can be seen to lead to a vicious regress in the context of the self-registration view of consciousness. If a mental state becomes conscious only by becoming the object a further mental state, what then ensures that this second state is also conscious? On the reflection model, a third act would be required to lift the second act into consciousness, and a fourth act to lift the third into consciousness, and so on. It seems, then, that the self-registration view, when married to the reflection model of self-consciousness, can ‘explain’ consciousness only by accepting an infinite regress of higher-order mental states – which means, of course, that it cannot explain consciousness at all.

This regress argument against the reflection model in the context of Ubiquity – an argument first developed systematically by Fichte (1994: 111-12) and later by Brentano (1991: 153) – may well appear to be fatal. There is, however, a way out for the reflection model, although most philosophers would agree this is not an attractive solution. It is this: hold on to the claim that mental states are lifted into consciousness by higher-order states, but with the proviso that these higher-order states can themselves remain unconscious. A higher-order state can still become conscious by becoming the object of a still higher-order state, but the top (or, if you prefer, the bottom) of the hierarchy is by definition an unconscious state. With the above proviso in mind, this is no longer problematic. In this way, consciousness is grounded in the unconscious. This is the solution adopted by Higher-Order Representation (HOR) theories of consciousness, such as those proposed by Armstrong (1968) and Rosenthal (2005). HOR theorists, then, remain with the conceptual framework of the reflection model and work under the assumption that all the objections against this model can be defused theoretically.

As said, however, most philosophers find this solution to the regress problem questionable. It seems paradoxical to explain consciousness in terms of unconscious mental states. One objection that is often raised against the HOR explanation of consciousness in terms of unconscious mental states is that it violates Ubiquity. This thesis, after all, states that consciousness presupposes self-consciousness. But how can the unconscious registration of a mental state by a higher-order state be classified as self-consciousness? True, it is a form of self-registration, insofar as the mind registers its own mental states by means of higher-order states. But insofar as this self-registration remains unconscious, it is questionable whether it amounts to self-consciousness. The phrase “unconscious self-consciousness” is, after all, a clear contradiction in terms. Insofar as HOR theories aim to explicate Ubiquity, then, they seem to fail. As Williford writes: “Classic higher-order representation (HOR) theories do not really do justice to the phenomenology behind ubiquity… Such theories arguably push the self-representational aspect of consciousness into the unconscious and thus betray the likely original experiential motivation for their theories.” (Williford 2006: 111)

Is consciousness grounded in the unconscious?
One might come to the rescue of HOR theory by making a distinction between strong Ubiquity and weak Ubiquity. Whereas strong Ubiquity states that full-blown self-consciousness is necessary for consciousness, weak Ubiquity states that mere self-registration of mental states by the mind is required, where this self-registration can remain unconscious. There is something to be said for weak Ubiquity, and thus for HOR theory. Weak Ubiquity still conforms to the basic intuition behind the self-registration view of consciousness. Moreover, HOR theorists ask, what is the alternative? The only way to avoid both the regress of higher-order states and the grounding of consciousness in the unconscious is to accept the existence of mental states that are not just aware of other mental states (thereby lifting the latter into consciousness) but also of themselves. Only such mental states, that are aware of themselves, can do without higher-order states, as they lift themselves into consciousness by being self-conscious. But HOR theorists generally find this a paradoxical solution, and thus prefer their own solution of grounding consciousness in unconscious higher-order states, which they find – if not totally unparadoxical – at least less paradoxical. As David Armstrong puts it: “[I]t is impossible that the introspecting and the thing introspected should be one and the same mental state. A mental state cannot be aware of itself, any more than a man can eat himself up.” (Armstrong 1968: 324) I will say more about this issue below.

In the final analysis, however, HOR theory remains unsatisfactory, for two reasons at least. First of all, we do not just want to explain consciousness, we also want to explain self-consciousness. Even if HOR theory succeeds in explaining consciousness in terms of the mind’s self-registration of mental states by higher-order mental states, the fact remains that this self-registration occurs unconsciously and therefore falls short of self-consciousness, since – as noted earlier – “unconscious self-consciousness” is clearly paradoxical. Self-consciousness, then, seems definitely out of the range of HOR theory. It is, moreover, questionable whether HOR theory can even explain consciousness, given the Hard Problem of Consciousness (HPC). The HPC seems to show that reductionism vis-à-vis consciousness is a dead end: it suggests that consciousness cannot be explained in terms of something else, i.e. something without consciousness, e.g. the brain as a purely physical object. But such reduction of consciousness to something else is precisely what HOR theory amounts to, as it explains conscious states in terms of unconscious higher-order states. This should come as no surprise, since HOR theories are often explicitly designed to facilitate a naturalist (i.e. materialist, physicalist) explanation of consciousness (hence the title of Armstrong’s 1968 classic, A Materialist Theory of Mind).

David Chalmers coined the term
"Hard Problem of Consciousness"

The question, then, comes down to how one stands towards the HPC: is it merely an extremely difficult problem which in the end can nevertheless be solved, or is truly insoluble? Can consciousness be reduced to something else, or is it irreducible? If one takes consciousness to be reducible, then HOR theory is, perhaps, still a viable option (if it can find an explanation for self-consciousness as well). Opinions on this will no doubt continue to differ in the foreseeable future, although there seems to be a growing majority leaning towards irreducibility. I, too, incline to irreducibility, but to argue for it here would far exceed the bounds of this blog post. In the following, therefore, I will simply assume the irreducibility of consciousness and investigate the consequences. It follows, of course, that HOR theory is off the table.  

The unavoidability of prereflective self-consciousness
Let’s take stock. The self-registration view of consciousness explains the latter in terms of self-consciousness: a mental state aimed at an external object is conscious because the mind is not just aware of the external object but also of the state itself. We saw, however, that the reflection model of self-consciousness fails: the reflective turning around of object-consciousness towards the subject cannot lead to self-knowledge, unless this reflection is guided by a prior self-consciousness, which is therefore prereflective and in a mode different from object-consciousness. Prereflective self-consciousness, then, is what we need to explain consciousness as such, in line with the self-registration view.

This also became apparent from the failure of HOR theory, where the reflection model returns in the idea that mental states are lifted into consciousness by additional reflections, i.e. higher-order states. We saw that HOR theory faces the problem of self-recognition: how does the mind know that the mental state, of which it is aware through a higher-order state, is its own mental state? Doesn’t this already presuppose self-awareness? We also saw that HOR theory faces a dilemma: either accept an infinite regress of higher-order states or accept that consciousness is grounded in unconscious higher-order states. Both horns of the dilemma are undesirable. An actual infinity of higher-order states not only violates the phenomenology of consciousness, it is also mysterious how a finite object such as the human brain can contain such infinite complexity. As for the second horn, the grounding of consciousness in the unconsciousness, we noted that this ignores the HPC.

So, to avoid both the regress and the grounding of consciousness in the unconscious, we have to accept the existence of mental states that are not just aware of other mental states (thereby lifting the latter into consciousness) but also of themselves. Only such mental states, that are aware of themselves, can do without higher-order states, as they lift themselves into consciousness, by being self-conscious. This is therefore what prereflective self-consciousness amounts to: a state of consciousness that is immediately aware of itself, unmediated by reflections.

David Armstrong: "A mental state
cannot be aware of itself, anymore
than a man can eat himself up."

Is prereflective self-consciousness paradoxical?
But how, then, should we respond to the objection, raised by HOR theory, that the notion of a mental state being aware of itself is incoherent? To repeat the earlier quote from David Armstrong: “[I]t is impossible that the introspecting and the thing introspected should be one and the same mental state. A mental state cannot be aware of itself, any more than a man can eat himself up.” (Armstrong 1968: 324) Note, first of all, that this is just a dogmatic assertion, without real argumentation. Also, the comparison of a self-aware mental state with a man eating himself up goes limp. A man who would – per impossibile – eat himself up entirely would not only kill himself; he would disappear altogether. In that sense, eating oneself up is a form of total self-negation. But a self-aware mental state is not self-negating – on the contrary, it is rather self-affirming or even self-producing.

To be conscious of an object, after all, is judgmental in nature, in that (a) one is conscious of the object as existing, such that existence is – at least implicitly – affirmed of the object, and (b) one is aware of the object as having one or more properties, which are therefore also affirmed of the object. For example, when I take a walk in the countryside and I (veridically) see a tree, I see the tree as existing and as green, as leafy, as beautiful, etc. Likewise, then, when a mental state is self-aware, it is aware of itself as existing and as having certain properties (e.g. awareness of itself).

A self-aware mental state, then, is self-affirmative, i.e. the complete opposite of the self-negation inherent in eating oneself up. The latter is clearly paradoxical, but where is the paradox in self-affirmation? Whereas “I don’t exist” is obviously contradictory, “I exist” is a truism. Thus, I see no paradox in speaking of a self-aware mental state… unless, perhaps, one interprets the self-affirmation inherent in self-awareness in a strong ontological fashion as self-production, as Fichte notoriously did. But it is clear that the Fichtean concept of “self-positing” is not per se needed to understand the self-affirmation inherent in self-awareness. I will return to this issue at the end of this post.

Subject-object difference vs. subject-object identity
Is, then, Armstrong’s criticism of the notion of a self-aware mental state completely unfounded? No, but whatever plausibility it has at the same time makes clear why the reflection model of self-consciousness is inherently wrong. Let me explain. The intuitive plausibility of Armstrong’s criticism derives from the common idea that some kind of subject-object difference is intrinsic to all consciousness, such that the conscious subject is always different from the object of which it is conscious. Hence Armstrong’s bald statement that “it is impossible that the introspecting and the thing introspected should be one and the same mental state”. But – and this is what Armstrong overlooks – it is precisely this idea that underlies the inadequacy of the reflection model of self-consciousness. In fact, we can use the idea of subject-object difference to clarify what object-consciousness really is – a concept we haven’t properly defined yet. Object-consciousness, we can say, is intentional consciousness and is as such inherently wedded to subject-object difference. In intentional consciousness, the subject is invariably aware of an object as different from itself.

Self-consciousness, however, is essentially characterized by subject-object identity. In self-consciousness, the subject is its own object; thus, subject and object coincide, they are numerically identical. Hence the inadequacy of the reflection model. Object-consciousness and self-consciousness pull in different directions: the first pulls towards subject-object difference, the second towards subject-object identity. The reflection model has to bring about an identity by means of conceptual tools that imply difference – an obvious impossibility. Hence the many paradoxes ailing the model. It constantly has to undo or supress the difference which its concepts equally constantly generate. Already on this abstract level, then, we see that the reflection model is in principle incapable of explaining self-consciousness: the aspect of subject-object identity keeps eluding the difference engendering conceptuality of reflection – like the tail eluding the self-chasing dog.

The non-intentional nature of prereflective self-consciousness
That the subject-object distinction is indeed the root of all trouble for the reflection model becomes clearer when we take a closer look at the phenomenological concept of intentionality. Intrinsic to that concept is the idea that intentional consciousness is inherently “thetic” or “positional”, such that consciousness essentially purports to be about an independent object, i.e. an object existing independently from the consciousness aimed at it. This, of course, harks back to what I said earlier about the affirmative nature of consciousness, albeit that the phenomenological view of the positional nature of consciousness is stronger. On the phenomenological view, consciousness not just affirms the existence its object, it affirms that existence as independent from itself. Thus, intentionality is seen to imply a strong subject-object distinction. Phenomenologists put this by saying that the object is intended by consciousness as transcending consciousness. Husserl referred to this positing of objects as transcending our consciousness of them as “the natural attitude”. As Sartre (1972: xxvii) put it: “All consciousness is positional in that it transcends itself in order to reach an object.” It should be noted that such a concept of consciousness as ‘intending beyond itself’ is by no means unique to phenomenologists; many analytic philosophers held similar ideas, notably (and influentially) Moore with his notion of the diaphanous nature of consciousness as an argument for realism.

The point is that the failure of the reflection model becomes all the more obvious if we understand object-consciousness in this strong sense as intending its object as existing independently. If self-consciousness were “self-transcending” in that sense, it would have to posit its object, a mysterious entity called “the self”, as existing independently. But then, immediately, a new regress would arise. For since self-consciousness is obviously a property of this self, self-consciousness would have to posit the self as independently being self-conscious. That is: self-consciousness would then have to presuppose a prior self-consciousness on the part of its object, the self. And this prior self-consciousness, since it too would posit its object as existing independently, would also have to presuppose an already self-conscious self as its object, and so on indefinitely (cf. Sartre 1972: xxvi-xxix; Frank 1991: 226). Again, then, we see that the reflection model leads to a regress. Hence the conclusion, explicitly drawn by Sartre in particular, that prereflective self-consciousness is non-intentional, i.e. not committed to a strong subject-object distinction. Rather, in prereflective self-consciousness, the subject is aware of itself as strictly identical with itself. Or in terms of mental states, prereflective self-consciousness is a mental state that is aware of itself as itself, not as something different.

Final considerations: Prereflective self-consciousness and Idealist Monism
Earlier we noted that Fichte interprets the self-positing inherent in self-consciousness in a strong ontological fashion as self-creation. We now begin to see the motivation behind that idea. If we cannot see prereflective self-consciousness as aimed at the self as an independently existing object, then the self becomes a function of prereflective self-consciousness, i.e. the self only exists as the object of this self-awareness. In other words: a self is that particular self only because it is aware of itself as that particular person: Socrates, for example, is Socrates only because he takes himself to be Socrates. As such, the self-creating aspect of prereflective self-consciousness underlies the radical autonomy of the self, as Fichte stressed. Hence his claims to the effect that the self is the prereflective self-consciousness it has of itself and is as such self-creating. As Fichte put it: “What was I, then, before I came to self-consciousness? The natural answer to this question is: I did not exist at all, for I was not an I. The I exists only insofar as it is conscious of itself.” (Fichte 1991: 98) This bootstrapping of the self through self-consciousness Fichte called “self-positing” (“Selbstsetzung”), saying things like: “the self begins by an absolute positing of its own existence” (Fichte 1991: 99). Note, by the way, that Fichte was not the first to draw attention to the self-creating power of self-consciousness. Similar ideas can already be found in Plotinus: see the previous post on this blog.

Baron von Münchhausen pulling him-
self from the swamp by his own hair.
Can self-consciousnss do the same?

We may take the idea that prereflective self-awareness is self-creating as its own reductio ad absurdum. But note that the idea appears in different light when we take into account the Hard Problem of Consciousness (HPC). For it seems clear, at least to me, that the HPC implies Idealist Monism, which I define as the claim that all of reality – including the physical – is ultimately explained in terms of consciousness. The irreducibility of consciousness obviously rules out Physicalist Monism (the claim that “everything is physical”), but it is consistent with both Idealist Monism and Ontological Dualism (i.e. the claim that reality consists of two different and separate substances, consciousness and matter). But when we also take the undeniable fact of mind-body interaction into account, the situation changes: Ontological Dualism falls away, and Idealist Monism is left as the only viable option. For if consciousness and matter are two different and separate substances, as Dualism maintains, then it is utterly mysterious how they can nevertheless interact (cf. the embarrassment of Descartes’ pineal gland). On an Idealist Monist reading, however, mind-body interaction is ultimately understandable as a form of mind-mind interaction, since Idealist Monism takes matter to be a manifestation of consciousness. But if we take Idealist Monism seriously, how then should we respond to Leibniz’ famous question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Note that on an Idealist Monist reading, Leibniz’ question should be rephrased as: Why is there consciousness, rather than nothing? Why does consciousness exist? And now the idea of the self-creating power of prereflective self-consciousness is suddenly not so absurd anymore…

References
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